Portside

There is still a lot of uncertainty about what the court will do. The decision could fall anywhere in between the two extremes laid out in this article. We’ll just have to wait and see; a decision could come down any day.

The 2.2 million uninsured adults with incomes below the poverty line who were caught in the Medicaid “coverage gap” in 2019 are a varied group, but they all live in states that have failed to adopt the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Medicaid expansion.

Last year, number of states that were categorized as hostile to abortion rights by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health policy think tank — including all of the states across the South: 29

...Black Belt communities currently being ravaged by COVID-19 would benefit from the kind of sustained investment that should have been happening since 2008...just as the whiter, richer states in the NBRC did.

But nothing prepared me to hear a so-called "expert" at a state senate hearing proclaiming that he remembered when he was a fetus and that such should be the basis for a total ban on abortion.

Currently, there are 20 states poised to outlaw abortion if given the opportunity, which would impact more than 25 million women of child-bearing age — and disproportionately poor and minority women.

We actually found out that our jail not only has a 287(g) program but is a mini detention center almost. There are people being held here for immigration purposes, and some of them are going to be deported directly from the jail.

Becky Rafter could have been among the 67% of white women voters in Alabama who cast their lot with Roy Moore. She grew up all over the South, including an Alabama small town shaped by white flight. Reared in a household of modest means in rental housing, her parents budgeted every dollar. Their financial planning, aid, and scholarships allowed her to sometimes attend private school, with the added help of white privilege. Maybe it was growing up queer in the South or the dissonance of the segregated societies of her childhood.

This past year in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, a small group of residents began organizing their community to compel the state to protect them against an invisible menace: the air they breathe. Their parish, the Louisiana equivalent of a county, is situated in what’s known as Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that hosts more than 100 petrochemical factories.

The Trump administration recently released its comprehensive budget proposal, optimistically titled "A New Foundation for American Greatness." The budget was immediately condemned by Southern politicians in both parties, as well as advocates for the poor, immigrants, and other vulnerable populations in the South.