Policy Watch Investigates

As the UNC Board of Governors prepares to take up the fate of the Silent Sam Confederate monument Friday, one board member says he's skeptical of a controversial $5.3 million plan to build a history center that would house -- and protect -- the divisive statue.

As UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt addressed a tense Faculty Council meeting Friday, a group of students interrupted her defense of a controversial plan to return the Silent Sam Confederate monument to campus.

The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees unveiled its plan for the Silent Sam Confederate monument Monday: a new, $5.3 million University History and Education Center.

In an often contentious first week of the N.C. General Assembly’s lame-duck session, Democrats and Republicans unanimously came together to pass a roughly $300 million bill to fund Hurricane Florence relief efforts.

North Carolina is not the only state whose transgender state employees and dependents are without insurance coverage under their state’s health plan. But the state’s blanket exclusion of treatments for gender dysphoria—from counseling and hormone treatment to gender confirmation surgery—puts it firmly in the minority.

While Congressional and General Assembly races got most of the election headlines this week, history was quietly being made in a series of law enforcement races. On Tuesday the state's seven largest counties - Buncombe, Cumberland, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake - all elected Black men sheriff.

Last week, transgender North Carolinians and their families spoke out against the decision by state officials not to cover treatments for transgender people from the NC State Health Plan. Now at least one member of the health plan’s board of trustees is speaking out on the issue - and urging a change.

The following numbers are based on a new Center for American Progress report that quantifies the potential benefits of Medicaid expansion if North Carolina were to fully expand Medicaid in 2019. The benefits would include:

Connor Thonen-Fleck never felt comfortable in his body. Something just felt...off, foreign. From an early age he would look in the mirror and a disconnection from what he saw.

The word “transgender” was not so much in the public consciousness when he was a child.

More than two dozen people crowded into a conference room at the North Carolina Judicial Center Wednesday for the first meeting of the Pretrial Working Group Subcommittee of the NC Courts Commission.

On Friday, October 12, the North Carolina Courts Commission’s Subcommittee on Pretrial Release will hold its first meeting. The preliminary meeting, to be held at the North Carolina Judicial Center at 901 Corporate Center Drive in Raleigh, will be to set goals for the Pretrial Release Work Group going forward.

Huge pools of standing flood water still surround houses in South Lumberton’s Turner Terrace neighborhood, drawing roving clouds of mosquitoes. Downed power lines float in the deep brown pools and lay tangled in the many fallen trees.

Last week Hurricane Florence crippled much of Southeast North Carolina. This week, as Governor Roy Cooper and the North Carolina General Assembly look at how best to help those whose lives were upended by the storm, we take a look at the relief effort so far by the numbers.

When the Silent Sam Confederate Statue was toppled at UNC-Chapel Hill last month, a flurry of text messages and e-mails began. The UNC Board of Governors. UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt. UNC President Margaret Spellings. The University Police.

When the North Carolina Courts Commission meets Friday, it will begin to take a look at an issue making national headlines: bail reform. Last month, California became the first state in the country to officially end cash bail. Republicans and Democrats in the state came together to end a system the Chief Justice of the California called “outdated, unsafe and unfair.”

When N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson announced a $6.6 million purchase of iPads to support early grade literacy in August, it seemed welcome news for North Carolina school districts that have long complained of inadequate state resources.