News & Commentary

For years, North Carolina has restricted whether, when, and under what circumstances someone may obtain an abortion through a web of onerous and medically unnecessary laws. People with lower incomes seeking abortion care in North Carolina are frequently caught in a vicious cycle where delays in accessing care increase costs associated with the procedure, and increases in costs cause further, unnecessary delays. This burden is most acutely experienced by North Carolinians of color: 1 in 5 Black people, 1 in 5 Latinx people, and 1 in 4 Native American people in North Carolina living in poverty. T

Across America, banks are disappearing, leaving behind their most vulnerable customers, many of whom are Black and low-income. Since 2013, more than 11,000 additional bank branches have shuttered. And the trend is only accelerating. Some analysts expect as many as 20,000 additional branch closures in the immediate aftermath of the COVID pandemic. Branches in majority-Black areas, in particular, were roughly 50 percent more likely to close than those in the rest of America. As a result, 63 percent of majority-Black census tracts do not have an active bank branch; 17 percent of Black Americans are unbanked; and 30 percent of Black Americans are underbanked.

After World War I, it quickly became clear that the war to make the world “safe for democracy” had not made America safe for equality. Anti-Black race riots ripped through Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., and even Elaine, Arkansas. In October 1919, after Black sharecroppers in Elaine convened a union meeting, newspapers labeled the effort a “Negro uprising.” The state mobilized troops and mobs to quell the rebellion. The result was “possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States,” concluded the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. T

With the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, we may be witnessing a turning point in the way this country thinks about poverty.

We learned last week that a group of hackers gained access to cameras installed by a surveillance camera company, and said they were able to access live feeds from 150,000 cameras inside schools, hospitals, gyms, police stations, prisons, offices, and women’s health clinics. Some of the video footage — showing patients in their hospital rooms, for example — was extremely privacy-violating. T

Like other essential workers, domestic workers are bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic without the luxury of being able to telework, social distance, or even take a sick day. They also face unique and challenging circumstances due to the nature of their work, which is undervalued and under-regulated by the U.S. government. As a result, domestic workers often endure horrific abuses that go unchecked. Many are brought to the U.S. by employers promising a better life, only to find themselves subjected to forced labor, denied wages, and threatened with deportation. 

Last year, then-President Trump imposed unprecedented sanctions against the world’s only permanent international criminal court and my work to support justice for the victims and survivors of human rights atrocities ground to a halt. Since 2012, I have served as the special adviser on crimes against humanity to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda. In this role, I provide Bensouda and her staff with legal advice and assistance in their investigation and prosecution of crimes against humanity around the world. 

The 2020 election was a historic year for lawmakers who identify as transgender: Voters across the country elected six trans lawmakers to state office. Sarah McBride was one of those lawmakers. Elected as a State Senator for Delaware’s first district, Sen. McBride is now the highest ranking trans lawmaker in the U.S. Her candidacy and her voice in trans advocacy have shown how trans people can become powerful leaders in public life. S

Despite being a year into a global pandemic that has caused a staggering half a million deaths in the U.S, many state legislatures still have their sights trained on a favorite target: decimating access to abortion care. I