Dozens rallied in front of the Wake County Courthouse last night to mourn the coming end of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that granted temporary work permits and a deportation reprieve to undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors. Protesters wore all black and carried candles in a pseudo-vigil, calling […]
Erica Hellerstein
Posted inUncategorized
An N.C. Company Played a Big Role in the Bush Administration’s Extraordinary Renditions. There’s Never Been a State Investigation.
In 2002, Abou Elkassim Britel, an Italian citizen, was traveling for business in Pakistan when police in Lahore apprehended him on immigration charges. The authorities detained and interrogated Britel, who was born in Morocco but married to an Italian woman, and accused him of being a “terrorist fighter,” subjecting him, he says, to sleep deprivation […]
Posted inNews
Judge Rules Murphy-Brown Nuisance Trials Will Kick off in April
Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Earl Britt ruled that the first set of cases in a high-profile and potentially precedent-setting trial against pork giant Murphy-Brown will begin in April. The twenty-six lawsuits were filed by more than five hundred plaintiffs living near Murphy-Brown LLC’s industrial hog farms in eastern North Carolina. The neighbors contend that […]
Posted inNews
Duke Energy Wants You to Pay for Its Coal Ash Mess
Get out your wallets: Duke Energy, a behemoth with a market capitalization of more than $62 billion, wants younot its shareholdersto pay for its coal ash mess. Coal ash dominated local headlines between 2014, when thirty-nine thousand tons of toxic coal ash contaminated seventy miles of the Dan River, and 2016, when a state toxicologist […]
Posted inNews
Atlantic Coast Pipeline Opponents Screen Documentary About Pipeline Resistance, Urge Cooper Administration to Reject Necessary Permits
Atlantic Coast Pipeline opponents huddled inside Raleigh’s Unitarian Universalist church last night to watch Water Warriors, a documentary tracking a remote Canadian community’s successful fight against a Texas-based oil and gas company. The screening was part of an ongoing statewide effort to oppose the ACP, a six-hundred-mile pipeline that would transport fracked gas from West […]
Posted inNews
Court Stays Civitas Institute’s Francis De Luca Appeal of Smithfield Agreement Lawsuit
Earlier this week, the Court of Appeals stayed a Wake County judge’s ruling last month that dismissed a lawsuit filed last year by Francis De Luca, the president of the conservative Civitas Institute. The lawsuit, filed in October 2016, claimed that then-attorney general Roy Cooper had diverted money from public schools to environmental projects in […]
Posted inNews
For the Last Five Months, Pastor Jose Chicas Has Been Hiding from ICE Inside a Durham Religious Center
Jose Chicas About a month ago, a fifty-two-year-old evangelical pastor named Jose Chicas was overcome with an inexplicable craving. For months, he’d been secluded inside a small religious space in Durham, and suddenly he had the urge to sink his teeth into a McDonald’s pancake. The thought of it hovered in front of his eyes […]
Posted inNews
A Federal Judge Allows Twenty-Six Nuisance Lawsuits Against Pork Giant Murphy Brown to Go to a Jury
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Earl Britt ruled that the twenty-six federal nuisance lawsuits filed against the pork giant Murphy-Brown LLC can finally go to trialan important turning point in a high-profile and potentially game-changing case in a state where hog farming is serious business. The lawsuits were filed by more than five hundred […]
Posted inNews
Bad News for Big Pork: A Federal Court Rules That the Murphy-Brown Nuisance Lawsuits Can Go to Trial
For those of you who have been following our coverage of the commercial hog-farming industry in North Carolina, an update: Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Earl Britt ruled that the twenty-six federal nuisance lawsuits filed against the pork giant Murphy-Brown can finally go to trial—an important turning point in a high-profile and potentially game-changing […]
Posted inNews
Nine of The Ten N.C. Republicans in the U.S. House Voted to Criminalize Abortion After Six Weeks of Pregnancy
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the GOP’s latest pet project: The Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017, a sweeping anti-abortion bill that would effectively ban the procedure after a fetus has a detectable heartbeat, which can occur as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. If passed, it would basically criminalize […]