Policy Watch Investigates

On Thursday Democratic state lawmakers filed three bills designed to protect LGBTQ North Carolinians from discrimination, outlaw harmful “conversion” therapy that targets them and fully repeal HB2 -- the infamous law that cast an international spotlight on the state as a battleground for transgender rights.

In 2016 the battle over HB2 cast an international spotlight on the struggles of transgender people in North Carolina. Despite the law’s partial repeal and replacement with HB421 - which critics continue to challenge as “HB2.0” - transgender people in the state continue to face hardships and discrimination.

At the end of this month, Michael Bunting is leaving his job at UNC-Chapel Hill after nearly 30 years. It wasn’t an easy decision. It’s not that he doesn’t love his job as an assistant athletic director. It’s not that he’s ready to retire at 52...

This month marked the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The deadliest high school mass shooting in American history, the Parkland tragedy made more urgent the always contentious political issue of gun laws.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has released its annual report on Murder and Extremism in the United States. The 2018 numbers show a sharp increase in murders by domestic extremists, especially right-wing groups.

At the corner of 4th and Liberty Streets in downtown Winston-Salem, the city is changing. A construction crew is working throughout the week, where a pile of demolition debris will soon become a Hotel Indigo - part of a chain of hip, modern boutique hotels.

1) Trove of emails provides a window into conflicts at UNC The University of North Carolina system has for several years struggled with the increasing politicization of the UNC Board of Governors, the members of which are appointed by the North Carolina General Assembly.

Voting rights advocates say GOP priorities drove Trump appointee to ignore allegations, focus resources elsewhere The State Board of Elections compiled evidence and interviews detailing a systematic ballot fraud operation in Bladen County two years ago...

On Friday the UNC Board of Governors rejected a proposal to return the Silent Sam Confederate monument to the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. But the decision was not a rejection of the idea of the statue’s return to campus. Board of Governors Chairman Harry Smith said that such a return is still the only legal option.

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.