Original Commentary

Editor's note: Kim Mackey is a social studies teacher with Wake County Public Schools. She recently wrote an open letter to State Superintendent Mark Johnson, because she says her ticket to his special event this Tuesday had been "revoked." In an email, a copy of which was shared with Policy Watch, Johnson wrote that the event was "at capacity."

Surely, it would be folly to suggest that ICE’s hardened reputation as a home-wrecker was earned by the Trump administration alone. Our bloviator-in-chief may be fond of the anti-immigrant dog-whistle, and his Quixotic obsession with a doomed border wall...

There’s an old maxim in American politics, usually attributed to former U.S. Senator and Nixon administration cabinet secretary Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” Would that Moynihan were still alive today so that he could direct a reminder of this simple truth toward North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger.

The United States sees an average of 22,000 firearm suicides and 14,600 firearm homicides, including 300 deaths in mass shootings, each year. In at least 42 percent of mass shooting cases, shooters put up “red flags” – maybe even blatant threats on social media – before opening fire.

Public education advocates in North Carolina are ablaze these days, after a report from The Washington Post in late January teased a nebulous plan hatched by the conservative Koch network to spend boatloads of cash on a massive, as-yet-unnamed, K-12 initiative in five states. If North Carolina is one of the five, state leaders and the Kochs are...

There’s a vexing conundrum that frequently confronts movements for social justice when they’re trying to rally supporters to action. It turns out that the best and easiest times to spur people to action often coincide with the moments at which the movement is at its weakest and least able to effect real change.

Legislation introduced last week to expand Medicaid should be welcome news to the hundreds of thousands in North Carolina who currently can’t see a doctor when they need one. House Bill 5 was introduced by lead sponsors Reps. Gale Adcock, Carla Cunningham, Verla Insko, and Jean Farmer-Butterfield, and Senate Bill 3 was introduced by lead sponsors Sens. Ben Clark, Dan Blue, and Gladys Robinson – all Democrats. A Republican-led bill is expected soon in the NC House.

Republicans, we need to talk. Not about the shutdown. I get the ceasefire, I get that the air traffic slowdowns may have finally spooked the president and D.C. Republicans, even if only for a temporary respite.

The 2019 session of the North Carolina General Assembly gets underway in earnest this week in Raleigh and, as always, dozens of important issues will compete for lawmakers’ attention. There’s the increasingly energetic and promising effort to end partisan gerrymandering, the desperate need to adequately fund our public schools and bring accountability to vouchers and charters, the mushrooming environmental crisis that continues to unfold in myriad guises, the chaos that has gripped the UNC system, and, of course, our desperately out-of-whack tax system...

Hurry up and wait. That’s the message for Republican candidate, Baptist minister and aspiring track star Mark Harris this week, who asked a Superior Court judge to do what North Carolina’s election honchos won’t – suspend disbelief and declare him the victor in Congressional District 9.

As we commemorated the 45th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade last year, we were contemplating what the second year under a misogynistic, virulently anti-abortion administration might bring.