Originally published by OpenCampus and North Carolina Public Radio. Less than a week after its surprise inclusion at a University of North Carolina Board of Governors meeting, faculty and students across the system are reacting with confusion and anger at a policy that seeks to eliminate DEI on campuses. “We are stunned at the speed, the secrecy, and the exclusion,” said Wade Maki, the head of the UNC System’s Faculty Assembly and a professor at UNC-Greensboro. “Very few people in the UNC System seemed to know this was coming. We had no testimony, no questions, no discussions, and now that it ..read more

Welcome back to Everything’s Political, Capital B’s news, culture, and politics newsletter! Every Thursday, I’ll take a look at recent stories that seem particularly noteworthy. Here’s what I’ve got for you this week. TikTok Might Be on Borrowed Time The clock is ticking for TikTok. Pointing to alleged national security risks, President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed legislation that gives the video-sharing platform’s China-based parent company 270 days to sell the ferociously popular app or face a national ban. Black users — both teens and adults — use the platform at high rates and have ..read more

You could say that President Donald Trump over the past year has been on a revenge tour. Just recall the militant language that he’s used to rile up his followers: “I am your warrior. I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he declared at one gathering. But only more recently have Americans gotten a concrete sense of what, precisely, that “retribution” might look like if Trump enters the White House in 2025. Reporting from Axios this month revealed that one of the main goals of a second Trump administration would be to redirect the federal gove ..read more

Originally published by The 19th UPDATE: DecisionDesk HQ projected Tuesday that Summer Lee won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District. WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Rep. Summer Lee stood in the backyard of a recently built dream home in exurban Pittsburgh and peered at a rusted pipe coming out of the ground topped by an empty, upside down bucket.   It was an orphaned well, probably for natural gas — Murrysville is a hotbed of them and they date to the late 1800s. The state has identified about 27,000 that need capping, but the total number of aban ..read more

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the media flooded with cases of women who had been denied abortion care during emergency situations, putting their lives at risk.  Whether pregnant patients have the constitutional right to abortion care when their health is severely at risk is at the heart of Idaho v. United States, whose oral arguments are being heard by the high court this week. The federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, often known as EMTALA, requires hospitals to provide the care that’s medically necessary to stabilize patients in emergencies. I ..read more

FLINT, Mich. — At the edge of Saginaw Street, a hand-painted sign is etched into a deserted storefront. “Please help, God. Clean-up Flint.” Behind it, the block tells the story of a city 10 years removed from the start of one of the nation’s largest environmental crises.  Empty lot. Charred two-story home. Empty lot. Abandoned house with the message “All Copper GONE,” across boarded-up windows.  John Ishmael Taylor, 44, was born in this ZIP code, 48503, and he’s seen firsthand the neglect of the place he loves, one he hopes will be reborn for his young children.  “The water cri ..read more

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On the morning of April 2, Morgan Farley was wearing a brown wig, light blue jeans, a brownish jacket, and gym shoes while dicing a potato on the kitchen counter inside her Chicago home. She was preparing breakfast for herself as her father, Sam Farley, headed out the door for work.  They didn’t utter a word to each other — not unusual, her father thought.   When Farley returned home that night, the potato had oxidized and browned. “It was still sitting there. … I had to throw it away, clean it up,” he told Capital B. “I haven’t seen her since.” The following day, Farley went t ..read more

Echoing arguments similar to those used by the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court striking down affirmative action, Republican attorneys general from 23 states petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week to stop taking race into account when regulating pollution. The petition, authored by the office of Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, was filed Tuesday with the EPA. It is only a request, but it highlights stiff opposition from conservative states to the Biden administration’s signature environmental justice policies, which include hundreds o ..read more

Welcome back to Everything’s Political, Capital B’s news, culture, and politics newsletter! Every Thursday, I’ll take a look at recent stories that seem particularly noteworthy. Here’s what I’ve got for you this week. Black Dissent Under Siege in the Deep South Exactly 60 years ago this month, organizers in Mississippi — including Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Bob Moses, and James W. Wright — founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Its ambition was twofold: to shine a light on the rot consuming the state’s Democratic Party, which barred Black Americans from participating in i ..read more