Media outlets and others featured in this edition: Carolina Public Press, Inside Climate News, South Carolina Daily Gazette, NC Newsline

To continue reading the rest of each article, please click the link at the end of the excerpt.

A new resource from the State Democracy Research Initiative makes the current text of all 50 state constitutions available and searchable on one site. This was from State Court Report.

If you're a North Carolina resident and voted in the N.C. Supreme Court race that is still not certified, please check the list of over 60,000 votes that Jefferson Griffin is trying to discard after narrowly losing to Allison Riggs.

Stephen Whitlow from Triangle Blog Blog has more information. Readers can also visit the Orange County, N.C. group's website The Griffin List to search names and more.

For more about the GOP challenger, check out The Assembly’s article by Jeffrey Billman and Michael Hewlett.

‘Indecent’ proposal: An NC school club’s plan to test their LGBTQ+ trivia skills is game over — for now

The ban came from no less than the superintendent. Now, the ACLU is involved and Cleveland County finds itself in a fight over free speech.

by Lucas Thomae  February 14, 2025

Public school students have fought for the right to express themselves going as far back as the 1940s, most notably during the 1960s and well into the age of social media. Over the years, the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer in schools, the Vietnam War and even Snapchat have been debated. A lawsuit recently filed against Cleveland County Schools, in the western part of the state, could provide the latest addition to the canon.

A student is suing the school district after it prohibited a high school club from playing a quiz game centered around LGBTQ+ history and pop culture.

A complaint filed in U.S. District Court by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina alleges that the county violated free speech protections in the U.S. and state constitutions, as well as federal law, by banning Shelby High School’s Activism Club from playing the game.

Cleveland County school officials claimed they were justified in forbidding the activity, arguing that the quiz game was “indecent based on community standards.” They pointed specifically to references of “bisexuality” and “cigarettes” as examples.

The ACLU’s attorneys see it differently.

The speech in question was political in nature, not indecent, they say. And decades of precedent from past U.S. Supreme Court rulings indicate that students do not shed their constitutional rights once they arrive on campus.

“The school is blatantly violating our client’s First Amendment rights and trying to suggest that a game that is text only, depicts nothing sexual in nature and just acknowledges the existence of LGBTQ+ people and their contributions to society is somehow indecent, lewd or obscene,” ACLU attorney Ivy Johnson told Carolina Public Press. “They’re essentially trying to erase (LGBTQ+ people) from the conversation, which is both a First Amendment violation and extremely dangerous.”

Controversy in Cleveland County

The plaintiff in the case is the student who founded the school’s Activism Club, a 17-year-old referred to in the complaint as M.K.

The club meets monthly during the regular school day — a “flex period” from 10:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. 

Students are allowed to use the flex period as they wish. The Activism Club often uses the time to “discuss issues of public interest that are not covered in the official curriculum,” according to the complaint. Some of those have included the Black Lives Matter movement, Women’s History Month, breast cancer awareness, suicide prevention and the war in Gaza.

M.K. first proposed the club play a “Jeopardy!”-style quiz game called “LGBTQ+ Representation” in April 2024 during her sophomore year. The quiz, which M.K. created, featured questions asking club members to identify famous LGBTQ+ individuals including politician Harvey Milk, pop star Lady Gaga and comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

Although the club’s faculty advisor, a school counselor, thought the game was a good idea, Shelby High School Principal Eli Wortman decided that students would need to have permission from their parents in order to play.

Because of this, the scheduled date for the quiz game was postponed until the next school year. It was then that M.K. proposed her club play the quiz game last October.

Her proposal was again denied, but this time the rejection came from Cleveland County Schools Superintendent Stephen Fisher via a school board liaison.

That led to lawyers becoming involved.

-- Carolina Public Press

Trump Has Thrown a Wrench Into a National EV Charging Program. Can He Make It Disappear?

From Love’s Travel Stops across the nation to Priester’s Pecans in Alabama, electric charging projects across the country have been thrown into chaos by the Trump directive. Could they be stopped for good? Experts say it’s unlikely.

By Lee Hedgepeth, Aman Azhar, Jake Bolster, Lisa Sorg, Sarah Mattalian

February 13, 2025

For now, Priester’s will have to stick to its famous pecans in Fort Payne, Alabama. But maybe not for long. 

Priester’s Pecans, an Alabama staple, is one of more than half a dozen sites across the state slated to receive millions of dollars in federal funding to expand access to chargers for electric vehicles.

Across the country, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law under then-President Joe Biden, is set to provide $5 billion to states for projects that expand the nation’s EV charging infrastructure.

But in a Feb. 6 letter, a Trump administration official notified state directors of transportation that, effectively, they can’t spend it. The Federal Highway Administration rescinded guidance on the funds, which had been allocated by Congress, and “is also immediately suspending the approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans for all fiscal years,” the letter said. 

“Therefore, effective immediately, no new obligations may occur under the NEVI Formula Program until the updated final NEVI Formula Program Guidance is issued and new State plans are submitted and approved.”

POLITICO reported on Wednesday that a DOT spokesman said in an email that states were free to use a small portion of the funding—about $400 million—because that was money the states had already “obligated,” or awarded to subcontractors. But that would still leave close to 90 percent of the funding up in the air.

Even before the administration had issued its letter, some Republican-led states, including Alabama, had already announced pauses to their states’ implementation of the national EV charging program. 

“In response to Unleashing American Energy, one of several Executive Orders that President Trump signed on January 20, 2025, the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs has paused the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program as of January 28, 2025,” the Alabama agency responsible for implementing NEVI posted on its website. “In addition, for applications for funding that were originally due on March 17, 2025, ADECA has closed the application window until further notice.”

Despite the announcement by the Trump administration, however, legal experts and those familiar with the electric charging program at issue say the president does not have the power to permanently nix the NEVI program.

-- Inside Climate News

Santee Cooper customers should expect a double cost hike in 2025 after years of frozen rates

By: Jessica Holdman - February 13, 2025 

Residential customers of South Carolina’s state-owned utility will likely see their monthly bills go up twice this year — an average of $11 in April and $5 more in July for the typical customer.

This second round of rate hikes come as Santee Cooper and its customers reach a legal settlement related to the failed expansion of the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County.

Power customers sued the Moncks Corner-based utility after cost overruns and mismanagement led to the 2017 abandonment of the nuclear project — after Santee Cooper and its former partner, South Carolina Electric & Gas, spent $9 billion.

Santee Cooper’s share of the debt was $3.6 billion.

That lawsuit led to a rate freeze in 2020, which expired at the end of last year. While the utility was barred from raising electricity rates during that time, it was allowed to run up a tab for what the agreement called “just and reasonable” expenses — such as costs related to natural disasters and other unplanned events.

That bill is now coming due for the more than 200,000 customers Santee Cooper serves directly in Berkeley, Georgetown and Horry counties, as well as customers of South Carolina’s power cooperatives that buy power from Santee Cooper.

Santee Cooper’s governing board signed off this week on an agreement deciding how much of those charges it would pass on to customers. Central Electric Power Cooperative, which buys power from Santee Cooper and other sources to supply the 19 power cooperatives around the state, signed off last week.

The agreement still needs the approval of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, the retired judge who has overseen the case, before it goes into effect.

In all, Santee Cooper can charge for $550 million worth of expenses. It will bill about 65% of that to the cooperatives.

The utility will take the hit for about $155 million, writing that off in the company’s financial statement, Ken Lott, its chief financial officer, told the board.

Santee Cooper will spread collections out over 14½ years starting in July, the utility’s head attorney, Carmen Thomas, told the board.

-- South Carolina Daily Gazette

‘I am not a robot’: Amazon warehouse workers in Garner begin weeklong union election

The Amazon fulfillment center in Garner would be the first in the South and just the second in the U.S. to unionize if successful.

By: Brandon Kingdollar - February 10, 2025 

Voting opened at 4 a.m. Monday morning in an election that will determine whether workers in Garner form the first Amazon warehouse union in the South after nearly three years of organizing.

Workers will have until Saturday Feb. 15 at noon to cast either a “Yes” vote in favor or a “No” vote against the formation of a union that would represent roughly 4,300 workers at Garner’s RDU1 Amazon fulfillment center, encompassing full-time, part-time, flex, and seasonal warehouse associates. This vote comes after years of campaigning by the Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, a movement founded by warehouse workers Rev. Ryan Brown and “Ma” Mary Hill in 2022.

If more than 50% of voters cast “Yes” ballots, the workers will form a union with the right to bargain for a contract with the shipping giant. Priorities stated by CAUSE include higher wages ($30 an hour for Tier 1 and Tier 2 warehouse associates), scheduling consistency, more paid time off, a one-hour paid lunch, accommodations for injured or disabled workers, and equal treatment of workers across sex, race, and national origin.

Eileen Hards, a spokesperson for Amazon, said the company “already offers what many unions are requesting,” including “competitive pay” and benefits such as health care, pre-paid college tuition, and a 401k retirement plan with a company match.

“We’ve always said that we want our employees to have their voices heard, and we hope and expect this process allows for that. We believe our employees favor opportunities to have their unique voice heard by working directly with our team,” Hards said.

Should the CAUSE vote succeed, the Garner facility would become just the second unionized Amazon warehouse in the U.S., after the JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island formed the Amazon Labor Union in 2022. Labor activist Christian Smalls, who led that effort, joined the organizers hoping to follow his example at a Garner rally that drew more than 100 Saturday.

“You can’t tell me that this company can’t be unionized, because it’s already unionized,” Smalls said to cheers. “Win, lose, or draw next week, you guys already got y’all’s union. This union ain’t going nowhere, right?”

‘An existential threat’

At an information session held in a Duke University classroom on Thursday Feb. 6, Brown said he believes Amazon is “an existential threat to every single person that’s in this room.”

“We feel that this empire has grown so large that it has crept into every nook and industry,” Brown told the room full of students. “There was a lot of human suffering that takes place at Amazon.”

Brown said he was inspired to organize the unionization movement because of his experiences working at the warehouse during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said that despite his wife being at severe risk for COVID-19 due to her severe asthma, he was asked to work in an area of the warehouse that workers had identified as a “COVID hotspot.” According to Brown, his supervisor told him he had no choice — and when Brown reported this to the general manager, he was told that nothing could be done about it.

“My soul was so troubled,” Brown said. “And I prayed. And the one word that I received was ‘organize.’”

While he had no experience with labor activism, Brown had the experience of organizing a church in Waco, North Carolina — “a town that has more cows than people,” he said — growing its congregation from just 25 to more than four times that number before he left. He joined with Hill — known to the organizers as “Ma Mary,” who coined the group’s name — to launch CAUSE in January 2022, and in the years that followed, they set about the work of building a union.

According to Orin Starn, an anthropology professor at Duke who worked at the RDU1 warehouse as part of his research, workers face daunting quotas and are given little rest at the facility. He said he was told he must pack 180 boxes each hour — a pace of three per minute — for a shift that lasts 10-and-a-half hours on average, with just two thirty-minute breaks, one of them unpaid. During “peak season” — the period around the holidays — that increases to 11-and-a-half hours, for 60 hours a week.

-- NC Newsline

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