North State Journal: “The newly appointed judge in the long-running Leandro case gave instructions to both parties in the case ahead of the April 20 informational deadline imposed by the N.C. Supreme Court in a March 18 order.  Special Superior Court Judge Michael Robinson was appointed to oversee the case on March 21 by Chief Justice Paul Newby.  Robinson was…

TX Observer: “A veteran of several contract fights, Kyle has witnessed various ways—some obvious, some subtle—that ExxonMobil has fought to undermine the union’s power. But as he and other union leaders began contract negotiations in January 2021, Kyle could tell that the corporation was taking a harder line. From the first time they met, he…

TX Observer: “Many gathered what they could and simply shuffled to a park across the street. They pitched their tents—a shred of privacy and shelter from the elements—and resumed surviving. Three months later, the cops and cleaning crews arrived again; the unhoused dutifully dispersed, some to a nearby strip of land between a railroad track…

Out in SA: “On March 24, a San Antonio jury returned a verdict in favor of Christopher Hoffman, a gay man who sought to prove a common law marriage existed since 1996 with his former partner, Moises Ortiz. The decision clears the way for Hoffman to legally divorce Ortiz and thus be eligible for alimony and other…

NY Times: “When Donald Trump recruited David Perdue to run for governor of Georgia, Mr. Trump’s allies boasted that his endorsement alone would shoot Mr. Perdue ahead of the incumbent Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Georgia Republicans braced for an epic clash, fueled by the former president’s personal vendetta against Mr. Kemp, that would divide the…

MS Free Press: “Foster, who runs Cedar Hill Farm, an agritourism business in DeSoto County, Miss., served as a state representative from 2016 until 2020, where he authored the state’s current death penalty law in 2017, allowing for executions by gas chamber, electrocution and firing squad. He placed third in the 2019 Republican primary for governor…

The Independent: “The superintendent of a north Texas school district has been accused of asking libraries to remove books about transgender and LGBT+ people. Jeremy Glenn, the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District, was alleged to have told the Granbury school board in a meeting in January that books about transgender invididuals should be…

The New Yorker: “Though Cowan is not among them, there are at least five candidates vying to take on Greene this fall—including three Democrats, one of whom will almost certainly lose in November. Among this latter group is Marcus Flowers, a Black, cowboy-hat-wearing Army veteran and former military contractor in his forties who reported narrowly…

NC Policy Watch: “The federal government will lease more than 110,000 acres south of Bald Head Island for offshore wind energy, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced today. The auction is scheduled for May 11. If developed, the offshore wind project could generate least 1.3 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, enough to power nearly 500,000…

Axios: “North Carolina’s Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson “paid” for the abortion of his “unborn child in 1989,” according to his personal Facebook comments from 2012. Why it matters: Robinson has surged to the front of the list of prospective GOP candidates for governor in 2024, while repeatedly emphasizing his opposition to abortion as a speaker…