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South Carolina Daily Gazette
Low pay, too little staff contribute to high turnover of SC election officials
COLUMBIA — Less than two weeks into his role as interim election director of Aiken County, Michael Bond was running his first election. The county’s longtime elections director, Cynthia Holland, retired effective May 23. There was a special election in the first week of June. Then the statewide primaries the next week. At the end […]
AI will play a role in election misinformation. Experts are trying to fight back
In June, amid a bitterly contested Republican gubernatorial primary race, a short video began circulating on social media showing Utah Gov. Spencer Cox purportedly admitting to fraudulent collection of ballot signatures. The GOP governor, however, never said any such thing, and courts have upheld his election victory. The false video was part of a growing […]
New Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas expands abortion access in the South
PITTSBURG — A new Planned Parenthood clinic in southeast Kansas will be the closest abortion access point for many people in the South and will provide easier access to reproductive health care for southeast Kansans who previously had to travel to Overland Park. The center, which opens Monday in Pittsburg, expects to have patients from […]
For now, the Supreme Court won’t stop states from blocking Biden’s Title IX changes
States shunning new federal rules on discrimination in schools over sexual orientation and gender identity won’t be forced to follow them for the time being. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday to reject a Biden administration request for a partial stay that would allow some of the new regulations to take effect while lower courts […]
Home health workers, data scientists and cybersecurity projected to be SC’s fastest growing jobs
COLUMBIA – South Carolinians considering their career options should look into computer and math-focused jobs and health care support. Those are the fields the state employment agency predicts will dominate the next decade. The S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce expects employment in these fields to see the greatest rate of increase in employment —nearly […]
About half of SC’s 3rd to 8th graders can read on grade level. Math scores are worse.
COLUMBIA — Fewer than half of South Carolina third- through eighth-grade students can do math as expected for their grade level, according to test scores released Friday. State education officials hope to improve scores with a new $10 million program to hire math tutors, improve training and pay for resources. A similar program has helped […]
To lower prescription drug costs, states head to the courthouse
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission released a scathing report suggesting that pharmacy benefit managers, the middlemen in the drug supply chain known as PBMs, are “profiting by inflating drug costs and squeezing Main Street pharmacies.” The FTC found that because of consolidation in the industry, the three largest PBMs now manage nearly 80% of […]
9 GOP attorneys general sue Biden administration over voter registration efforts
Attorneys general in nine states, including South Carolina, are challenging an executive order by President Joe Biden that would enlist federal agencies to help register residents to vote, arguing the order undermines their power to control elections. They call it a federally subsidized program aimed at boosting Democratic and left-leaning blocs. Kansas Attorney General Kris […]
Advocates celebrate SC law banning prosecution of trafficking victims
COLUMBIA — A wide-ranging public safety law that started out as a proposal to help victims of human trafficking was celebrated Thursday by advocates who had been working on its various sections for years. “I’m not normally one who likes to have things tacked on to my legislation like a Christmas tree, but in this […]
SC ACLU asks judge to allow recorded interview with death row inmate
COLUMBIA — A civil rights group argues a death row inmate should be allowed to give a recorded interview for publication before he is scheduled to die. A motion this week is part of an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging a Department of Corrections policy that bars prisoners from giving interviews to reporters or members of […]
‘Perfect storm’ of crises is leading to cutbacks in abortion care, advocates say
Advocates for abortion access say compounding crises of abortion bans, rising economic costs and systemic health care issues are beginning to cause significant funding challenges and potential disruptions to reproductive care of all kinds. Several people described it as a “perfect storm” of problems with the U.S. health care system, particularly post-pandemic, and the rise […]
Former SC corrections worker sentenced for smuggling contraband: ‘A message needs to be sent’
COLUMBIA — A former corrections employee was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to smuggling drugs, cellphones and other contraband into state prisons through food shipments. Javaris Da’Sant, a 22-year-old from Columbia, pleaded guilty to charges of trafficking meth, furnishing contraband to a prisoner and possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. […]
SC is buying out more than 200 repeatedly flooded homes. Here’s how the effort has gone.
The white oak Terri Straka planted as a sapling is all that still stands in her former yard in Socastee. Earlier this summer, demolition crews erased her home of more than three decades from the landscape on low-lying banks of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Seeing the tree serves as a reminder and brings on a […]
SC legislator says he was held at gunpoint in North Charleston road rage incident
NORTH CHARLESTON — A South Carolina legislator hopes to raise awareness after he said a man threatened him with a gun in a road rage incident in North Charleston. Rep. J.A. Moore told the SC Daily Gazette he was passing time in the Park Circle neighborhood around 1 p.m. Tuesday, waiting until he could pick […]
Diné author writes Navajo Code Talkers book for elementary school readers
Danielle Burbank collected each and every book on Navajo Code Talkers that she came across in her nearly two decades of work as a librarian. She found paths to learn her own family history. Her research process started at home in Crystal, New Mexico, where she wondered what her grandfather experienced in his time serving […]
Hundreds of thousands of parents died from drugs. Their kids need more help, advocates say.
Every day, 8-year-old Emma sits in a small garden outside her grandmother’s home in Salem, Ohio, writing letters to her mom and sometimes singing songs her mother used to sing to her. Emma’s mom, Danielle Stanley, died of an overdose last year. She was 34 and had struggled with addiction since she was a teenager, […]
SC ed board tentatively approves model rules banning cellphones in K-12 schools
COLUMBIA — A model policy requiring South Carolina’s K-12 students to stash their cellphones during the entire school day received initial approval Tuesday from the State Board of Education, which wanted to get more feedback before finalizing minimum guidelines for school districts. The unanimous vote comes six weeks after the state budget mandated school districts to […]
2 women say Texas hospitals wouldn’t treat their ectopic pregnancies. Each lost a fallopian tube.
This story was originally published by The 19th Two women have filed complaints with the federal government alleging that Texas hospitals denied them abortion care necessary to treat their ectopic pregnancies. The complaints were filed Aug. 6 by Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz and Kyleigh Thurman against Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital and Round Rock-based Ascension […]
New bans on panhandling in medians spark debate over free speech rights
Despite court rulings that soliciting money is protected as free speech, some cities and at least one state are considering new restrictions on panhandling in traffic medians, arguing it’s a safety hazard. New Mexico’s Democratic governor this year and an Arizona Republican lawmaker last year proposed statewide bans on asking for money on street medians, […]
SC education agency celebrates move after 6 decades in downtown Columbia
COLUMBIA — The South Carolina Department of Education officially marked the move of its 940 employees out of the agency’s long-time downtown Columbia office building, cutting the ribbon Monday on a new, 150,000-square-foot headquarters built by a politically connected developer. “For six decades that building stood sentry over South Carolina’s education struggles and triumphs as […]
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The South Carolina Daily Gazette is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site covering state government and officials and how their decisions affect people across the Palmetto State. We are a small team dedicated to providing fair, accurate and thorough coverage of what the government is (or isn’t) doing for the people and with their money. We will clearly explain how policy is made and ditch the politi-speak while connecting readers with what’s happening in their government. That’s why our slogan is “Empowering South Carolinians through news.” Democracy depends on informed voters advocating for themselves and others based on knowledge, not spin. To make staying informed even easier, we offer a free newsletter delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Our reporting is free both to readers and to other outlets, which can republish our work under the Creative Commons license. South Carolina Daily Gazette is an affiliate of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers. The Gazette retains full editorial independence. Our name comes from the state’s first successful newspaper, the South-Carolina Gazette, first printed in 1732. Seven years later, it also became the first newspaper in colonial America edited and published by a woman.
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