ABC13 News: “Duke University School of Law Professor Darrell Miller said the ordinance could be a pre-cursor to the introduction of national legislation. Buncombe County is now the seventh community in North Carolina to enact such an ordinance. “This is an example of what we might think of as blue localities in red states,” said Professor Miller….

Texas Monthly: “Every month for the past decade, Scott Nicol, a 51-year-old artist and activist, has set out from his home in McAllen to roam the Rio Grande Valley in search of ladders used to scale the border wall in South Texas. On a cool and overcast day in early April, Nicol has centered his…

NOLA.com: “Troy Carter fulfilled a long-held ambition Saturday as voters in the 2nd Congressional District elected him to the U.S. House of Representatives, triumphing over Karen Carter Peterson after a bruising campaign between two Democratic state senators from New Orleans who agreed on issues more often than not. Carter won the race with 55% of…

NPR: “Two Louisiana state senators will go head-to-head in a runoff election Saturday that will determine who will succeed a White House adviser in the U.S. House. State Sens. Karen Carter Peterson and Troy Carter, both Democrats, will compete for the 2nd Congressional District seat left vacant by Cedric Richmond, whom President Biden tapped to serve…

AL.com: “The Alabama Senate [Tuesday] passed bill to prohibit racial profiling that would require police to keep records of traffic stops intended to show whether profiling is happening. The bill is by Sen. Rodger Smitherman, a Democrat from Birmingham, who has sponsored bills to prohibit racial profiling for more than a decade. Under his legislation, city, county,…

CNN: “Former President Donald Trump’s backing of football great Herschel Walker to run for the Georgia Senate seat has been enough to effectively freeze the GOP field in place — even though some Republicans privately worry the political neophyte might fizzle against Sen. Raphael Warnock in a high-stakes general election. Warnock, who is running for a full six-year…

Gambit: “Four years ago I recalled in this space Gov. Earl K. Long’s masterful put-down of then-state Attorney General Jack Gremillion — “If you want to hide something from him, put it in a law book.” I jokingly speculated that the same might be said of current Louisiana AG Jeff Landry. Now, after watching Landry lose yet…

The Root: “Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin gave residents a reason to celebrate when he officially pardoned anyone convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession by the city over the last three decades. On Tuesday, Woodfin announced a blanket pardon for anyone with a closed marijuana conviction in the Birmingham Municipal Courts between 1990 and 2020. The…

Politico: “Florida Rep. Val Demings said she’s “seriously considering” a statewide bid against Sen. Marco Rubio or Gov. Ron DeSantis, boosting Democratic hopes in a battleground state that’s growing increasingly red. Demings, a former Orlando police chief, rose to national prominence as a House impeachment manager and as a possible running mate for Joe Biden last year….

GA Public Broadcasting: “A new analysis of demographic data from Georgia’s November and January elections confirms a larger decline in white rural turnout led to Democrats flipping both U.S. Senate seats, one of the biggest challenges the GOP must tackle ahead of 2022. After a record-setting November 2020 general election that saw more than five million Georgians cast their ballots,…