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Last month the North Carolina Senate passed a bill that would eliminate the state corporate income tax over five years, beginning in 2024. New polling, released last week by progressive policy group State Innovation Exchange (SiX), however, shows North Carolina voters overwhelmingly oppose such a change.

Why would public defenders representing patients want a requirement that prosecutors be present? Each year, Bob Ward, an assistant public defender in Mecklenburg County, helps more than 1,000 patients with mental illness navigate a process in which a doctor asks the state for permission to force them to receive treatment.

The Innovative School District (ISD), a Republican-backed school reform model that has failed to produce results, could be phased out in two years.  A provision tucked inside the state Senate's proposed 2021-2023 budget calls for North Carolina to “Transition from the Innovative School District Model” and end plans to select additional schools for the district.

U.S. Senate Republicans block advance of bipartisan infrastructure plan, but talks continue WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats’ attempt to start debate on a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan was blocked by Republicans on a party-line vote Wednesday, as lawmakers hustle to wrap up negotiations over drafting that legislation.

WASHINGTON—Local water utilities worried about getting hit with lawsuits and high cleanup costs are stepping up their lobbying of Congress as lawmakers move to regulate toxic chemicals found in drinking water. The bill, the PFAS Action Act of 2021, has garnered bipartisan support and two Michigan lawmakers, Reps. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat, and Fred Upton, a Republican, are expected to bring the measure to the House floor for passage later this week.

BOG member says refusal to reappoint law professor Eric Muller is a message to students, campus leaders and faculty that they "are not in charge of the system" The UNC-Chapel Hill faculty is opposing what they say is undue political influence on appointments to the UNC Press Board of Governors.

State and national housing experts say the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout underscore the need for a stronger housing safety net. The National Low Income Housing Coalition recently released its annual report examining the significant gap between wages and the cost of rental housing.

After top Republican state lawmakers eliminated the legislature’s in-house watchdog agency, the Program Evaluation Division, in February Joe Coletti, then a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation lauded the decision. In a Feb. 22, 2021, article that appeared on the conservative think tank’s website, he opined that a partisan staff might be more nimble in performing the oversight function and making recommendations to increase government efficiency.

Are North Carolina’s teachers indoctrinating students with tenets of Critical Race Theory?  The state’s Republican leaders say they are, but struggled to provide solid evidence Wednesday when asked to do so by Democratic colleagues.

Biden refutes continuing GOP conspiracy claims: "The big lie is just that, a big lie" PHILADELPHIA — Returning to the state that handed him the White House, President Joe Biden made a passionate plea Tuesday for Americans to rise up and protect their voting rights from a series of restrictive measures pushed by Republicans in Washington and in state capitols nationwide.

Lack of access, "Trump effect" both acting as roadblocks COVID-19 vaccines are hard to come by in Bladenboro, the small southeastern North Carolina town that was the center of a COVID-19 cluster that pushed its home county into the red zone on a virus alert map.

WASHINGTON — The most ambitious part of the pandemic stimulus package signed by President Joe Biden earlier this year is about to hit the bank accounts of millions of U.S. parents. Starting this week and ending in December, the vast majority of U.S. households with children will begin receiving monthly payments as a result of changes in that law expanding and reworking the federal child tax credit.

There have been countless shortcomings in the responses of federal and state officials to the COVID-19 crisis over the past year and a half, but things have also improved dramatically since President Biden took office and here’s a very practical example:

WASHINGTON —The Native American children traveled on trains, thousands of miles from their homes, to Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many had been forcibly taken from their parents and communities. Once there, they had to hand over their belongings, put on uniforms, cut off their braids, adopt new names and abandon their languages and cultural practices.

Six new members are set to join the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, changing the board’s demographic makeup but likely not its conservative bent. The new trustees will have to contend with the fallout from the Nikole Hannah-Jones case, which has prompted an exodus of Black faculty and raised questions about the effectiveness of the university’s shared governance structure.

Large sums went to McCrory, Tillis campaigns There has been renewed scrutiny of U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, as watchdog groups have identified irregularities in political contributions to former Gov. Pat McCrory and Sen. Thom Tillis.