By Seanna Adcox | Editor-in-chief
I’ll start by answering the questions I asked in yesterday’s newsletter. South Carolina’s “four barbecue finishing sauces,” as listed in the 2014 law making barbecue the state’s official picnic cuisine, are vinegar and pepper, mustard, light tomato and heavy tomato. If you’re like me, you group them more generally as vinegar, mustard and ketchup.
And as for the state’s official beverage, that’s milk, as per a 1984 law. Sweet tea was added as the state’s hospitality beverage in 1995.
I asked the questions in light of Paul Hyde’s humorous welcome column for newcomers. Our state so-and-sos (as I call South Carolina’s many official symbols) can make for some fun trivia.
“This partnership is about building the future of nursing from within our own community.” - Shaunda Trotter, AnMed’s chief nursing officer, on a new training center.
AnMed hospital system is building a 30,000-square-foot center that will provide clinical classroom space for Tri-County Technical College’s expanding nursing program. (Photo courtesy of AnMed)
By Jessica Holdman
An Anderson hospital is building a center to train more nurses in South Carolina’s Upstate. According to the latest federal data, South Carolina had about 12,000 fewer nurses than needed.
The U.S. Capitol on Oct. 1, 2025. (File photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
By Shauneen Miranda
As partisan tensions rise in advance of the fast-approaching midterm elections, students will test their knowledge today in a field that’s long enjoyed bipartisan support: civics. A ninth grader from Greenville will represent South Carolina. You can watch the competition tonight on C-SPAN. (If you missed Skylar’s article on the contest that decided South Carolina’s finalist, click here.)
The South Carolina Public Service Commission is scheduled to decide by Jan. 29 if it approves the merger of NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy. (File photo by Ned Oliver/Virginia Mercury)
COMMENTARY
By Ennis Jacobs
This commentary on the proposed merger of NextEra and Dominion comes from Ennis Jacobs, board president of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and a former Florida utility regulator. He uses numbers from NextEra’s record in Florida to caution against approval of a merger that would create the world’s largest regulated electric utility.
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