Obama

June 30, 2016 - In Southern battleground states, the growing Latino electorate could be a decisive voting bloc — and especially motivated after last week’s 4-4 Supreme Court deadlock effectively halted President Obama’s deportation relief programs.

April 21, 2016 - This week the Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit challenging President Obama's deportation relief programs for undocumented immigrants. Most Southern states are plaintiffs in the case — even though the programs would benefit many immigrants in the region.

March 2, 2016 - While Senate Republicans refuse to consider any of President Obama's nominees to fill the vacancy left by the death of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, they're engineering a broader judicial crisis for purely political reasons.

January 27, 2016 - As efforts intensify to keep fossil fuel reserves in the ground in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change, anti-drilling activists are planning to protest outside a March auction in New Orleans of more than 42 million acres of U.S. waters from Louisiana to Florida for new oil and gas development.

November 13, 2015 - President Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline last week, citing climate concerns. But Canadian tar sands oil is already flowing to refineries in the South, putting vulnerable communities at even greater risk for pollution-related health problems.

October 21, 2015 - Since Republicans took control of the Senate in January, they have delayed and obstructed highly qualified judicial nominees at every step of the confirmation process, leading to scores of vacancies on the bench and dozens of judicial emergencies.

July 17, 2015 - As a federal trial over North Carolina's racially discriminatory new voting law got underway, one of the state's congressmen introduced a bill to honor with a commemorative postage stamp a political leader whose groundbreaking career in Congress in the late 19th century was cut short by laws disenfranchising African Americans.

May 20, 2015 - Last week Florida became the latest among 28 states that now or will soon offer statewide online voter registration. Evidence shows such systems are less prone to fraud, more cost-effective and popular among voters and elections officials alike.

April 17, 2015 - The Welcoming America movement, which has its roots in the South, is being hailed by a White House task force as a model approach for helping communities be more proactive in addressing immigration.

March 26, 2015 - This week marked the fifth anniversary of President Obama signing into law the Affordable Care Act, and a "People's Grand Jury" in North Carolina handed down a symbolic indictment of the state's Republican leaders for refusing to expand Medicaid to cover more uninsured low-income people as the law allows.