It appears that, finally, after a year-long delay that has left North Carolina the only state in the union without a budget for the current fiscal year, Republican state legislative leaders may soon give final approval to a comprehensive budget plan and send it to Gov. Josh Stein.

Of course, as is usually the case, funding for public education was and remains one of the most hotly debated budget items. And while it appears that teachers will finally receive some long overdue but still modest raises, as we learned in a conversation with Wake County State Rep. Phil Rubin, the plan does little if anything to address the fundamentally skewed funding priorities that have long plagued and worn down our public schools. As Rubin explained to NC Newsline, not only does the budget plan continue to favor unaccountable private voucher schools at the expense of public schools, new plans to impose a one-size-fits-all scheme on county property taxes could make funding problems even worse.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Rep. Phil Rubin. 

When it comes to politics and policymaking, the present era is among the most divided and rancorous in modern American history. At the national level, the U.S. seems as if it’s more divided than ever on a host of basic issues. But is this really the case?

CEO of the national nonprofit, the NewDEAL Forum, Debbie Cox Bultan, says when you dig a little past the surface, it becomes evident that, in many ways, Americans are not as divided as it might seem. Especially at the state and local levels, it turns out that large majorities are actually in agreement on many of the issues that matter most and in their desire that public officials of all parties work together to find common ground solutions.

In Part One of Newsline’s extended conversation with Bultan, we explored her group’s findings about the many fundamental issues on which large majorities of Americans agree and their shared desire that elected leaders of all stripes find ways to work together and compromise to promote the common good.

In Part Two, we learned more about how the New Deal Forum is working to lift up the notion that public service can and should remain a thoroughly honorable profession. We also discussed the importance of combating the scourge of gerrymandering and election rigging that is afflicting our politics in the aftermath of a recent Supreme Court ruling that guts the federal Voting Rights Act.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the NewDEAL Forum’s Debbie Cox Bultan.

One of the greatest achievements of the American Civil Rights movement was the enactment more than 60 years ago of a law known as the Voting Rights Act. Though it had several provisions, the basic objective of the law was simple – it was to eliminate centuries of deep-seated racial discrimination that had infected and polluted U.S. elections by assuring that all the nation’s citizens had an opportunity to be full participants in our democracy.

Unfortunately, despite the progress the law has helped usher in and the fact that the country still has miles to travel in overcoming racial discrimination, opposition to the law and excuses for weakening it have been a constant ever since its enactment. And last month, opponents and excuse makers succeeded in convincing the U.S. Supreme Court to gut a key provision that had barred politicians from rigging elections to dilute the impact of minority voters. And recently, to get a better handle on this troubling news, Newsline caught up with Southern Coalition for Social Justice Senior Counsel Chris Shenton for a special two-part conversation in which we examined the ruling and the damage that it will cause.

Click here to hear the full interview with Southern Coalition for Social Justice Senior Counsel Chris Shenton

Last week was national Teacher Appreciation Week, a time to celebrate educators who show up for their students every day. Unfortunately, for many of the teachers in North Carolina, underappreciated – especially from state lawmakers – is the main thing they’re experiencing these days.

On May 1st, thousands of educators, advocates and allies converged on Halifax Mall behind the state Legislative Building in Raleigh to protest the lack of a state budget and scheduled corporate tax cuts that may leave school districts with even less money next year.

NC Newsline spoke with several of those attending the rally about the message they would like to deliver to legislators during the ongoing legislative session.

Click here to hear the full interview with North Carolina educators Marie Delgado, Tennille Simms, and Jane Miller.

Thousands of North Carolina public school teachers and their supporters converged on Raleigh this past Friday to demand that state lawmakers end their chronic lack of support for public schools. That the participants in the “Kids over Corporations” rally had a strong case to make is hard to deny. Their event took place just days after a new report placed North Carolina 46th in the nation for teacher pay for the current school year — down three spots from last year — and 39th in the nation for per pupil spending.

One expert who was there on Friday, knows the ins and outs of state education policy like the back of his hand, and indeed, lives it every day, is Charlotte-Mecklenburg 7^th grade language arts teacher Justin Parmenter. And prior to the rally, Parmeter joined NC Newsline to talk about the urgent needs he sees in our schools and why he hopes so fervently that state leaders will listen and act.

In Part One of our recent conversation, we discussed the increasingly dire situation that confronts the public schools in our state and why it’s essential that state lawmakers heed the demands of educators by dramatically improving public education funding.

In Part Two of our chat, we continued our discussion of the need to better fund teacher pay in particular and public schools generally. We also discussed a pair of high-profile policy priorities of the political right – immigration enforcement and private school vouchers – that have only served to further undermine the stability, mission and morale of traditional public schools.

Click here to listen to the full interview with middle school teacher Justin Parmenter.

One especially vexing public health issue that continues to plague North Carolina is the persistent crisis in the wellbeing of Black mothers and other moms of color. Time and again, statistics show that women of color face scandalous mortality rates that are far out of proportion with the general population.

Fortunately, studies and real-world experience confirm that there are many relatively simple and effective policy solutions that can make a big difference in combating the problem and recently NC Newsline caught up with a state lawmaker – Orange and Caswell County State Rep. Renee Price – who champions and explains them in simple, commonsense terms. Newsline also got a chance to ask her about two other important issues on which she’s pushing for action this spring – mental health services and public education.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Rep. Renee Price of Orange and Caswell Counties.

With the North Carolina General Assembly back in Raleigh for the 2026 session, the state of our public schools is once again at the top of the public policy agenda. Unfortunately, despite the talk we often hear from legislative leaders, the hard truth is that our schools are and have been struggling mightily for several years thanks to a chronic lack of funding.

What’s more, as Newsline was reminded in a conversation this past week with the President of the nonprofit Wake Ed Partnership, Keith Poston, the situation figures to get worse and soon unless lawmakers decide to pause the regressive tax cuts that are scheduled to take effect in the near future. What’s more as Poston also noted, even the efforts of well-off counties like Wake to supplement state school funding could be in jeopardy if lawmakers follow through with a new plan to enact one-size-fits-all rules on local property taxes.

Click here for the full interview with Keith Poston, President of the nonprofit Wake Ed Partnership.

State support for preschool education hit record highs for enrollment, quality, and funding in the 2024-2025 school year, according to a new report entitled “The State of Preschool 2025” from the National Institute for Early Education Research. That said, some states advanced more than others. This year’s report brings to the forefront for the first time one state that excels at both access and quality standards: Georgia.

Unfortunately, in North Carolina, preschool enrollment actually declined as did state government investments. To learn more about what the numbers mean and why state policymakers should prioritize pre-k, NC Newsline recently sat down with the institute’s Senior Director and Founder Steve Barnett and the lead author of The State of Preschool Yearbook, Associate Research Professor Allison Friedman-Krauss.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NIEER’s founder Steve Barnett and associate research professor Allison Fiedman-Krauss. 

Learn more about this year’s rankings.

It’s been 20 years now since North Carolina started its state lottery and with only a very few exceptions, state lotteries are now an almost universal phenomenon. Interestingly, however, the rise of lotteries has coincided with the massive growth of legalized private gambling, and this has posed challenges for state officials to keep their lotteries relevant and revenue producing.

Recently, to gauge how these efforts are faring, Robbie Sequeira, a reporter for the national news outlet Stateline, took a look at the state of U.S. lotteries and last week he was kind enough to join NC Newsline to share his findings.  Newsline also got a chance to ask Sequeira about another topic on which he’s recently reported and found a somewhat unusual degree of bipartisanship in state government – the national shortage of affordable housing.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira.

As state lawmakers return to Raleigh this week for their 2026 legislative short session, there’s one issue that looms as the most important and most challenging: the state budget. Thanks to a long series of personal and corporate income tax cuts (and more that are scheduled to take place), the state will soon face a massive new budget shortfall that will endanger an array of core public systems and services that are already being run on shoestring.

Now add to this that House and Senate Republicans haven’t even been able to agree on a budget for the current fiscal year and it’s no wonder that a growing chorus of experts has issued a dire warning about what lies ahead for the state fiscal picture absent swift action, and recently we sat down with one of those experts – the NC Budget and Tax Center’s Sally Hodges Copple – to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the NC Budget and Tax Center’s Sally Hodges-Copple.

The state of North Carolina finds itself in a fiscal policy mess thanks to a series of regressive income tax cuts, there’s no larger or more important public function that will be adversely impacted than public education. For many years now, thanks to the decisions of Republican legislative leaders, North Carolina public schools have listed along near the bottom of national rankings in a host of important funding categories.

A landmark lawsuit – the Leandro case — sought to alter this situation by establishing that all schoolchildren in the state have a constitutional right to a sound basic education, but GOP lawmakers ignored the ruling and recently succeeded in getting a Republican majority on the court to effectively gut it. So where do things stand now and what’s next for public education in our state? Recently, Newsline sat down to discuss these questions with the Public School Forum of North Carolina’s Senior Director of Policy and Interim President/CEO, Lauren Fox.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the Public School Forum’s Lauren Fox.

The biggest story in North Carolina politics right now – indeed, it’s a big national story – is the recent primary election defeat of longtime state Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger. The veteran Rockingham County Republican lawmaker lost to his local sheriff, Sam Page, by just 23 votes.

So, what happened and why and is Berger’s defeat indicative of a pattern that reaches beyond the borders of North Carolina? Last week, Newsline caught up with the Durham-based New York Times reporter who covers the politics and culture of our state and the rest of the south, Eduardo Medina, to get his assessment.

Click here to listen to the full interview with New York Times reporter Eduardo Medina.

Follow Medina’s work in The New York Times.

No world news development of the past few weeks has commanded more attention or spurred greater controversy than President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran. And while, at this point, the ultimate outcome of the war remains very much in question, the war is drawing very high degrees of skepticism from North Carolinians of all political persuasions – especially independents and Democratic voters.

Now add to this the largely negative view that most North Carolinians hold right now about the economy and the president’s performance in managing it, and it’s no surprise that his overall approval ratings have plummeted. So where exactly do things stand, how does this compare to past public attitudes on foreign wars, and what’s likely to be the key driver of public opinion during the 2026 election cycle? Recently, Newsline sat down with the director of the Elon University Poll, Prof. Jason Husser, to find out.

In Part One of my recent sit down with Elon University pollster and political scientist, Prof. Jason Husser, we discussed his most recent public opinion surveys and what they say about how North Carolinians view the Trump presidency – and why deep-seated skepticism about the war in Iran and the state of the economy are likely to present big problems for the president and his party in the fall elections.

In Part Two of our conversation, we turned our attention to North Carolina politics and policy matters, including the fall U.S. Senate race between former Gov. Roy Cooper and challenger Michael Whatley, approval ratings for Gov. Josh Stein, and what North Carolinians are thinking about some high-profile issues, like concealed weapons and the rising costs of health care.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Elon University poll director Jason Husser.

Over the last few years, we’ve had several opportunities to chat with former state lawmaker Graig Meyer of Orange County during the four terms he served in the state House and two in the state Senate. Recently, however, Meyer decided to leave elected office to become the executive director of one of the state’s most important nonprofit advocacy organizations, the North Carolina Justice Center.

It won’t be an easy task. Meyer assumes his new role at a time in which many of the positions the Justice Center espouses – progressive tax policy, a stronger safety net, fair treatment for immigrants, tough consumer protection laws – are not in vogue at the state legislature. Nonetheless, as we learned in our most recent conversation, Meyer is energized by the new challenge and optimistic about the organization’s prospects for policy success at a time of big change at the General Assembly.

Click here to listen to the full interview with former state Senator Graig Meyer.

Even before his fateful and thus far largely unpopular decision to go to war with Iran in late February, both President Donald Trump and his party had been encountering some significant political headwinds as a result of an array of controversial policy actions. Now, with the war dragging on without much explanation or any clear plan for a conclusion, and rising prices for fuel and related items hitting Americans in their pocketbooks, standard political wisdom would predict a good chance of big Republican electoral defeats this fall.

That said, the fall elections are still seven months off, so how accurate are such predictions likely to be? Recently, to get a better gauge on where things stand, what people are thinking and where the president is likely playing with political fire as a result of some of the approaches he’s taken, Newsline sat down for a two-part conversation with one of our state’s most experienced and astute political observers, NC State University Professor of Political Science, Steven Greene.

In Part One of our recent conversation with Greene, we discussed President Trump’s deeply controversial decision to attack Iran, its impacts here at home, and how both matters are playing out in domestic politics as we look forward to the 2026 elections.

In Part Two of our conversation, we turned our attention to the North Carolina political scene and, in particular, the massive earthquake that just hit the state legislature as a result of the primary defeat of the state’s most powerful politician – longtime Republican Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NC State University political scientist Steven Greene.

Despite its many benefits, few technological developments of the 21st Century have had a larger negative impact on the overall mental health and wellbeing of American young people than the rise of social media. And while no one can imagine putting the social media genie back in the bottle from which it came, a growing chorus of parents, educators, mental health professionals and advocates is calling for better and tougher regulation of the giant corporations that dominate this field.

And it’s in light of this that many are welcoming a pair of recent court rulings in California and New Mexico that held corporations liable for damages to children injured on their platforms. One of those advocates is Sam Hiner, the co-founder of a national organization birthed in Chapel Hill known as the Young People’s Alliance. And recently Hiner joined NC Newsline to discuss the debate over social media as well as several other formidable challenges facing young people in the modern world.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Sam Hiner of the Young People’s Alliance.

Learn more about the Young People’s Alliance. 

One of the most remarkable, and in the minds of many, most shameful, developments in North Carolina public policy over the last three decades has been the failure of state leaders of both parties to fulfill their constitutional duty to provide all children in the state with access to a sound basic education. It’s now been over thirty years since the state Supreme Court clearly established the existence of such a right in the landmark Leandro case, but since then, elected leaders have found one excuse after another for ignoring it.

Thankfully, a cadre of dedicated researchers and advocates continues expose and push back against this unconstitutional inaction and this past week, Newsline caught up with one that group’s most persistent voices – North Carolina Justice Center senior policy analyst Kris Nordstrom.

Click here to listen to the full interview with North Carolina Justice Center senior policy analyst Kris Nordstrom.

It’s been two years now since sports betting became legal in North Carolina, and it’s quickly become one of the most impactful and transformative law changes in state history. In a remarkably short time, sports gambling – and, indeed, all kinds of gambling – have overtaken our society and produced one of the biggest and profitable industries in the nation.

Unfortunately, despite its popularity, rapid growth and sudden omnipresence, gambling has led to an array of deeply troubling trends – both for the sporting games that play such an important role in our culture, and for millions of average people – especially young people – for whom gambling is an expensive and often destructive addiction. A new WRAL documentary examines these developments – it’s called “The Gamble: Sports Betting in North Carolina,” and recently Newsline caught up with the journalist behind it, WRAL TV investigative reporter and producer Cristin Severance.

Click here to listen to the full interview with WRAL TV investigative reporter and producer Cristin Severance.

Watch “The Gamble: Sports Betting in North Carolina.”

If you’re like most average consumers, you’re acutely aware of how your monthly energy bill has been rising steadily in recent years. And a new report from the nonprofit Energy and Policy Institute shines a bright light on one big factor behind those hikes that turns out to be very much in the utility companies’ control – profits.

The report is entitled “Paying for Their Profits: How Ratepayers Foot the Bill for Soaring Utility Profits” and it finds that big investor-owned utilities like Duke Energy are making a mint even as huge numbers of average ratepayers struggle mightily to keep up with their bills. And recently NC Newsline sat down with one of the report’s co-authors, Energy and Policy Institute Research and Communications Manager Sue Sturgis, to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Energy and Policy Institute Research and Communications Manager Sue Sturgis. 

As the U.S. rapidly moves toward the one-month mark in President Trump’s highly controversial war with Iran, the costs – both in human lives and dollars and cents — continue to mount rapidly. And these costs are impacting virtually all Americans. Not only are direct expenditures on the war impacting the U.S. Treasury and the government’s ability to fund core public services, the economic impacts – most notably in the form of soaring fuel prices – are taking a toll on millions of average consumers.

And it’s in light of these developments that the group Veterans for Responsible Leadership has launched a new billboard campaign in North Carolina critiquing the war and calling for Congress to exercise its authority to control the president’s thus far unilateral actions. And recently, Newsline caught up with the group’s North Carolina-based executive director, former U.S. 82nd Airborne Division captain, Scott Peoples.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Scott Peoples, executive director of Veterans for Responsible Leadership.

As the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians are well aware, the economic news of late remains a mix of good and bad news. On the hopeful side, the official unemployment rate remains comparatively low. What’s more, there are some important ways in which our state remains better situated than many others. On the other hand, however, there are several areas in which things are trending in a negative direction.

Perhaps most notable here, is the ongoing affordability crisis that continues to keep prices for several basics of life – housing, health care, groceries – beyond the reach of many average households. Now add the failure of state and national policy leaders to tackle these matters effectively and it’s no wonder that concerns are running high – both among experts and average citizens. And recently NC Newsline caught up with North Carolina Budget and Tax Center Policy Analyst Alex Campbell to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with North Carolina Budget and Tax Center Policy Analyst Alex Campbell. 

How is North Carolina doing in building a workforce with the necessary degrees and job credentials for the 21st Century economy?

While the challenges here are huge, this is one area in which state policymakers have created a nonprofit that’s charged with monitoring our progress and, where it can, helping to move things in a positive direction. The group is called myFutureNC, and recently it released its latest update on the headway we’re making. And earlier this month, NC Newsline caught up with the group’s President and CEO, Cecelia Holden.

In Part One of our conversation, we checked in and heard some encouraging news related to how well our state is doing in meeting its decade-long goal of building a workforce in which two-million residents hold a post-secondary degree or industry-valued credential by 2030.

In Part Two of our conversation, we dug deeper into the issue and reviewed some of the major challenges we face, including the reading and math scores of younger students, the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the disparities in how different regions of the state are faring. And we also examined what many see as a major elephant in the economic room and future employment trends: artificial intelligence.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Cecilia Holden, president and CEO of myFutureNC.

Click here to read the latest report.

An especially noteworthy 2026 primary election has come and gone, and there were a lot of important and high-profile outcomes – some expected and some surprising.

Topping the list of predicted results were the outcomes in the Democratic and Republican U.S. Senate primaries, where former Gov. Roy Cooper and GOP party official Michael Whatley cruised to easy wins and are now set for what all expect to be an expensive November showdown.

Interestingly, however, despite its national importance, the Senate primaries were partially overshadowed by a Republican primary in a state Senate race in which longtime Senate leader Phil Berger and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page are headed for a recount. NC Newsline caught up with Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper to review these and other results.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Western Carolina University political science professor Chris Cooper.

Among the many controversial actions taken by North Carolina public university leaders since Republicans at the state legislature took control of the system and campus boards, few have provoked greater concern than a recent announcement that administrators at UNC Chapel Hill would begin secretly recording classroom lectures and discussions.

In addition to their concerns about the basic and creepy Big Brother aspects of such a proposal, faculty members in Chapel Hill pushed back forcefully against the plan as an unwarranted move that would stifle learning and free discussion. Happily, the plan appears to have been scrapped, but that has not stopped efforts on the campus to restrict academic freedom, and recently, to learn more, Newline caught up with the interim vice president of the North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors, Dr. Abigail Hatcher.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Dr. Abigail Hatcher, the interim vice president of the North Carolina Conference of the American Association of University Professors.

There’s been no bigger or more controversial national news story in recent weeks than the Trump administration’s unprecedented immigration crackdown. All across the country – and perhaps most notably in Minnesota – federal immigration officers have employed an array harsh and often discriminatory and violent tactics to round up people suspected of being undocumented – many of them U.S. citizens.

And of course, the massive sweep has created a need for places to house detainees – at least temporarily – and so it is that we’re now learning of plans to create a vast network of so-called detention centers (that is prisons) across the country. What’s more, as Kevin Hardy, a reporter for the national news outlet Stateline recently reported, in addition to taking over existing jails and prisons, the administration is moving to convert and use large private warehouses and manufacturing buildings for this purpose. Not surprisingly, this is causing a lot of concerns for local government leaders on a variety of grounds, and recently, Newsline caught up with Hardy for an extended conversation to learn more.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy, we discussed the revelation that the Trump administration plans to establish a new network of so-called detention centers – that is, prisons – to house the thousands of people swept up in recent immigration raids. What’s more, the plan is to convert a large number of private warehouses and manufacturing facilities – many of them located in communities not typically used for prisons – to this purpose.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into the subject and, in particular, the opposition that has arisen to this scheme from both Republican and Democratic local officials, the public campaigns that some communities have undertaken to convince owners of these facilities not to go along with the administration’s plans, and the prospects for expected court challenges.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, the first several weeks of 2026 have featured a large complement of wintry and bitterly cold weather and that’s something that’s sure to drive up the electric bills that will soon hit thousands of residential ratepayers. And while there’s nothing that can be done to control the weather, there are steps energy providers and elected officials can take to help minimize electricity rates – most notably, working to shift as quickly as possible to sustainable sources of energy with predictable costs like solar and wind.

Unfortunately, while North Carolina had been moving in that direction, recent political lobbying by Duke Energy has sidetracked those efforts and, as Newsline learned in a recent chat with Will Scott, the North Carolina Policy Director for the Environmental Defense Fund, the result will be more reliance on volatilely priced fossil fuels and a shift in the burden for funding Duke’s profits from industrial and commercial customers to residential consumers.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Will Scott, the North Carolina Policy Director for the Environmental Defense Fund.

If there’s a most egregious disconnect right now between state and national policy and what reams of scientific evidence and countless common-sense observations tell us about the world around us, it’s clearly in the realm of environmental protection and, in particular, climate change. As has been repeatedly and thoroughly documented, our planet currently faces an existential crisis that demands an urgent, all-hands-on-deck response from government at all levels, the private and nonprofit sectors, scientists, and average citizens.

Unfortunately, as Newsline learned recently in an extended conversation with North Carolina League of Conservation Voters’ clean energy campaigns director, Meech Carter, the perverse reality right now is that many corporate actors, along with the Trump administration, are moving in the opposite direction by loosening or eliminating anti-pollution rules and conservation efforts, expanding the use of expensive fossil fuels and sticking average ratepayers with the bill.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation Carter, we explored the troubling fact that new actions by North Carolina-based electricity giant Duke Energy, are poised to both raise prices on average consumers and further inhibit critically important efforts to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.

In Part Two of our chat we dug deeper into these issues by examining the troubling growth of so-called data centers, recent actions by the Trump administration to end federal regulation of pollutants that cause climate change, the critical need to rebuild western North Carolina better and stronger 18 months after Hurricane Helene, and why its critical that caring and thinking people vote in this year’s elections if our state and nation are to return to the pursuit of sane environmental policies.

Click here to listen to the full interview with North Carolina League of Conservation Voters’ clean energy campaigns director Meech Carter.

Early voting is already well underway in this year’s primary election that concludes on March 3, but even as this process plays out, conservative activists and self-described “election integrity experts” are renewing their longstanding campaign to purge registered voters from the rolls in groups and geographic areas that generally tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

The latest effort: a recent offer from a group of conservative activists to provide North Carolina’s Republican dominated Board of Elections with new computer software that they claim will identify fraudulent voters.

As NC Newsline reporter Lynn Bonner explained in a recent story, however, the software in question remains in a developmental stage and is a of a type and origin that pro-democracy advocates say should raise some serious red flags. And recently, we sat down with Bonner to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NC Newsline investigative reporter Lynn Bonner.

Click here to read Bonner’s story.

During his 2024 campaign to return to the White House, President Trump promised American voters that he would almost immediately deliver a new era of
peace and prosperity. Today, a little over a year since his return to office, it’s increasingly clear that most Americans do not believe he has delivered.

In addition to a string of losses for Trump allies in a series of special elections, several new opinion surveys indicate that most Americans – including a  significant percentage of Republicans – are unhappy with rising costs of everything from housing to health care to groceries. And yet, despite these trends, Trump retains a core of strong supporters – and this is true in North Carolina – who remain loyal and willing to accept his characterization of the facts, even when they’re contradicted by official statistics. And recently to get a better handle on this situation, Newsline sat down for an extended chat with the author of one of the most recent polls, veteran Catawba College political scientist, Prof. Michal Bitzer.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with veteran Catawba College political scientist, Prof. Michael Bitzer, we discussed recent polling numbers that indicate that while President Trump retains a core of strong supporters, his overall approval ratings are waning in light of several controversial global policy actions and an economy that’s failing to live up to his campaign promise of lower prices and bigger paychecks.

In Part Two of our chat, we continued our discussion of the widespread discontent over the state of the economy, as well as the general bipartisan dissatisfaction with the performance of the U.S. Congress. In addition, we checked in on the continued strong polling numbers for North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein and looked ahead to the upcoming North Carolina U.S. Senate contest in which former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper is expected to face one of a group of lesser-known Republican candidates.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Catawba College political scientist Prof. Michal Bitzer.

If you celebrated Valentine’s Day over the weekend, chances are you noted that tariffs are driving up the cost of flowers, chocolates, and many other items associated with the holiday.

Many of the products that define Valentine’s rely heavily on imports. The United States imports nearly all the cacao used to make chocolate, primarily from West Africa, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador. About 80 percent of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are also imported.

To get a better idea of how across-the-board tariffs are impacting consumers, we checked in recently with two small business owners in Raleigh and in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Sam Ratto is the owner of Videri Chocolate Factory in downtown Raleigh and Abigail Helberg-Moffitt is the owner of Bloom WNC in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Click here to listen to their story.

Read their full story here.

For close to 90 years, most American universities and their faculty members have operated under a popular, useful and commonly understood definition of academic freedom – that is the notion that a free search for the truth and its exposition (one not beholden to politicians or the whims of public opinion) is at the heart of higher education’s mission. Indeed, throughout this period, a national organization known as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has made championing such a definition its guiding mission.

However, in recent years, conservative partisans have been leading a relentless campaign to undermine academic freedom and, in recent months, that effort has given rise to a new initiative at the UNC System Board of Governors. And recently to learn more, Newsline caught up with an AAUP leader here in North Carolina – UNC Charlotte Associate Professor of Social Work, Anneliese Mennicke.

Click here for the full interview with UNC Charlotte Associate Professor Anneliese Mennicke.

The nation’s persistent affordability crisis continues to leave large majorities of Americans deeply concerned about the state of the country and dissatisfied with national political leaders and, as Newsline learned in a recent conversation with KFF senior survey polling analyst Dr. Shannon Schumacher, nowhere is this better evidenced than in the field of health care.

As Schumacher told us in a recent conversation, new KFF polling finds that the combination of soaring costs and frayed and uncertain insurance coverage has left millions of people worse off than they were just a year ago and deeply concerned about the policies, actions and inactions of the Trump administration and congressional leaders as we look forward to the 2026 elections.

Click here to listen to the full interview with KFF senior survey polling analyst Dr. Shannon Schumacher.

One of the most worrisome trends impacting our nation’s public health right now is the spread of misinformation about the risks and benefits of vaccines. Tragically, this sobering development is on display right now in our state where multiple outbreaks of measles – a dangerous and sometimes deadly and debilitating illness – have emerged thanks to the failure of parents to secure vaccination for their children.

And it’s in light of developments like this that an array of experts and average citizens are pushing back with accurate information and advocacy, and recently we caught up with one of the leaders of that effort – veteran Ohio-based pediatrician Dr. Arthur Lavin. Lavin helps lead a national organization called Grandparents for Vaccines and as he told Newsline, he and his colleagues in this effort are determined to remind Americans of some simple truths about communicable disease that many have forgotten.

Click here for the full interview with Dr. Arthur Lavin of Grandparents for Vaccines.

North Carolina primary election is just weeks away, and it looks like our state will play host to one of the nation’s most expensive and important U.S. Senate races as former Democratic governor Roy Cooper heads toward a fall clash with one of three candidates seeking the Republican nomination.
Of course, all of this comes at a time of profound national division and turmoil as President Trump continues to pursue an agenda that polls say most Americans view as reckless and unattuned to their needs. At such a moment, it seemed to us like a good time to check in with one of our state’s most experienced political observers, veteran Democratic consultant and columnist Thomas Mills. And as Mills told us in Part One of our extended conversation, this fall’s elections are likely to show once again that North Carolina remains one of the nation’s most closely divided states.

In Part Two of our chat, we examined the fascinating state Senate contest in Rockingham and Guilford counties in which long-time Republican leader and Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger faces a formidable challenge from popular Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. We also discussed whether there is a chance for Democrats to gain any seats in the state legislature and U.S. House delegations in light of aggressive Republican gerrymandering and what Mills sees as some of the key issues that are likely to be foremost in voters’ minds as they go to the polls.

Click listen to the full interview with veteran political consultant Thomas Mills. You can read more of his observations at Politics NC.

Few organizations have had a larger impact on the honesty, transparency and overall health of North Carolina’s government over the few decades than the state chapter of the national nonprofit advocacy organization Common Cause. Recently, the group’s longtime executive director Bob Phillips moved on to retirement, turning over the reins to the longtime organizational deputy director Sailor Jones.

NC Newsline recently sat down with Jones to discuss why he’s already redoubling the group’s efforts to resist assaults on fair elections. And Jones weighs in on recent actions by the NC State Board of Elections to reject campus voting sites and curb Sunday voting in several counties.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the new executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, Sailor Jones.

All across the country, ICE and Border Patrol agents have conducted police-state-style raids and other actions that have terrorized communities and raised constitutional issues of profound importance.

At the same time, numerous changes to immigration policy – many of them adopted without public knowledge or input – have made an already complex system more opaque and confusing than ever.

At such a challenging moment, the nation is blessed to have a small and courageous cadre of nonprofit advocates who work each day to monitor and shine a light on the system and advocate for basic American values like due process. And recently Newsline got a chance to talk with one of the most able and best-informed attorneys working in this arena, American Immigration Council Deputy Legal Director, Raul Pinto.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with American Immigration Council Deputy Legal Director, Raul Pinto, we delved into some of the most worrisome front burner issues related to immigrants and immigration policy currently afflicting the nation – including the deeply disturbing mass raids, arrests and violence launched by the Trump administration in numerous communities across the country.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of these and related issues, including the matter of transparency and accountability in the immigration law system and an ongoing effort by Pinto and his colleagues to compel the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to simply provide immigrants with their own immigration records.

Click here for the full interview with Raul Pinto, Deputy Legal Director at the American Immigration Council

Editor’s note: Newsline’s interview with Pinto was recorded before a second U.S. citizen was shot and killed by federal immigration officers in Minnesota. 

The headlines are making clear, big and important debates and actions – especially several controversial actions of the Trump administration and its allies — have continued to roil American policy and politics in the New Year. From the health care wars to the widespread immigration crackdowns to a bevy of contentious foreign policy moves, Americans are concerned about the present and future and, in many instances, deeply divided.

It’s the kind of moment that keeps political scientists and pollsters busy as they work to assess the state of public opinion and how it’s likely to impact voting patterns and upcoming elections, and one especially trustworthy monitor of the situation in North Carolina is Meredith College political science professor and pollster David McLennan. And recently, we caught up with McLennan for an extended interview in which we dug into several of these matters.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with Meredith College political scientist and pollster David McLennan, we examined some of the top issues making political and policy news in the New Year and how they relate to the latest developments we’re seeing in American public opinion and voter registration numbers.

In Part Two of our chat, we continued this conversation, and looked more closely at some of the most controversial issues – including the Trump administration’s national crackdown on immigrants and its controversial foreign policy actions and statements — as well as how these controversies might impact the 2026 elections and, in particular, North Carolina’s highly anticipated U.S. Senate race between former Gov. Roy Cooper and Republican challenger Michael Whatley.

Commemorative services are planned across the state Monday as the nation pauses for a federal holiday in observance of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. MLK Day is a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer and improve their communities.

Bishop William Barber – president of Repairers of the Breach and architect of the Forward Together Moral Movement – will mark the day with a series of speeches encouraging people of all backgrounds to come together and sound the alarm against unjust policies that have led to healthcare cuts, gerrymandered districts, reduced funding for public schools, and increased aggressive actions by ICE agents.

Barber and a coalition of North Carolina religious leaders and advocacy organizations recently announced plans for a memorial march in mid-February to speak out against regressive policies while highlighting what they believe is a better path forward for the nation. NC Newsline sat down with Bishop Barber to discuss the upcoming march and his thoughts as we mark the 2026 MLK Day. Barber shared with us one of the key objectives of the upcoming February march is to lift up a vision of what caring and thinking people are for, more than just the policies that they’re against. 

For those who had hoped the New Year might usher in a period of renewed calm in American policy and politics, this first week has been yet another profound disappointment. Topping the list of worrisome developments was President Donald Trump’s decision to use U.S. military personnel to arrest the president of Venezuela Niclas Maduro and his wife.

Trump’s action to decapitate the leadership of a sovereign nation and quote “run” the oil rich country going forward has prompted protests and deep concern across the nation and the world about violations of international law and the U.S. Constitution. And one of the many American elected officials to voice such concerns has been North Carolina Fourth District Congresswoman Valerie Foushee. As Newsline learned in a recent extended interview, Foushee is strongly opposed to putting armed forces personnel in jeopardy in service of another nation-building exercise that she views as unlawful.

We examined several other subjects, including the the failure of Foushee’s GOP colleagues in Congress to renew federal subsidies for Americans enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, the un-American actions of ICE and border patrol agents, the anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and President Trump’s pardon of numerous perpetrators.

Click here to listen to the full interview with North Carolina Congresswoman Valerie Foushee (NC-04)

Editor’s note: NC Newsline’s interview with Foushee was conducted prior to the fatal shooting in Minneapolis by an ICE agent that has ignited nationwide protests. 

As we commence the New Year, few if any subjects raise greater concerns for the wellbeing of Americans than the ongoing global environmental crisis. From climate change to the growing and widespread prevalence of toxic chemicals, to the Trump administration’s ongoing war against environmental protection regulations, this past year has been another deeply worrisome one for the health of our planet.

And while it will clearly be difficult to effect the public policy turnaround that’s so urgently needed anytime very soon, one predicate that will be absolutely necessary is a continuing flow of accurate information and on this front, North Carolina is fortunate to have one of the nation’s best and most knowledgeable environmental reporters – Lisa Sorg of Inside Climate News. And this past week, Newsline caught up with Lisa to discuss some of the most important environmental stories of 2025 and what’s likely to be making news in 2026.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Lisa Sorg of Inside Climate News.

It’s common knowledge that the nation’s housing market – especially in growing areas like North Carolina – has become prohibitively expensive for millions of people, and a new report from researchers at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Center for Geospatial Solutions (which is housed at the institute) highlights a major culprit – the rising tide of corporate ownership of the nation’s residential housing stock.

According to the report – which is entitled “Who Owns America,” nearly 9% of residential parcels in 500 U.S. counties are owned by a corporation and the concentrations exceed 20% in some cities. What’s more, the trend is expanding rapidly, and it’s further complicating the already deeply challenging housing market for first-time buyers. And in December to learn more about the report and the housing market challenges it helps to highlight, we caught up with the national housing reporter for the news outlet, Stateline, Robbie Sequeira.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Robbie Sequeira.

Editor’s note: This is a rebroadcast of our interview from Dec. 7, 2025. 

Few areas of modern American popular culture have undergone greater or more rapid changes in recent years that college sports. Thanks to a series of successful legal challenges, the nation’s longstanding practice of treating college athletes as amateurs has been completely upended and, especially at big schools engaged high-profile sports like football and basketball, teams have become professionalized, with many athletes switching schools yearly, and raking in multi-million dollar deals under so-called “name image and likeness.”

In a time of such rapid change and upheaval, it comes as little surprise that many people who were used to how things once worked – be they university leaders or average citizens and sports fans — are experiencing a sense of disorientation and discomfort. And this fact was made clear in some opinion surveys conducted last October by the Elon University Poll and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, and at that time, NC Newsline caught up with the Elon poll director, Prof. Jason Husser, to learn more.

Now that we are in the midst of the college football bowl season, we thought it would be an ideal time to revisit that interview and the poll findings.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Elon University Professor Jason Husser.

In our fast-changing world, few technological developments of recent years have had a bigger impact on young people than the emergence of instant communication and social media. And while it’s not difficult to identify the positive impacts of these phenomena, the worrisome impacts are also numerous. And this is a trend that seems certain to intensify in years to come with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.

Thankfully, many advocates have started to speak out in favor of stronger laws to protect vulnerable people – especially young people – from exploitation like predatory algorithms, social media bullying, artificial intelligence and other impacts from the online world that endanger people’s mental and even physical health. And a few months’ back, NC Newsline caught up with the leader of one such group, the co-founder and executive director of the Young People’s Alliance, North Carolinian Sam Hiner.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Sam Hiner, the co-founder and executive director of the Young People’s Alliance.

The affordability crisis plaguing the American economy continues to grow more serious, and if there is a most visible sector of the economy for which soaring prices are causing the most havoc, it has to be housing. Across the country, the skyrocketing cost of housing – both for purchase and rent – is conspiring to swell the ranks of Americans who are inadequately housed, or even completely homeless.

What’s more and quite maddeningly, this disastrous trend is being abetted by the Trump administration and its congressional allies, who have made it a priority to abandon the federal government’s proven “housing first” policy in favor of a mishmash of poorly funded alternatives and coercive tactics that some advocates characterize as an attack on homeless people. And recently to learn more about where things stand and what advocates are doing to push back, Newsline caught up with the executive director of the North Carolina Coalition to End Homelessness, Dr. Latonya L. Agard.

Click here for the full interview with Dr. Latonya L. Agard.

When veteran journalist and advocate Bob Phillips took over as executive director of Common Cause of North Carolina a quarter century ago, he was the organization’s sole staff member and the work he pursued to fight for fair elections, voting rights and honest government could often be a lonely effort. Today, as he prepares to retire next month, he’s no longer quite so lonely – with a staff of 15 Common Cause North Carolina is now the organization’s largest state affiliate – but many of the battles he fights remain daunting and uphill affairs.

Especially when it comes to elections and combating the gerrymandering that allows politicians to rig their outcomes, Common Cause and its allies continue to face stiff headwinds from President Trump and his allies in Congress, state legislatures and the federal courts. And yet, as Bob reminded Newsline when we talked last week, there remain simple and doable fixes that could return fairness to our elections, and there are many reasons to believe caring and thinking Americans will be able to make them a reality in the not too distant future.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Bob Phillips. 

It continues to be one of the great scandals of modern America that in the world’s richest nation, millions of people – including an especially high percentage of children – suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Here in North Carolina, around one in seven people — including a quarter of our children — are burdened by food insecurity.

And just to make the situation that much more outrageous and inexcusable, recent actions by federal and state elected officials to undermine SNAP food assistance and slash funding for anti-hunger nonprofits have made the situation significantly worse. The result: this year, more people than ever are struggling to feed their families. Amazingly, however, the good people doing anti-hunger work remain resilient and unbowed, and recently we got the chance to learn more about the needs in our community and how average folks can help in an extended conversation with the president and CEO of the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, Ron Pringle.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with Pringle, we discuss the hunger crisis that currently afflicts North Carolina and how recent actions by federal and state lawmakers to slash funding for food assistance and nonprofits that aid people in need have made an already bad situation significantly worse.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into the details of the current hunger crisis, some of the many innovative and hopeful ways in which groups like the Food Shuttle, even with depleted funding, seek to attack it, and how average North Carolinians can support their effort by donating their time, talents and treasure.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Inter-Faith Food Shuttle President and CEO Ron Pringle.

Click here to learn more about the Food Shuttle

It’s now been nearly 15 months since the worst storm in modern times to hit western North Carolina – Hurricane-turned-Tropical Storm Helene – inundated numerous mountain communities, killed more than 100 people and inflicted tens of billions of dollars in property damage.
Unfortunately, as NC Newsline has reported on numerous occasions, especially when it comes to the federal government, the response has been decidedly and often maddeningly inadequate. Despite repeated pleas from Gov. Josh Stein, funding from Washington has been slow and spotty and, thanks to Trump administration bloodletting, federal agencies that should be helping to spearhead the recovery have been inadequately staffed and often missing in action. As a result, western North Carolina residents remain deeply frustrated and worried about the future and recently we caught up with a storm survivor and local recovery leader who’s traveling to the nation’s capital along with a group of other disaster survivors from around the country this week to call for a better federal response – Watauga County carpenter and organizer Jon Council.

Click here for the full interview with Down Home North Carolina community organizer Jon Council.

The rising cost of housing continues to be a huge problem for millions of Americans. But, of course, as just about any average person can also confirm, lack of affordability is not just a problem confined to housing – it’s spreading across the U.S. economy in dozens of areas. So, what’s going on here? During the COVID pandemic, we knew precisely what was going on – a huge drop in supply that was giving rise to rapid inflation, and that problem was rapidly and successfully addressed during the Biden presidency.

So why are prices going up again and what should elected leaders be doing about it? Recently Newsline got a chance to discuss these and some related matters in an extended conversation with NC State extension economist and professor emeritus Mike Walden.

In Part One of our extended conversation, we discussed the affordability crisis that’s plaguing millions of average Americans – and how President Donald Trump’s tariffs are contributing to the problem and undermining the bold promises he made to Americans during the 2024 election.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of the economic challenges that confront the nation, including the impact of artificial intelligence, the changing nature of work, the ongoing disinvestment in research in higher education and the soaring costs of health care.

Click here to listen to the full interview with economist Mike Walden.

It’s common knowledge that the nation’s housing market – especially in growing areas like North Carolina – has become prohibitively expensive for millions of people, and a new report from researchers at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Center for Geospatial Solutions (which is housed at the institute) highlights a major culprit – the rising tide of corporate ownership of the nation’s residential housing stock.

According to the report – which is entitled “Who Owns America,” nearly 9% of residential parcels in 500 U.S. counties are owned by a corporation and the concentrations exceed 20% in some cities. What’s more, the trend is expanding rapidly, and it’s further complicating the already deeply challenging housing market for first-time buyers. And recently to learn more about the report and the housing market challenges it helps to highlight, we caught up with the national housing reporter for the news outlet, Stateline, Robbie Sequeira.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Robbie Sequeira.

The record federal government shutdown may be over, but the dysfunction to which it gave rise and helped spur continues to plague North Carolina. Here in our state alone, millions of average people who have long relied upon government structures and services to help make basics like health care and access to food more affordable are suddenly confronting dire situations.

Whether it’s Medicaid, Affordable Care Act Marketplace health insurance policies or SNAP food assistance, recent actions of the Trump administration and its congressional allies are causing havoc for people living on the edge. What’s more, as we learned in a recent conversation with North Carolina State Senator Natalie Murdock of Chatham and Durham Counties, Republican leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly, who could be taking action to ease the confusion and suffering, have instead chosen inaction.

Click here to listen to the full interview with state Senator Natalie Murdock.

One of the top news items at the start of the holiday season here in North Carolina has been the Trump administration’s latest anti-immigrant crackdown. The mass border patrol enforcement action has spurred chaos in several communities with tens of thousands of students skipping school, workers afraid to report to their jobs, and business owners shuttering their doors as masked individuals rounded up people with the use of highly questionable tactics.

Not surprisingly, as in many other parts of the country, thousands of North Carolinians are standing up to witness and document these often troubling actions and this past week Newsline sat down with an advocate whose organization is playing an important role in educating caring and thinking people about how they can support their immigrant neighbors, Siembra NC senior strategist, Andrew Willis Garcés.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Siembra NC’s Andrew Willis Garcés.

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is causing heartache and consternation for thousands upon thousands of North Carolinians. What’s more it’s not just people lacking proper documentation who are being negatively impacted. As NC Newsline journalist Brandon Kingdollar recently reported, in many instances, it’s American citizens and lawful residents who are being wrongfully targeted and harmed, and recently, we caught up with Brandon to learn more. We also got a chance to ask him about another controversial federal law enforcement initiative – this one targeting a product that millions of Americans have grown used to being lawful.

Click here for the full interview with NC Newsline reporter Brandon Kingdollar.

Affordable housing remains one of the most vexing problems in North Carolina and around the country. What’s more, as we were reminded in a conversation this past week with NC Newsline poverty and housing reporter Greg Chidress, it’s a challenge that’s only been made worse by real and threatened federal funding cuts and the uncertainty those cuts are driving amongst the heroic service providers here and elsewhere who do their best to help the unhoused and expand the housing stock.

Happily, the story is not exclusively bleak. As Childress reminded us, there is evidence of a growth in new housing construction in some communities. What’s more, as was highlighted in a recent story he authored about a dynamic young activist and nonprofit leader in the city of Kinston, local advocacy and entrepreneurship can still make a real difference in addressing this daunting problem.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Newsline report Greg Childress. 

One of the most visible and prolific voices for progressive policy change in 21^st Century North Carolina is UNC Professor of Law Gene Nichol. Since taking up residence here three decades ago, Prof. Nichol has taught, written and advocated with remarkable energy and clarity for public policies that promote economic, social and political justice. He established a center at UNC that worked to document and combat poverty and inequality, and he’s long served as one of the state’s toughest and most unapologetic public critics of the conservative politicians who’ve dominated state policymaking in the last 15 years.

Now, Nichol is out with a new book in which he documents the relentless right-wing political and policy crusade that’s being waged by the state’s conservative legislature leadership and speaks directly to caring and thinking North Carolinians about how they can fight back. The book, which is published by the folks at Blair Publishing, is entitled “Now what? How North Carolina Can Blaze a Progressive Path Forward” and this past week, we caught up with the author to learn more.

Click here for the full interview with UNC law professor, author and commentator Gene Nichol.  

Few national policy changes of the past year have drawn more attention or caused more controversy that President Trump’s on-again off-again economic tariffs. But when it comes to lasting global impacts, it’s all but certain that tariffs will pale in comparison to another controversial policy shift – the Trump administration decision to abandon our nation’s commitment to combating climate change.

This past week, representatives from around the world convened in Brazil for the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP30 — a key opportunity to check in on how the world is doing in meeting the climate pledges made by scores of nations under the Paris Agreement. And sadly, as we learned in a recent conversation with North Carolina League of Conservation Voters Clean Energy Campaigns Director Meech Carter, the news – especially here in the U.S. – is not encouraging.

Click here for the full interview with Meech Carter as we discuss climate change, energy policy, and the absence of the U.S. at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

One of the most visible and controversial economic policy shifts to be implemented during the first year of the second Trump administration has been the return of big economic tariffs (that is, federal taxes) on foreign imports. The President claims that tariffs will boost domestic businesses, but results thus far – especially given the on-again-off-again way in which they’ve been applied and removed — have been, at the very best, mixed.

One North Carolina businessperson who can testify to the challenging ways in which tariffs have impacted their business is western North Carolina farmer, Mary Carroll Dodd. Dodd is the owner of Red Scout Farm near Black Mountain, where she farms on land her family has owned for 125 years. And as she told Newsline when we caught up with her a few days’ back, tariffs have been anything but a boon to her business.

Click here for the full interview with Mary Carroll Dodd. 

The federal government shutdown continued to have an array of devastating impacts in recent days and, by any fair estimate, one of the most harmful has been the shutoff in SNAP food assistance. While a pair of federal court rulings appear to have forced the Trump administration to restart benefits for the millions of families who rely upon them, at last report, those benefits will be at just half of previous levels – a change that will guarantee a spike in hunger and suffering.

So how is this playing out in North Carolina? How many people are being adversely impacted and what if anything can be done to lessen the impact? Recently, we sat down with a journalist who’s been watching and reporting on this situation – NC Newsline reporter Galen Bacharier.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NC Newsline reporter Galen Bacharier.

The government shutdown and its devastating impact on millions of federal workers and average citizens is not the only dysfunction emanating from Washington these days. Thanks to the refusal of Congress and the Trump administration to extend health insurance tax credits enacted during the Biden years, millions of Americans are facing astronomical price spikes for Affordable Care Act health insurance policies for the New Year.

So, how bad is the situation and what can average North Carolinians do – both to urge Congress to act and to learn about how to fashion solutions to cope with the price hikes? Recently, Newsline sat down with one of our state’s most knowledgeable health care policy experts – Rebecca Cerese of the North Carolina Justice Center – to hear some answers to these and other closely related questions.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Rebecca Cerese of the North Carolina Justice Center.

Fact sheets and additional resources: 

• Enhanced Premium Tax Credit (EPTC) Fact Sheet,
• Health Resource Sheet.
• A Fact Sheet that offers tips on how to navigate hospital medical bills
• Fact Sheet on the NC Medical Debt Relief and Protection Program
• NC Navigator Consortium

Amid the federal government shutdown and the pause in SNAP benefits, a growing number of groups and individuals are coming together and collaborating to promote the success and well-being of students and their families.

One such group in our state is the North Carolina Community Schools Coalition – a nonprofit that’s working hard to promote a model across the state in which traditional public schools become the hubs of their communities – not just for K-12 education, but for an array of core public services and structures – something that’s especially important at a time like the present when core government services have been going away.

And recently, NC Newsline caught up with the Coalition’s Director of Services, Melissa McDonald, to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Melissa McDonald of the North Carolina Community Schools Coalition.

Over the last couple of decades, few if any American economists have played a more prominent role in the national debate over the economy or in actually crafting economic policy than Jared Bernstein. Bernstein served as chair of the national Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

And recently Bernstein was kind enough to join NC Newsline for a conversation about the current state of the U.S. economy and, among many other things, how the ongoing rise in inflation combined with growth in unemployment signals the arrival of the dreaded phenomenon known as stagflation, and how President Trump’s chaotic policies – most notably the imposition of tariffs on imported goods and services – are fueling what could well be a very destructive and hard-to-reverse economic trend.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired September 21, 2025.

It’s almost impossible to turn on one’s computer, phone or TV these days without hearing about or, indeed, experiencing the impact of AI – artificial intelligence. The rapid rise of this remarkable technology is reshaping our world in many important ways – some that provide grounds for great hope and others that give rise to profound concerns.

Not surprisingly, AI’s rapid rise is also spurring discussion of a raft of ethical and public policy issues – from questions of privacy and consumer protection to the need to regulate so-called deepfakes, to the very question of how humans assure that they retain control over the technology. Thankfully, some smart leaders have begun to pay close attention to the policy implications of AI, and here in North Carolina, one of those leaders is Mecklenburg County State Senator DeAndrea Salvador. And recently Sen. Salvador joined NC Newsline for a special two-part conversation in which we discussed some of these issues, and how for her, AI is a deeply personal matter.

In Part One of our extended conversation with State Senator Salvador of Mecklenburg County, we dove into a discussion of AI – artificial intelligence – the hopes and fears to which it’s giving rise and, in Senator Salvador’s case, how AI allowed an online talk she had given a few years’ back to be excerpted and manipulated for use in corporate advertising without her consent.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of the important policy implications of AI’s rapid rise, some of the legislation that she and others have introduced to help steer things in what they hope will be a healthy direction, and a new AI leadership council that Gov. Josh Stein has established (and on which Salvador serves) that will try to keep AI working for North Carolinians rather than the other way around.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Senator DeAndrea Salvador.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired September 21, 2025.

North Carolina faces a dire shortage of affordable housing. One need merely talk to friends and family members – even those with middle class incomes – to understand just how difficult it is to find affordable rental housing, much less homeownership opportunities.

That said, the numbers are bleak. The National Low Income Housing Coalition released a report this past summer entitled “Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing” which showed how the wages that millions of hourly workers are earning don’t come close to what’s necessary. In North Carolina, a full-time worker must earn a minimum of $27.14 per hour to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment. So how did we get here, how are policies in Washington deepening the crisis and what should we be doing? Back in August, Newsline got a chance to explore these questions and more in an extended conversation with the executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Samuel Gunter.

In Part One of our extended conversation with the executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Samuel Gunter, we dug into some of the details of our state and national affordable housing shortages, why the current market is failing millions, and why the latest budget cuts and policy changes emanating from Washington are not going to help.

In Part Two of our chat we turned to several related matters, including the way in which natural disasters and the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation policies are dramatically worsening the situation and how the recent Trump executive order targeting homeless people for arrest or involuntary commitment represents another significant step in the wrong direction.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Samuel Gunter.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired on August 3, 2025.

In 34 central and eastern North Carolina counties, one-in-five people – that’s well over half-a-million men, women and children – suffers from food insecurity.

And sadly, things aren’t going to get better any time soon. Indeed, thanks to recent acts of Congress and the state legislature, SNAP food assistance and other parts of our already threadbare and inadequate anti-hunger system are experiencing new, big and devastating cuts that are sure to worsen the problem. Not surprisingly, anti-hunger advocates are speaking up and demanding better and back in June Newsline caught up with one such leader – the President and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, Amy Beros.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Amy Beros.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired on June 8, 2025.

Few areas of modern American popular culture have undergone greater or more rapid changes in recent years that college sports. Thanks to a series of successful legal challenges, the nation’s longstanding practice of treating college athletes as amateurs has been completely upended and, especially at big schools engaged high-profile sports like football and basketball, teams have become professionalized, with many athletes switching schools yearly, and raking in multi-million dollar deals under so-called “name image and likeness.”

In a time of such rapid change and upheaval, it comes as little surprise that many people who were used to how things once worked – be they university leaders or average citizens and sports fans — are experiencing a sense of disorientation and discomfort. And this fact was made clear in some recent opinion surveys conducted by the Elon University Poll and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, and recently Newsline caught up with the Elon poll director, Prof. Jason Husser, to learn more.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation Husser, we discussed some of the results of the recent opinion surveys of university leaders he oversaw on the subject of the rapid changes that have been underway in college athletics – particularly the professionalization of once amateur sports and the newfound ability athletes enjoy to transfer from school-to-school.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of these issues, the concerns that many university leaders have about how these changes are impacting low revenue sports, and, in addition, how these views compare and contrast to what a poll conducted this past summer revealed about the attitudes of the general public.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Elon University Professor Jason Husser.

Over the last several decades, much of the world has made significant progress in how it views and responds to the affliction we’ve come to refer to as substance use disorder. Whereas people who once struggled with the misuse of and addiction to drugs and alcohol were once dismissed as weak and flawed, we’ve learned that substance use disorder is an illness not unlike many others that can and should give rise to treatment rather than judgment and ostracization.

A recent lawsuit settlement should help advance this ongoing piece of societal progress. The case involved a pair of North Carolina skilled nursing facilities that sought to deny admission to an individual in violation of multiple federal laws because of his substance use disorder and recent drug use. The case settlement requires the facilities to develop and implement a Substance Use Disorder Non-Discrimination Policy and to implement several other modern, medically sound policies and recently, in order to learn more, we caught up with a pair of attorneys from the nonprofit that helped spearhead the case, Disability Rights North Carolina: Holly Stiles and Sara Harrington.

Click here to listen to the full interview Holly Stiles and Sara Harrington.

If there’s a single factor that’s playing the largest role in spurring the dysfunction and divisiveness that plague modern American politics, gerrymandering – the intentional rigging of electoral districts for partisan purposes – is it. With the assistance of digital technology and recent judicial rulings that have given them complete carte blanche, state legislatures across the country are making a mockery of fair elections by drawing and redrawing electoral districts to assure partisan electoral outcomes even before the candidates are selected.

And sadly, one of the national poster children for this destructive trend is North Carolina, where in response to the demands of President Trump, Republican leaders have signaled a willingness to redraw the state’s already rigged U.S. House map to expand their 10-4 majority to 11-3. Recently, in order to learn more about the GOP scheme and a new poll that shows strong bipartisan opposition to it, Newsline caught up with one of our state’s leading defenders of democracy and fair elections, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, Bob Phillips.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Common Cause of North Carolina executive director Bob Phillips.

Despite the fact that they have yet to adopt a budget for the state fiscal year that commenced July 1, and are scheduled to return to Raleigh a couple more times this year, it appears that state lawmakers have wrapped up most of their action for the 2025 legislative session. And if that is in fact the case, one of the biggest losers in the Raleigh policy battles this year will have been our natural environment.

In addition to passing new laws to weaken important environmental protections, lawmakers have failed to fund a host of important public initiatives that are designed to clean up dangerous pollutants and strengthen communities to better withstand future natural disasters. And recently we caught up with one of our state’s top environmental policy experts — the Southeast Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Drew Ball – to learn some of the sobering details.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Drew Ball, Southeast Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

State lawmakers returned to Raleigh in late September for a brief stay, and in the aftermath of a horrific killing that had occurred just weeks before on a Charlotte commuter train, legislative leaders made criminal justice and their stated intention of “getting tough on crime” the central focus. Among the law changes sent to Gov. Stein for his review were provisions that would make it easier to hold people accused of crimes without bail pending trial and jumpstart the state’s death penalty law.

Despite its rapid approval, not everyone on Jones Street was convinced that the “get tough” approach is the answer, and one of those people was State Rep. Carolyn Logan of Mecklenburg County, who told Newsline that she believes the state needs a more creative and comprehensive approach to making her community safer.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Rep. Carolyn Logan of Mecklenburg County.

The North Carolina General Assembly was back in Raleigh in late September to enact legislation that leaders say will quote “get tough on crime” by limiting access to bail and pre-trial release for more criminal defendants and jump-starting the state’s long un-used death penalty.

Shortly after lawmakers departed the capital, Newsline caught up with an attorney who has studied this kind of legislation and its impact on crime in several states — the Chief Counsel of the Justice System Reform team at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, Jake Sussman. And sadly, Sussman says there’s no evidence that lawmakers’ “get tough” approach will make a meaningful difference. To do that, he says, lawmakers will finally need to muster the courage to engage with complex and expensive policy solutions like fixing the state’s desperately underfunded mental health system.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s Jake Sussman.

North Carolina is now into the second year of Hurricane Helene recovery and as we discussed in a special edition of News & Views last week, while there have been many encouraging and inspiring aspects to this story, the hard truth is that we have a very long way to go. And as Newsline learned recently in a conversation with policy analyst Alex Campbell of the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, the main reason for the slow pace of the recovery is funding – or more precisely, the lack of it from both the federal and state governments. Indeed, Campbell believes unless elected officials do something soon to inject billions of additional dollars, western North Carolina is in for many more tough years.

Click here to listen to the full interview with BTC policy analyst Alex Campbell.

This past week marked the one-year anniversary of Helene – a deadly hurricane-turned tropical-storm that wreaked unprecedented havoc in western North Carolina. Helene caused widespread and massive flooding that killed scores of people and caused more than $60 billion dollars in damage to North Carolina’s mountain west.

In the year since, clean-up and recovery have been ongoing – sometimes seemingly never-ending — tasks for the communities affected and state leaders. Indeed, since he took office just a few months after Helene, Gov. Josh Stein has made Helene recovery his administration’s top priority and recently Newsline was lucky enough to get a snapshot of where things stand when we caught up with the Governor’s point person in that effort, Matt Calabria.

Click here for the full interview with Matt Calabria, the Director of Governor Josh Stein’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina.

As with virtually all natural disasters, public funds and programs are at the heart of the ongoing recovery effort from Hurricane Helene. That said, federal relief from the Trump administration has been maddeningly minimal and slow, and that hard reality has helped force local private actors to display unusual resiliency and creativity in helping to keep the recovery up and running.

One group that’s been making a real impact is a nonprofit known as Mountain True. Not only have Mountain True staff and volunteers played an important role in the massive debris clean-up that continues to this day, but its experts are also developing strategies and plans to better prepare western North Carolina for future natural disasters, and last week NC Newsline I spoke with the Healthy Communities Director of Mountain True’s Appalachian Design Center, Chris Joyell.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Chris Joyell. 

If western North Carolina is going to fully rebuild and recapture the economic vitality it enjoyed prior to Helene, small businesses will be at the heart of the effort. And make no mistake, the challenges are enormous.

Surveys show that 96% of small businesses in the region were impacted by the storm, and while the majority have reopened, revenue for most is still more than 20% below pre-Helene levels.

Fortunately, some smart and energetic nonprofits are working energetically and successfully to help revive small business and one such group is the community economic development nonprofit, Mountain BizWorks, and recently Newsline caught up with the group’s executive director, Matt Raker.

Click here for he full interview with Mountain BizWorks’ Matt Raker.

Over the last couple of decades, few if any American economists have played a more prominent role in the national debate over the economy or in actually crafting economic policy than Jared Bernstein. Bernstein served as chair of the national Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

And recently Bernstein was kind enough to join NC Newsline for a conversation about the current state of the U.S. economy and, among many other things, how the ongoing rise in inflation combined with growth in unemployment signals the arrival of the dreaded phenomenon known as stagflation, and how President Trump’s chaotic policies – most notably the imposition of tariffs on imported goods and services – are fueling what could well be a very destructive and hard-to-reverse economic trend.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

It’s almost impossible to turn on one’s computer, phone or TV these days without hearing about or, indeed, experiencing the impact of AI – artificial intelligence. The rapid rise of this remarkable technology is reshaping our world in many important ways – some that provide grounds for great hope and others that give rise to profound concerns.

Not surprisingly, AI’s rapid rise is also spurring discussion of a raft of ethical and public policy issues – from questions of privacy and consumer protection to the need to regulate so-called deepfakes, to the very question of how humans assure that they retain control over the technology. Thankfully, some smart leaders have begun to pay close attention to the policy implications of AI, and here in North Carolina, one of those leaders is Mecklenburg County State Senator DeAndrea Salvador. And recently Sen. Salvador joined NC Newsline for a special two-part conversation in which we discussed some of these issues, and how for her, AI is a deeply personal matter.

In Part One of our extended conversation with State Senator Salvador of Mecklenburg County, we dove into a discussion of AI – artificial intelligence – the hopes and fears to which it’s giving rise and, in Senator Salvador’s case, how AI allowed an online talk she had given a few years’ back to be excerpted and manipulated for use in corporate advertising without her consent.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of the important policy implications of AI’s rapid rise, some of the legislation that she and others have introduced to help steer things in what they hope will be a healthy direction, and a new AI leadership council that Gov. Josh Stein has established (and on which Salvador serves) that will try to keep AI working for North Carolinians rather than the other way around.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Senator DeAndrea Salvador.

North Carolina state government continues to operate without a budget for the fiscal year that commenced July 1. Thanks largely to a disagreement between Republican leaders of the House and Senate over whether the state should plow ahead with a series of scheduled tax cuts – even as fiscal analysts warn of big impending budget shortfalls – the state is operating on a makeshift continuation budget that’s leaving a host of core public services inadequately funded.

What’s really behind this stalemate and what are some of the impacts it’s producing for state residents? Recently, as part of a special extended interview, Newsline posed these questions and several others to one of the North Carolina General Assembly’s longest serving and most widely respected members, State Rep. Pricey Harrison of Guilford County. And as Harrison explained, the hard truth is that the budget failure and its myriad impacts are likely the result of the political fears of one very powerful state Senator who faces a Republican primary challenger in 2026.

In part one of our extended conversation with Harrison, we discussed the ongoing failure of Republican legislative leaders to reach agreement on a state budget for the fiscal year, as well as GOP proposals to enact new, significant and worrisome changes to our state’s voting laws prior to the 2026 elections.

In part two of our interview, we turned our attention to an area to which Harrison has long been recognized as one of the General Assembly’s best informed and most impactful voices – environmental protection – and in particular the damage that continues to result from new state and federal laws that hamstring environmental regulators. In addition, we also chatted about the massive and negative impacts that President Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will have on our state’s social safety net unless state lawmakers step up to fill the huge gaps that will soon be created.

Click here for the full the full interview with state Rep. Pricey Harrison. 

It’s an interesting fact that while North Carolina’s population continues to steadily increase, enrollment in public schools is trending in the opposite direction. Part of the explanation for this is to be found in demographic shifts, but as Newsline learned in a recent conversation with veteran education policy analyst Kris Nordstrom of the North Carolina Justice Center, there are other factors involved as well – things like the state legislature’s ongoing expansion of private school options and its failure to adequately fund traditional public schools.

Nordstrom has authored a new report on this subject – it’s entitled “Navigating Declining Enrollment: How smarter state policies can help schools thrive” – and in it, he details some of the policy changes that could help slow or reverse the trend, as well as steps state and local officials could take to lessen the negative impacts when they’re forced to close schools.

Click here to listen to the full interview with veteran education policy analyst Kris Nordstrom.

Ever since the world was overtaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, public health policy and vaccine policy have been front and center in the national political debate. And tragically, despite a longstanding and overwhelming consensus among public health experts across the globe about the efficacy of vaccines and their vital importance in protecting human health and wellbeing, a small group of naysayers and conspiracy theorists have managed to hijack the debate and, in some instances, ascend to positions of power and influence.

And right now, this phenomenon is in full bloom in the United States as the Trump administration, under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is moving aggressively to roll back decades of progress in combating disease by discouraging vaccines and slashing funding for research. Fortunately, an array of gifted and well-informed experts continues to speak the truth on these important subjects, and recently we caught up with one of them, UNC Professor of Medicine and infectious disease expert, Dr. David Wohl.

In Part One of our recent conversation, we discussed some of the controversies roiling the world of public health and vaccine policy right now, as well as some of Dr. Wohl’s recommendations for keeping yourself and your family properly vaccinated. In Part Two of our chat, we continued our discussion of some of the current policy debates, as well as Wohl’s deep concerns about the ongoing federal government disinvestments in health research.

Click here for the to listen to the full interview with UNC Professor of Medicine and infectious disease expert, Dr. David Wohl.

In our fast-changing world, few technological developments of recent years have had a bigger impact on young people than the emergence of instant communication and social media. And while it’s not difficult to identify the positive impacts of these phenomena, the worrisome impacts are also numerous. And this is a trend that seems certain to intensify in years to come with the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.

Thankfully, many advocates have started to speak out in favor of stronger laws to protect vulnerable people – especially young people – from exploitation like predatory algorithms, social media bullying, artificial intelligence and other impacts from the online world that endanger people’s mental and even physical health. And recently NC Newsline caught up with the leader of one such group, the co-founder and executive director of the Young People’s Alliance, North Carolinian Sam Hiner.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Sam Hiner, the co-founder and executive director of the Young People’s Alliance.

One of the most controversial bills to win approval by the North Carolina legislature during the 2025 session was a bill (SB 50) to allow any person 18 or older to carry a loaded concealed weapon without any kind of permit or background check. Gov. Josh Stein vetoed the measure, but the question of whether that veto will be overridden hinges on just a tiny margin of votes in the state House.

And recently we got a chance to learn more about the bill and the concerns anti-gun violence advocates are raising from Jessica Burroughs, Senior Campaign Director for the group MomsRising. We also got a chance to ask Burroughs about another issue her group is monitoring closely – hunger and the impact that recently enacted legislation in Washington will have on this fast-growing problem.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jessica Burroughs, Senior Campaign Director for the group MomsRising.

Another Labor Day is upon us and in anticipation of that, Oxfam, the global nonprofit that works to fight inequality and end poverty and injustice, has released the seventh edition of its Best States to Work Index. The index tracks 27 policies across three dimensions—wages, worker protections, and rights to organize—that support low-wage workers and working families, and as has been the case for some time now, the index reports that North Carolina ranks among the worst states for all workers (and women workers in particular). And recently Newsline caught up with Oxfam America’s Senior Domestic Policy Advisor Patricia Stottlemyer to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Patricia Stottlemyer.

After several months of uncertainty and waiting, the State Health Plan board finally made some decisions recently about how it will deal with the half-billion-dollar shortfall it’s been running. And topping the list, as had been expected, will be some new and not insignificant premium hikes for state employees. The increases – especially when paired with the state legislature’s failure to reach agreement on a new state budget (and the freeze that’s effectively placed on employee salaries) – is causing a lot of heartburn for teachers and state employees and recently to learn more about how the increases will work, the concerns they’re provoking in various circles, and some of the other changes in store for Health Plan enrollees, senior contributor Rob Schofield caught up with NC Newsline reporter Lynn Bonner.

Click here for the full interview with reporter Lynn Bonner.

The recent action of the State Health Plan Board to raise employee premiums at a time in which teacher and state employee salaries remain stagnant is causing great concern in many circles – especially among the employees who will see their take-home pay decline even further.

Indeed, as became clear in a recent conversation with the President of the North Carolina Association of Educators, Tamika Walker Kelly, these developments can be seen, especially when combined with recent actions in Washington, as just the latest in what amounts to an ongoing ideological war on public schools.

Click here for the full interview with the President of the North Carolina Association of Educators, Tamika Walker Kelly.

Duke Energy. Most households in North Carolina pay their electric bill each month to the Charlotte-based energy giant. What many may not realize, however, is that there are two Duke Energies — Duke Energy Carolinas in the west and Duke Energy Progress in the east. And now, thirteen years after they first got together, the two have filed documents with state and federal regulators to complete their merger into one giant utility provider. So, what does this mean, what is Duke saying and what happens next? And how will all of this interact with a new state law that allows Duke to delay its carbon reduction goals?

Recently Newsline got a chance to pose all these questions and more to a journalist and researcher who has followed the state’s electricity industry for many years — Energy and Policy Institute Research and Communications manager Sue Sturgis.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Energy and Policy Institute Research and Communications manager Sue Sturgis.

It’s been six weeks now since President Donald Trump signed the so-called one big, beautiful bill act into law and as you’ve no doubt heard, the new law will soon bring massive funding cuts and policy changes to core safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food benefits. Meanwhile, here in North Carolina, state lawmakers have passed a so-called mini-budget that, while vastly smaller in scale and scope, will still have significant impacts on health policy.

So, what do these changes look like? Who will be impacted? What issues remain unresolved? And why are some important players in the health care system deeply concerned? NC Newsline recently got a chance to explore all of these questions and more with the editor and founder of the nonprofit news outlet North Carolina Health News, Rose Hoban.

Click here to listen to the full interview with North Carolina Health News founder and editor Rose Hoban. 

Gerrymandering. Most Americans have come to be familiar with this phenomenon in which politicians rig electoral maps and elections for partisan purposes, but unless you’re a serious political observer, you may not be up to speed on just how far out of control this destructive practice has gotten of late or, indeed, how unless something is done soon, it might well spiral out of control.

Fortunately, a handful of experts have been monitoring and chronicling the gerrymandering mess for some time and one of the most knowledgeable is author Dave Daley. Daley — a senior fellow at the nonprofit FairVote — is author of the books “Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count” and “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections,” and recently he penned an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he noted that the 2026 midterms might not be decided by tariffs or President Trump’s approval ratings, but by gerrymandering. And NC Newsline recently  caught up with him to learn the details.

In Part One of our extended conversation, we explored the sobering current reality of how Republican state-level politicians – most notably right now in Texas — are, at the urging of President Trump, attempting to rig the 2026 midterm elections by gerrymandering their state congressional maps in unprecedented ways.

In Part Two of our conversation, we looked into the ways in which the gerrymandering wars could spin out of control, how the only realistic solution to the problem lies in congressional action, how President Trump’s effort to initiate a mid-decade census is fraught with problems, and how yet another case to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall could further fuel the fires that threaten American democracy.

Click here to listen to the full interview with gerrymandering expert and author David Daley. 

It’s been 16 years since the federal government raised the national minimum wage – a fact that continues to worsen the nation’s soaring income inequality. Interestingly, in recent months, rather than proposing to make the minimum wage a living wage, some politicians – including President Trump – have championed the idea of ending taxes on the tips. Indeed, it’s a change that was included in the so-called big, beautiful bill Trump recently signed into law.

Unfortunately, while it’s an idea that may have superficial appeal in some circles, as researchers at the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center detailed in a recent brief, the proposal is more of a gimmick that would actually do little to help many low-income workers. And recently to learn more about why this is so, Newsline caught up with BTC Public Policy Analyst, Sally Hodges-Copple.

Click here to listen to our full interview with BTC Public Policy Analyst Sally Hodges-Copple.

It’s hard to believe, but we’re fast-approaching the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene and the devastation it wreaked in western North Carolina, and it seems appropriate to check in on the state of the recovery. Last week, we learned from a legislative oversight hearing on hurricane response and recovery that the process has been moving forward, albeit slower than most would like.

Today we’ll hear excerpts from that hearing in which state lawmakers got an update from the officials in charge and offered their own assessment of the rebuilding effort thus far.

Click here for our coverage of the hearing. 

You don’t have to be policy wonk with an affinity for crunching numbers to understand that North Carolina faces a dire shortage of affordable housing. One need merely talk to friends and family members – even those with middle class incomes – to understand that the picture is bleak when it comes to finding affordable rental housing, much less homeownership opportunities.

That said, the numbers are bleak. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently released a report entitled “Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing” and it demonstrates how the wages that millions of hourly workers are earning don’t come close to what’s necessary. In North Carolina, a full-time worker must earn a minimum of $27.14 per hour to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment.

So, how did we get here, how are policies in Washington deepening the crisis and what should we be doing? Recently, Newsline got a chance to explore these questions and more in an extended conversation with the executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Samuel Gunter.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Samuel Gunter.

Among the most disastrous public health development to afflict the United States in recent years has been the rise of the so-called anti-vax movement. Thanks to the unfortunate rise of misinformation, disinformation and misguided parental anxiety, millions of people – especially children – are being placed at serious and unnecessary risk of grave illness and death from diseases that once had been largely conquered.

Fortunately, a lot of smart, caring and thinking people are working hard to reverse this dangerous trend and many are associating themselves with a new national nonprofit called Grandparents for Vaccines. And recently NC Newsline caught up with the Ohio-based pediatrician who’s helping to found and launch the group, Dr. Arthur Lavin.

Click here to listen to the full interview with pediatrician Dr. Arthur Lavin.

We’re now six months into the second Trump administration and recent weeks, in particular, have been filled all kinds momentous and often disturbing news from Washington. Topping the list, of course, is the massive new budget reconciliation package – what supporters dubbed the “one, big, beautiful bill” that the president signed into law on July 4^th.

Unfortunately, as recent reports and analyses from an array of nonpartisan experts have made clear, the impacts from the bill will be anything but beautiful. Among other things, the new law promises to end life sustaining health insurance coverage and food assistance for millions of people while bestowing huge new tax breaks on the nation’s wealthiest individuals. One of the most articulate critics of the legislation is North Carolina second district congresswoman Deborah Ross – and recently Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with Ross in her Washington office for a special two-part conversation on the mega-bill and several other recent developments.

In Part One of the  extended conversation with Congresswoman Ross, we discussed the massive new mega-bill signed into law recently by the president and the disastrous impacts that it’s all but sure to have throughout North Carolina.

In Part Two of our chat, we delved into some of the other issues roiling the nation’s capital at the six-month mark of the second Trump administration – including the political right’s war on public education, public broadcasting, and clean energy, and most recently, the deeply disturbing effort to hide law enforcement files regarding President Trump’s past longtime relationship with the late convicted sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.

Click here for the full interview with North Carolina second district congresswoman Deborah Ross.

One of the most disturbing hallmarks of the Trump administration has been its relentless effort to defund public education – an effort that hit a new low earlier this month when Trump’s Department of Education announced suddenly and without warning that it would be freezing billions of dollars in essential funds – funds that Congress already appropriated and for which school districts had already budgeted.

Recently, in order to learn even more about this troubling action, Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with a national expert on education funding, the Project Director of the Education Funding Equity Initiative at the national nonprofit, New America, Zahava Stadler. And while federal officials have since backed down on the funding freeze much uncertainty remains, and as Stadler told Newsline, the damage that could be done to our schools is enormous.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Education policy expert Zahava Stadler.

It’s an article of faith in many conservative circles that the Trump administration’s tough anti-immigrant policies will free up jobs for U.S. born workers. New research from Economic Policy Institute senior economist Ben Zipperer, however, demonstrates conclusively that the opposite is the case. Zipperer’s calculations actually show that the net impact of mass deportation on employment – both for immigrants and U.S. born workers – is decidedly negative.

Indeed, he calculates that the administration’s goal of deporting one-million people per year will lead to a loss of nearly six million jobs over the coming years — more than forty percent of which will be jobs now held by U.S. born workers. The construction and child care industries will be among the hardest hit. Zipperer’s report is entitled “Trump’s deportation agenda will destroy millions of jobs,” and earlier this week, NC Newsline caught up with him at his Washington office.

Click here for the full interview with Economic Policy Institute senior economist Ben Zipperer.

The North Carolina General Assembly has gone home for the month of July, and perhaps – depending on some of the political machinations between House and Senate Republican leaders – the rest of the summer. But that doesn’t mean there’s a lot to point to in the way of major accomplishments.

Not only have lawmakers yet to pass a new state budget to coincide with the fiscal year that began July 1, but the list of truly significant legislation in other areas – Helene relief, education, infrastructure — was extremely limited.

One of the most vocal critics of this situation has been Senate Democratic Leader Sydney Batch. Indeed, when Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with her recently for a special extended conversation, Batch described 2025 as one of the most unproductive legislative sessions in modern history.

In Part Two of our chat, we discussed some of the bills GOP leaders advanced from the far right’s culture war agenda, including their especially disturbing decision to hijack a consensus bill designed to protect people from revenge porn and transform it into a catchall for things like banning school books and denying health care to transgender people. We also discussed the fact that despite repeated assurances of their desire to quote “protect women,” how Republican leaders failed to advance a bill that would have enhanced insurance coverage for detecting breast cancer.

Click here for the full interview with Senate Democratic leader Sydney Batch.

The new state fiscal year started July 1, and the state legislature is on vacation for most of the month, but that doesn’t mean we have a new state budget. Thanks to big disagreements between NC House and Senate Republicans, the state is listing along on its old budget and several major decisions – most notably around teacher and state employee pay – remain on hold.

Lawmakers will return to Raleigh the week of July 28th and at that time they’ll have a long list of potential agenda items, including the budget, several gubernatorial vetoes, Hurricane Helene recovery issues and an ambitious GOP sponsored election law overhaul. Recently Newsline’s Rob Schofield sat down with politics and state government reporter Galen Bacharier to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NC Newsline reporter Galen Bacharier.