The next session of the S.C. General Assembly doesn’t convene until January, but Republicans in the State Senate are already working to try and pass a bill that essentially would prohibit abortions in the state.  It’s known as the Fetal Heartbeat Bill.

It won easy passage in the House of Representatives earlier this  year, and Republican Governor Henry McMaster has said if the bill passes he’ll sign it into law.  Because the bill is expected to have a harder time passing in the Senate its' backers are already at work trying to give it a head start in next year’s session.

On this mini episode of the South Carolina Lede, host Gavin Jackson takes us to Horry County as a number of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls visited the Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting this week.

There's a brief lull in the heavy rain that's hit Charleston as Hurricane Dorian lingers off the coast.  The city's Emergency Managment Director Shannon Scaff takes a deep breath.  He's about to interview live, nationally with The Weather Channel.  He's also relieved.  The storm isn't over yet and already he knows it could have been much worse. "We got lucky with the tides," he tells the reporter.

The City of Chester is in crisis. Shootings are on the rise and so are shooting-related deaths. So far this year, police have taken more than 130 calls about shots being fired. That’s 20 more than all of last year.

Chester residents marched for 'Freedom From Gun Violence' on Sept. 14, a first public effort to stop escalating street and gang shootings in the city.

Credit Scott Morgan / South Carolina Public Radio

On Sept. 21, 1989, a lot of people in the Piedmont went to bed before the storm arrived. They knew it was on its way; some even knew about it hitting the coast. But hurricane or no hurricane, hurricanes don’t barrel across states and then make their way north, so most people didn’t think much of what was to come.  

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV) and the South Carolina Emergency Management Division (SCEMD) today announced a partnership to recognize 30 years since Hurricane Hugo impacted the state.

The season’s eighth named tropical storm was classified by the National Hurricane Center late Friday night, but it is no longer a direct threat to South Carolina.

Hurricane hunters then found that the tropical storm had strengthened Saturday morning, and it now has winds up to 50 mph. Strong upper-level winds from the southwest were limiting the tropical storm’s ability to become better organized. However, those winds are expected to weaken Sunday when forecasters say Tropical Storm Humberto will be poised for intensification.

Update Friday 5 pm: The National Hurricane Center says Tropical Depression Nine has formed, located 240 miles east-southeast of Freeport, Grand Bahama Island.  A center of circulation was noted on the eastern side of a broad area of low pressure, based on satellite and hurricane hunter data.  The more eastward placement of that center prompted forecasters to make a significant adjustment to the forecast track for the soon-to-be tropical storm, which is now more than 100 miles from the coast of South Carolina early next week.

Why don’t people leave when a hurricane hits where they live? And how do news outlets and emergency officials and even governors make people understand that they should?

Those are two questions that vex all of the above-mentioned groups during a storm. In the first week of September, Hurricane Dorian menaced the South Carolina coast for days and triggered evacuation orders for every beach community in the state.

And yet, more people than not in some evacuation zones just didn’t evacuate.  

Country music has made and broken careers for close to a century now.  David Ball of Spartanburg is one of the survivors, enjoying a long career in the field.  In high school he joined the legendary acoustic trio Uncle Walt's Band, playing a blend of bluegrass, blues, swing and folk, "and then that of course led me into Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family," he recalls of his introduction to country.  The group moved to Texas, where it became the rage in clubs across the state, and where its unique blend of sounds eventually came to be called Americana, with Uncle Walt's Band being named one