July 26, 2018 -
Vernon Haltom of West Virginia's Coal River Mountain Watch was among those who testified about coal's future before a congressional subcommittee this week. The testimony of Haltom — whose group is working to end mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia — details what boosting coal means for the communities where it's extracted.
July 20, 2018 -
With President Trump nominating a judge with a record of hostility to voting rights to the U.S. Supreme Court, state courts and constitutions are likely to play an increasingly critical role in protecting those rights — but those institutions are under political assault by conservatives.
July 20, 2018 -
President Trump recently commuted the federal prison sentence of Alice Marie Johnson of Tennessee, who was serving life without parole for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense. The move came after a decade of effort by criminal justice reform advocates, who now see hope for more systemic change in a bill that's been introduced in Congress by a key GOP leader.
July 19, 2018 -
A campaign to encourage politicians to reject contributions from electric utility monopolies aims to recast Virginia politics-as-usual as unethical. Though the pledge effort is meeting opposition from those who benefit under the current conflict-ridden system, it's still going strong — and has spread beyond the state.
July 16, 2018 -
The public has until July 31 to weigh in on a proposal to bar key federal funding from family planning service providers who so much as mention abortion to patients. The policy would have a disproportionate impact on the health of poor women and women of color in the South.
July 11, 2018 -
The organization's special rapporteur on extreme poverty presented a report last month documenting his disturbing findings in states including Alabama, Georgia and West Virginia.
June 29, 2018 -
Dealing a blow to the labor movement that will disproportionately affect people of color, the conservative majority's ruling that public-sector workers represented by unions should be able to pay nothing for that representation endorses a policy first promoted in the 1940s South by pro-segregation business interests hostile to organized labor because of its work on behalf of racial justice.
