AL Political Reporter: “Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones has been selected by the Biden White House to help guide the president’s selection for the next U.S. Supreme Court justice through the confirmation process.  The so-called “sherpa,” as the role has been termed, helps schedule and guide the nominee through the series of interviews that she…

AL Political Reporter: “The Alabama Sheriffs Association, joined by the Association of County Commissions of Alabama and the Alabama Association of School Resource Officers, held a press conference outside the Alabama Statehouse Tuesday to voice their opposition to a slate of permitless carry — also known as “constitutional carry” — bills currently moving through the…

NC Policy Watch: “State Supreme Court justices were asked in oral arguments Wednesday to declare that redistricting plans the Republicans devised are so skewed that they violate voters’ constitutional rights, while lawyers for GOP lawmakers argued that redistricting should be left to the legislature. Common Cause, the League of Conservation Voters, and a group of…

NY Times: “A federal judge on Monday rejected plea agreements with the Justice Department for two of the three white men facing hate crime charges in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery after his family expressed fierce opposition to the deal.It was a surprising and extraordinary twist in a case in which a 25-year-old Black man…

NBC News: “More than a dozen historically Black colleges and universities received bomb threats on Tuesday, the first day of Black History Month. Howard University was among the first to issue a shelter-in-place order early Tuesday — just a day after the school and several other historically Black colleges and universities received similar threats. “A bomb…

CNBC: “”Maus,” the decades-old graphic novel about the effects of the Holocaust on a family, has become an Amazon bestseller as part of a backlash to the news this week that it was banned by a Tennessee school board. The McMinn County board says it took that step on Jan. 10 because of a handful of curse words…

Business Insider: “The Republican chairman of the National Governors Association said on Saturday that Donald Trump should not lead Republicans or the country again. “I do not believe Trump is the one to lead our party and our country again, as president,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told Insider on the sidelines of the NGA Winter…

MS Free Press: “The first Black woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in history will be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker told a radio show this afternoon. The senior Republican senator from Mississippi made clear that he has no plans to vote for Biden’s yet-to-be-announced pick. Biden has vowed…

Political Wire: ““Three women who said Roy Moore asked them for dates as teens — when he was in his early 30s — testified Thursday morning in Leigh Corfman’s defamation lawsuit against the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court,” AL.com reports. “Two of the women said they went on multiple dates with Moore in about…

Popular Information: “An acclaimed MLK-themed novel was removed from a 10th-grade English class in North Carolina. Haywood County Superintendent Dr. Bill Nolte told Popular Information that he pulled the book, Dear Martin by Nic Stone, in a matter of hours after receiving one parent complaint. Nolte said he did not read the book — or even obtain…