In the conservative catalogue of insults, calling a judge an “activist” is about as cutting as it gets. If this were an old-time playground war of words, it would rank […]
The forces in North Carolina’s General Assembly aligned with what typically are seen as progressive causes – including strong public schools, fair and adequate taxation, wide access to decent health […]
High on the granite façade of the North Carolina Supreme Court’s headquarters across from the Capitol in downtown Raleigh is engraved what can be seen as an inspiring and enduring […]
We weren’t expecting it to be pretty – “it” being the launch of the N.C. General Assembly’s new session, with freshly emboldened conservatives eager to flex their muscles. The reality, […]
The N.C. General Assembly gathered on Jan. 11 amid trappings of ceremony and good cheer to kick off its 2023 session. Then reality reared its head: At least in the […]
The N.C. Supreme Court – or at least a slim majority of its members – invoked its solemn duty to uphold constitutional rights when it agreed in a Nov. 4 […]
Like it or not – and there are plenty of reasons to worry amid the familiar end-of-summer bursts of excitement – another school year will soon get under way. The […]
The U.S. Supreme Court, as if rushing to settle old grievances, in recent weeks has thrashed about in a virtual frenzy of “originalism” – never mind the consequences for America’s […]
The colossal dispute over the proper financing of North Carolina’s public schools that has played out over 28 years is heading to a showdown before the state Supreme Court – […]
Four months after the N.C. General Assembly enacted a new alignment of the districts in which our state’s congressional representatives are chosen, the gavel has come down: That district map […]
Among all the issues and challenges confronting North Carolina as 2022 gets under way – overcoming the pandemic, easing rural poverty, alleviating environmental threats, improving access to health care, on […]
Americans this first week of January are recalling how close to the brink of disaster our nation’s democratic system came one year ago, when a violent mob seeking to keep […]
In the rough and tumble realm of politics, it can be a hard call as to whether someone is standing firm on worthwhile principle or simply obstructing out of plain […]
Here in the last week of October, almost four months after a new state budget was supposed to have been in place and with multiple plot-lines coming to a head, […]
A momentous clash between North Carolina’s General Assembly and the state’s judicial system looks to be coming to a head. At stake is the ability of the state’s public schools […]
The coronavirus – now rekindled in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” – is forcing us yet again to adjust our daily routines and recalibrate our expectations of normalcy. Even people […]
North Carolina legislators – offering what amounts to a snappy salute in the direction of Mar-a-Lago – are well on their way toward fixing an election law that’s anything but […]
Say this much, at least, for those legislators who favor making it easier, not harder, for North Carolinians to vote: They’re not ready to surrender to their vote-suppressing foes. Even […]
With Republican lawmakers throughout the land making “election integrity” a favorite cause and rallying cry, it likely was just a matter of time before some of their North Carolina counterparts […]
When an ambitious bill designated as H.R. 1 was approved by the newly empowered Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives back on March 8, 2019, perhaps a fitting […]
Perhaps it’s the pandemic that offers a fitting analogy to the condition of our politics as Americans try to recover from the trauma of Jan. 6 – when we came […]
The United States Congress, a week after the nation’s Capitol was overrun by a violent mob while lawmakers were carrying out one of their paramount duties, now faces a paramount […]
Even for those of us who found a measure of joy during the year whose end we now mark – taking delight from a child’s birth, perhaps, or from a […]
As Americans soldier on amidst their ill-fated 2020 stress test, there is inspiration to be found. Our democracy’s guardrails as enshrined in the Constitution may have been battered by a […]
North Carolinians who stood against our soon-to-be ex-president’s rancid politics of grievance, contempt and division, fueled by a gusher of falsehoods, are heartened by the nation’s clear choice of Joseph […]
With North Carolinians on track to cast eye-popping numbers of votes in advance of Election Day, Nov. 3, perhaps it’s time to breathe a cautious sigh of relief. A system […]
With the coronavirus still rampant across North Carolina, the top education concern in many families has little to do with the state’s long-term school investments or with the disadvantages faced […]
It’s pretty obvious why the N.C. Council of Churches and its allies on the faith-and-justice spectrum hope to see plenty of like-minded voters turning out for the elections this fall. […]
The image of a perfect storm conveys a rueful irony – the storm whose components are so intertwined, so synchronized, so mutually reinforcing as to make it “perfect” in its […]
The scenario was familiar as the N.C. General Assembly engaged in another frantic and exhausting push to complete a legislative session. Mission accomplished? Well, that depends on how you look […]
With just five months and change until Election Day, 2020 – and with many virus-leery North Carolinians wondering how they’ll manage to vote safely – efforts to update the state’s […]
Members of the N.C. House and Senate, resolutely confronting the deadly and disastrous coronavirus pandemic, have offered up shining examples of just what friends are for. Friends are there to […]
When and if members of the N.C. General Assembly reconvene as scheduled on April 28 – presumably wearing masks and taking all the other recommended precautions to stay safe and […]
In keeping with the familiar rhythms of American politics, this is a year when many of our elected leaders, including the president, and their would-be successors will stand for inspection […]
The North Carolina General Assembly’s Republican majority is down to what looks to be its last-ditch defense of the voter ID law it rammed through at the tail end of […]
UpdateOn Jan. 21, Superior Court Judge David Lee, who oversees compliance in the Leandro school-quality case, issued an order endorsing the WestEd report’s findings and setting forth steps to address its recommendations […]
A long road remains to be traveled before North Carolinians find out whether they’ll have to show an identification card, with photo, in order to vote in next fall’s pivotal […]
When leaders of the N.C. Council of Churches two years ago adopted a policy statement entitled “Confederate-themed monuments: Time to reassess,” the statue known as Silent Sam still faced north […]
Perhaps the Republicans who control North Carolina’s General Assembly have finally gotten the message: their decade-long efforts to rig the state’s congressional voting district boundaries in their party’s favor simply […]
When N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore called the House to order for its scheduled 8:30 a.m. session on Sept. 11, he made a fateful decision bearing not only on a […]
When N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore called the House to order for its scheduled 8:30 a.m. session on Sept. 11, he made a fateful decision bearing not only on a […]
If politics can be described as a contact sport, it’s perhaps fitting to say that when the Republicans who control North Carolina’s General Assembly went to court to defend the […]
If politics can be described as a contact sport, it’s perhaps fitting to say that when the Republicans who control North Carolina’s General Assembly went to court to defend the […]
If politics can be described as a contact sport, it’s perhaps fitting to say that when the Republicans who control North Carolina’s General Assembly went to court to defend the […]
It can’t have escaped many folks’ notice – even those, bless their hearts, for whom the really big news involves the onset of football season – that our political systems […]
It can’t have escaped many folks’ notice – even those, bless their hearts, for whom the really big news involves the onset of football season – that our political systems […]
You have to wonder: What would U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. tell that proud North Carolina gerrymanderer David Lewis if they ever came face to face, just the two […]
Not to belabor the obvious, but when North Carolina’s elected leaders craft a spending plan for state government, they take positions on many issues that have a moral dimension. And […]
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to specify that the court ruling does not address the status of the law enacted in December to comply with the state constitution’s […]
Update: After this article was written, Gov. Cooper did veto House Bill 1029, as he was urged to do. He criticized the bill as potentially “devastating to the cause of fighting election […]
The first thing Gov. Roy Cooper did after he reported for work on Wednesday, Nov. 8, was to order up a generous new supply of red ink for his veto […]
It’s a truism that weather affects elections. Yes, many of us would slosh through a downpour if that’s what it took to get to the polls. But a cold, driving […]
A summer of hectic twists and turns has made it increasingly clear: The N.C. General Assembly’s ruling Republicans have been driven by desperation. They must be desperately worried that their […]
The drive by Republicans who control the N.C. General Assembly to enhance their already formidable power, often at the expense of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, has been relentless. Why is […]
Depending on the context, it could be called poor sportsmanship. Or bullying. Or a flouting of democratic principles. Or even tyranny. Consider a situation in which a group of people […]
The current leaders of the North Carolina General Assembly – top members of the state House and Senate, all of them Republicans – rule with iron fists and aren’t squeamish […]
North Carolina’s new state budget – now on a fast track to final enactment by the Republican-controlled General Assembly over Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto – represents a miserable failure […]
They suited up in their red t-shirts, hoisted their homemade signs and coursed like a river through the heart of downtown Raleigh. Destination: The headquarters of North Carolina’s General Assembly. […]
When the N.C. General Assembly convenes on May 16, legislators will be “welcomed” by a throng of advocates for high-quality public schools – teachers prominent among them. More power to […]
Public education in North Carolina has its share of challenges, not the least of which has been the state’s ongoing failure to make sure that school systems in poorer communities […]
It was perhaps the N.C. Supreme Court’s finest hour. In 1997, the high court held unanimously that North Carolina public school students are entitled under the state constitution to the […]
Ordinary Americans – those of us not allowed to know the secrets of high-level espionage work – at this point find it hard to judge accurately the accomplishments of Gina […]
As the General Assembly wraps up its weirdly timed and generally ill-conceived winter session, it would be nice to think that the grand dispute over class sizes in North Carolina’s […]
The pattern has become familiar – and a welcome pattern it is, even if brought about by the Republican-controlled General Assembly’s relentless abuses of our democratic system. Call it, “Judges […]
Progress in rooting out North Carolina’s gerrymandered voting districts hasn’t always occurred in a straight line. But the trend – thanks to federal judges honoring their duty to uphold the […]
Grand constitutional questions in this country aren’t settled until the Supreme Court has its say, either by affirming or reversing the rulings of lower-court judges or simply by declining to […]
Well, here we go again. If the Republican-led General Assembly in 2017 focused on trying to exert its dominance over a freshly installed Democratic governor, then 2018 could bring the […]
The solid citizens of Johnston County, N.C. – in a fateful quirk of geography – for several years have faced an unusual dilemma: What to do about the local company […]
With Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House desperate to post a big legislative win, their push for so-called tax reform – the label being used to sugar-coat […]
To the Republicans who run the N.C. General Assembly, the concept of judicial independence – central to our bedrock American principle of checks and balances and to the rule of […]
At many levels, Americans are confronting issues of race relations and racial justice with an intensity that echoes the climax of the civil rights movement five decades ago – as […]
When President Trump stepped to a White House lectern on Monday and rebuked the instigators of the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., that had erupted two days before, he was […]
The three federal judges could have just come right out and said it: The Republicans who rule the N.C. General Assembly have elevated foot-dragging to a fine art. Their stall […]
The optics, as they say, are terrible. But in a state whose motto is “To Be Rather Than to Seem,” it’s even more important to look at the substance. And […]
Better get used to it. The N.C. General Assembly, after an all-too-brief adjournment during July, is about to reopen for business in its marble and masonry maze on Raleigh’s Jones […]
Presented with a new state budget that, whatever its occasional virtues, is mainly about easing tax burdens on the well-off while grinding opponents of legislative Republicans into the dirt, Democratic […]
By now the strategy is familiar – the strategy used by the N.C. General Assembly’s Republican chiefs to try to make a fundamentally flawed state budget appear, well, not that […]
The Republicans who took control of North Carolina’s General Assembly with the elections of 2010 were, it could be said, licking their chops. They knew that when they came to […]
UPDATE In separate, party-line votes on June 8, the state House and Senate rejected Gov. Cooper’s attempt to convene a special session for the purpose of redrawing legislative voting districts. […]
Following the elections of 2010 – tilted as they were by an intense right-wing pushback against President Barack Obama midway through his first term – Republicans in the N.C. General […]
So, the question as always comes down to one of vision. The elected chieftains who decide how much money North Carolina’s state government will spend, what it will be spent […]
As Shakespeare’s King Lear famously put it, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” Top Republicans in the N.C. General Assembly now might well […]
How many times do we have to say it? Well, it’s worth repeating – especially in the aftermath of recent income tax filing deadlines, when the subject becomes a sore […]
North Carolina’s failure under Republican leadership to improve low-income residents’ access to health care via the Medicaid program has been like a persistent, throbbing pain in the state’s civic and […]
Our national politics are in an ugly place, driven by an accelerating cycle of suspicion, accusation, blame, recrimination and retaliation. The circumstances by which Neil Gorsuch takes office as a […]
Call it a head-on collision between politics and principle. Is anyone surprised that politics prevailed? Yet here’s the twist that perhaps makes the outcome somewhat understandable, if no less regrettable. […]
They might not care for the image, but Republican members of the N.C. General Assembly act as though they were drunk with power. They have the votes not merely to […]
The fight over North Carolina’s House Bill 2 – the law that notoriously stamps the state’s seal of approval on discrimination against lesbian, gay and transgender folks – has devolved […]
Politics, at least in a democracy, is competitive. The analogy to sports may be simplistic but it’s not too far off the mark. Participants seek to win, and to do […]
North Carolina’s governor gets to live in a mansion whose handsome property occupies a full city block in downtown Raleigh. He or she gets to meet with assorted dignitaries, here […]
Compared with some of the provocatively, even outrageously unsuited people whom President Trump has chosen for high office, Neil Gorsuch barely moves the needle. But that’s not to say Americans […]
For many of us, these are troubling times as Donald Trump ascends to the nation’s highest office. We can hope for the best but it’s hard not to anticipate the […]
As we watched the egregiously unqualified Donald Trump campaign for and win election to the White House, any good news on the government and politics front was likely to be […]
The ugly truth can’t be evaded or denied: North Carolina’s General Assembly, in the grip of an arrogant Republican majority, has plunged ahead with a shocking, shameful abuse of power […]
He and his supporters twisted and turned, wriggled and squirmed. But 27 days after the Nov. 8 election, Gov. Pat McCrory finally bowed to the inevitable and conceded that his […]
No one reading this post is likely to pull a brain muscle describing ways in which the recent elections could have consequences ranging from the unfortunate to the dire. Our […]
Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency was a waste-pit wallow through a sludge of fear and hate. That millions of Americans voted for him presumably without hating anyone says a […]
Those of us aligned with the Council of Churches share a political outlook whose priorities include equal rights, equal opportunity, environmental stewardship, ample investment in public services and fair allocation […]
As the 2016 campaign season grinds along the final stretch toward Election Day on Nov. 8 – and with thousands of North Carolinians already having cast their ballots – we […]
