The job of governing a state of 10 million people with a 60 billion dollar annual budget is big and serious business that requires elected leaders to read, think, learn, listen and work with people of widely differing views. Unfortunately, this basic premise of elementary school civics seems to have escaped Republican state Representative Keith Kid…

It was six months ago this week that Hurricane Helene devastated much of western North Carolina. By now, you’d think elected leaders would have long since devoted all of the resources at their disposal toward emergency relief and getting the basics of life in the mountains back up and running. Unfortunately, while state lawmakers did approve a new …

Among the many ways in which the ham-handed policies of President Trump and Elon Musk are making life more difficult for millions of average Americans, the attacks on early childhood education are among the worst. Access to affordable child care is already a huge problem for American families — especially since the demise of COVID-era subsidies. Th…

The challenge posed by carbon emissions that drive climate change is one of the most important issues facing humanity. If ever a matter required everyone’s best efforts and collaboration — elected officials, regulators, providers, consumers — this is it. Unfortunately, many important Republican legislative leaders in Raleigh disagree. They’re spons…

Over the past few decades, one of North Carolina’s best known and most prolific economists has been Prof. Mike Walden. Walden, the Reynolds Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Agricultural and Resource Economics at NC State University, is an outspoken champion of free markets and a longtime regular contributor to the pages of the conservative John …

It’s been nearly a decade and a half now since Republicans legislators took control of the North Carolina General Assembly and commenced an aggressive campaign to consolidate their complete control of state government, while at the same time, rolling back much of the progress that had been achieved in previous years to expand civil rights and civil…

Like a metastasizing cancer, America’s youth gun violence crisis continues to grow and spread. According to the latest mortality data from the CDC, firearm-related deaths among children and teenagers in the United States have soared by 50% since 2019. In 2023, firearms remained the leading cause of death among American youth for the third year in a…

It’s now been four-and-a-half months since incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice Alison Riggs narrowly defeated her Republican challenger, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, in the 2024 election. Judge Jefferson Griffin (Photo: State Court of Appeals) Unfortunately, Griffin refuses to concede and instead continues to advance several wid…

For elected leaders interested in improving the efficiency of government, a recent pilot health program managed by the state Department of Health and Human Services provides a powerful lesson. The program — known as Healthy Opportunities — was implemented in three mostly rural regions to see if the physical health of people enrolled in Medicaid, co…

The process of managing North Carolina’s massive state government workforce is a big and daunting job under the best of circumstances. And as was made clear in a recent legislative committee hearing, it’s made much harder by the antiquated and underfunded HR systems the state employs. At present, the average length of time it takes for the state to…

The challenge posed by carbon emissions that drive climate change is one of the most important issues facing humanity. If ever a matter required everyone’s best efforts and collaboration — elected officials, regulators, providers, consumers — this is it. Unfortunately, neither North Carolina’s main electricity provider, Duke Energy, nor the politic…

The initial weeks of the second Trump administration have been — to say the least — chaotic. Between the slash and burn firings and funding cuts Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has sought to impose on everything from Medicaid and other safety net programs to the Department of Education to veterans services to support for u…

The second Trump administration is well underway and already bringing a healthy measure of chaos and controversy to the political scene. So, what are North Carolina voters thinking about all this? Are they supportive of what President Trump and Elon Musk are doing, or do they have concerns? And what about North Carolina politicians? How are they fa…

Cryptocurrency. The topic is much in the news these days, but as with so many topics related to financial and economic policy, it’s an area in which opinions are plentiful, but genuine knowledge is sometimes rather scarce. Fortunately for NC Newsline readers, a recent report by States Newsroom national technology reporter Paige Gross does a great j…

Like most Democrats, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein holds a dramatically different worldview from the Republicans who lead the state legislature — especially those who embrace the politics of President Donald Trump. That said, Stein is also a realist who understands that there are many core issues on which most North Carolinians agree and wish ferv…

Here’s an assignment for the conservative politicians and activists who keep telling us that President Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk’s massive federal budget cuts are quote “making American great again”: take a few minutes to check out the history of the federal budget deficit. As a quick review reveals, it was a Democratic administration that l…

If there’s anything more absurd than the Trump administration’s cheerleading for hateful policies on matters of race and gender, it’s the ineptitude behind it. The people implementing these policies are so mean-spirited and clueless that, as Associated Press reported last week, they’re erasing thousands of images from Defense Department websites th…

As anyone who watches a pro or college sporting event these days knows all too well, America’s massive and growing corporate gambling industry is spreading like a weed. As with most such voracious industries, however, too much is never enough and so it is that state lawmakers are advancing another bill to help make sure that those who lose money ga…

North Carolina Republican lawmakers have rightfully complained in recent years about the state’s deeply flawed recovery response to Hurricanes Matthew and Florence — two storms that wreaked havoc years ago. It’s outrageous that many eastern North Carolina homes still remain unrepaired. That said, their recent partisan grandstanding about the post-H…

North Carolina Republicans have enjoyed large majorities in the General Assembly for nearly 15 years, and during that period, Democrats have often done a poor job of crafting and communicating a coherent alternative vision to the GOP’s hard right policy agenda. Recently, however, progressive Democratic legislators have come together to change that …

Few domestic policy issues have proved more vexing to elected leaders in recent years than the nation’s affordable housing shortage. And while there are several obvious causes for the problem — most notably in recent years, the pandemic — it was an issue on which the Biden administration was making some real headway through its support for public p…

No single issue of national policy is capturing more public attention six weeks into the new Trump administration, than the president’s shocking — many would say shameful — embrace of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. And among the thousands of voices that have risen up in recent days to decry what they see as Trump’s abandonment of America’s commit…

Of all the recent crazy developments in the world of law and policymaking, the ongoing scheme to convince millions of people that commonsense ideas like diversity, equity and inclusion should be feared and eradicated is among the most troubling. The result has been a parade of new policies that will not just halt our painfully slow progress in over…

Few domestic policy issues have proven more challenging in recent years than the affordable housing shortage. The Biden administration was making some real and encouraging headway before it left office by working to expedite housing construction and aiding renters and first time homebuyers, but sadly that momentum is quickly being frittered away. R…

Successful management of the massive investment funds that the state of North Carolina maintains is no small or easy job. But it’s also not rocket science. Many states have done quite well for decades with a standard mix of moderate-to-conservative public and private investments. Weirdly, however, this simple, commonsense approach regularly runs af…