Sat down with the great @jimhightower.com for a talk about Texas politics past, present and future. He's been sounding a consistent alarm for decades about the Democratic Party's reliance on and deference to corporate donors. theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

This week Jesse talks to Southlands founder and editor @boyceupholt.bsky.social about Southerners' relationship to our natural surroundings — and about a new book Upholt has also written, about the history and destiny of the Mississippi River. theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

Across the South — and especially in Florida, home to Moms for Liberty, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz — MAGA has spent the last 5 years attacking and demonizing librarians, teachers, LGBTQ people and other innocent parties for "sexualizing" and "grooming" children.

ICE detainees report overcrowding and abusive conditions at Pine Prairie center in Louisiana. We looked at ICE detention in Louisiana here: theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

#Louisiana State Rep. Terry Landry Jr. has hope for the future of our democracy 🌟. 🎙️ "Real change happens through the work, relentless work of the people." Haven't listened to the latest episode of the SPLC's #ApathyIsNotAnOption podcast? Listen today 📲: https://bit.ly/4kkwX7U

What did last week's elections mean for the South? We brought in @votegloriaj.bsky.social — one of the Tennessee Three — to talk about it. Also: her thoughts on Trump's pardon of felonious former TN House Speaker Glen Casada. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-29...

It is an amazing time to be a corrupt politician facing jail time. You finally have a president who understands you. He feels your pain! tennesseelookout.com/briefs/forme...

This week on HEADLIGHTS: A talk with Eva Posner at @evincocampaigns.bsky.social about what it takes to run a successful progressive campaign in the South. Also: the impact of lost SNAP benefits. theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

Kind of an eye-popping look at the power behind North Carolina's Supreme Court. "He’s packed higher and lower courts with former clerks and mentees whom he’s cultivated at his Bible study, prayer breakfasts and similar events. His political muscle is backed by his family’s ..."

Good news from S.C.: "With more than 20 miles of land along the Santee, Black and Pee Dee rivers, preventing development will help reduce flooding. At least 115 plant and animal species considered a priority for protection also live on the protected land, according to Open Space Institute."

What are the prospects for progress in Texas? Who better to talk to than @progresstexas.bsky.social? @chrismosser.bsky.social is the guest on this week's Headlights, talking Lone Star politics and media. Link below.

On this week's HEADLIGHTS: Tennessee State Senator Heidi Campbell on the state's gun death statistics — and why they're among the worst in the country. Also, a remembrance of what the late great D'Angelo meant to his hometown of Richmond, Va. — and what it meant to him.

The South's war on libraries continues: "In what intellectual freedom advocates have seen coming for months, a Texas school district has just shut down access to all secondary school libraries for students due to the regulations of the state’s Senate Bill 13."

Florida's ongoing assault on free speech continues. Two grandparents who sent a signed postcard critical of the state's chief financial officer were visited at home by state law enforcement officers. These are police-state tactics aimed at people engaged in free expression.

R.I.P. D'Angelo, a native of Richmond, Va., whose music was soaked in Southern soul and funk. One of the greats. variety.com/2025/music/n...

This week: great conversation with Texas state Sen. @saraheckhardttx.bsky.social about Lone Star politics: the redistricting fight, the Texas non-voter problem, and where she sees opportunities. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

This week: @corbintrent.bsky.social on "America's Undoing" and why Democrats are being too timid in pushing for a popular, populist progressive agenda. Also: How the right-wing media outrage machine works, and a memoriam for the late great Arkansas drag queen and club owner Norman Jones.

Arkansas native Norman Jones, a towering drag performer who won the first-ever Miss Gay America pageant and the driving force behind some of the state’s most beloved gay clubs, died Monday at the age of 79.

Good news from Georgia, although a referendum is still to come.

On this week's HEADLIGHTS: an interview with the reporter and author Alexis Okeowo, a contributing writer for The New Yorker who has a great new book out called BLESSINGS AND DISASTERS: A STORY OF ALABAMA. Part memoir, part history, part deeply reported consideration of her complex home state.

"Literacy is much more than the ability to read. Literacy is what results from repeatedly exercising that skill with a wide range of books. Learning. Empathy. A broader understanding of the world and the people in it. The Alabama Public Library Service Board does not seem to like that."

A Georgia journalist was detained while reporting on an anti-ICE protest, and DHS has reopened an old immigration case against him. He now faces deportation. georgiarecorder.com/2025/09/23/i...

None of the reports from DHS so far have even mentioned the names of the actual people shot — one killed — at the Dallas ICE facility yesterday. This is because humanizing detainees in any way works against the desensitization and dehumanization necessary to sustain the mass deportation project.

Great conversation this week with Leah Song of Rising Appalachia — on music, activism, and bringing people together in tough times. Also: What the National Guard deployment to Memphis signals for cities in Southern states. youtu.be/4O4zUEgjT1g

Thanks to contributor Glenn Daigon for this account of a successful union action by school bus drivers in Richmond, Va. theprogressivesouth.org/learning-fro...

This week: Guns and gun violence in the South, and why the right never wants to talk about it. Also: Great conversation w/Katie Blankenship of Sanctuary of the South, on providing legal help to immigrants in our chaotic moment. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-21...

Good news for Cop City protesters! The racketeering charges were a clear overreach that tried to frame political protests as an illegal conspiracy. But this is a mostly procedural ruling, and prosecutors will probably appeal.

New episode of Headlights: Steve Smith of @cleanenergy.org on solar and wind energy progress in the South, and how it's under threat from the Trump admin and massive new power-sucking data centers; and an update on Texas' ever-more-aggressive anti-abortion laws. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-20...

From slavery to convict leasing to Jim Crow to "right-to-work," the Southern economy has always depended on extracting labor as cheaply as possible. A Labor Day look at what @epi.org calls the "Southern Economic Development Model."

Holiday greeting from @rickbaldwin.bsky.social. #EditorialCartoons

The latest from @rickbaldwin.bsky.social: School vouchers.

Very happy this week to talk to writer, thinker, educator and Progressive South board member @sotoalfred.bsky.social about Florida politics — how they got so bad, how they can maybe get better. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-18...

The latest from Rick Baldwin: on restoring the Confederacy. (More at rickbaldwincartoons.com)

The generally conservative 5th Circuit blocks West Texas A&M's drag ban. FIRE Attorney Adam Steinbaugh: “We’re overjoyed that our clients will now be able to express themselves freely, and we’ll be watching to make sure that President Wendler obeys the laws of the land while the case proceeds."

We are beyond proud of Fort Worth State Rep. Nicole Collier for standing up to ridiculous GOP bullying! Full talk: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

The conversation in HEADLIGHTS this week is with Dom Kelly of @newdisabledsouth.org: "The South has 1/3 of all disabled people in the entire country — the majority of whom are Black. We also have the legacy of eugenics, of slavery, of Jim Crow, that all inform our policies and our systems today."

It's baaaaaack. This week: Why the Confederacy never really died, and why it's making another one of its zombie resurgences now under the Trump administration. Listen here: sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-17...

Thanks to our friends at Inside of Knoxville for a great write-up and interview about The Progressive South! insideofknoxville.com/2025/08/jess...

A newly formed City of Jackson housing task force promises to hold the city’s landlords accountable for neglect.

Good news out of Florida! A federal judge has thrown out the state law being used to ban books in Florida schools as overbroad and unconstitutional. The law fails the long-established Miller Test for defining obscenity. bookriot.com/penguin-rand...

In this week's episode of Headlights (link below), we're talking about the attacks on the Voting Rights Act from Louisiana and elsewhere. Here's @rickbaldwin.bsky.social's take.

— How a Louisiana court case could be the final nail in the coffin of the Voting Rights Act. — Andrew Otazo of Miami Creation Myth on what the rest of us get wrong about his complicated, "fraudulent" city. — And what Hayley Williams' new songs have to say about Nashville and the South.

Thrilled to welcome @rickbaldwin.bsky.social as a contributor to The Progressive South! Rick is an illustrator, fine artist, writer and podcaster living in the Atlanta area.

They're messin' with Texas! How gerrymandering shapes Southern politics. Plus, a great conversation with Tulane professor @coreyjmiles.bsky.social, who guest-edited this summer's hip-hop themed issue of the journal Southern Cultures. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-15...

Back in 2023, a farmworker named José Arturo Gonzalez Mendoza died while working on the massive farm estate owned by Republican State Senator Lisa Barnes. What happened next should shock the conscience. www.newsobserver.com/news/state/n...

This week: Florida's war on immigrants. We talk with Tessa Petit, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, about the fight for the rights of the state’s immigrant communities. We also take a drive out to Alligator Alcatraz. Listen in! sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-14...

By the way, we're up on YouTube now as well as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. youtu.be/2u83EYnsnDU

This week: Talkin' book bans in 'Bama with @angiehay.bsky.social of Read Freely Alabama, leadership failures on climate change across the South, and ... Kid Rock's patriotic flag-a-palooza Rock The Country.

An excerpt here from our crossover with the guys at the Cast Iron Resistance podcast: What's up with the increasingly aggressive pro-Trump posturing by our congressman? And ... what does he do in the bathroom? (link to episode in comments) youtu.be/86ieImYlNjQ?...

From @gwenfulton.bsky.social: "I think, maybe now ... they will install the sirens, maybe now they will rebuild the dams, maybe now they will cap the carbon, maybe now they will protect public lands, maybe now they will preserve the forests, maybe now we will be reborn. But they don’t."