Politics

January 13, 2022 - As Martin Luther King Jr. Day nears, Democratic lawmakers have renewed their efforts to advance two major voting rights bills that have been blocked by the Senate filibuster. Voting rights advocates are angry over the lack of progress and are demanding immediate action from elected officials.

January 12, 2022 - Over 80 cities, counties, and states will raise their minimum wage this year, thanks to the Fight for $15 movement. But only two of those jurisdictions are in the South. 

January 6, 2022 - A text sent to the Trump White House the day after the 2020 election outlining a strategy to have the Supreme Court decide the outcome of the presidential race reportedly came from the phone of former Energy Secretary and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Championing the election's overthrow didn't dim Perry's job prospects, though: He resigned his Trump administration post that December and the following month became a director for the general partner of Energy Transfer, the Dallas-based pipeline company led by billionaire Trump backer and longtime Perry associate Kelcy Warren, whose interests Perry profitably championed in Washington.

December 17, 2021 - Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi are among the states with the lowest vaccination rates. Grassroots organizations there are partnering with public health officials to battle misinformation and distrust in rural, Latino, and Black communities — but elected officials in those states aren't making their jobs any easier.

December 16, 2021 - Southern states' new Republican-drawn election maps would mean less political power for communities of color in the Black Belt region. Voters there are now asking state and federal courts to decide if the new districts violate state or federal law, including the Voting Rights Act.

December 10, 2021 - In its first lawsuit to come out of the latest round of redistricting, the U.S. Department of Justice has taken aim at Texas, arguing that the GOP legislature's new election district maps violate the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against voters by race or color. We look at some of the numbers cited in the lawsuit, which faces an uphill fight in the new legal landscape created by the Supreme Court's 2013 decision gutting the landmark civil rights-era law.

December 6, 2021 - Prisons inflate the political representation of the communities that host them — without any say from prisoners themselves.