It is 36 days until election day on November 3. Here are some relevant upcoming dates from the North Carolina State Board of Elections:

• Oct. 9: Voter registration deadline
• Oct. 15: Early voting begins (same-day registration available)
• Oct. 20: Absentee ballot request deadline (5 p.m.).
• Oct. 31: In-person early voting ends (3 p.m.).
• Nov. 3: Election Day (Deadline for most absentee ballots)

Absentee voting remains off 2026 pace

As seen on Vote Tracker, county boards of elections have accepted 11,632 ballots through September 27.

That is less than the 14,003 accepted at a similar point in the last midterm election in 2022. Two caveats:

• County boards have not yet entered all accepted ballots into the statewide system. For example, I wrote last week that 5,540 ballots had been accepted from September 4 through 20. Looking at the same period today, 5,713 ballots have been accepted. That only accounts for about an eighth of the drop from 2022.
• This could be a return to in-person voting for some people who first started voting absentee in 2020 during the COVID-19 scare and continued voting that way in 2022. Fewer absentee votes do not necessarily mean less voting altogether.

The partisan breakdown of the accepted ballots is 47.0 percent Democratic, 37.6 percent unaffiliated, and 15.6 percent Republican. Those numbers are worse for Democrats than at a similar point in 2022, when the breakdown was 52.7 percent Democratic, 31.3 percent unaffiliated, and 15.7 percent Republican.

Again, this may simply reflect some voters moving from absentee to in-person voting. Such a change would disproportionately affect Democratic absentee-ballot turnout, since they tended to shift toward that voting method in 2020.

If anything, the number of absentee ballot requests indicates that absentee voting will drop even further compared to 2022. Voters have requested 89,839 absentee ballots so far this year, compared to 129,678 four years ago, a nearly 31 percent drop.

The Democratic share of absentee ballot requests has dropped by 7.5 percentage points, from 49.5 percent in 2022 to 42.0 percent in 2026. Again, however, that is likely due to a move away from absentee voting this year.

Democrats were 44.2 percent of all absentee voters (not absentee ballot requesters) in 2022 and 41.3 percent in 2018.

Democrats perform relatively well in voter registration

Looking at voter registration starting 15 weeks before election day, both parties are behind where they were in 2018 (the previous Trump midterm election). However, the Democrats have picked up the pace over the past two weeks and will soon be even with their 2018 registration increase total. In the meantime, Republicans have gained less than a third of the registrations they had at a similar point in 2018.

Democrats outgained Republicans by 1,807 registrations this week and are on pace to outnumber Republicans in North Carolina in mid-October. It was only last January that Republicans overtook Democrats to become North Carolina to become North Carolina’s largest party for the first time in state history. Unaffiliated has been the state’s largest registration since early 2022.

While Republicans have been steadily increasing their registration numbers vis-à-vis Democrats for decades, this period of the Democratic Party’s rise is not unique. As seen in the graphic below from the John Locke Foundation’s Voter Registration Changes, the Republican grind towards a two-party majority has periodically been disrupted by rapid Democratic gains during the weeks before election day. The most obvious example is in the 2008 election, when Democrats outgained Republicans by over 250,000 registrations. Even during Trump’s first election in 2016, Democrats outgained Republicans by 5,337 registrations during the last few months before election day.

Even if Democrats do emerge back on top in total registrations, that will probably be short-lived. Biennial list maintenance takes place in early 2027, and Democrats will probably lose tens of thousands more registrations than Republicans will.

The post 9-28 election data dump: Will Democrats reemerge as North Carolina’s largest party? appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Here are a couple of opportunities to view historic, Revolutionary-era documents in North Carolina in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We encourage you to take advantage of these opportunities while you still can.

Historic copies of Declaration of Independence on display in Durham

Celebrating America’s Semiquincentennial, the “We the People” initiative by Duke University and Durham County includes three rare prints of the Declaration of Independence from the early 1800s. They will be on display over the next three months from the David M. Rubenstein Americana Collection:

• 1823 “Stone Declaration” — a full-size reproduction engraved by printer William J. Stone and commissioned by John Quincy Adams. It is considered the closest copy to the original Declaration ever created.
• 1818 — Calligrapher Benjamin Owen Taylor hand-copied a broadside reproduction of the Declaration that included facsimiles of the signatures.
• 1819 — Publisher John Binns created a illustrated broadside copy of the Declaration.

The copies have been exhibited at the Durham County Main Library through most of September. They are now on display at the Nasher Museum of Art on the Duke University campus until Jan. 3, 2027.

Halifax Resolves on display in Halifax

A copy of the Halifax Resolves document is on display at the new Halifax State Historic Site Visitors Center until Oct. 6. The Resolves document is typically displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. It has been in North Carolina since April in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Signed on April 12, 1776, a date emblazoned on the North Carolina state flag, the Halifax Resolves was the first official action by any of the thirteen colonies on the road to independence from England and King George III. It is viewed as an important early step to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and other Revolutionary leaders at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776.

After it was unanimously signed by 83 delegates from across the colony at the 4^th Provincial Congress in Halifax, the Resolves was presented to the Second Continental Congress by delegate Joseph Hewes. (Hewes had also been a delegate to the Fourth Provincial Congress!)

The new Visitor Center is a great new addition to the Halifax Historic Site, and we encourage you to visit while the Halifax Resolves is still there.

The post North Carolina Revolutionary opportunities for you to enjoy appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

• A new report on housing reform from the Mercatus Center offers a framework to examine North Carolina’s progress in removing barriers to housing construction and identify where additional reforms are still needed
• Even though North Carolina has already adopted several housing reforms, state and local regulations continue to limit the amount and type of housing that can be built in many communities
• Many reforms can be pursued locally through changes to zoning, permitting, and development standards, while the General Assembly can establish broader guardrails and protections for housing construction

North Carolina needs more housing. As communities across the state continue to grow, the question for policymakers is not simply how to make housing more affordable, but how state and local policies can make it easier for the private market to produce the homes North Carolinians need.

Fortunately, North Carolina does not have to start from scratch.

In Housing Reform in the States: A Menu of Options for 2027, Mercatus Center scholars Salim Furth, Emily Hamilton, and Charles Gardner identify 18 reforms that state and local policymakers can use to remove regulatory barriers to housing construction. Their recommendations fall broadly into four categories: reversing regulatory overreach, streamlining development procedures, improving legal frameworks, and updating construction standards.

Using the Mercatus report’s recommendations as a benchmark provides a useful way to evaluate North Carolina’s progress. In several areas, the General Assembly has already adopted reforms that protect property rights and make housing easier to build. In others, legislation containing reforms has been introduced but not become law.

Importantly, not every solution requires action from Raleigh. Local elected officials, planning boards, zoning officials, and permitting departments can pursue many of these reforms themselves. State lawmakers can establish broad protections and guardrails, while local governments can examine their own zoning ordinances, permitting procedures, parking requirements, fees, and development standards.

This brief is the first in a three-part series that uses the Mercatus report’s framework to take stock of what North Carolina has already accomplished and identify the next steps state and local policymakers should take to increase housing supply.

1. Cap minimum lot size requirements

Minimum lot size requirements limit how many homes can be built on available land and increase the amount of land that must be purchased with each home. The larger the minimum lot size, the fewer homes can be built. Allowing smaller lots can support more entry-level and lower-cost housing.

The Mercatus report recommends that states establish ceilings on local minimum lot sizes, particularly in places served by public water and sewer. “Ceiling” means a maximum limit set by the state that localities could not exceed by their own minimums. For example, if the state of North Carolina were to set a minimum lot size ceiling of 1,500 square feet, then the city of Raleigh could not set its minimum lot size to 1,800 square feet, since it would be above the state’s designated ceiling. 

Houston provides evidence of the importance of allowing for small lot sizes. After allowing residential lots as small as 1,400 square feet, the city saw tens of thousands of small-lot homes constructed. Texas and Maine have since adopted statewide limits on minimum lot sizes in certain circumstances.

North Carolina considered a similar concept in Senate Bill (SB) 688. The bill would have required residential zoning to be based on dwelling units per acre rather than minimum lot sizes and established minimum allowable densities based on municipal population. A minimum allowable density would establish a floor for how many housing units a local government must allow per acre, preventing a city from having zoning rules that require very large lots. Under SB 688, the minimum density would have varied based on municipal population, with larger municipalities required to allow more housing units per acre than smaller municipalities.

It did not become law.

State action: The General Assembly could establish a reasonable limit on minimum lot sizes.

Local action: Cities and counties do not need to wait for state legislation. Local governments can review their zoning ordinances and reduce minimum lot sizes where existing requirements unnecessarily consume developable land. They can also allow the subdivision of larger residential lots into smaller lots where infrastructure can accommodate additional homes.

2. Require clear and objective development standards

Housing that complies with existing zoning regulations should not require a political negotiation before it can be built.

The Mercatus report recommends requiring “specific and objective” approval criteria. When applicants satisfy published standards, approval should follow rather than depend on subjective judgments by boards or administrators.

North Carolina’s House Bill (HB) 765 attempted to move in this direction. Among other provisions, it would have expanded administrative approval for permitted uses, established clearer timelines, restricted unauthorized zoning conditions, and required factual support for certain zoning decisions.

State action: The General Assembly should revisit the provisions in HB 765 and establish stronger protections for by-right development.

Local action: Planning boards and local governments can audit their own ordinances for vague, undefined standards, such as whether a project is “compatible,” “appropriate,” or consistent with neighborhood “character.” Wherever possible, these should be replaced with measurable standards involving height, setbacks, density, traffic, infrastructure, and other objectively identifiable conditions.

Projects satisfying those standards should receive administrative approval.

3. Strengthen protections against zoning regulations that would make existing development nonconforming

Zoning regulations should not make the types of homes, lots, and development patterns that already exist throughout a community illegal or impossible to build again.

The Mercatus report highlights jurisdictions where large shares of existing development would be illegal to construct under current zoning and recommends invalidating certain restrictions when a substantial share of existing properties do not comply with them.

North Carolina has partially addressed this issue in 2024 through SB 382, which included a provision that restricts local government–initiated downzoning and protects against certain newly created nonconformities.

There is room to go further.

State action: The General Assembly could pass a reform protecting homeowners against zoning standards that make large portions of existing neighborhoods nonconforming.

Local action: Local planning departments could conduct zoning audits comparing current requirements with existing development. If an established neighborhood consists predominantly of homes on 5,000-square-foot lots, for example, then requiring 10,000-square-foot lots for new homes would deserve reconsideration. The same principle could apply to setbacks, parking, building dimensions, and density.

Existing neighborhoods can provide valuable evidence about what forms of development are already compatible with a community

4. Secure development rights when an application is submitted

Developers should be able to rely on the zoning and development rules in place when they submit a qualifying application rather than risk having those rules changed while a project is moving through the approval process.

The Mercatus report recommends securing zoning rights at the time a development application is submitted.

A 2025 bill, SB 493, attempted to strengthen North Carolina’s vested-rights protections by clarifying that qualifying development applications would be protected from subsequent changes to local development regulations. The bill would also have clarified that establishing a vested right would not extinguish other existing use rights attached to the property, giving developers greater certainty that the rules and development rights applicable when they filed would remain available as the project moved through the approval process. While SB 493 passed the Senate, it stalled in the House.

State action: North Carolina should reform vested rights and consider establishing that applicable zoning regulations are secured upon submission of a completed development application.

Local action: Local governments can create greater predictability by avoiding zoning changes designed to stop projects already moving through the development process and by publishing clear policies governing pending applications when regulations change.

5. Limit objectors’ standing to sue

Residents who challenge a development approval should be required to demonstrate an actual and individualized harm rather than relying on generalized opposition to delay an otherwise lawful housing project.

North Carolina already requires people who are not the applicant or a property owner to demonstrate that they will suffer “special damages” in order to appeal certain quasi-judicial land-use decisions. Even so, state law also allows neighborhood associations to appeal when at least one member has standing, meaning that groups of nearby property owners can participate in challenges without every member individually demonstrating a distinct harm.

State action: The General Assembly could clarify that challengers must demonstrate actual or imminent damages that are personal and distinct from effects on the public generally. A narrower standing standard could be written to require an objector to show a concrete, personal impact from the proposed development rather than simply living nearby or opposing the project.

Local action: Local governments cannot rewrite state standing requirements, but they can reduce opportunities for conflict by adopting clear and objective approval standards. The less uncertainty built into a development approval, the less opportunity there is for prolonged disputes over whether an otherwise permitted project should move forward.

Part 2 of this series will continue to look into what state and local policymakers can do to make housing more affordable and abundant in North Carolina.

The post A housing supply reform agenda for North Carolina: Part 1 appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Preston Cooper explains the significant role standardized tests play in predicting college students’ likelihood of success.

Most selective colleges and universities stopped requiring standardized tests in admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have now begun to reinstate them. These policy changes highlight the role academic preparation plays in college completion outcomes. This report links the standardized test scores of students in the entering class of 2018—one of the last entering classes before the test-optional movement gained steam—to six-year college completion outcomes as of 2024.

Test scores and college completion have a strong relationship. Institutions where admitted students’ test scores are higher tend to have much stronger completion rates. For example, an institution where entering students have a 25th percentile SAT score of 900 has a predicted completion rate of just 51 percent. But an institution with a 25th percentile score of 1300 has a predicted completion rate of over 90 percent.

Even after controlling for possible confounding factors, such as institutional resources and students’ socioeconomic status, the relationship between test scores and college completion remains strong. After accounting for potential confounders, a 100-point rise in a college’s lower-bound SAT score generally required for admission is associated with a 7.9 percentage point rise in college completion rates.

Institutions where entering students’ test scores are higher tend to be more selective. But dozens of institutions marry high academic standards for admission with a relatively high acceptance rate—in other words, they tend to admit most students with certain academic qualifications. These “high standards, inclusive admissions” institutions—including George Mason University, the University of Kansas, and Drexel University—boast an average completion rate of 80 percent.

While the SAT has become somewhat easier over time and scores have risen, the test remains highly predictive of college completion rates. The SAT and ACT help college admissions officers better determine which applicants are truly prepared for higher education.

The post Standardized tests’ role in college success appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Charles Lane explores legal issues surrounding President Donald Trump’s approach toward southern border policy.

Migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border surged into the millions during President Joe Biden’s first three years in office, but they have nearly ceased in the last 18 months. President Trump says it’s all because of the crackdown on asylum seekers he launched by executive proclamation on his first day in office. “As it turned out, we didn’t need legislation,” he boasted in December. “We just needed a new president.”

In contrast to his sometimes chaotic and violent deportation drive, opposition to Trump’s border policy has been muted. You can’t argue with success: encounters between the border patrol and migrants peaked at 250,000 in December 2023; by December 2024, the number was a still-significant 47,000. Under Trump it has plunged further, to well below 10,000 a month—the lowest rate since the early 1960s.

There’s just one little problem: Trump’s policy might not be legal. In fact, federal courts have repeatedly ruled that it is not, finding that the president had no authority under current immigration statutes to issue his proclamation. According to these judges, he did, in fact, need new legislation.

This is potentially a very big deal, though the rulings have drawn little media coverage—perhaps because they have been stayed pending the Trump administration’s appeals. But now everyone needs to start paying attention: Trump’s Solicitor General, John D. Sauer, has asked the Supreme Court to take up the case and salvage what he called “the Administration’s single most effective policy in resolving a border crisis.”

The justices have no risk-free option, legally or politically. They can uphold the lower courts’ rulings that the policy was illegal, possibly triggering a new rush of migrants to the border—or even defiance from a furious Trump. Or the justices can ratify Trump’s policy and its bold assertion of executive authority. This would not only truncate the United States’ commitment to asylum but warp the balance of power between the president and Congress.

The post Exploring the legality of Trump’s successful border policy appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux predict a Republican revolt against tariffs.

Donald Trump’s tariffs are hurting Americans. Real economic growth is slowing, consumer prices rising, and real wages stagnating. Now the Republican Party is set to pay for it.

Since the founding, tariffs have proved toxic to the party that implemented them. When Mr. Trump asserted executive authority to impose the highest tariffs in 90 years, Republican congressmen, though skeptical, remained silent. If tariffs hurt Republicans in the November elections as much as they have hurt the economy, the midterms could end up igniting a Reagan revival on trade, shifting the trajectory of the party and the country.

No American president was more passionate about trade liberalization than Ronald Reagan. He understood that free and open markets allow “more productive use of our nation’s resources, more rapid innovation, and a higher standard of living,” as he said in 1985. “The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides for human progress and peace among nations.”

Most Republicans in Congress favor free trade. They voted by large majorities for the North American Free Trade Agreement, almost unanimously for free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, in large numbers for giving President Obama trade promotion authority, and overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The production disruptions and economic uncertainty that have come with Mr. Trump’s tariffs aren’t winning Americans over. Instead, the prevalence of the view that trade is “an opportunity for economic growth” has soared to 82%, twice the 2008 level, according to a March Gallup poll, which found that 74% of Republicans have a positive view of trade. Republican voters may tell pollsters they support Mr. Trump’s tariff policy, but that support is declining. A February Guardian-Harris Poll found 53% of Republicans say tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy, and 64% said Mr. Trump’s tariffs caused higher prices.

The post Time for a return to free trade appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Jeff Rosen highlights one effective way to boost the American economy.

Back in 1995, President Bill Clinton told an audience gathered for an event in Washington, D.C.: “We need a Government that’s smaller and more entrepreneurial, that provides a lot less hassle, that realizes that there are an awful lot of people out there in the private sector who have enlightened views and they want to do the right thing and they need to be helped instead of hindered in that.” The same could be said today, 30 years later.

The many problems associated with federal regulatory processes now date back more than a century, but those associated with approval of federal infrastructure permits are of a more recent vintage. In fact, the cost, burdens, and delays from such permitting were not widely discussed or even recognized by most policymakers until the 1990s.

They are now, of course, a massive concern, particularly in the transportation, energy, mining, and related infrastructure sectors. And they do genuine harm to the economy. While regulatory reform writ large should remain the overriding goal, fixing the permitting problem should be among the highest priorities for anyone concerned about America’s ability to complete projects that are crucial to our continued prosperity.

In considering the problem, it is useful to understand how and why permitting delays arise in the first place. There are three main sources, each linked to the three main stages of the permitting process.

First, there is the pre-filing compliance stage. When a project is being conceived and developed, its champions need to identify the laws — sometimes as many as 60 separate statutes — with relevant requirements, as well as any agencies whose approval they must obtain. …

… Second, there is the federal review and approval process. This stage comprises multiple steps and can involve many statutes. …

… Third, there is the period after the decision is made — in the record of decision (ROD) or the finding of no significant impact (FONSI) — that leads to agency approval and kicks off the possibility of outside litigation.

The post Focusing on federal permitting reform appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Jim Hoft writes for the Gateway Pundit about major personnel changes in one federal government agency.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon just confirmed what every honest observer already knew: the old Civil Rights Division was a woke fortress inside Main Justice.

When President Trump’s team told those lawyers the American people had voted to end illegal DEI discrimination and scrub dirty voter rolls, about 300 of the division’s 400 attorneys walked out.

Dhillon did not mourn them. She called it what it was.

In an interview this week with Col. Kurt Schlichter filling in on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Dhillon said the Civil Rights Division is one of the largest shops at Main Justice in Washington.

When she arrived, it had about 400 attorneys. After her office made clear it would implement the president’s executive orders, “prioritizing getting rid of DEI and cleaning up voter rolls,” “eventually about 300 of those attorneys quit, and so they self-deported.”

Then she rebuilt.

“We then had the task of, while we had DOJ restrictions and budgetary constraints, building back the Civil Rights Division,” Dhillon said. “And I’m really happy to say that I recruited over 100 great legal professionals here to the DOJ.”

… Dhillon told Tucker Carlson last year that holdouts inside the division held “crying sessions” and “unhappy hours” after she made it clear the era of weaponized civil-rights law was over. According to the New York Post, she later said those lawyers “self-deported with a nice golden parachute from the government.” She didn’t fire them. She told them the job had changed. They left.

The numbers line up with other reporting. Bloomberg Law reported this month that more than 300 of the division’s 400-plus lawyers departed over the past 19 months as Dhillon redirected the office toward voter-roll enforcement, campus discrimination, and religious-liberty cases.

The post DOJ civil rights chief says hundreds of lawyers ‘self-deported’ appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) has opened a public comment period on rules governing political party committees’ plans to sell goods or services. The rules will provide a mechanism for complying with state campaign finance law.

Party committee sales are exempt from finance limits

The Wake County Republican Party is holding a gun raffle (drawing on October 2). Back in February, the Duplin County Democratic Party hosted its annual cake auction. A quirk in state law makes purchases of those raffle tickets or cakes not subject to campaign finance restrictions.

North Carolina law (GS 163‑278.8A) exempts sales by party committees (such as county parties or party women’s organizations) from some campaign finance reporting and contribution limit requirements:

[T]he purchase price of goods or services sold by a political party executive committee or affiliated party committee as provided in subsection (b) of this section shall not be treated as a “contribution” for purposes of account‑keeping under G.S. 163‑278.8, for purposes of the reporting of contributions under G.S. 163‑278.11, or for the purpose of the limit on contributions under G.S. 163‑278.13

The law requires a committee holding a fundraising sale to submit a plan for the sale to the SBE executive director for approval.

In case you think this is just a backdoor way for Daddy Warbucks to dump a million dollars into a local party committee secretly, the law includes three restrictions:

• The total amount to be raised from sales under all plans by the committee cannot exceed $20,000 per election cycle.
• No one may make total purchases under the plan that exceed $50.
• Goods or services donated to the committee for the sales count as in-kind contributions.

Even so, sales events provide parties with more opportunities to raise funds.

The proposed rules

The SBE proposed rules for enforcing the law’s sales plan requirement on September 15. The rules require party committees to file a “Political Party Exempt Sales Plan” report with the SBE for any sales events they hold. The report must include:

1. “The dates the exempt sales will be conducted.14
2. “A general description of each item to be sold.15
3. “The fair market value of each item to be sold.16
4. “The price the political party will charge for each item sold.17
5. “The estimated quantity of each item to be sold.18
6. “The estimated sales receipts.”

The report must also include an acknowledgment by the committee’s treasurer of the restrictions imposed by law on party sales fundraising.

Public comments are open through November 16

If you wish to comment on the proposed rules, you have several options:

• Online: Public Comment Portal: Exempt Sales Plan Rule
• Email: rulemaking.sboe@ncsbe.gov (Make clear that you are commenting on the Exempt Sales Plan Rule.”)
• In-Person Public Hearing: 10 a.m. Oct. 5, 2026, at the State Board of Elections office on the third floor of the Dobbs Building, 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27603.
• Mail: Attn: Rulemaking Coordinator, P.O. Box 27255, Raleigh, NC 27611-7255 (Make clear that you are commenting on the Exempt Sales Plan Rule.”)

One thing that is not useful is submitting a comment that party committees should not be allowed to have exempt sales events. State law permits them. If you want to change that, contact your state legislator instead.

The public comment period closes at 11:59 p.m. on November 16, 2026. 

The post State elections board proposes political party sales rules appeared first on John Locke Foundation.

Editors at Issues and Insights highlight facts that stand in the way of climate alarmists’ goals.

Last week we noted that so far there had been zero Atlantic hurricanes, a record. For the first time in 112 years, we’ve now gone this deep into hurricane season without one. Of course the media ignore this monumental phenomenon because it doesn’t fit the global warming tale. So what other inconvenient facts are they covering up? Here’s a partial list:

The Great Barrier Reef, that immense coral system off of Australia’s northeastern coast, the largest living structure on the planet, which experts said was being killed by manmade global warming, has gone through its best five years on record. Official reef-wide statistics were “widely published as the Great Barrier Reef got worse,” says Danish researcher Bjorn Lomborg, but when the data showed improvement, the statistic keeping stopped.

“Vegetation greenness has been increasing globally since at least 1981, when satellite technology enabled large-scale vegetation monitoring,” says a study published in Nature. “Global vegetation models suggest that CO2 fertilization is the main driver of global vegetation greening.” The volume of additional greenery is equivalent in size to the contiguous U.S. four times over. The findings support previous reports that reached the same conclusion: Earth is going green. …

… Former climate activist/climate reporter Lucy Biggers, now head of social media at The Free Press, recently confessed that she “never covered positive climate stories because it would muddy the message that climate change was an existential threat that was burning the planet.” She would cover the stories “that made the climate look worse.” This is “why we rarely see events like this year’s historically quiet eastern hurricane season covered widely by the news,” she adds. “Many reporters believe covering it will give fodder to climate change deniers.”

She left the reservation but she says news outlets still have reporters who are agenda-driven as she was, and think they’re reporting the truth when they’re actually amplifying the activist propaganda.

The post Exposing truth about climate alarmists’ schemes appeared first on John Locke Foundation.