Southern Politics

January 30, 2013 - The legislative session that starts today promises to bring big changes to North Carolina as the leaders of the once-progressive state seek to slash unemployment insurance, create a more regressive tax code, impose voter ID requirements, increase private control of public schools, and enshrine right-to-work in the state constitution.

January 24, 2013 - President Obama outlined a decidedly progressive-minded agenda for his second term -- one the South's white oligarchy of business, political, religious and media leaders will fight tooth and nail.

January 18, 2013 - Much of the impetus for the civil rights movement came from students who led marches, took beatings, sang freedom songs, and went to jail. James Orange organized schools in Birmingham, Ala. and recounted his experiences in a 1981 interview in Southern Exposure, which we share in honor of the magazine's 40th anniversary.

January 17, 2013 - In 2012, 41 percent of Southern voters chose a Democrat for Congress. But this month, less than a third of U.S. Representatives from the South will be Democrats. Welcome to the world of gerrymandering, Southern-style.

January 11, 2013 - The new year promises lots of action on the labor front -- and as always in the South, it comes with heavy baggage from the past.

January 7, 2013 - A judge has ruled that a law passed by the Republican-controlled legislature to punish the N.C. Association of Educators by barring it from collecting dues through payroll deduction represents unconstitutional "retaliatory viewpoint discrimination."

January 3, 2013 - One of the biggest decisions facing North Carolina's new legislature and governor is whether to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to cover more than 500,000 low-income people. Much of the opposition to expansion is more about ideology than anything else, a visceral reaction to a law that has been mischaracterized since it was proposed.