It’s difficult to put into words the rage I felt upon learning that UNC will not inform students if one of our classmates tests positive for COVID-19 this fall. Flouting federal guidelines about social distancing and who counts as a close contact, UNC-Chapel Hill announced at the end of last month that three feet between students is enough distance — despite the CDC clearly denoting the minimum safe distance as six feet.
...Aditi Kharod
Aditi Kharod's articles and posts
While the North Carolina General Assembly tries again and again to reopen gyms and bars, there is another type of business that has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and is struggling to rebound: child care centers. Thirty-three percent of all child care facilities remain closed, according to a presentation NC Early Education Coalition policy director Michele Rivest gave to the House Health Committee on June 24.
...It has been eight days since Minneapolis resident George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. Floyd was described by friends and family as a “gentle giant,” a kind and trustworthy man with a big heart. At the time of his death, he was not resisting arrest. Chauvin, who along with the other three officers involved in Floyd’s death has since been terminated from his position, was charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter on Friday, four days after he was caught on camera pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, refusing to let up even when Floyd begged for air and told Chauvin he could not breathe.
...High school students in the small mountain town of Sylva have been going to extreme lengths to find an adequate place to complete their schoolwork. Because they don’t have broadband at home, these students—and thousands like them in rural North Carolina—roam their towns, searching for an internet signal so they can learn. “I have seen students sitting in their cars doing their homework trying to find somewhere with an internet signal,” Sylva Mayor Lynda Sossamon said at a press conference last week.
...Organization does good work to promote reproductive freedom, but it should disclose and disavow its troubling past and connections. Population Connection is the largest grassroots population organization in the United States, with over 40,000 members. In 2018, it celebrated its 50th anniversary. When it was founded in 1968, however...
...Report authors, advocates differ over possible side effects On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a cost estimate of the Raise the Wage Act, a federal bill to phase in a minimum wage of $15 an hour by 2025. HR 582, whose primary sponsor is Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA)...
...The humanitarian crisis at the border is growing more severe by the day, and some North Carolina lawmakers are intent on bringing the crisis home. As HB 370 (the bill to force sheriffs to comply with ICE detainers, as you may recall) and HB 135 (another bill that does essentially the same thing) reside in the House and Senate Rules Committees, respectively, here are some numbers to place North Carolina in the context of the larger crisis.
...In 1971, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote an opinion in the landmark case Lemon v. Kurtzman that set forth a the three-pronged test lawmakers should use to avoid violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The three prongs of the test were these:
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