“Being locked up because you no longer have an address.”
A post shared in a DeKalb community group, October 30, 2026, about the county’s new camping law.
The law says nothing about having an address. It makes it unlawful to live in a spot on public property in a way that blocks access, such as a sidewalk, street or park. No one can be arrested without first getting a warning and an offer of help, such as shelter, a ride or a referral. The law itself says being unhoused “is a condition that cannot be criminalized.”
The commission passed it 5 to 2 on October 27, 2026. The CEO has seven days to sign or veto it.
Source: DeKalb County Board of Commissioners, file 2026-0550, roll call of October 27, 2026, and the ordinance text of August 25, 2026.
Read the full check: what the law says, and how each commissioner voted ›“The states with the roughest job markets tend to have the highest percentages of Black residents.”
Karen Juanita Carrillo, New York Amsterdam News, October 29, 2026, writing about WalletHub’s Best & Worst States for Jobs. The link to race is the paper’s reading. WalletHub ranks jobs for everyone and does not use race.
Part of it holds. In WalletHub’s ten lowest ranked states, Black residents average 14.1 percent of the people. In its ten highest ranked states, they average 5.5 percent.
Black workers are a different count. In 2025, the ten states with the largest Black share had Black unemployment of 6.5 percent on average. The ten with the smallest share averaged 7.3 percent. Minnesota ranks third for jobs, and Black unemployment there was 10.2 percent. Mississippi ranks near the bottom, and it was 5.6 percent. In Georgia it was 5.0 percent, against 3.3 percent for all workers.
Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025 annual averages, the 38 states with a published Black rate; Census Bureau, American Community Survey, 2020 to 2024.
“Strickland, Local Food Bank Leaders Warn of Growing Hunger Amid Federal SNAP Cuts”
Headline, The Seattle Medium, October 29, 2026. We could not open the full article, so we check the headline as published.
The cut is on the record. The budget law Congress passed in July 2025, Public Law 119-21, tightened SNAP’s work rules and moved more of the cost to the states. USDA’s own figures show 41,603,048 people on SNAP in July 2025 and 36,087,667 in July 2026, the latest month: 5.5 million fewer people in one year, down 13.3 percent. The last two months are preliminary.
More people at food banks is on the record too, as food banks report it. Feed More in central Virginia reported pantry visits up 20 percent (as reported by PBS). Those are local counts. They cannot be added up into a national one.
What the record does not have is a national measure of hunger since the cut. The Agriculture Department ended its yearly hunger report after the 2024 figures. Its stated reason, on September 20, 2025: “These redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous studies do nothing more than fear monger.” The last report found 13.7 percent of households short of food at some point in 2024, and 24.4 percent of Black households. That was before the law.
Sources: USDA SNAP Data Tables, data as of October 9, 2026; USDA, September 20, 2025; USDA’s final hunger report, as summarized by the Alliance to End Hunger; Food World News, October 21, 2026, citing PBS.
Read the story: Who lost SNAP, and what happened next? ›“Muscogee Schools Graduation Rate Rises to 96.3%, Nearly 8 Points Above Georgia”
Headline, Columbus Times, October 29, 2026.
Georgia’s four year graduation rate for the class of 2026 is 88.5 percent, up from 87.2 percent, in the state’s release of September 28, 2026. 96.3 minus 88.5 is 7.8 points, so nearly 8 is right.
Muscogee has been climbing: 93.5 percent for the class of 2023 and 96.1 percent for the class of 2025, both from state data. We could not yet open the state’s 2026 file by district to see the 96.3 for ourselves.
Sources: state release as reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; class of 2025; class of 2023.
Has teacher turnover in south DeKalb doubled since 2022?
The share of teachers in their first year in the southern high school areas rose from 7.0 percent in October 2022 to 16.2 percent in October 2025, more than double. That count measures new teachers. It does not measure how many teachers left, which SourceLine has not found from the state by school area.
See the record on the DeKalb schools issue ›“Memphis City Council approves data center ordinance; moratorium falls short”
Headline, Tri-State Defender, October 22, 2026.
The council’s October 20, 2026 agenda carried both for final reading: Ordinance 5986 and Ordinance 5982, a temporary moratorium. The city’s data center page says the council approved a substitute version of Ordinance 5986. It pauses new data center applications for up to 135 days while planners write siting rules, due within 90 days.
News reports put the votes at 7 to 5 for the pause and 6 to 6 on the longer moratorium, with one member absent. They differ on how long that moratorium would have run, 12 or 18 months. SourceLine has not found the minutes yet.
Shelby County is a separate step. Reports say commissioners moved a moratorium of up to 12 months for areas outside city limits forward, 5 to 4, and on October 28 the Tri-State Defender reported the vote was postponed. We could not reach the county’s own records, so we do not rate that part yet.
Sources: council agenda, October 20, 2026; City of Memphis data center page; WSMV; Newsline; Memphis Flyer.
Every claim gets one of these findings
Each finding lists its evidence and the date we checked. Every candidate in a race is checked the same way. When the Black press leads us to a claim, we credit and link the paper and do not republish its work.