WCPT: “Drug overdose deaths in Kentucky decreased 5% between 2022 and 2021, the first drop since 2018. New data from the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center showed 2,127 Kentuckians died from a drug overdose in 2022 compared with 2,257 the year prior. Gov. Andy Beshear pointed to a statewide program allowing Kentuckians without health insurance to…

Politico: “The North Carolina Supreme Court has overturned its own past ruling that said partisan gerrymandering is illegal, clearing the way for Republicans there to redraw the state’s congressional lines in a way that heavily favors the GOP. The ruling clears the way for North Carolina legislators to aggressively gerrymander the congressional map, which is…

WaPo: “A man killed five people, including an 8-year-old boy, with an AR-15-style weapon Friday night in an angry response to his neighbors’ request that he stop shooting in his yard while their baby was trying to sleep, according to Texas authorities. Instead of heeding his neighbors’ request, the man allegedly took the gun, went…

WaPo: “Black lawmakers in Virginia’s General Assembly joined the state’s NAACP Friday in calling for the resignation of Martin D. Brown, the state’s chief diversity officer, after he blasted diversity, equity and inclusion programs in a speech at Virginia Military Institute. State Sen. Lamont Bagby (D-Richmond), the chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, described…

Watauga Watch: “Winston has served for the last six years on the Charlotte City Council and is currently mayor pro tem. He is also a labor activist — a professional videographer but also, as a stagehand and grip, a union member, in “our region’s robust sports television and entertainment production community” (Winston website). He was…

WaPo: “Last October, Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph A. Ladapo, made an alarming claim about the mRNA vaccines that have been so vital to protecting people around the world from serious disease and death from the coronavirus. Dr. Ladapo issued a press release declaring that a new analysis by the Florida health department had found an “abnormally high risk of cardiac-related…

NY Times: “Only two people knew exactly what happened during the minute they were alone together in the general store in Money, Miss., on Aug. 24, 1955. One, Emmett Till, a Black teenager visiting from Chicago, died four days later, at 14, in a brutal murder that stands out even in America’s long history of…

WRAL: “The state legislature is considering a controversial solution to the lack of affordable housing: Granny flats. On [April 20] a legislative committee advanced House Bill 409, which aims to legalize the construction of tinier houses in the yards or woods of already existing homes. Technically called accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, such properties are…

NY Times: “As recently as a decade ago, U.S. military officials stood by the anemic fiction that Confederate base names had nothing to do with race hatred. But that position rang hollow each time Confederate ideology figured in episodes of racist violence. The connection was crystal clear in 2015, when a gunman sought to instigate…

North State Journal: “The ACLU-NC’s 40-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina is a facial challenge to the law, meaning the lawsuit is claiming the law is either unconstitutionally overbroad or vague and should therefore be blocked. The lawsuit claims the law “violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the…