A national report which saw big drops in teacher union membership and strength in North Carolina has raised some interesting responses from local media outlets in the Tar Heel State.

The report, commissioned by the Fordham Institute of Ohio, found membership among teachers in NCAE declined from 49 percent of educators in 2008 to 21 percent of educators in 2021. The decline is the second largest nationally.  Second only to Wisconsin which passed sweeping reforms in 2010 that significantly weakened unions. 

Local Raleigh outlet WRAL.com ran an article on the report earlier this week and said researchers “are surprised” at the drop in membership. When asked what caused the significant drop in North Carolina’s union membership, Melissa Arnold Lyon, one of the researchers, told WRAL she isn’t quite sure.

North Carolina was more of a surprise,” Lyon said. Teachers could be joining other groups that aren’t employee associations, or it could be that new teachers aren’t joining and replacing retiring teachers who were members, Lyon theorized, adding that she really didn’t know. But the drop coincides with the state’s declining rankings in average teacher pay.

If younger teachers are coming into the profession with lower pay and no collective bargaining rights, Lyon said, “then it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to expect that those newer teachers wouldn’t see the benefit of joining a union.”

A day later, the News and Observer (N&O), told us what it thought of the report when it ran a Reality Check on the report. The N&O article took issue with the report claims. For example, in response to the claim that “teacher unions are weaker than they were a decade ago.”  The N&O asked NCAE president, Tamika Walker Kelly to respond. Walker Kelly said the organization is growing in strength and has added 1,000 new members since its march in Downtown Raleigh. 

North Carolina’s ranking of 48^th (out of 51 places) in perceived influence was also brought up. Researchers had asked education leaders and education policy advocates in every state to identity who was the major player in education policies in their state. According to the report, North Carolina was ranked 48^th in the area of perceived influence for teachers’ unions. 

Melissa Arnold Lyon, one of the authors of the report told the News and Observer that NCAE is still an important factor in state education politics. But from the perspective of many actors, NCAE is not the primary actor, but one of many actors driving education policy in the state. 

Again, the News and Observer asked Walker-Kelly to respond. She said NCAE is one of the fastest growing unions in the country and pointed to the huge turnout for the teacher protest rally in Raleigh on May 1^st. 

Honestly, I’m a little surprised by these stories.

Being mystified by a decades-long trend only says you’re not looking close enough at the problem. There are answers.

Talking to the head of a teacher’s union may be the best way to get an idea of what the teachers union thinks. I don’t know how it helps to validate facts.

Walker-Kelly says NCAE membership is up 1,000 members since the May 1 teacher rally in Raleigh. If that’s the case, wouldn’t the organization be willing to substantiate the claim by opening its books to validate new members?

 It’s true that the organization turned out thousands for the May rally, but does how does that fact translate into influence? If so, why did no member of the Democratic leadership address the crowd in Raleigh?  Why was there no movement on teacher salaries for months?   

I’m not surprised by the Fordham report findings. NCAE membership and influence has been on the decline for years.  It’s a theme I’ve written about frequently. See here and here .

Yes, there may very well have been a modest uptick in membership in recent years.

In 2023, the North Carolina Association of Educators reported having a membership of almost 26,000. In 2024, that number climbed to almost 27,000 members. However, that number included more than just teachers.  Teachers as a percentage of total membership continues to decline.

The problem is that exact numbers are difficult to come by.  The State Auditor collects information on employee associations. NCAE, however, is not a public organization and is not required to divulge membership numbers.  Again, if membership is growing, wouldn’t NCAE leadership want to be the first to share the news?

Even if the uptick happens, what’s undeniable is the uptick happened against a backdrop of years of steady decline in NCAE members.

Researchers and local media may be hesitant to offer reasons for the decline, I am not. In my view three factors account for much of the decline.

First, many teachers joined NCAE initially because the organization offered teachers legal liability insurance and represented teachers during salary negotiations.  Now teachers can buy liability insurance through the state or other organizations, often at a lower rate.  It’s no longer a practical necessity to join NCAE.

Second, NCAE leadership and its national leadership skew overwhelmingly Democratic. Surveys of the teacher profession show it to be ideologically divided with more teachers identifying as Republicans and Independents than often realized by NCAE or NEA leadership.  Those decisions have consequences.

Third, the policy stances of the NEA and NCAE are often at odds with those of rank and file teachers. For example NEA and NCAE fiercely oppose school choice,embrace identify politics in the classroom and regularly pass resolutions on controversial issues like race, gender and sexual identity.  Moderate and conservative educators frequently argue that such issues alienate large numbers of teachers and pull them away from their core responsibilities of academic instruction and student improvement.

Why is NCAE in decline? I think most of us know why. Why others refuse to recognize those reasons is a question that begs to be answered.

The post It’s time to tell the truth about NCAE appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

This is the second of a two-part series on proposed election rules changes. Part one covered proposed rules for recounts and voter ID.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) has proposed a set of election rules changes. Two of the proposals address absentee voting and voting sites. This post will include summaries of those proposals and provide information on how you can provide a public comment on them.

Absentee Voting Rules

This would add a new subchapter to the chapter on rules for absentee ballots for ballots with deficiencies. The addition is long overdue, as county election officials rely on informal guidance in numbered memos from the State Board of Elections (SBE). While numbered memos are supposed to reflect election laws and rules, they do not undergo the formal vetting process that rules do. The SBE ran into trouble over numbered memo shenanigans in 2020, including having its numbered memo guidance overturned by a federal court.

The rules fall into four categories.

I. Curable deficiencies. Problems that can be corrected by election officials contacting the voter. Some of those deficiencies include:

• The voter did not sign the absentee ballot application or signed it in the wrong place.
• The required photocopy of the voter’s ID is either missing, unreadable, or not of the acceptable type.
• The name on the ID is not the same as or “substantially equivalent” to that on the voter file. Maiden names are considered substantially equivalent (see 08 NCAC 17 .0101(a)(3)(D))

Something missing here is a procedure for confirming that an illegally transmitted ballot is really from the voter.

II. Non-curable deficiencies. Problems that cannot be corrected by contacting the voter include:

• The ballot envelope is not sealed or appears to have been opened and resealed.
• The voter is requesting a replacement ballot (not really a deficiency, but the voter will get a new ballot if there is enough time left before election day).
• The name of a witness or an assistant is not printed on the application or is not legible, unless officials can determine the name of the witness or assistant from the signature.
• A witness or notary did not sign the absentee ballot application.

For non-curable deficiencies, election officials will send the voter a replacement ballot if it is at least 4 days before election day. If it is three days or less before election day, they will attempt to contact the voter to encourage them to vote in person.

III. Irregularities that do not require further action from the voter. If the ballot arrives inside a sealed ballot envelope, but the outer envelope is not sealed, or if it is hand-delivered in an unsealed envelope that is later sealed in front of officials, officials will note the issue but accept the ballot.

IV. Irregularities that require further action. Some situations require officials to contact the voter for further information before they can determine if a ballot is curable or not:

• The ballot envelope is not sealed or appears to have been opened and resealed, but the outer envelope is sealed.
• The ballot returned to officials is not the same as the ballot sent to the voter (this could happen to a couple who accidentally send their ballot in their spouse’s envelope).

Here is a link to the proposed absentee ballot rules. Here is how you can provide the SBE with your public comment (Deadline: Tuesday, July 14):

• Online on the Public Comment Portal: Absentee Voting Rules
• Email: rulemaking.sboe@ncsbe.gov (Specify that you are commenting on the absentee voting rules.)
• In-Person Public Hearing: 10 a.m. June 22, in the Board Room at the State Board of Elections, Dobbs Building, 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27603. 
• Mail: Attn: Rulemaking Coordinator, P.O. Box 27255, Raleigh, NC 27611-7255 (Specify that you are commenting on the absentee voting rules.)

Voting Site Rules

The proposal would add a subchapter to Chapter 10 of the state election regulations. That chapter is listed as “Ballot Rotation Rules For Primary Election Ballots,” but the actual chapter title is “Election Day Matters.”

The proposed subchapter has three substantive sections.

I. Voting Sites Buffer Zones. This section builds on § 163‑166.4, the state law limiting activities in and near voting places. It requires county boards of elections to pass resolutions establishing buffer zones around each voting site (early voting sites and election-day precincts) in which electioneering activities are banned. It reasonably extrapolates from the law that voting places with multiple entrances should have a buffer zone around each entrance; the law refers to “the door of entrance.” Election officials must clearly mark the buffer zones before voting begins. State law requires the buffer zone to be 25-50 feet (50 feet where possible) from the entrance to the voting area.

The rules also establish a buffer zone of 6 to 15 feet from curbside voting places and require that curbside voting areas be large enough to accommodate two vehicles at a time.

II. Voting Site Electioneering Zone. This section establishes procedures for election officials to create and mark zones adjacent to the buffer zones for people to conduct electioneering activities and for additional non-adjacent electioneering zones, if the county board determines that the physical layout of the voting site will result in an insufficient amount of space for electioneers to engage in the election-related activity.” Presumably, that means that there is an intervening area that is not part of the property housing the voting site. The purpose of the electioneering zone is to assure that there is an area next to the buffer zone for electioneering activities, to to limit electioneering to that zone and nowhere else.

III. Restrictions of conduct at or near voting sites. This section states that election officials “shall ensure peace and good order at the voting site.” The responsibility includes enforcing the prohibition of “election-related activities” within the voting area and buffer zone.

It also includes preventing any “noise and sound that is disruptive to the voting site” from outside. What is considered disruptive is not left to interpretation. It is “any noise at a volume that is audible to the chief judge or a judge when that official is in the voting enclosure.” If you are outside and election officials can hear your shouting or other noise from inside the voting area, you are being disruptive. They will then require you to quiet down until you are “longer audible in the voting enclosure.” The rule also bans the use of a “sound amplification device,” such as a megaphone near a voting site. Again, if they can hear you from inside, you are being disruptive.

The State Board of Elections claims the authority to set these rules, in part on § 163‑48 of state law, which tasks election officials with enforcing “peace and good order in and about the place of registration and voting.” The US Supreme Court upheld states restricting speech in voting buffer zones in Burson v. Freeman (1992), stating “a government has such a compelling interest in securing the right to vote freely and effectively.”

Here is a link to the proposed voting site rules. Here is how you can provide the SBE with your public comment (Deadline: Tuesday, July 14):

• Online: Public Comment Portal: Voting Site Rules
• Email: rulemaking.sboe@ncsbe.gov (Specify that you are commenting on the voting site rules.)
• In-Person Public Hearing: 10 a.m. June 29, in the Board Room at the State Board of Elections, Dobbs Building, 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27603. 
• Mail: Attn: Rulemaking Coordinator, P.O. Box 27255, Raleigh, NC 27611-7255 (Specify that you are commenting on the voting site rules.)

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Steven Richards writes for JustTheNews.com about an interesting revelation involving the American government’s space program.

A House investigation has identified hundreds of scientific publications in which NASA-funded U.S. researchers appear to have conducted joint work with Chinese institutions, potential violations of a federal law that has barred such collaboration for more than a decade.

The report, released on Wednesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, also found that, in several instances, some of that research involved collaboration between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientists and institutions that are part of “China’s defense research and industrial base.”

The findings have serious relevance at the current moment, the committee’s chairman, John Moolenaar, R-Mich., said, because the United States is currently engaged in a new space race with the Chinese Communist Party. 

NASA’s successful Artemis II mission last month demonstrated the space agency’s capability to return Americans to lunar orbit, with the goal of reaching the lunar surface by 2028, for the first time since the end of the Apollo missions. China is also planning its own expedition to the moon, hoping to land its own astronauts, called “taikonauts,” on the moon by 2030. 

“The successful Artemis II mission made all Americans proud of the incredible work happening at NASA. We are the world leader in space exploration, and we want to make sure the taxpayer-funded research that keeps America ahead is protected from adversaries including China,” Moolenaar said in a statement.

“NASA worked cooperatively with the Committee throughout this review, acknowledged areas where improvements were needed, and demonstrated it is taking these issues seriously through concrete steps to improve its research security and compliance processes moving forward,” he added. 

“I appreciate the rigorous review that the House Select Committee on China and Chairman Moolenaar as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee and Chairman Grassley have undertaken, which has brought needed visibility to gaps in NASA’s past compliance practices,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told Just the News in a statement. 

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Casey Chalk writes for the Federalist about the impact of artificial intelligence on our lives.

As impressive as artificial intelligence has already become across a variety of disciplines, from computer science to medicine to architectural design, for anyone who has sought to incorporate AI into their workflow or solve some problem around the house, it can still be, well, less than intelligent. It gets the answer wrong and hallucinates, often disastrously so (in part because, as they say about data, “garbage in, garbage out,” and the internet has a lot of garbage). As much as The Terminator, Blade Runner, and The Matrix series provoke endless nightmares of a future sentient robot apocalypse, the fact of the matter is that whatever real threats AI poses to human flourishing, it cannot and will not ever be human. …

… First things first, we need to appreciate what makes the way we think particularly human. As Paul O’Hara and Steven Umbrello argue in their new book, Can AI Ever Be Human? Consciousness Explored, human knowledge begins with what philosophers call “empirical consciousness,” which involves becoming aware of objects through our senses, as well as becoming aware of ourselves as thinkers, something that is visible even in the first few years of human development. As we get older, we develop an internal awareness that involves “self-presence and mastery,” which enables us to reflect on our thoughts and feelings. We then leverage those thoughts and feelings to interpret sensory data around us. …

… AI’s processing of enormous amounts of data and identification of patterns is by definition deterministic, operating within predefined parameters. AI is merely executing programmed responses that are “transcribed into binary code, transmitted as binary code, and ends with binary code,” note O’Hara and Umbrello. Or, as Dave Gershgorn explains: “There is no understanding; it’s just matched patterns.” The simple word “yes,” for example, which in human communication has complex textures and meanings based on context, in the ASCII encoding scheme is the sequence 01111001 01000101 01010011.

For AI, there is no spontaneity, creativity, or reflection as there is in human decision-making.

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Adam Kredo writes for the Washington Free Beacon about disturbing revelations involving a United Nations group.

The federal investigation into staff at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—the U.N. Gaza relief organization that’s been closely linked to Hamas—will soon encompass at least 1,500 UNRWA-linked individuals suspected of terror ties. This unprecedented dragnet—reported here for the first time by the Washington Free Beacon—exposes an aid group brimming with Hamas operatives, and is generating momentum in Congress and the Trump administration for harsher sanctions on the embattled aid group, according to congressional staffers briefed on the matter.

The punitive measures up for consideration include stripping UNRWA of its diplomatic immunity under U.S. law, which would open it up to legal action from terror victims, and fully designating the aid organization as a foreign terrorist organization, according to three Trump administration officials and other sources tracking the matter in Congress.

These discussions have accelerated since the Free Beacon first reported in April that UNRWA and other U.N. agencies are stonewalling a federal probe into their ties to Hamas. The U.S. Agency for International Development inspector general’s office, a law enforcement agency separate from the largely defunct USAID, has spent months independently unearthing evidence that multiple UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack. The probe will soon expand to at least 1,500 suspected militants with UNRWA ties.

UNRWA, an official organ of the notoriously anti-Israel United Nations, is the only aid group with a large operation in Gaza, with as many as 13,000 Gazan employees and a large distribution network. U.N. officials have insisted for years that it is the only viable option for getting relief to Gazans. But Israel and its supporters have long claimed that UNRWA is fully infiltrated by Hamas and has cemented the terror group’s control over aid distribution.

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Editors at National Review Online assess Canada’s experience with government-sanctioned assisted suicide.

Encouraging doctors to get involved in people killing themselves in a society with socialized medicine and declining religiosity has ghastly consequences. Who knew? Canadians can’t say that nobody warned them.

Social conservatives are often accused of being overwrought in predicting a parade of horribles from each step down the proverbial slippery slope of social “progress.” By the time those horribles materialize — and in most cases, sooner or later, they do — we are on to the next cause, or we’re told that people are just accustomed to this now.

After all, who wants to settle for slow progress when one can enjoy the swift forward momentum of jumping out the window?

The antiseptic acronym MAID, for Medical Aid in Dying, is almost too perfect in how it evokes the modern nanny state: a nice lady who just tidies things up for you. It was sold, as it has been sold in nations such as Britain and American states such as Oregon and New York, as compassion for those suffering terribly at the very end from incurable ailments that robbed them of their minds, their movements, and their dignity.

That was the teaser rate. Now, the real bill is due. As has happened in other jurisdictions, Canada started with strict criteria in 2016 and then loosened them in 2021 to apply to anyone considered to be suffering gravely, whether or not they were close to the grave. On a per capita basis, Canadians today are more likely to die of MAID than Americans are to die of gun violence.

Now, MAID in Canada has its own poster boy: Dr. James MacLean. If MacLean’s case is not as sensationally grisly as, say, that of Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic or as flamboyant as the euthanasia crusading of Jack Kevorkian, it nonetheless underlines the banality of evil at work in Canada.

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Rich Lowry of National Review Online assesses the recent public outcry against data centers.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stole the show at a recent congressional hearing with two jars of brown water.

She explained that the dirty water had come from Morgan County, Ga., where a Meta data center is tainting the water of local residents.

It was an image perfectly suited to driving the intensifying opposition to data centers in that it was photogenic, easy to understand — and misleading.

According to reporting in the New York Times last year, the water problem has affected four homes in the vicinity of the data center, not the entire county, as AOC implied. It stands to reason that the construction of the data center disturbed the private wells of these homes (the problems started when Meta broke ground), but that could happen with any construction project.

As a gesture of goodwill, Meta should replace the wells, but the PR damage has already been done.

The growing animus to data centers is as irrational as the campaign to stop nuclear power, which had considerable success, to our detriment to this day.

At least nuclear power has had real accidents, although the one in the United States, Three Mile Island, was ultimately of trifling significance. There has been no data center equivalent of Chernobyl or Fukushima, and there never will be.

The opposition to data centers is what you might call a moral panic, except there is nothing moral about potentially sabotaging the U.S. in the AI race with China based on misunderstandings and lies.

Data centers have been with us for a long time, powering the internet and cloud computing. They’ve kicked into overdrive, though, with the rise of AI, which depends on large-scale computing power. The centers don’t need many people to operate them, but they create lots of construction jobs and contribute massive tax revenue to the places where they are located.

What’s not to like? Well, they require lots of energy and water, and this is presumed to strain local communities and drive up rates for everyone else.

The evidence doesn’t show much effect on the price of electricity, though.

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Dmitri Bolt writes for Townhall.com about the New York City mayor following through on his socialist ideology.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani kicked off his plan to “fix” the city’s affordability crisis with his official housing policy agenda, titled “Block by Block,” under which one of the first priorities is to allow the government to seize property from owners deemed “negligent” and redistribute it to so-called “responsible stewards,” a category that includes anyone from land trusts, nonprofits, or even tenants themselves.

“Through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City,” Mamdani announced. “When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards. Stewards that include community land trusts, non-profits, or even the tenants themselves.”

In other words, despite Mamdani’s claims that this time his own version of socialism will be different, it appears to be heading down the same familiar path, one that students of history expected upon Mamdani’s victory.

Government redistribution of private property, however, is not the only pillar of Mamdani’s “Block by Block” agenda. He has also vowed to fast-track the construction of low-income and government-subsidized housing, while promising to impose price controls on those units that would limit rent to just a quarter of a tenant’s income.

Mamdani ended his “Block by Block” agenda announcement with a unifying, though ironic, speech, praising the city for what it is known for: its iconic skyscrapers, bridges, and museums. 

Yet those achievements were made possible not because of politicians like Mamdani, but in spite of them, driven largely by private industry and capitalists. Today, Mamdani’s own agenda still depends on the very economic forces he blasts daily, relying on private wealth to help fund his socialist policy vision.

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Breccan Thies writes for the Federalist about a disturbing revelation involving a prominent left-wing organization.

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), currently under federal indictment for allegedly funding hate hoaxes, has been able to push its propaganda in schools through millions of dollars in direct payments from government entities at all levels.

According to watchdog OpenTheBooks, SPLC has received at least $3.85 million specifically for teaching materials in American public schools since 2016, with $1,352,655.07 in direct payments from school districts, cities, counties, universities, and states. While the group says most payments lack an explanation, the amounts “suggest payment for materials, speakers or licensing fees.”

“While Frederick Douglass, and my late friend Bob Woodson, challenged us to remember the great principle in the Declaration of Independence that our rights and dignity come from God, not government, geography or ethnicity, some groups claiming to fight racism have decided to desecrate our founding principles with identity politics,” OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart told The Federalist. “Taxpayers deserve full transparency from government agencies and public universities.”

The governments are not just in Democrat-run states, and include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, OpenTheBooks found a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), inside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor to fund pushing the SPLC’s “Learning for Justice” curriculum program into middle schools. The project was called “Youth Empowerment Solutions: Engaging Youth for Anti-Racism and Cultural Equity (YES-ERACE).” …

… “Learning for Justice” was rebranded from “Teaching Tolerance” in order to “reflect evolving work in the struggle for radical change in education and community” which went from “reducing prejudice to more pointedly supporting action to address injustice.”

“We must learn, grow and wield power together,” the SPLC stated of the name change, claiming that it intends to examine “the ways systems and institutions perpetuate racism and white supremacy” and “demand radical change, challenging white supremacy in school and teacher education curricula, school discipline policies, school facilities and classroom climates.”

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Jessica Costescu and Ethan Barton write for the Washington Free Beacon about education mischief in the Lone Star State.

A Houston-based education advocacy group fighting to eliminate standardized test requirements is led by a white left-wing activist who accused the Texas government of racism after it obeyed a state law written by a black Democrat requiring it to replace the city’s top school officials.

Community Voices for Public Education (CVPE) describes itself as a “multi-racial, community-based nonprofit uniting parents, educators, students, and community members to advocate for strong, equitable public schools.” Among its top priorities are implementing “restorative practices for schools in communities that have been denied resources for generations due to racist and classist public policy” and replacing Houston Independent School District (HISD) superintendent Mike Miles, whom the state appointed after the school system received failing scores for more than five consecutive years.

It also aims to “reduce the high stakes consequences of standardized testing” by ending the graduation requirement for students to pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness and to eliminate the Texas Education Agency’s A through F scoring system for districts and individual schools that is partially based on test results.

CVPE, which is overseen by two steering committees filled with left-wing activists, is headed by cofounder Ruth Kravetz, an HISD teacher who has repeatedly aligned with socialists and argued that the state’s takeover is a “racist” endeavor. The group has routinely partnered with the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Houston chapter, and in January, Kravetz helped organize an anti-ICE protest alongside the DSA Chapter of North Texas and Communist Party USA Dallas/Fort Worth, as well as other far-left groups such as the Sunrise Movement and Indivisible.

Kravetz, who has encouraged student walkouts, gave a lengthy interview to Section 44, a self-described “journal of Texas Marxism” made up of “revolutionary socialists,” in February 2020.

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