News

Bipartisan bill flouts Trump veto threat WASHINGTON—Congress this week is expected to pass a massive defense policy bill that President Donald Trump has threatened to veto because it would remove the names of Confederate generals from military bases across the South. Members of the House and Senate forged a bipartisan agreement to rename the 10 bases in the annual must-pass defense measure...

Pittsboro, Fuquay-Varina want to buy drinking water from Sanford. But that town's water is contaminated with PFAS. At least 1 million people living from Pittsboro to Wilmington in the Cape Fear River Basin could be exposed to high levels of toxic perfluorinated compounds.

Nearly a third of all North Carolina households lack high-speed internet, essentially cutting them off from crucial education and health care services, according to a recent report by the Andrea Harris Social, Economic, Environmental, and Health Equity Task Force. Most of these areas are rural and often in communities of color.

On Aug. 5, 1974, a lawyer named general Mary Lawnton wrote a memo for her bosses at the Justice Department.  Today, few people remember her but that memo has recently become very important. Its title is “Presidential or Legislative Pardon of the President.” Lawnton addressed a question that no court had ever decided, a critical question to Watergate-obsessed America: can a president pardon himself?

The charter, which opened in 2018, has serious financial, management and academic problems.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, the families that entrust their children to Essie Mae Kiser Foxx Charter School school in East Spencer, a small town of about 1,500 in Rowan County, were urged to “enjoy" their holiday break on the school’s Facebook page. 

After more than three years, the state’s ban on local governments offering new protections against LGBTQ discrimination expired Tuesday. Now, say advocates and elected officials from across the state, it’s time to make some long delayed progress on those protections.

WASHINGTON—More than a dozen U.S. House and Senate members are pushing for a bipartisan coronavirus relief package to aid struggling states and local governments and fund programs such as unemployment and rental assistance that are set to expire later this month. In a Tuesday press conference, lawmakers unveiled a four-month, $908 billion proposal that would fund transportation, the paycheck protection program to help businesses pay their employees, food assistance and coronavirus testing centers.

Dreamers looking for bold action from a new administration President-elect Joe Biden said last week he would send to the U.S. Senate a bill that would lay out a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people living in the United States within his first 100 days in office. In the interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, Biden built on an early promise to reinstate an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA...

Outgoing administration proposes to bring back use of electrocution, firing squads People on federal death row could be executed by firing squad or electrocution, if a U.S. Department of Justice rule becomes final. In the waning days of the Trump administration, US DOJ is both expediting the number of federal executions and expanding the methods of how executions can be carried out.

Donald Trump's baseless, nonstop public allegations of pervasive fraud, election meddling and disloyalty among his party members are unprecedented for a modern American president. But some observers of North Carolina politics have seen this kind of behavior before.

In an extraordinary concurring opinion, a Reagan-appointed judge offers searing indictment of industrialized hog farming Shortly after Smithfield Foods lost its third consecutive hog nuisance case in federal court, company CEO Ken Sullivan wrote a letter.

Exports of dairy, pork, soybeans, even blueberries declined. What's in store for farmers under Biden? WASHINGTON — American farmers who have endured the drama and turbulence of trade and agriculture policy in the Trump administration can expect a far more sedate and multinational experience when President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.

Last week the American Medical Association made international headlines by declaring racism an “urgent public health threat,”  warning that it perpetuates health inequities and calling for systematic change to combat it. “The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer,” said Dr. Willarda V. Edwards, an AMA board member, in a public statement.“Declaring racism as an urgent public health threat is a step in the right direction toward advancing equity in medicine and public health, while creating pathways for truth, healing, and reconciliation,” Edwards said.

This week the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved the Lumbee Recognition Act, bringing the North Carolina tribe closer to the federal recognition it has sought for more than a century. Reaction from other tribes — particularly the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians  — was swift and negative. They said questions remain about the origins and authenticity of the Lumbee, who have at various points claimed descent from four different tribes.

Truitt will have to rebuild trust with the state board, whose relationship with her predecessor was combative. Education in North Carolina has become “highly politicized” to the detriment of student achievement, says State Superintendent-elect Catherine Truitt.