News

As lawmakers work to negotiate a final state budget by the end of the month, the ongoing conflict between Vidant Health and the UNC System continues to unfold through public jabs and in private mediation. In the balance: Tens of millions in medicaid reimbursements to one of Eastern North Carolina’s most vital hospital systems.

The state Charter School Advisory Board (CSAB) on Monday unanimously stood by its approval of two charters schools Wake County school officials deem are not needed. CSAB members agreed Wake officials’ concerns about Wake County Preparatory Academy and North Raleigh Charter Academy appear to reflect “philosophical” differences about the value of charters rather than fear of school re-segregation or charter saturation.

WASHINGTON – North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis declared his opposition last week to one of President Trump’s judicial nominees – a rare defection from a freshman Republican who touts his leadership of his party’s efforts to reshape the federal judiciary. Yet North Carolina Democrats are nonetheless gearing up to hit the senator, who is up for reelection next year, on his near-perfect record in support of the president’s lower-level judicial nominees – an issue that typically flies under the political radar.

This is the 74th day of the legislative session and members of the House and Senate face a deadline at the end of this month to finalize the new state budget. What remains unclear at this point is whether Medicaid expansion will be part of the spending plan. If not, will Governor Cooper veto the legislature's budget? Today's Monday numbers column takes a closer look at some of the numbers surrounding the ongoing expansion debate.

The North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has been quietly facilitating the dismissals of hundreds of thousands of criminal charges and infractions across the state for the past two years as part of a data clean-up effort. Each of the cases dismissed had been pending for years – some for decades – without prosecution...

Serena Sebring and Kayla Hartsfield were arrested last month after chaining themselves to the gates outside the Durham County Detention Center. The two women, activists with Southerners On New Ground (SONG), were trying to bring attention to a cash bail system they say has utterly failed. Studies show the current system disproportionately jails minorities, the poor and those accused of non-violent crimes while failing to effectively assure defendants make their court dates in higher numbers than those who are offered alternatives to cash bail.

With a close – and bitterly contentious – vote over a potential veto of this year’s state budget looming, North Carolina lawmakers say GOP legislators are scrambling to win over Democrats behind the scenes by offering “pork” spending on local projects.

PFAS contamination found in both and Jones and Orange counties Maysville, which sits on the rim of the Croatan National Forest, is home to 1,000 people — about half of whom rely on the town’s sole drinking water well. And that well, according to a brief sentence in the both the House and Senate versions of the state budget, is contaminated.

Hoping to hear some discussion of the future of the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument, Lindsay Ayling and a few other UNC-Chapel Hill students attempted to attend last week’s meeting of the UNC Board of Governors. Attempted, as it turns out, was the operative word.

A sentence here, a paragraph there. A strike-through, a repeal, a new section. Individually, the Farm Act and the House and Senate budgets chip away at the incremental yet significant progress the state has made toward regulating industrialized livestock operations. But taken in total...

Teachers would get an average 3.5 percent pay raise over the next two years under a biennium spending plan released Tuesday by state Republican leaders. The plan calls for spending $23.9 billion during the 2019-20 fiscal year, and it increases spending on public education by $1.3 billion over the next two years.

WASHINGTON -- Black mothers are dying in childbirth at alarming rates in the United States, and a North Carolina congresswoman wants the federal government to do more about it. Rep. Alma Adams (D) is gathering allies and pushing legislation...

The chuckles usually come before a question about the viability of an online preschool can be completed. There’s just something about the concept that makes people want to giggle.

That sleek flat panel TV with the ultra high-definition screen — or the anvil of an ancient model that can still muster a picture — are safe when hanging on your living room wall. But crush them in a landfill and their contents are toxic. A controversial provision in the state legislature's Regulatory Reform Bill would allow local governments to opt out...

Restoring the "Silent Sam" Confederate monument to its original place at UNC-Chapel Hill is "not the right path," UNC Board of Governors Chairman Harry Smith said Wednesday. His thinking has undergone an evolution, Smith said at a press conference following a full meeting of the board of governors.