Lots of feasting at the public trough these days.

Mississippi's Black-majority districts remain very much in Gov. Tate Reeves' sights. The state with the largest percentage of Black citizens in the country is likely to lose minority representation.

"The breakup of the Delta District can only be due to race and the desire to dilute the Black vote."

No surprise: The DOJ was apparently sicced on @splcenter.org by right-wing organizations including Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA, who were mad about being called hate groups.

Longtime Kentucky environmental journalist James Bruggers dies @liamniemeyer.bsky.social kentuckylantern.com/2026/06/18/l...

After vetoing a bill to establish a retail cannabis framework last month, Virginia Gov. @abigailspanberger.com has negotiated a compromise with legislators. Retail sales will start on July 1, 2027. Virginia will become the first Southern state with a full legal cannabis marketplace.

@queerkentucky.bsky.social provides valuable journalism covering LGBTQ issues across the Bluegrass State. This week, we talk to Executive Director Missy Spears about what they do and the difference they make. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-57...

On this week's episode of "Headlights," we talk about Central Arkansas Pride and their plans for this year. For some more historical grounding, @oxfordamerican.bsky.social has great photos by Jon Bryant Crawford of the politically charged Conway Pride Parade in 2005.

Bentley Hudgins would be the second out transgender state legislator in the South, after Virginia's Danica Roem. @pwcdanica.bsky.social

This week: We talk with Dolores Wilk of Central Arkansas Pride about their advocacy for LGBTQ folks across the state — including a Pride Festival right outside the state Capitol. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-56...

We talked about William Wolfe and the Center for Baptist Leadership a few months ago (link in comment). Phil Williams is now digging into him as part of his invaluable "Hate Comes to Main Street" project, focusing on the rise of white Christian nationalism.

This week: We talk with LaTricea Adams of @younggiftedgreen.bsky.social in Memphis about environmental justice and facing off against Elon Musk's data center. theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

This week, a great conversation with @davidgriscom.bsky.social about "The Myth of Red Texas." Come for the cowboy strikes, stay for the People's Party. Also: the latest on redistricting, and the Tennessee school system that banned Alex Haley's "Roots." theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

Here‘s a long take on what the chopping up of Memphis represents, in the context of Tennessee’s long hostility to its largest majority-Black city.

Memphis has always been on the front lines of attempts to build Black political power — and to knock it down. This week we look at the carving up of the city among majority-white congressional districts in the context of 160 years of often ugly history. theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

Knox County Schools in Knoxville, Tenn., has banned Alex Haley's 1976 classic "Roots" from school libraries, saying it allegedly violates the state's Age Appropriate Materials Act — because it includes scenes of "sadomasochistic abuse" (i.e. the beating of enslaved people).

South Carolina expands its Heritage Act to protect Confederate monuments from not only removal but also "the use of digital codes or informational plaques placed near some monuments in recent years offering broader context on the bad parts of history."

Southern conservatives are getting pretty cavalier about threatening to remove elected Democrats from office. New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno responds to threats from Louisiana AG Liz Murrill. www.facebook.com/share/v/1B6w...

Props and noisemakers! Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton has removed Democrats from committee assignments because of their indecorous behavior during the special session to carve up Memphis among Republicans.

South Carolina redistricting push fails in the state Senate by two votes.

"This is what living under a cabal is like. We have to waste our time with their obsessions because they don’t have to pay attention to our needs. By and large, our elected officials have no interest in public service. Only power. That’s Alabama. That’s what it’s been for centuries."

And Mississippi — which has the largest Black population by percentage of any U.S. state — also gets the green light to scrap its one Black-majority congressional district.

The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing Alabama to throw out and redraw congressional maps even though early voting is well under way for the state's May 19 primary — and the maps it is throwing out were just upheld in 2023 by ... the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tennessee state Rep. Justin J. Pearson emerges from the House chamber Thursday morning to fire up protesters in the hallway, as the GOP supermajority hurtles toward carving up Memphis’ Black voters among majority-white congressional districts.

The famous colorblindness of white Southern conservatives. Something they have always been known for. Like when they said, "separate but equal."

South Carolina writer @rickpidcock.bsky.social grew up in the conservative evangelical movement and has become an astute observer and critic of it. As a columnist for @baptistnews.com ws, he has been raising alarms about the ongoing growth of Christian nationalism. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-52...

In case you were distracted by the right-wing assault on voting rights, the right-wing assault on reproductive rights is still advancing. The conservative 5th Circuit has at least for now blocked mail access to mifepristone nationwide. lailluminator.com/2026/05/01/5...

Memphis is the second-largest majority-Black city in the United States. Sen. Marsha Blackburn and other Tennessee conservatives want to split it into pieces to ensure that its more than 400,000 Black residents are powerless minorities in three different congressional districts.

The question now will be how far Southern conservative legislators think they can go in drawing new districts that will "unintentionally" eliminate African-American representation.

This week, we round up some of the worst laws passed this spring in Southern states to further bully and harass trans people. This year’s bills are no longer only aiming at issues like sports and bathroom access, but directly at the presence — or even the mention — of trans people altogether.

Conservative leaders across the South are deferential to Elon Musk, if not outright subservient to him. And the richest man in the world is taking advantage of that as he wreaks havoc on our earth, air and water. theprogressivesouth.org/elon-musks-t...

@betsyphillips.bsky.social tears into TN Gov. Bill Lee's proclamation of Nuclear Family Month: "Can you even imagine the delusional gall it takes to sit in a state built through the enslavement of people talking about how Tennessee was built on one man, one woman and their kids?"@nashvillescene.com

Great conversation this week with @emyellin.bsky.social! She co-wrote the new memoir NONVIOLENT, with the late Rev. James Lawson Jr., who trained generations of civil rights leaders and activists. His life and guiding ideas provide a through-line of fights for justice, from the 1950s to the 2020s.

Young Democrats in the South? They're not mythological beasts. This week: talking to the leaders of the newly organized Knox County Young Democrats, in one of the most Republican parts of Tennessee. Also: those slippery Texas social studies standards, and Florida's war on sociology.

Virginia will no longer issue Robert E. Lee commemorative license plates. Democratic Del. Dan Helmer of Fairfax: "The Confederacy and its leaders do not deserve our commemoration, and its adherents certainly do not deserve taxpayer dollars.”

This week: a pleasure to talk with journalist @jazmineulloa.bsky.social about her excellent new book on the past and present of El Paso. Also: Dems flip two legislative seats in Florida; Louisiana leads the way in forcing schools to post the 10 Commandments; and a purse museum in Little Rock.

How bad is the air in Louisiana's Cancer Alley? Even worse than you think. Johns Hopkins scientists Peter DeCarlo and Keeve Nachman sampled the 85-mile corridor and found toxin levels up to 10X higher than previously reported. They walk through the findings on this week's episode. (link below)

Tennessee has two school voucher programs. The older, smaller one requires state testing and reporting of scores. The newer, statewide one does not. The older one has shown underperformance by voucher students. So now the Legislature is getting ready to scrap those test requirements too.

Some prominent Republican sheriffs in Florida are questioning Trump's mass deportation program. floridaphoenix.com/2026/03/16/f...

This week: Talking immigration politics and more with Georgia state Sen. Kim Jackson @kimforgeorgia.bsky.social. Plus: rising right-wing radicalism in Florida and Texas, and a look at the multicultural work of Ballet Nepantla. theprogressivesouth.org/headlights-e...

William Wolfe and the Center for Baptist Leadership are bringing MAGA politics and ethno-nationalism into the heart of the Southern Baptist Convention. baptistnews.com/article/sbc-...

A raft of primaries and one special election in the South brought new faces into the spotlight and offered clues about this fall’s midterms. We take a look at the U.S. Senate race in Texas, anti-establishment votes in both parties in N.C., and an Arkansas state House district that flipped blue.

This week, we're letting the private prison profiteers speak for themselves — with some annotations. You can hear the leaders of CoreCivic brag about their 2025 contracts with ICE. And also some things about their prisons that they forgot to mention to shareholders. sites.libsyn.com/576820/ep-43...

The centrist impulse to offer up the LGBTQ community as a sacrifice in order to achieve "peace" in the wokeness wars is exactly the sentiment that led to the industrial north giving up enforcement of racial equality in exchange for getting the country back humming again after the Civil War.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn is a cheerleader for ICE and the mass detention and deportation of immigrants. But she has made sure ICE won't put a detention camp of 16,000 prisoners in white, affluent, Republican Wilson County.

On back to back days, the Tennessee Valley Authority reversed course on plans to close two massive coal-fired power plants, and the Trump administration abandoned federal regulation of greenhouse gases. We talked about it with Steve Smith of @cleanenergy.org.

“They’re very intentionally staffing the Department of Education office with these ultraconservative ideologues.” www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Terrific reporting from @nashvillebanner.bsky.social. "Footage also captured a pattern of demeaning conduct from law enforcement, who used a mix of pejoratives to describe the targets ... as teams of law enforcement apparently competed to detain the most people."

The great @jimhightower.com recalls his work with Jesse Jackson. When we talked to Hightower last fall, he said that Jackson in 1988 ran "the only intentionally racially inclusive populist campaign in recent American history."

This week: How the @selc.bsky.social is fighting for environmental protections in the South. We talk to Program Director Geoff Gisler about the first year of Trump 2.0, and what's ahead. Also: more on the FBI's seizure of Georgia ballots, and a look at Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas."