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It’s hard to believe, but the 2020 presidential election process is in full swing. The Iowa caucuses kicked things off last night and four weeks from today is “Super Tuesday” – the day on which presidential primaries will be held in North Carolina and 15 other locations. Within six weeks, well over half the delegates to the two major political party conventions will have been selected and, amazingly, we could well know who the Democratic challenger to President Trump is likely to be before spring officially arrives.

Last Friday morning in Richmond, Va., midway through oral arguments in the hog nuisance case of McKiver v. Murphy-Brown, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III removed his glasses and briefly rested his cheek on his hand, as if burdened by the content of thousands of pages of case documents he had read.

The State Board of Education’s “Annual Report on the State of the Teaching Profession” shows a steady decline in teacher attrition.  The board will discuss the report this week at its monthly board meeting Feb. 5-6. 

In North Carolina, 1.25 million people – one in seven adults – has a suspended driver license. That alone is a massive public problem. After all, driving is “a virtual necessity for most Americans,” as the U.S. Supreme Court has noted, and there are few communities where a resident can get to work, school, or everyday errands without a car. But what is even more troubling is that many of these people may not know it.

As North Carolina considers ways to meet its constitutional obligation to provide children with a sound basic education, it must stop placing marginally qualified teachers in schools. That’s a conclusion reached by the Teacher Ed Work Group of the Governor’s Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education, which recommends the state ensure all K-12 classrooms be led by highly qualified, well-prepared teachers.

A barrage of briefs were filed Wednesday in the ongoing case against UNC’s agreement to give the Silent Sam Confederate statue to the NC Division of the Sons of Confederate veterans – along with $2.5 million. A group of 88 prominent UNC-Chapel Hill alumni and donors moved to file an amicus brief in the case.

WASHINGTON — Black mothers and babies are dying at staggering rates in North Carolina and throughout the country.   The national statistics are alarming: Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related issues than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. American Indian women are also more than twice as likely to die due to pregnancy-related issues than white women. 

It was February 2011. I was a relatively young local government reporter and I will, if pressed, admit to being a bit starstruck that state Speaker of the House Thom Tillis stood right in front of me talking that year's budget standoff, although that gauzy feeling did not last long.

Two weeks ago, the North Carolina General Assembly returned to Raleigh for what was supposed to be a special session on health care. Unfortunately, rather than addressing the lack of health coverage that is hurting our working families and advancing solutions that will help our rural hospitals, legislative leaders instead focused (unsuccessfully) on overriding Governor Cooper’s seven-month-old budget veto. The failure of our lawmakers to create a solution to close the coverage gap, is simply unacceptable.

Even before one gets to the heart of the matter – namely, a) constitutional law, and b) the dangerous message of lawlessness and violence the concept conveys – it must be stated that there is something fundamentally incongruous and just plain wrong about the idea of a “gun sanctuary.” Merriam-Webster offers multiple definitions for the word “sanctuary,” but none of them references the protection of human killing machines.

Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC has filed an application with the Utilities Commission requesting authority to raise its rates for electric service. For a residential electric customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month, the current monthly bill of $102.71 would increase to $108.43 under Duke’s proposal.

Because DEQ limited air monitor sites to meet EPA criteria, they were too far from hog farms to accurately measure their emissions. When state environmental officials agreed to a historic civil rights settlement two years ago, neighbors of industrial hog operations hoped that their misery — detailed in court under oath but discounted by the pork industry, their lawyers and several legislators — would be further confirmed by data. 

When state environmental officials agreed to a historic civil rights settlement two years ago, neighbors of industrial hog operations hoped that their misery /p> ...

Law "is clear" Rep. Holly Grange should have reported on businesses owned by her husband even if they were inactive Last week, Policy Watch reported that State Rep. Holly Grange (R-New Hanover) had failed to disclose a business owned and operated by her husband on state Statement of Economic Interest (SEI) forms for several years.

If North Carolina Republicans are confounded by the notion that every last one of them disdains public education—and, surely, not all of them do—they should tune into Mark Johnson’s bro huddle with right-wing talk show host KC O’Dea last Friday to see where a North Carolinian might get such a notion.

More than two decades after a landmark state Supreme Court ruling, NC moves a step closer to assuring every child access to a "sound, basic education" Superior Court Judge David Lee signed a consent order Monday in which the defendants and plaintiffs in the long running Leandro case agree to work “expeditiously and without delay” to create and implement a plan to provide North Carolina’s school children with a sound, basic education.