One of the reasons Natalie and I launched DFDC last year was to cut through all the partisan noise in favor of clear, fact-based analysis of how federal policy affects all of us here in North Carolina.

It turns out that a lot of voters in our state are sick and tired of all those partisan labels. For the first time in our state’s history, the number of unaffiliated voters heading into the November election outnumbers voters registered with either political party, with 30 percent registered as Democrats or Republican and 39 percent as unaffiliated.

But does that registration choice make these 3 million voters truly independent?

In a recent issue of his newsletter, Michael Bitzer, director of the Center for NC Politics at Catawba College, looks at that question.

“The ‘unaffiliated’ label may tell us that a voter has chosen not to join either major party, for a variety of reasons,” Bitzer notes. “Increasingly, the challenge for political analysts is understanding what that choice actually means.”

We are grateful to Bitzer for giving us permission to reprint his analysis in this week’s edition. If you prefer listening to reading, or want to dive even deeper, Bitzer recommends this episode of the Long Play podcast about what it means to be an unaffiliated voter in NC. The episode includes an interview with one of my favorite songwriters, Jason Isbell, who talks about music as a way to bridge the partisan divide.

“If you like to do something rather than be something, you can do a lot of stuff, you know,” Isbell says. “And I think that is the part of the political process that is lost. When you start looking at it like this side versus that side, it’s really more about participating than it is about winning or losing.”

We hope our newsletter is helping you participate. If you find today’s issue useful, please share it with your friends and neighbors, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe.

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The 40 Percent Question

With four in ten of the 7.8 million North Carolina registered voters having selected ‘unaffiliated’ in their party registration, pundits continue to describe these voters as ‘political independents’—with the idea that they are up for grabs between the two major parties (which themselves are at 30 percent each).

A recent podcast that explores the political U.S. South highlighted whether North Carolina was ready to ‘flip to the Democrats’ with this year’s U.S. Senate election—with Mitch Landrieu observing that the state’s unaffiliated voters are “otherwise known as independents—in the middle…”

And one of the state’s leading partisan strategist—Democrat Morgan Jackson—noted that unaffiliateds “don’t want to affiliate with either political party,” while Republican strategist Paul Shumaker observed that the unaffiliated voters are concerned about what impacts them directly in deciding their vote—and by extension, are not partisan loyalists.

Being registered unaffiliated tells us how someone is registered. It does not, by itself, tell us how that person thinks, votes or identifies politically.

So are these unaffiliated voters really independents and therefore up for grabs in North Carolina? The answer, at least from the evidence presented here, is not necessarily—and perhaps not even in the same way from Manteo to Murphy.

This has been a serious research question to better understand North Carolina’s politics. In 2022, several colleagues and I published a study of the state’s unaffiliated voters as the ‘unmoored voter’: those who are not just simply shadow partisans but, on average, are distinct from the two major parties.

In our analysis, over half of the unaffiliated registered voters who participated in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential primaries could be termed “shadow partisans,” who consistently voted in one party’s primary all three years. And those shadow partisans split evenly between being ‘Democratic’ and ‘Republican’ in their consistency.

The other portion of unaffiliated primary voters—47 percent—we determined were “floaters”: those who shifted from one party’s primary one year to another based on the electoral environment or the choice of candidates.

In our statistical analysis, we generally found that the unaffiliated North Carolina voter occupied the ‘go-between’ space regarding attitudes towards politics: they were more conservative than Democrats but more liberal than Republicans, and were generally in between the two parties when it came to satisfaction about the president at the time (2021 under Joe Biden) and the country. They also had distinctive policy attitudes on things like free community college and raising taxes on high income earners (again, between the two parties), while being the group that was most supportive of a third party over the two major party identifiers.

This research offers an important warning: treating all unaffiliated voters as a single pool of persuadable independents can be misleading.

What About The Unaffiliateds’ Voting Patterns?

Another analysis of NC’s unaffiliated voters is the 2024 election and the percentage of partisan (or not) registered voters in a precinct’s electorate, compared to Trump’s percentage of the precinct vote share. This scatterplot analysis takes each precinct’s registered party’s percentage of voters casting ballots and compares it to Trump’s two-party precinct vote share.

Taking the two major parties, one would think as the percentage of registered Republicans increases in the precinct’s electorate, so too would Trump’s vote percentage—and indeed, that’s exactly what happens, as shown by the black line-of-fit.

The black line is the single statewide weighted fit. Its R-squared value is 0.913, indicating an exceptionally strong relationship (91 percent) between registered Republican share and Trump’s precinct vote share. And its practical vote implication is important as well: for every 1-point increase in a precinct’s registered Republican share, Trump’s two-party vote share was expected to increase by about 1.28 points, based on a vote-total-weighted statewide fit.

But as many N.C. political observers know, North Carolina politics isn’t just shaped by partisan dimensions, but also geographic/regional aspects. The above graph delineates precincts within one of four regions: central cities in an urban county (for example, Charlotte in Mecklenburg County; Raleigh in Wake County) the outside the central cities but inside the urban county (urban suburbs, like Huntersville in Mecklenburg; Wake Forest in Wake County)), the surrounding suburban counties to an urban county (Gaston and Union counties to Mecklenburg; Johnston to Wake), and finally the rural county precincts

—in different colors.

And when you break each of these four regions into their own separate lines, the Republican increase is similar across the regions.

The relationship is strongest in Urban Suburb precincts (R-squared=0.961) and Central City precincts (R-squared=0.956), followed by Surrounding Suburban County precincts (R-squared=0.883). It remains strong but comparatively lower in Rural County precincts (R-squared=0.773).

Now, take the Democratic precinct percentage in the electorate, and naturally one would expect the line to go down (meaning, as the percentage of registered Democrats in a precinct’s electorate increases, Trump’s vote share decreases).

And indeed, it does, not just state-wide but also within the four regions.

For every 1-point increase in a precinct’s registered Democratic share, Trump’s two-party vote share was expected to decrease by about 1.12 points, based on a vote-total-weighted statewide fit. And while the R-squared values were slightly lower than the Republican values, the Democratic percentage in a precinct’s electorate was strongly related to Trump’s vote percentage.

Now, the Unaffiliateds—what happens to Trump’s two-party vote share when the Unaffiliated percentage in a precinct’s electorate increase?

The overall relationship is weakly negative, with a weighted R-squared value of only 0.020. Compared to partisan registration that is highly predictive of presidential voting, unaffiliated registration, by itself, is not.

The estimated slope is -0.422, meaning that across all precincts, a 1-point increase in unaffiliated registration share corresponds to an estimated 0.42-point decrease in Trump’s two-party vote share. However, the low R-squared means this single statewide line summarizes relatively little of the precinct-level variation.

But when broken out by each of the four regions, a fascinating pattern emerges.

The regional relationships differs substantially, and thus when combined, gives us the very weak and slightly downward line.

In Central City precincts, higher unaffiliated-registration shares were associated with higher Trump vote shares. The weighted slope was +0.53, meaning that a one-point increase in unaffiliated registration corresponded to about a 0.53-point increase in Trump’s two-party vote share. Even so, the relationship was modest, with unaffiliated share explaining about 9% of the variation in Trump vote share.

A similar, but weaker, positive relationship appeared in Rural County precincts. There, a one-point increase in unaffiliated registration was associated with about a 0.46-point increase in Trump vote share. However, the model’s explanatory power was substantially low, with an R-squared values of 0.037 (meaning, barely 4% of the Trump vote share can be explained by this one factor). In practical terms, unaffiliated registration in rural areas appears to lean somewhat more Trump-friendly, but it is far from a dominant predictor.

The pattern reverses in suburban settings. In Urban Suburb precincts, a one-point increase in unaffiliated registration was associated with an estimated 0.84-point decrease in Trump vote share. The relationship was modest but more pronounced than in the urban-core or rural models, with an R-squared value of 0.116.

The strongest negative regional relationship appeared in Surrounding Suburban County precincts, where a one-point increase in unaffiliated registration was associated with about a 0.89-point decrease in Trump vote share. The model explained roughly 10.6% of variation in Trump support.

This regional contrast explains why the single statewide unaffiliated-registration line is not especially informative on its own. Unaffiliated registration does not appear to represent one consistent electoral bloc across North Carolina. In central-city and rural precincts, a larger unaffiliated share was associated with somewhat stronger Trump performance. But in urban-suburban and surrounding suburban-county precincts, the relationship ran in the opposite direction: precincts with more unaffiliated voters tended to give Trump a lower vote share.

The divergence appears to suggest that unaffiliated N.C. voters could be shaped heavily by regional context. In the two suburban North Carolina regions, unaffiliated registration may capture voters who are less aligned with the Republican Party and less supportive of Trump. In central-city and rural areas, by contrast, unaffiliated registration may include more voters who are culturally or electorally receptive to Trump despite not registering as Republicans.

A caution to throw into the mix: first, this scatterplot analysis is a precinct-level relationship, not individual-level evidence about how specifically unaffiliated voters voted. Secondly, due to the regional R-squared values ranging only from 0.037 to 0.116, this may only tell us that unaffiliated registration is informative, but substantially less powerful than Republican or Democratic registration in explaining Trump’s precinct vote share.

North Carolina’s Unaffiliated Are Not One Thing

So, are North Carolina’s unaffiliated voters really independents, sitting in the political middle and waiting to be won over?

The evidence, as is the case in many areas of North Carolina (and American) politics, suggests a more complicated answer.

North Carolina’s unaffiliated voters are not one homogeneous electoral bloc. Some are “shadow partisans,” consistently behaving like Republicans or Democrats despite their registration.

Others are genuine floaters who move between candidates, parties and elections. And 2024’s precinct-level evidence suggests that even the relationship between unaffiliated registration and Trump’s performance varies considerably depending on where those voters live.

That may be the most important finding here. The word “unaffiliated” tells us something about how a North Carolinian is registered. It tells us considerably less about how that person thinks politically or how they will vote.

And geography appears to matter.

In suburban areas, higher levels of unaffiliated registration were associated with lower Trump vote shares. In central-city and rural precincts, the relationship moved in the opposite direction. None of these relationships is nearly as powerful as the connection between partisan registration and presidential voting—and the relatively low R-squared values for the unaffiliated models are an important reminder not to overstate what the data can tell us.

But they do challenge the idea that North Carolina’s unaffiliated voters can simply be placed in a statewide “middle.” Yes, they may be a bridge between the two parties, but there’s complications crossing the canyon.

For campaigns, that distinction matters. A candidate looking at the state’s 40 percent unaffiliated registration and seeing a massive pool of independent voters up for grabs may be looking at the wrong number. The more useful question is not How many unaffiliated voters are there? but rather Who are these unaffiliated voters, where are they, and how have they behaved politically?

North Carolina’s growing unaffiliated electorate may indeed be an important source of electoral volatility. And in a state like North Carolina, that has an intense base of partisan support on both sides, little movements among the remaining voters can have big consequences. But volatility is not the same thing as ideological moderation, and registration status is not the same thing as political independence.

The “unaffiliated” label may tell us that a voter has chosen not to join either major party, for a variety of reasons. Increasingly, the challenge for political analysts is understanding what that choice actually means.

For more of Michael Bitzer’s analysis, subscribe to his newsletter here or follow him on social media. Bluesky: @BowTiePolitics & @ncpolitics. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ncpolitics. Instagram: @ncpolitics_center

One of the biggest stories of President Trump’s second term is his often violent crackdown on immigration. According to CBS News, enforcement surged this summer, with an average of 1,500 people taken into custody daily in July, including at routine check-ins at immigration offices, airports and traffic stops. And more than half of those detained last month had no ciminal history, which means no pending charges or past convictions, Austin Kocher, a researcher at Syracuse University, reported this week.

We’ve been tracking how the crackdown has played out in our state since we first started publishing a year ago. As regular readers know, I am not a neutral observer. While we haven’t seen large-scale public raids here since Operation Charlotte’s Web last fall, the enforcement efforts haven’t stopped. But they are being carried out more quietly. According to an analysis by NC Local, data through March shows that enforcement picked back up earlier this year, with more than 6,300 immigrants detained during Trump’s second term.

In today’s issue, we speak with Helen Parsonage, an immigration attorney based in Winston-Salem, to better understand the nitty gritty of immigration law and its impact on immigrant communities and workplaces in NC.

Helen moved to the United States more than 30 years ago from England with her husband, a biochemist, and landed in Winston-Salem in 1991 when she and I first met. When her boys started school, she began working as a paralegal with a local immigration firm and soon went to law school at night, motivated by her own experience navigating our complicated immigration system. She now represents many of the North Carolinians caught up in the crackdown.

She had intended to wind down her practice this year, but when Trump was re-elected, she knew that an escalation in immigration enforcement was coming.

“And those who know me, particularly those who live with me, will confirm that I’m stubborn and hard-headed and I was not going to quit,” she told me. “So now I’m working full-time, probably more hours than I was before, because I’m pigheaded and I’m not going to walk away.”

Our conversation is below, edited here for length and clarity. If you find it interesting, please share it with friends and neighbors.

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Phoebe Zerwick: At the end of last month, immigration agents arrested 13 people at a swimming hole in the Pisgah forest that’s popular with families. According to news reports, it was the first ever coordinated raid involving the Forest Service and local sheriffs, at least in North Carolina. Are you representing anyone detained there and what do you make of the raid?

Helen Parsonage: I’ve spoken to a couple of folks about the Pisgah Forest incident. I’ve always been a great fan of the National Park Service and the National Forests. So it was particularly disappointing to see folks from the National Forest Service participating in this when I never really thought of their role as anything even tangentially related.

I spoke to one young man who had no criminal history. I think several people there were picked up because they had an old deportation order that may have been on appeal or they may have been going for check-ins. I have not heard anything to indicate that anybody in those 13 people were “the worst of the worst.” No rapists, murderers or anything like that.

I really don’t know why this raid was conducted except as a scare tactic, because this is one place where you might think you were safe. ICE likes to find easy targets. This was an easy target.

Phoebe Zerwick: There’s a closed down private prison in the northeast corner of the state called Rivers Correctional. We first reported on negotiations between the owners and ICE to reopen for immigration detention. The New York Times just confirmed that the prison will reopen this year for around 1,400 detainees.

I’m curious about several things. First of all, whether having a local detention center will increase arrests in North Carolina and, also, whether or not in some ways a nearby facility might make it easier for the families of those detained who now have to travel all the way to Georgia or further to see loved ones.

Helen Parsonage: Well, it’s clearly not meant to substitute for taking people to Georgia. This is all part of the increased capacity. And if it’s got space for 1,400 immigrants, I guarantee you it’ll be over capacity fairly quickly. It’s also very convenient for parts of Virginia, so I imagine it will serve that area as well. I’m concerned about these older facilities being reopened almost certainly without proper upgrades and improvement. Profit margin is the driving force — these are for profit prisons so every corner they can cut increases their profit margin. Rivers has been closed, I think, for a significant period of time and I think there were some concerns about its state of repair when it closed down. So I’m not optimistic that the upfit will have been anything other than the minimum.

Phoebe Zerwick: What do you hear from your clients who are in some of some of these privately run detention centers about the conditions?

Helen Parsonage: There are things like lack of privacy. Most of these places are dorm-type.

But the two things I hear most about are food and medical. The food is substandard even by jail or prison standards. The bologna sandwich is ubiquitous. There is insufficient food, particularly given that most of the folks they detain are adult men who have the highest calorie need and they’re not getting those. I hear a lot of concerns about lack of respect for dietary restrictions, whether religious or cultural. I have a client in detention right now who does not eat beef for religious reasons. So if there is beef in the meal, they just take it out. There’s no substitute. You may just get the bread bun.

And then access to medical care. Everybody’s hearing the extremes, but the clients I’m thinking of, one needs a special diet because he has a medical condition that makes it hard for him to absorb nutrients. This lady who does not eat beef is insulin-dependent. They’re just not taking care. Every time I see the clients, they look a little thinner.

Phoebe Zerwick: And remind us, have these two individuals committed crimes?

Helen Parsonage: No.

Phoebe Zerwick: What are they detained for?

Helen Parsonage: One was living in New Bern, North Carolina, and had a pending affirmative asylum claim. He had a work permit, a driver’s license. He was working as an imam in the local mosque and was getting medical treatment from a clinic there. He was the victim many years ago in his home country of numerous gunshot wounds. He was picked up on false allegations following an argument and rather than allowing him to face his accuser and potentially get the charges dismissed, he was whisked away to Georgia where he has been ever since. His special diet has been discontinued. He’s in pretty poor health. It’s hard to keep his spirits up. That’s half my job these days – trying to help keep people’s spirits up while they’re in detention and encouraging them that there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

The other lady was a green card holder for years. She traveled outside the United States to visit her father who was dying. It was the end of his life and those things don’t run on schedule. So she ended up outside the United States for seven months, which is over the six month presumptive. When she got back, they accused her of abandoning her green card. Now in past decades it would be like getting a traffic ticket, saying “Okay show up to the court on such and such a day.” But this time they have her in detention.

Phoebe Zerwick: People fleeing persecution and violence can come to this county and apply for asylum. Can you explain what the new asylum rules mean and how that’s playing out in North Carolina?

Helen Parsonage: Let me tell you how it used to work. If you came to the United States seeking asylum, you would file your asylum application with the asylum office, which is part of U.S. Customs and Immigration Service and has nothing to do with the court system or the deportation system.

You would be interviewed by an asylum officer, a non-adversarial interview, potentially with an interpreter and your attorney, if you have one. The asylum officer’s role has traditionally been to ask the right questions so that somebody who’s got a valid asylum claim could provide the information that the officer needed to approve and grant asylum. If the asylum officer felt there was insufficient information or there were inconsistencies, or if the person had filed their asylum claim late, the officer could refer the case to an immigration judge, which is an adversarial hearing: there’s a prosecutor there, cross-examining, trying to find inconsistencies.

What this administration has just done is said that the asylum office can send people to the deportation court without conducting an interview. So the asylum officers are more than happy to shift their backlog of cases over to the immigration court. I am not sure how the immigration court system feels about that. They’re already backlogged. This is just taking one silo of cases and moving them somewhere else. Under this administration, we’re seeing court asylum grant rates of about 6 or 7 percent. Which is a staggering drop. [Before] it varied from court to court and judge to judge, but the national average was closer to 40.

The asylum seekers I represent cover the full range of humanity because they’re from different backgrounds, different cultures, different education levels, everything from somebody who only has a second grade education all the way through to professionals in the medical and legal profession in their home countries. I can tell you that asylum seekers have a pretty low criminal rate. Immigrants have a lower rate of committing crime than the native-born American population anyway. But it’s even lower among asylum seekers.

Phoebe Zerwick: Until last month’s raid in the Pisgah Forest, we hadn’t seen large-scale public raids since the wave of arrests last fall in Charlotte and Raleigh. Still, the numbers of detentions are up and they seem to be happening way more quietly, out of public view. What are you seeing in North Carolina in terms of where people are getting arrested and what they’re being arrested for?

Helen Parsonage: I think the change in leadership at the Department of Homeland Security had something to do with that, the departure of Greg Bovino and his theatrics. People were not happy with what they were seeing, so I think that it is quieter.

There’s a number of different ways they’re trying to meet their numbers. One is that they are trying to pick up individuals at their check-ins. These typically are people who have a pending case or something on appeal who are doing check-ins with ICE. In North Carolina, everybody goes to Charlotte for their check-ins. What I’m seeing is most of them are people who’ve got maybe a final order that is on appeal, mostly men. They are also picking up people at traffic stops. Getting yourself into one of our county jails is a really good way to have ICE come across you and detain you. Regardless of what happens in the criminal case, even if the charges are dropped or they’re found not guilty, they’re still taking folks, which didn’t used to happen. A misdemeanor larceny is something that gets charged a lot of times based on either a misunderstanding or a falling out. It can be whatever, people call the police. They’re often dismissed or not guilty. But once somebody is in jail, it’s almost impossible to get released because ICE is taking people directly to Georgia. ICE likes easy targets. County jails are easy for them because people are being held there.

I have not heard of any incidents at Charlotte airport, though I’m advising clients to be very cautious about going to airports because TSA is clearly sharing passenger lists with ICE and some airlines are cooperating and others are not. So, you want to figure out which airline you’re going to fly with if you absolutely have to fly.

Phoebe Zerwick: The legislature here in North Carolina passed new laws earlier this year requiring local law enforcement and some state law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. How is that playing out in North Carolina?

Helen Parsonage: All of this is anecdotal, but from my experience the one way in which we’ve seen it is magistrates at the jails giving bond and ICE being alerted that people are there. The bond form that the magistrates fill out now has a question about immigration status. That is not a legal assessment that most of our magistrates are equipped to make. They’re getting it wrong both ways.

Phoebe Zerwick: With all those public raids in North Carolina and of course in Minneapolis, a lot of people were appalled by what they were seeing, and a lot of people in North Carolina trained to be ICE observers, myself included. I’m curious about what the legal ramifications are for American citizens who document what ICE agents are doing.

Helen Parsonage I think there’s two separate questions there. What are the legal ramifications, what are the practical ramifications?

From a legal standpoint, it’s fairly clear. Do not physically interfere with ICE officers or police officers, but it’s well established that you can video and film them.

That said, some of the officers do not take kindly to being videoed and we’ve all seen occasions where they will do everything from snatching the phone to slamming observers to the ground, pepper spraying.

Are there personal risks? Yes. So that’s something everybody has to figure out for themselves and we’ve seen the extremes that they will go to with people observing.

Phoebe Zerwick: And are there legal risks for employers who prevent immigration agents from entering workplaces?

Helen Parsonage: So, they can’t come into private spaces without a warrant. So I’ve been advising employers to put “employees only” signs up, to have a clear divide. I tell them, if it’s an area I can’t go into then ICE can’t. So I can go into a restaurant and sit but I can’t just willy-nilly wander back into the office or into the kitchen. Restaurants and public places like that do have the right to refuse service to anybody they choose. And I’ve seen some rather gratifying videos of ICE officers being politely but firmly required to leave restaurants and cafes and had service refused them. And that’s something that can be done and it’s growing as people are seeing that that can work.

Phoebe Zerwick: And what about churches? Can churches still offer sanctuary?

Helen Parsonage: Sanctuary is an interesting word because sanctuary as a legal concept has not existed since 1515. It’s a moral concept and it is one that even in those cases that we had here in North Carolina of individuals in sanctuary as we called it, it relied on kind of a gentleman’s agreement between DHS or between immigration services and the community that they would not force their way into a church to snatch somebody out. The optics are not good. I think that’s why they’re still not doing it. That would be a bridge too far for most people. It doesn’t stop them waiting outside, of course, but I’ve not seen them do that.

Phoebe Zerwick: An issue that’s gotten a lot of attention recently is the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the president’s decision to rescind temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians, which has consequences for immigrants from more than a dozen counties. How is that playing out in North Carolina?

Helen Parsonage: Well, what it’s really hurting are businesses. Obviously, it’s hurting the individuals. All of a sudden, after many years, their work permits have just been cut off. You’ve gone from being in lawful status to having no lawful status. It shows you the hypocrisy of this administration because it’s always about people should do it the right way and people should get their legal status and what they’re doing is actually turning tens of thousands of lawful residents of the United States into undocumented immigrants. A lot of them have been established professionals. I know individuals who are working in our finance system and banking, individuals who are working in optometrist’s offices, people who are working in schools, people who’ve been working in hospitals and not just as nurses but as physicians and physicians assistants and social workers.

Everybody thinks when they talk about mass deportations and picking people up that we’re going to lose construction workers and agricultural workers and we certainly are in some places. But we’re also losing school teachers, doctors, lawyers, professionals, finance folks, all kinds. I’m having clinics call me up saying that they’re losing qualified staff and so it’s impacting patient care.

Phoebe Zerwick: This is a time of enormous confusion and fear. Back last fall, immigrant families were afraid to send their kids to school. What’s your sense of what they’re going through with all of this uncertainty?

Helen Parsonage: Folks are very afraid of being detained or having a loved one detained. They’re particularly afraid for somebody if they’ve got any kind of medical condition because everybody’s reading about folks who are not getting medical treatment and, in several horrific cases, have passed away in immigration detention through neglect.

I think a lot of folks are looking for reassurance. They’re hunkering down. Everybody’s a little more cautious about where they go. But it’s a very resilient community, so I don’t want to give the impression that they’re cowering in fear somewhere. These are folks, many of whom have been through much worse in their home countries or to get here. Many of them have lived with being undocumented for many years or decades even. They don’t need me to tell them how to cope with this. I can try and help them if the worst happens. I can do small things to protect people just in terms of legal strategy to try and minimize the risks. But most of these folks have lived with uncertainty for most of their lives.

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So today, we’re catching you up on the big stories from our hiatus that are having an impact on North Carolina communities. They all take on added political significance as we head into the November midterm elections. That’s when all of us have the chance to weigh in on what we think of the job our elected officials are doing in DC.

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We want to hear from you about the issues you’ll be thinking about when you go to the polls this fall, whether that’s healthcare, the War in Iran, climate change or the cost of living. Drop us a note in the comments or by email at downfromdc@gmail.com and we’ll do our best to answer your questions.

In the meantime, please share today’s post with friends and family and if you haven’t already, please subscribe. It’s free.

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The war in Iran comes home

For most of us, the war in Iran feels far away from our sticky southern summer. Maybe we notice when we go to the gas pump, but it’s been easy to forget about the human toll of the president’s $37.5 billion war.

But that’s not the case for North Carolina’s military communities. Two soldiers based at Fort Bragg died at U.S. military bases in the Middle East last month. Their names were 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, and Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, 30. Swinton and his wife had two children, a son, 6, and a daughter, 4. The Army flew his body home last week for a funeral in Hope Mills, near Fayetteville.

In his last phone call with his wife, Swinton sounded tired from relentless drone attacks by Iran at the Erbil Air Base in northern Iraq. “I could always tell, when the tone would change, that something was going on,” Jamiah Swinton, also an Army veteran, told The New York Times. “There was no peace.”

A campaign reset in western NC

GOP leaders chose State Rep. Jennifer Balkcom this week to run in the 11th Congressional District after incumbent Rep. Chuck Edwards (R) dropped out of the race following a report from the House Ethics Committee over his conduct with female staffers.

The 11th District in western North Carolina has been solidly Republican until this year. The slow federal response to recovery from Hurricane Helene made Edwards especially vulnerable. That was before the Ethics Committee began its investigation into allegations of his inappropriate relations with women. And Edwards drew a strong competitor when James Ager, a farmer from a longtime political family, won the Democratic nomination.

Money isn’t everything in politics, but it’s certainly worth watching. Chris Cooper, author of The Anatomy of a Purple State newsletter, reported that by the end of June, Ager had raised three times as much money as Edwards, with $2.2 million in cash reserves compared to $485,744 for Edwards.

Tillis supplies key vote to confirm Trump’s attorney general

Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in criminal proceedings in New York before his re-election, was confirmed early Saturday morning as attorney general after winning over a handful of GOP senators who had been on the fence. N.C. Sen. Thom Tillis was among them, having backed the president’s nominee only after Blanche promised to scale back plans to give the president and his allies protection from tax audits and dissolve a $1.8 billion slush fund that could include money for the rioters who stormed the Capitol in 2020.

In response to criticism that Blanche’s written promise is not binding, Tillis told The New York Times: “Now, could the president completely reverse this and create a new fund? He could, and then he can answer to the American people.”

A deep dive on James Comey’s shell prosecution

Thanks to excellent reporting by Virginia Bridges, of The News & Observer, we now have more details about how a handful of seashells on a NC beach turned into a criminal case against former FBI director James Comey.

We’ve shared reporting earlier on the prosecution of James Comey by the U.S. Attorney in NC’s Eastern District, a Trump appointee, over a photo Comey posted to social media of four seashells arranged on an Emerald Isle beach to read “86 47.” Prosecutors allege that Comey threatened Trump, the 47th president, because the number “86,” slang for “throw out” or “get rid of,” can be interpreted to mean “to kill.”

Bridges reviewed stacks of federal court documents to piece together how the investigation unfolded. Her timeline found that Comey took the photo down from his social media account within hours after posting after someone texted his wife to complain of the violent overtones. By then, the Secret Service were already tracking his movements.

When he was FBI director, Comey led an investigation into possible collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. Trump fired him after taking office in 2017. A NC grand jury indicted Comey in April. Comey says that he meant no violence and that calling for the ouster of an elected official is protected political speech.

ICE agents raid mountain swimming hole

Immigration officials arrested 13 people last month at a swimming hole in the Pisgah National Forest that is popular among families. Multiple news organizations reported on the arrests, the first large-scale raid since Operation Charlotte’s Web last fall terrified immigrant communities across the state.

When immigration agents arrived at the swimming hole on Sunday, July 26, families fled into the surrounding woods. “We were confused. There was a lot of panic going on,” Sandra Salazar, co-founder of an organization that connects Latinos with the outdoors, told NC Local. “When we were able to go in, we started looking for people, and we saw people hiding behind trees. We saw people hiding in the middle of the water behind rocks, boulders. We saw people who had crossed the river with their children hiding because they didn’t want to have that interaction with ICE agents.”

The most detailed reporting came from Lilly Knoepp of NC Local, who found that the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Department worked with the National Forest Service and immigration agents in the first such coordinated raid in NC. ICE has not released the names of those detained, which means that news organizations have not been able to check whether those arrested had criminal records.

In other news of immigration detention, The New York Times confirmed that Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton NC will reopen later this year. Down from DC, in collaboration with The Assembly, first reported last September on negotiations between ICE and the GEO Group, which owns the prison, to reopen. For context, the Times writes: “The opening of the facility — the first of its kind in North Carolina — signals that even as ICE has been retreating from its plan to buy up warehouses around the country, it remains determined to increase its capacity for detaining people as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.”

Rising Seas

A recent photo essay published by Time magazine documents life in rural Hyde County, one of the least populated corners of the state. In the winter, thousands of migrating Tundra Swans and Snow Geese feed in the fields around Lake Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. When they return to the water at twilight, the sound of all those beating wings is deafening. And if you walk quietly, you might see a black bear, whose numbers are believed to outnumber humans by two to one.

In 2022, NC photographer Cornell Watson started photographing the people living in this wild place for a vivid portrait of a community on the front lines of climate change. Take a moment to look at his intimate portraits of rural life where homes are often flooded in the frequent and extreme storms brought on by climate change.

“I’ve been in [Scranton] all my life,” Gretchen Davis, who previously lost a home to flooding in Hurricane Florence in 2018, told Time. “I was born in it, and I guess I’ll die in it.”

We’ll be back later this month with more analysis of decisions by the elected officials we send to DC and how they shape our lives here in NC. In the meantime, please share this post with friends and neighbors and be sure to subscribe.

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I’ll be celebrating July 4, as I do most years, at a neighborhood potluck at the park down the hill from my house in Winston-Salem’s West End.

One neighbor brings the barbecue, made according to a family recipe. Someone else brings a bucket of fried chicken and the rest of us fill in with sides. My favorite part is the annual homemade pie contest, and then it’s off to the races, with children circling the playground on bikes and trikes decorated in red, white and blue.

It’s a public park, so families from other parts of town join in. Who can refuse such a spread or the celebration of our independence from the British monarch and the shared ideals that were agreed to 250 years ago?

The White House’s celebration of our semiquincentennial began in April with a prayer meeting up in DC on the National Mall. It continued June 14, on President Trump’s birthday, with an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn, followed by a state fair, which opened June 25 and will last until July 10.

The events around the 250th feel like a culmination of President Trump’s second-term efforts to promote his preferred version of American history. The April prayer rally was an effort to cast us as a Christian nation, a vision at odds with the Constitution’s promise of religious freedom. Trump and his second administration have taken numerous official actions to downplay inconvenient truths as slavery and the forced expulsion of indigenous people.

He has tried to remove materials from the Smithsonian Institution which he says “has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.” He ordered The National Park Service to remove signs that commemorated enslaved people and in the case of the Smoky Mountain National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway, flagged those that referred to climate change, air pollution and the forced removal of the Cherokee people. Last month, a federal judge ordered the signs restored.

The festivities in Washington, and the 250th itself, are ostensibly an effort to celebrate the founding and all that America has accomplished since then. But they are becoming yet another setting for disputing what parts of our history to hold up. North Carolina’s presence at that fair on the National Mall has become a perfect case in point.

Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s administration declined to have the state sponsor a pavilion at the fair or send an official delegation, citing costs. In response, Republican House speaker Destin Hall accused him of playing partisan politics with a “patriotic event.” Several businesses from the state, among them SPEVCO, Richard Childress Racing and Mt. Olive Pickles, have sponsored the state’s showcase. When the exhibit opened last week, images of the booth circulated on social media, including of a split screen TV on one wall with the state seal from the NC state flag on the left and the red, white and blue X from the Confederate flag on the right.

Mt. Olive withdrew its sponsorship over the weekend. Stein condemned the Confederate symbol as “dishonoring the flag of North Carolina.” State fair organizers told The News & Observer that the video screen was removed.

It all has me thinking about how the way we tell our history says as much about who we are today as it does about our past. So ahead of this holiday, I reached out to some people who are steeped in our state’s history at community history museums across the state, from Cherokee in the west to Wilmington at the coast, and asked the same question:

What aspect of your community’s history is not given enough attention or is at risk of being lost, and why does it matter?

Their responses follow, with links where you can learn more about these museums, their exhibits, and how they interpret our shared past.

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Kate Baillon, Museum Director, Cape Fear Museum of History and Science in Wilmington:

What is most at risk of being lost is not the historical record itself, but the nuance, context, and human experiences that give those records meaning. As generations pass, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand the complexities of historical events, and the motivations, constraints and decisions of the people who lived through them. Preserving and sharing these stories matters - it helps us to move beyond simple narratives, fosters empathy, and provides a deeper understanding of how the past continues to influence the present.

Zachary Dressel, Assistant Director, Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby:

Parts of our history are always at risk of being lost as generations move on, as people age out, and as communities age. We’ve seen that a lot here in Cleveland County. Shelby has done a really great job over the last several years recapturing the history around minority groups in our area, something that was previously underrepresented in the historical narrative in our community.

The Earl Scruggs Center is doing that through providing special exhibits that revolve around African American stories. It is extremely important for us to share the contributions of the African American Community because music in particular is a shared experience for all people. In our region in particular, people of all ethnicities participated in the making of music, in many cases combining cultures and traditions to create new musical forms. It is from this “musical soup” that American musical forms such as Bluegrass were created. If we are missing a part of the recipe, it is harder for us to understand how the soup was made in the first place.

The practice of sharing history works much the same way. We have to study the contributions of all the people in our community in order to better understand where we are now and look to where we are going.

Carol Ghiorsi Hart, Museum Director, Greensboro History Museum:

Greensboro may be a booming college town with tech companies arriving daily, but its true foundation was built on blue denim. Decades ago, the city was anchored by self-contained segregated mill villages where textile companies provided housing, schools, and churches—creating tight-knit communities that were under corporate control. Today, this working-class heritage is at risk of being lost to rapid gentrification, developer-led demolitions, and the passing of the last generation with firsthand memories.

While some of the factories have been repurposed, preserving this history matters – it is the foundation of Greensboro’s identity. More recently, the arrival of new people and new ideas is an important but sometimes overlooked thread in Greensboro’s history, like it is for many cities. First-and-second-generation immigrants are always contributing to and reshaping our city, so it’s vital to represent and connect experiences of different individuals and communities across time. Greensboro’s Montagnard community (the largest outside of Vietnam) is one group making a difference today.

Bringing together different tribal and language groups originating in Vietnam’s central highlands, this community works locally to preserve cultural traditions like dance and weaving. They also collaborate with other immigrant organizations around community empowerment and equal access to health care and education. These are just a few of the ways they are contributing to the city’s evolving history.

John Swaine, CEO, International Civil Rights Center in Greensboro:

During the Civil Rights struggle, people worked together to achieve the big things – equal rights for all Americans. That is what we present at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum. It took a diverse range of persons earnestly and creatively working together to achieve the successes of the Greensboro F.W. Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins in a movement that expanded across the nation. Were it not for the sake of a commitment to achieve peace in this community, these protests might have ended in a disaster, as they did in some other places.

We persist in reminding people that we must work across divisions, or we will forget that it took people cooperating to get a Civil Rights Act of 1964, a Voting Rights Act of 1965, and other steps toward an enlightened social evolution. Unfortunately, our country is worrisomely divided now, and we are losing the capacity to work, think, and reason together — not to mention the ability to disagree meaningfully about what should come next.

Franky Abbott, Chief Content Strategist & Historian, Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte:

Charlotte is often celebrated as a symbol of the New South — a city remade through banking, development, and rapid growth into a modern, forward-looking metropolis. But that story of reinvention only makes sense against the longer arc of what came before: the plantation economy, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the slow, contested work of building something more just — an arc that continues today as waves of new immigrants bring languages, cultures, and perspectives that are remaking the city once again.

The history we choose to teach shapes how we understand ourselves and our place in that unfolding story — and a city that doesn’t know that story can’t fully see itself or reckon honestly with the forces that history set in motion and that still shape Charlotte today.

Peter Koch, interim director, Mountain Heritage Center in Cullowhee:

I’m often asked what was going on in western North Carolina in the Revolution, particularly in 1776. The answer is the Cherokee-American war, also known as the Rutherford Expedition. Basically, this was a punitive expedition by the American Patriots in September 1776 to pre-empt Cherokee support for the British who ostensibly were upholding their territorial boundaries. The expedition had some fighting but mostly it resulted in many towns and fields of crops being burnt. The expedition paved the way for settlers who came to the region closer to 1800. Some of those settlers had been on the Rutherford expedition, so it can be seen as a founding event for the region.

Conversely, it can also be seen as genocide due to the consequent deprivation and famine that happened with people being burnt out of their homes and farms. I think this part of the Revolution is not getting its due since it’s an uncomfortable story and doesn’t fit with what is commonly known about the settlement of the region.

Shana Bushyhead Condill, executive director, Museum of the Cherokee People in Cherokee:

When we talk with our community about what we want our visitors to know, it is, inevitably, that we are still here. That response speaks to both the heartbreaking truth that most Americans do not have a clear understanding of Native people and history and also our incredible resilience. Narratives that center the “disappearing Indian” myth were highly effective. We continue to read signage in public history sites across the country, and specifically in the removal states of the southeast, that speak about Native people generally, and Cherokee people specifically, in the past tense.

Our story is continually told for us and about us. Our goal and intervention is to be a hub of Cherokee knowledge based on Cherokee scholarship. The fact remains that we are still here. We are the tribal museum of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, one of three federally recognized Cherokee tribes. Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians are headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and we are honored and blessed to be headquartered on ancestral Cherokee homelands in what is now western North Carolina. Our Cherokee ancestors negotiated and fought to allow us to remain and thrive as sovereign tribal nations.

Mike Wakeford, executive director, MUSE Winston-Salem:

What parts of the past deserve more attention? My instinct as a historian is to say “all of the above.” And I mean it, at least in this sense: sustaining historical understanding and curiosity about the past is an ongoing process. It requires vigilance. Those parts of our community’s past that have traditionally drawn focus—the Moravian heritage or the tobacco industry, to cite two easy examples—require reinforcement and critical revisiting lest they fade out of historical memory or become relegated to myth.

But as a museum dedicated to telling the whole, interconnected story of our community, we think it’s also vital to open new areas of understanding and encourage visitors to reflect on their own perspectives in light of new knowledge. In a city like Winston-Salem, highlighting stories of how African Americans powered our growth and evolution, bringing them to the center of the narrative, is of utmost importance. Similarly, the time is now to enrich the portrait of Winston-Salem’s sizable Jewish and Greek communities’ growth in the 20th century. And the growing presence of an internally diverse Hispanic population, which is now a decades-long story, now demands that we begin studying it through a historical lens.

In a time when division seems to animate American life, museums like ours remain steadfast in our belief that evidence-based engagement with the past is indispensable to the pursuit of a “more perfect union.”

Marc Barnes, communications manager, NC History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation & Reconstruction in Fayetteville:

At the NC History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation & Reconstruction, we believe that what’s not being given enough attention and is at the risk of being lost is in our name itself. The true story of the Civil War in North Carolina has never been truthfully taught, nor have the stories of Emancipation and Reconstruction.

We are working to change that by combining robust university- and Smithsonian-level historical scholarship with oral histories from families in all 100 NC counties, which tell the stories of the time before, during and after the Civil War. We sponsor lectures and send out academics to teach K-12 social studies teachers across the state. In 2028, a state-of-the-art facility will open in Fayetteville. The reason it matters is that 150 years ago, we were deeply divided. Today, we are still deeply divided. We need to understand who we were before we can improve on who we are and in so doing, work toward building a more perfect Union.

Danielle Buckingham, Public Historian, Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham:

Much of our work to uplift the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray is about being rooted in community, especially in the historically Black neighborhood that nurtured young Pauli and where we now serve as historians, educators, and advocates. Pauli Murray’s existence defies attempts at presenting American history as one-dimensional and exclusive.

Murray exists in multitudes as a Black, LGBTQ+ feminist, civil rights activist, lawyer, educator, Episcopal priest, and poet; and it’s important that we reject censorship or erasure of all the identities and roles Murray held. For many folks, Murray represents the importance of affirming one’s right to exist no matter how many people try to deny it. At the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice, we have witnessed the ways Murray’s life story spurs folks to action, and more importantly, leads to the most unlikely connections amongst individuals from all walks of life. This is why our work matters.

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Happy Fourth of July to our faithful readers. There are, of course, celebrations and exhibits happening all across our state. Here’s a list, compiled by the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which encourages such themes as freedom, multiple voices and common ground as worthy of celebration.

We’re taking a summer break this month and will be back in August ready to analyze the impacts of what’s coming down from DC – and the major election ahead of us. In the meantime, please share the link with friends and family, and if you have not already, please subscribe.

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Think of the biggest environmental stories in North Carolina over the last decade – from industrial hog farming pollution to PFAS chemicals in our drinking water – and Lisa Sorg was on the ground talking to people who were affected. From her home base in Durham, Lisa has earned a reputation as one of the most tenacious environmental journalists in the southeast. She now covers NC for Inside Climate News. I was so impressed with her track record that I hired her a few years ago to teach a journalism course at Wake Forest University, and she is a master at that, too.

It takes the kind of knowledge of the federal bureaucracy that Lisa possesses to uncover these stories. That knowledge is especially pivotal now, when we are seeing rollbacks to regulation on wetland protections and forever chemicals – all of which she has reported on.

Lisa and I spoke earlier this month about the many ways recent federal regulations and court decisions are affecting us here. Below is a transcript of our conversation, edited lightly for clarity.

Phoebe: You recently wrote about a $28 million grant from the Department of Energy to renovate two coal-fired plants in Roxboro, which is just north of the Triangle. Tell us what you learned.

Lisa: So there are a lot of intersecting occurrences happening in Person County, and none of it is coincidental, really. It’s all part of a larger plan to expand the fossil fuel infrastructure.

First this $28 million grant—Duke Energy is going to use it for upgrades and optimization, for these two coal-fired units. The $28 million injects more money into fossil fuels, but the real surprising aspect of this grant to me is that when Duke applied for it, they had to come up with matching funds, which is very common in grants. The matching funds, $44 million, comes from ratepayers. So, we’re paying with our electricity bills as ratepayers and we’re paying with our tax dollars. That’s money that could be used for battery storage, energy efficiency, and other clean energy sources to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Instead we’re using it to prop up a very old coal plant. The Roxboro plant was built and began operating in 1966. There were a couple additions in ‘73 and ‘80, but it’s not a young plant. This also brings me to the larger context of Person County.

Person County is just north of Durham and the plant is on Hyco Lake. You can stand at an elementary school and see the smoke stacks from the elementary school. Duke is building two natural gas plants there at the same Roxboro plant. So at some point we’re going to have natural gas and coal burning at the same time, which is also a problem for fossil fuels and the climate.

The other thing that’s happening is that Person County is the epicenter, at least in that part of the state, for a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure. There’s a new natural gas pipeline that’s being built from the Roxboro plant west to Rockingham County by Enbridge, which is a Canadian natural gas company. There is a huge 25 million gallon liquified natural gas facility also in Person County, and a Microsoft data center is going in just south of the Roxboro plant.

One thing that’s important to know is that under state law, Duke and any publicly owned utility – Enbridge, for example – gets a guaranteed rate of return on their capital investment. So, if they build something, they get a guaranteed 10% return on their investment. It’s a lot more lucrative for Duke to build a billion dollar plant or, however much it’s going to cost to build these new natural gas plants, than it is to install a solar utility or to procure clean energy. There’s a financial incentive for them to keep building fossil fuels.

Phoebe: Last fall, you wrote about the announcement by Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin, to roll back limits on forever chemicals, including GenX, which is a huge problem in the Cape Fear River watershed. I gather these new standards are taking effect this summer. What does this mean for communities who rely on the Cape Fear River for their drinking water?

Lisa: We’re in year nine—since June 2017—of it being publicly known that GenX and other forever chemicals were in Wilmington’s public drinking water and in the Cape Fear River, as well as in the drinking water of other nearby communities in Brunswick County. And that doesn’t even count the private wells which are not regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

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What the rollback means is that nine years later public and private water utilities, like the Durham public water utility or AquaNorth Carolina, which would be a private utility, no longer have to treat their drinking water to keep the levels of GenX under 10 parts per trillion. It sounds infinitesimal. GenX is toxic and that’s why you have such low levels. Wilmington has already voluntarily spent tens of millions of dollars to remove GenX and a lot of PFAS, or at least reduce them in the drinking water, and that cost was passed on to ratepayers. Durham is doing the same thing. We’re going to be paying more for water.

But what this rollback means is that other utilities, maybe really small ones who don’t have the money or the willpower or the clout to treat their water because it takes an advanced treatment system, don’t have to comply. They can continue to expose their customers to high levels of GenX. And there are a few other chemicals in the ruling, but Gen X is the one that we would know the most about here.

Advocates have fought for a long time to get these drinking water standards. I was there in Fayetteville in April of 2024 when (then-EPA Administrator Michale Regan] announced the maximum contaminant level standards in drinking water — and people were beside themselves. Finally, something had happened after all these years of advocating. But now they’re rolled back. Industry has a lot of sway in the new EPA.

Phoebe: Some forever chemicals have also found their way into drinking water at two elementary schools outside of Fayetteville and into private wells. That’s coming up in a federal trial that you’re covering next month. Can you tell us about that?

Lisa:. I don’t like sitting on hard benches all day, but I do love covering trials. So, what’s going to happen? This lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2018 and 2020 by residents of North Carolina whose drinking water has been contaminated with GenX and other types of forever chemicals that they alleged had originated from Chemours. It’ll be a jury trial for damages related to the fact that their drinking water has been contaminated and possibly their health jeopardized. It’s a bellwether lawsuit. It could set precedents for similar lawsuits elsewhere that Chemours has contaminated the drinking water.

Earlier this year, Chemours petitioned Judge James Dever to seal tens of thousands of pages of documents saying they were proprietary or contain confidential material. And he briefly did allow them to be sealed and then the plaintiff’s lawyers said and some other interveners said, “ No. You can’t seal those,” and petitioned him to unseal them. Which he did. There are a few redactions, but they’re largely intact…. I’ve gotten through about half of them. And these are ones that Chemours did not want to see daylight. And the takeaway so far from what I’ve read is that Chemours went to great lengths to greenwash and massage the messaging about the risks of these compounds.

Phoebe: Let’s turn to a 2023 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that rolled back protections for wetlands. It can take a long time to figure out the impact of these kinds of far-reaching decisions. Can you tell us what you learned reporting your recent story about wetlands and flooding in North Carolina?

Lisa: It’s long been scientifically known that wetlands are nature’s way of controlling flooding. They filter pollutants. They perform an immense amount of environmental good. They’re homes for critters. They have a special place in my heart because they look dead, but when you start looking in the water, you see all the life.

What [Sackett v. EPA] did is limit what type of wetland can be regulated to something with an obvious connection to a waterway. What that doesn’t account for is that there’s a whole world beneath our feet where these wetlands can have these kinds of connections in the groundwater. And so this ruling completely ignored the science of this really key hydrological connection.

What that has turned out to be is we have an increase in flood risk and in flood insurance claims according to a study that was done out of UNC Chapel Hill. The study was co-written by the Environmental Defense Fund, which is a pretty centrist environmental advocate. However, it was peer reviewed and no industry paid for the study.

What it found was that North Carolina, even before Sackett, lost 52,000 acres of wetlands from 1985 to 2023. It also said that at risk in North Carolina is 4.6 billion dollars, B with a B, in flood mitigation benefits. The takeaway is we’re going to pay for this. Meaning if your house gets flooded, which we know in Tropical Depression Chantal flooded places that had never flooded before, we are going to see higher premiums for those who do have flood insurance and we’re going to see higher losses for those who don’t.

Phoebe: You mentioned Tropical Depression Chantal, almost a year ago. That storm caused massive flooding in the Triangle. At least six people lost their lives. This year, we’re in a drought across most of the state, so we’re not really thinking about flooding right now. But what’s going on with the recovery from Chantal? And big picture, what’s going on with our summer weather this year?

Lisa: Even though it was declared a disaster area by the Trump administration, those kinds of funds just kind of leak out. They’re not getting where they need to go quickly. They didn’t even before, but now it’s even slower if you can imagine it. There are still people hurting from Chantal.

It’s ironic because this year we’re having a completely different problem. Durham and I think all the way west to Greensboro is in exceptional drought….At this point, we’re under stage two water restrictions. In Durham, we have 95 days of premium water left. After that, we have to start going into the less premium water, including a quarry, which it’ll cost more to treat the water from those secondary sources because they’re not as pristine. We are in big trouble and the heat has been phenomenal. It’s been a very dry hot summer, and you have to wonder where the water’s going to come from. Especially if you have data centers that are plugged into the aquifer or getting surface water as their source of water to cool all those computers. There’s just an enormous amount of demand and right now and not enough supply.

Phoebe: The weather feels so much more extreme than it used to be 20 years ago. It gets us back to our discussion of fossil fuels, right?

Lisa: Yes, it all is linked. The more fossil fuels we burn and put greenhouse gases in the air, then the planet warms and or the weather gets more extreme and then we run our air conditioners and then we burn fossil fuels to run the air conditioner. It’s just this vicious cycle.

Phoebe: One of the things you do as an environmental reporter is you keep up with lots and lots of data. Can you tell us what kind of data you’re looking at right now and why?

Lisa: I just saw this great census report. I love data. I could just look at it all day long. And the census says that 113,000 North Carolina households, which is more than people, it’s a household that could be a household of four people, have no air conditioning whatsoever. Seven of the top 10 counties without air conditioning are in the mountains. Although it still gets hot in Buncombe County. But Guilford, Mecklenburg, and Forsyth, they’re all in the top ten. And if you don’t have air conditioning and you live in a city where there’s a heat island, that is a serious public health emergency. If you’re elderly and you don’t have air conditioning, you’re at risk of death, a higher risk of heart attack and dehydration and all the problems that come with just aging and your intolerance to heat. So, that’s one thing I’m looking at.

The other thing that I’m looking at is [the EPA] is planning to roll back the emissions testing requirement for passenger vehicles of a certain age in 19 counties in North Carolina. The reason for the testing is to reduce the amount of emissions going into the air from tail pipes. I have asked the State Highway Patrol for how many cars get these emissions tests each year because Zeldin is saying it’s going to save us $20 million and so much time and the air is going to remain clean. I’d like to know how that’s going to happen.

Phoebe: What other environmental stories are you paying attention to over the summer?

Lisa: One thing is Enbridge, the natural gas company, which is based in Canada, and it bought PSNC of North Carolina. It plans to build a 28-mile pipeline through southern Chatham County, and through pristine forest land. It’s going to cross the Haw River. It’s going to cross several major, important waterways. I was at a meeting recently and Chatham County is ready to lie down in front of the bulldozers. It’s a serious issue down there and there’s a huge amount of public opposition and Chatham County is organized.

I’m also watching the effects of the drought. We still don’t have a state budget. We’re waiting for that to come out. We’ve been over a thousand days without a state budget. I’m also curious about some energy policy bills that have passed the House but haven’t come out of the Senate yet. There’s some issues having to do with forever chemicals in landfills. In terms of the data centers, you could write a data center story a day, but I think it would start to numb people out. But there are two important pieces of litigation going on, one in Chatham County over a data center that would also be a crypto mine and it would be 750 megawatts, which is enormous. To give you an idea of how big 750 megawatts Duke’s nuclear plant, the Shearon Harris plant is, is a thousand megawatts. So it’s just short of the power consumption of a nuke plant.

And then there’s another lawsuit being filed in Edgecombe County where a data center developer is upset that the Tarboro town board illegally denied their rezoning request. I’m doing a big project on contamination in parks. There are at least a dozen parks in North Carolina that were built on top of old landfills or incineration sites and now it’s time to clean them up because the contamination has been lead, arsenic stuff you don’t want your kids exposed to that. This is very very expensive to clean up, but what are you going to do? Not clean up your park?

We are grateful to Lisa for speaking with us. Read more of her work at Inside Climate News or on X: @lisasorg or Bluesky: @lisaosrg.bsky.social.

Consider subscribing to Inside Climate News, a nonprofit news organization. And if you found this conversation helpful to your understanding of how federal actions shape our state, share the link with friends and family and if you haven’t already, subscribe.

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Tech giants including Amazon, Google, Apple and META are turning to North Carolina for the massive data centers they need to power artificial intelligence that’s transforming every aspect of our lives.

By one industry count, North Carolina is home to 93 of these data centers, with dozens more in the works, covering hundreds of acres and costing hundreds of millions or more, potentially boosting the local property tax base. With 35 of these centers, Charlotte has the highest concentration in the state. Earlier this month, the city council there passed a moratorium on approving or considering new data centers, joining a groundswell of opposition that stretches from the Tennessee border where the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian Tribal Council passed a moratorium last month all the way to Edgecombe County in the east.

“This is not a partisan issue when it comes to protecting our neighborhoods across the city,” Charlotte councilmember Dimple Ajmera said earlier this month, according to reporting by The Charlotte Observer. “This is about clean air, clean water.”

National polling shows that Republicans and Democrats across the country oppose data centers in their communities, with Democrats more likely than Republicans to be “strongly” opposed. A recent poll by The Carolina Journal, published by the conservative think-tank John Locke Foundation, found that 78 percent of NC voters think data centers should generate their own energy. Another poll, by the Center for NC Politics at Catawba College, found that about two thirds of North Carolinians, whether they’re Democrats, Republicans or unaffiliated, are concerned about energy consumption for artificial intelligence. And more than half of North Carolinians believe that the development of AI is less important than renewable energy.

With lawmakers facing public pressure this election year, the NC Legislature took up a bill this month called the Ratepayer Protection Act that among its many provisions would require data centers to pay for the electrical infrastructure needed to run them, limit incentives local governments are allowed to pay to attract them, and prohibit companies from using eminent domain for the land they need. But as Lisa Sorg with Inside Climate News reports, the bill also undoes two decades of energy policy, delaying the retirement of coal-fired power plants and speeding up approval for nuclear power.

The scale and speed of construction has caught many of us by surprise. I wanted to better understand what state and local governments can do to regulate data centers and what role, if any, the federal government plays. Earlier this month, I turned to Jackson Ewing, the director of energy and climate policy at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University, for a crash course in energy policy.

Here are some big takeaways from our conversation:

• The data center boom creates the largest increase in demand for electricity in a generation. They also use enormous amounts of water.

• NC is attractive to tech companies for our relatively low electricity rates, reliable water supply and available land.

• The companies that are driving the boom are among the wealthiest in the world and could help pay to modernize our electrical grid.

• Because the electrical system is managed locally and regionally, regulation falls largely to state and local governments.

• If our government officials and tech companies act now, we have a chance to build a cleaner energy system that could slow climate change

The transcript of our conversation—edited for length and clarity—follows. If you find the discussion useful, please share the link with a friend or neighbor. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe. It’s free.

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Phoebe: Can you talk about the global forces driving this data-center boom that’s playing out in communities across our state?

Jackson : We see a really voracious appetite for computing power among some of the most capitalized companies in the history of the world. These are companies that are contributing to the majority of our country’s GDP growth right now. I’m talking about the Googles, the Metas, the Alphabets, and the new entrants like Anthropic, OpenAI, companies like Nvidia that are providing the chips that fuel this boom.

These companies are in competition with one another and are in competition with international competitors in large part, but not exclusively, from China. And so they view it as imperative that they are able to increase their computing power rapidly.

Phoebe: What makes North Carolina so attractive?

Jackson: There is relatively cheap electricity compared to some other parts of the country. I don’t want that to be taken out of context or appear as though I think that electricity prices in North Carolina are fine. They’ve certainly been increasing and that’s a challenge for many households and many businesses. But compared to parts of the northeast for example, compared to California for example, North Carolina’s electricity prices are viewed as affordable and the ability to access electricity in the state is also attractive compared to some other peers.

There’s also, again, relatively speaking, available land and there are different incentives and regulations in place that are viewed as pro business. North Carolina also has a growing population, strong financial and research and tech services. And so you put all this together and combine that with the fact that there is some proximity to where demand will be high from the large population centers along the eastern seaboard and you have a pretty attractive environment.

Phoebe: Some communities are encouraging data centers with incentives, but there’s been a groundswell of opposition driven in part by concern over power bills. Can you talk a little bit about whether these fears are warranted?

Jackson: The fear is warranted, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that those outcomes have to come to pass. They’re warranted because in a traditional regulated utility model, if we have to build a lot of new generation infrastructure and new wires in the forms of transmission and distribution wires to service that data center need, and we then collect up those costs and we go to our public utility commission here in North Carolina, and we say, “This is how much it’s cost us to build all this new power infrastructure right now. We’re going to take a profit margin on that, too, as the utility, so this is what the new rates should be for customers across the state.” If those rates are just spread broadly from those costs without any differentiation between what is the responsibility for these new data center loads, then absolutely that will lead to rate increases for other commercial and industrial customers. It will lead to rate increases for residential customers.

But there are ideas about how to prevent that kind of outcome and they’re not just purely hypothetical. These are ideas that are being put forward by the North Carolina Energy Task Force. These are ideas that are being explored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that attempt to have the data centers pay for that additional infrastructure that will service their loads and to keep that out of the larger rate-payer base and also to take some creative approaches to their operations that can lessen the impact on the broader energy system.

Phoebe: I want to come back to that later. The other concerns that you hear out of these public meetings is people are worried about water usage, noise, loss of farmland and other damage to the environment. What’s your assessment of those concerns?

Jackson: So data centers are water intensive in many ways, for cooling operations and beyond. There is variability there and I think that there is some progress in lowering cooling needs of some data centers with creative new approaches and new chip designs and things like that.

One thing that is quite clear is that the water demand makes site selection very important. It’s often the municipalities that are managing water systems and expected to build the infrastructure necessary to provide water. And so in some areas that can create a real challenge. In other areas it frankly won’t because of existing water resources. So that’s very site-specific.

Similarly, there is variance in how disruptive the noise is from data centers. Not all data centers are created equal…. Some of these campuses are going to be quite large and so it’s understandable that different communities might view this as not worth it to them to dedicate some of their land to a data center. Some people find them unsightly and that land could be used for other purposes, whether that be kept wild or used for farming or used for other commercial operations and so on and so forth.

These are choices that communities have the ability to influence if they don’t view the benefits in terms of tax revenues and jobs as worth the investment, giving up that level of land and the water and energy that’s needed to service them.

That leads to another complaint that we hear with data centers, which is that they are not engines for employment on the same level that traditional commercial and industrial energy, land, and water users are. So, you’re not going to get as many jobs out of them. You’ll get a boost in construction jobs on the front end, but in terms of the operations when they’re going on, there’s justifiable criticisms that we’re talking about dozens of people to run a huge data center, compared to much higher ratio of employees to the kind of power and resource use for an automotive plant, for example.

Phoebe: What’s your assessment of how effective moratoriums and zoning restrictions are in regulating this industry?

Jackson: Moratoria and permitting and zoning and siting restrictions at local levels can be effective in keeping data centers from being built in those locations. I think they’ll get built in other locations and the companies building data centers recognize this and they’re just going to venue-shop until they find the advantageous places that ticks a lot of the boxes that they need in order to get these operations off the ground. And again, these are companies with really, really large balance sheets that have a strong track record of getting things done relatively rapidly. And so the forces there are quite strong. My position is that broadbased, data-center moratoria across the country might slow down construction but are unlikely to prevent it in a major way.

You also marry that with a real federal government interest in the global leadership that the U.S. currently has, but by a relatively thin margin in AI. It views [that leadership] as really important to things like national defense, to economic competitiveness, and by extension to geopolitical power. So there are going to be federal government incentives and pressure to ensure that what it views as critical infrastructure for building out AI happens in the United States.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the federal government is in position to come to community or county X in North Carolina and say, “You have to do this.” These communities do still have the ability to say no. But in aggregate, the forces behind getting the data centers built are stronger than the forces behind preventing them.

Phoebe: The North Carolina legislature is just now debating a bill called The Rate Payer Protection Act that requires data centers to pay higher electricity rates, limits incentives from local governments, speeds up the move to nuclear power and at the same time slows the phase-out of coal-fired plants. What do you make of the approach NC lawmakers are taking?

Jackson: The pieces of the Rate Payer Protection Act that require data centers to pay rates that cover more of their operations and prevent those rates from being spread across other businesses and residences are a positive development. I think those are the sort of solutions that we need.

The main thing I take issue with is language that ties the retirement of coal-fired plants to the approval of new nuclear power stations. I think that’s a misguided policy. Coal-fired power stations across the country and across the state have been progressively being retired for multiple decades at this point and the influx of data centers is not such that that should be rolled back, particularly in multiple cases where our state utility, Duke Energy, has planned for years to retire particular coal-fired power stations and was prepared to do so and this is in many ways a disruption to their operations that they didn’t really ask for. This bill goes a step further and ties the phase-out to nuclear development and that creates a lot of uncertainty because we don’t know when nuclear will ultimately come online.

Speeding up some of the licensing and permitting for nuclear to help meet this new load growth could have some virtuous results from a climate and a local pollution and affordability perspective. I also think that we can service this load through some expansion of gas-fired plants without having to wait a decade for nuclear energy and without having to depend on the perpetuation of coal-fired power. We can also service these data centers much of it through more aggressive policies on renewables combined with storage. And we can service it more effectively through requiring or incentivizing the data centers to be flexible in their operations.

Phoebe: Earlier, you talked about creative approaches to the way data centers operate that could reduce energy use. Can you explain what you mean?

Jackson: The flexibility I just mentioned is an approach to demand response that is specific to data centers and that could enable us to get more energy out of our existing infrastructure. When we build our power infrastructure, we build it to be able to service when our demand is the highest that it ever is and we even go a bit above that because you need reliability, so you need some redundancy in the system in case something unexpected happens. As a result, we are building infrastructure for the hottest day in July or August, at the time of the day when everyone’s coming home and blasting their air conditioning and turning on all their appliances or for the coldest day in February, when we have these major increases in our heating energy usage. That means that for the vast majority of the year we are using much less electricity than is available in the power grid.

Flexibility in data centers explains how they can shift their operations to be responsive to how much demand for electricity is occurring elsewhere in the broader system. So on that hot day in July or that cold day in February, a data center might be compelled through regulation to curtail their operations to do less computing and as a result use less energy and allow for the grid to continue to operate reliably without having to build all of the new generation and transmission and distribution that would meet all of that load on that hottest day in July.

They can do that in a few ways. One, they can just reduce the operations themselves or they could shift those operations to elsewhere in their broader network. So when the power stress is particularly high in one location, maybe that computing that is required based on what their customers want can happen somewhere else. A data center can plan some of its operations to happen at times when use elsewhere on the grid is lower, so for things like large-language-model training, when you’re going to have really high energy use, they can plan that in advance at a time when other energy uses are going to be low. Now the tech companies will tell you it’s not quite that simple, but there is a possibility there.

And the other thing they can do is to have more power generation ability on site. So let’s say the grid includes really large batteries or some backup generation, like a small natural-gas unit on site. So at times when power is abundant, you charge up your really large batteries. At times when power is stressed through demand elsewhere on the grid, you use that battery storage that you’ve built up.

The incentive for them is that by operating more flexibly, they can get online quicker. That’s why many of these companies are willing to entertain these sorts of arrangements where they don’t have constant access to all the power they want at every particular second of the day, but rather they are willing to act flexibly through one of those pathways I just described.

Phoebe: What you’re recommending, then, is that NC lawmakers require that data centers have storage on site and backup generators on site and operate in this flexible manner?

Jackson: Yes, absolutely. We can create flexibility tariffs, which essentially is a rate structure that incentivizes these data centers to be flexible or you could have flexibility mandates to curtail operations if we face major demands elsewhere on the grid. You can also mandate or incentivize more what we call “bring your own capacity” that says in order to connect, you have to have a certain amount of storage of backup generation that doesn’t drain the grid.

And then one thing that’s a little less tested but I think it’s quite promising is that you can create arrangements whereby the data center doesn’t just come in and myopically try to service its own load. It actually invests in energy generation, transmission, distribution, storage elsewhere in the grid that will service other customers and as a result could lower their electricity bills.

It could be a force for having cleaner generation if they’re investing in, for example, solar and storage, and also for their own self-interested reasons, reducing the grid burden of their own operations because they’re creating power elsewhere ... Ultimately, we could take this load-growth moment, which has a lot of potential risks, and turn it into something that uses this major capital influx into the power system for positive ends.

Phoebe: That sounds very optimistic.

Jackson: I don’t mean to sound naive or that this is a panacea, but I also want to be clear that the kind of arrangement that I just mentioned is happening in multiple places around the country… They’re being pursued in New Jersey. They’re being pursued in Minnesota. North Carolina is at this moment in a somewhat earlier part of the journey on that, and so I certainly think they are possible and that there are no particular structural or kind of physical characteristics of the state that would preclude them.

Phoebe: What are some things that the federal government could be doing to regulate the industry and encourage the kind of flexibility you’re talking about?

Jackson: If we wanted to rank the most important forces that are relevant here, I think that we should start with the private sector, with the businesses that are driving the growth and with states and beyond that to regional transmission organizations (RTO’s) that cover a given service territory all before we get to the federal government and that’s largely because our approach to power systems in the United States is distributed across different states rather than being nationalized. We don’t have a coherent national grid.

Some of what’s happening is the Department of Energy put out an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking that was about policies and regulations that it wanted to see [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] execute on large loads and it does contain a provision about flexibility. It’s less vocal on having lower carbon generation sources, as you would imagine given this administration’s position on energy generation. But it does instruct FERC to try to implement regulation that addresses some of the other challenges with data centers. Now there’s a jurisdictional question about where first authority starts and stops, and many states have seen this as an infringement on their own jurisdictional power and so that is going to be in various ways disputed, but it is something that approaches a more national set of policies and principles that could guide some data center development issues.

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I am grateful to Jackson for sharing his expertise. You can read his work at the Nicholas Institute here. We’ll be following the Ratepayer Protection Act as it winds its way through the N.C. General Assembly this session and keeping up with any rules issued by FERC. In the meantime, if you have more questions about data centers and what they mean for your community, drop us a note at downfromdc@gmail.com.

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This week we are reprinting an article from KFF Health News about how one rural community in eastern NC is coping after its hospital closed and why the measures Congress passed to support healthcare in exactly such places aren’t doing the job.

Trump’s $50B rural health bet meets a healthcare desert in North Carolina

By Sarah Jane Tribble and Amanda Seitz

WILLIAMSTON, N.C. — Two years after her brother’s death, Debra Pierce still wonders whether the 50-year-old would have survived his heart attack if her local hospital hadn’t closed.

“The sad thing is we’ll never know if he could have been saved that night or not, because we don’t have a higher level of care in this county,” Pierce said as she stood outside the mobile home where she last hugged her brother.

Emergency crews from a neighboring town worked on Stanley Sears for a half hour but couldn’t revive him for the long drive to the closest hospital, records show.

In the tall grass — which would be mowed if Sears were still alive — Pierce swiped through the photos on her phone. She stopped at a picture that showed Sears smiling. Pierce chuckled and then sighed: “Bless him.”

The local hospital had closed a year before Sears’ death, leaving behind a gutted healthcare system. Martin County does not have paramedics on its ambulances, and it can be 20 miles or more to the closest — and often overcrowded — emergency rooms.

The healthcare gaps in Martin County illustrate the finite reach of a $50 billion rural health fund that Republicans crafted to strengthen support for President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending measure, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, last year. Though the cash has not been doled out, Republican candidates in competitive midterm elections — including the closely watched battle for the congressional district that encompasses Martin County — are casting the fund as a lifeline that will shore up critical rural health services across America.

The money has been highly anticipated in North Carolina, where most residents live in rural counties. Pierce, a Republican who blames county officials for the hospital closure, said she has faith Trump will help them. “Old man’s doing his job up in there,” she said.

On paper, Martin County — home to about 22,000 people — looks like a top contender to receive at least some of the $213 million that’s been earmarked for North Carolina.

Yet County Manager Drew Batts said it won’t be the answer for his residents.

“The $50 billion is not something that is specifically going to help our situation,” Batts said as he walked into the shuttered hospital in April. “It’s not going to help us get this place reopened.”

Martin County won’t get direct relief from Trump’s rural health fund — because its hospital isn’t open. North Carolina is distributing the money among existing health and social service organizations. Plus, federal regulators set limits on how much can be spent on construction and building renovations.

‘We Can Only Pray’

Martin General Hospital closed abruptly in 2023, surprising employees and shocking patients, who had to be wheeled out on stretchers and transported elsewhere to finish treatment. The closure even stunned local elected leaders, who say the company operating the county-owned hospital, Quorum Health, did not notify them it intended to shut down operations and file for bankruptcy. Quorum spokesperson Lisa Anderson said the company had told county commissioners of the hospital’s ongoing financial challenges.

Politicians have spent the years since trying to reopen the hospital, with county taxpayers pouring an estimated $2.9 million into maintenance, utilities, and other costs in the hopes of resuming operations, Batts said.

The county is now considering spending at least $1.5 million, he said, to create two higher-level paramedic units with quick-response vehicles, specially equipped with electrocardiogram equipment or other “advanced lifesaving support.”

Pierce said she is praying the county can add paramedics and reopen the hospital.

“There’s some answered prayers happening every day,” she said. “So, we can only pray and hope, you know?”

‘They Just Want To Not Die’

With its nine hospitals, the region’s largest health system is ECU Health, connected to East Carolina University. The system has become a de facto safety net for 29 counties. Batts and Brian Floyd, the Greenville-based system’s chief operating officer, have lobbied state and federal lawmakers, walking them through the shuttered hospital and asking for help.

“It’s a real healthcare crisis that has already proven itself to have lost lives that perhaps didn’t have to be lost,” Floyd said. “They just want to not die because there’s nowhere to go when you have an emergency.”

Eleisa Ann Evans drove 2½ hours from a small town near the Outer Banks on a recent evening so her aunt could get care at an ECU Health ER in Greenville. Once there, Evans said, staff told her to leave her 79-year-old aunt in the waiting room and wait outside because of capacity issues.

Evans said she was outraged at the way the staff treated her. She said she had been standing behind her aunt’s wheelchair while inside and “wasn’t using nobody’s chair.”

With Martin General gone, all the surrounding counties are “also in jeopardy,” Floyd said. “No one knows what to do” with that large of a healthcare “desert,” he said.

What healthcare is left in the county includes one urgent care center, run by a private company, and a nonprofit health clinic, operated by Agape Health Services, which accepts patients from five counties and plans to build another primary care clinic to meet demand.

ECU Health signed a letter of intent last year to reopen Martin General as a rural emergency hospital that would provide outpatient care as well as an ER. Under the terms of the deal, Martin County would pay to refurbish the hospital, and the North Carolina General Assembly would have to give ECU Health $210 million, of which $150 million would pay for the construction of a new inpatient tower at ECU’s Beaufort Hospital.

The health system, through its affiliate Access East, won a portion of North Carolina’s $213 million first-year payout from the rural fund. But the federal money can’t be used to reopen Martin General, Floyd said.

The five-year Rural Health Transformation Program is slated to be delivered in $10 billion annual increments to states, which applied and competed for the money.

North Carolina’s plan creates a hub-and-spoke model that allots money to six large regional leads, including nonprofits such as Access East. Those hubs will distribute money to local entities and coordinate broad initiatives such as improving primary care and fortifying the healthcare workforce, as well as developing “digital solutions,” according to the state’s hub application.

An Election Issue

The lack of emergency care in the region has emerged as a top talking point in a close U.S. House race between Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat who represented the district when Martin General closed and is seeking his third term, and Republican Laurie Buckhout.

The rural health fund was added at the last minute in 2025 to win votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade — cuts that are projected to hit rural hospitals and clinics especially hard. Rural health executives say the fund won’t come close to offsetting those losses.

Matt Mercer, a spokesperson for the North Carolina Republican Party, called the rural fund a “once in-a-generation opportunity” for the state.

But U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, who was one of three Republican senators to vote against the bill — and who announced shortly before the final vote that he planned to retire from Congress — warned of devastating consequences ahead for healthcare in his state.

Buckhout, who declined an interview, plans to attack Davis — a vulnerable incumbent whose district was recently redrawn to favor GOP candidates — for voting against the bill.

“Martin County lost its hospital on his watch, and he still opposed the funding meant to help communities like it,” Buckhout campaign spokesperson Stephen Gallagher said in a statement to KFF Health News. The campaign did not respond to additional queries about her plans for healthcare access, if elected.

Davis, who signed a letter from lawmakers in support of North Carolina’s rural health fund application, said the money “is essentially putting a band-aid on a much, much broader situation that needs dire help.” He has introduced legislation that would increase Medicaid reimbursements for rural hospitals, though it has not moved forward.

During recent testimony on Capitol Hill in Washington, ECU Health CEO Michael Waldrum said his system expects to lose a billion dollars over the next 10 years from the looming Medicaid cuts.

Overnight Waits for Emergency Care

The region’s emergency rooms offer a stark glimpse of a healthcare system in crisis.

Martin General’s ER treated about 11,000 patients annually before it closed, according to state data. A sign still hangs in the staff break room showing that 23 patients were seen in the ER the day it closed.

ECU Health, which owns all but one of the rural hospitals around Martin General, reported a 132% increase in its daily ER visits since the hospital’s closure. The company’s nearly 1,000-bed hospital in Greenville, about 40 minutes from Williamston, is the state’s only Level 1 trauma center east of Raleigh.

The Greenville hospital’s median patient ER wait and treatment time was nearly 4½ hours, according to the most recent federal data. That’s longer than 96% of thousands of hospitals reporting nationwide. The wait times “don’t reflect poor care,” ECU Health spokesperson Brian Wudkwych said in an emailed statement. He said the system’s ERs treat nearly 300,000 patients annually.

While the system has seen an increase in Martin County patients, the wait times primarily stem from shortages of inpatient and behavioral health beds, Wudkwych said.

Floyd, the ECU Health chief operating officer, said many rural patients who arrive at the system’s ERs have multiple chronic conditions that require longer visits. Often doctors start treating one problem and then find the patient’s “blood sugar is out of control, your hypertension is far out of control,” he said.

ECU staff encourage people who are not too sick to skip Greenville and, instead, seek care at one of the system’s community hospitals, which aren’t as busy, Floyd said.

A security officer guarded the Greenville emergency department’s doors on two nights in April. The “capacity notice” sign near the entrance meant family members of patients had to wait in cars or on benches outside.

“We’ve only been here six hours,” Tonya Miles said after bringing her mother for a potential blood clot in her leg. The family had left the day before after waiting for two hours, because her mom “wasn’t prepared” for such a delay in treatment, Miles said.

On another evening, Olivia Lewis said she had brought her mother two nights previously and left without care after their wait stretched from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“She tore off her hospital bracelet and said: ‘I’m out. I’m done,’” she said. Now, they were back.

On a recent Friday in Martin County, Vannessa Little was sitting at a McDonald’s with her kids just down the street from the closed hospital. Little pointed to one of her girls and wondered how her care would have been different if the hospital had been open.

Her daughter, then 6, suffered severe burns over 30% of her body in 2024, and the journey to treatment was “just crazy,” Little said. An ambulance arrived at her Williamston home from neighboring Bertie County to transport them to ECU’s Greenville ER.

“That was a long time,” Little said of the 30-mile drive. The girl was ultimately airlifted more than 100 miles to Chapel Hill. Little said she hadn’t heard of Trump’s rural health investment. “The only changes that people are making is they’re taking away everything.”

She voted against Trump in 2024 and said she didn’t think she would vote this year.

“It’s a waste of my time.”

This story was republished under a Creative Commons License. Like many of the news outlets we rely on here at DFDC, KFF Health News is a nonprofit organization. Read them here, share their work and consider a donation.

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We’ve been focused on politics lately, and we’ll continue to be in the lead-up to this November’s midterm election. But this week, we are sharing some other stories from and about North Carolina.

How extremist groups gained influence during Hurricane Helene

60 Minutes sent legendary correspondent Leslie Stahl to western North Carolina this year to report on how militias and white supremacist groups took advantage of the chaos following Hurricane Helene. They showed up in devastated mountain communities to help with disaster relief, part of an intentional strategy to present a softer image and spread disinformation about the federal government.

The segment, which aired May 3, included interviews with Henderson County Sheriff Lowell Griffin and with experts on hate crimes and misinformation. Stahl also talked with the leader of one of the groups about the strategy. “We hand out flyers, you know. If somebody wants to contact us later, that’s fine,” Robert Rundo, co-founder of the Active Club, told her. “But just us showing up changes somebody’s opinion, someone’s mind so the next time when they put something out and they say ‘These evil guys,’ they say ‘Wait a second. That’s the guy who came when my house was on fire and helped me out.’” The presence of armed militias after Hurricane Helene was previously reported by Jordan Green, a Greensboro-based journalist who writes for Raw Story.

National forests expected to lose protection

The Trump administration has faced backlash over its plans to repeal a regulation that blocks road construction and logging in 58 million acres of wilderness. That includes some of the most pristine parts of the state, according to Blue Ridge Public Radio, which reports that 172,000 acres within the Pisgah and Nantahala forests would open for roads if the rule is rescinded this summer as expected.

Heath Cartree, a fishing guide near Brevard, told BPR that spending time in the wilderness can be a spiritual experience for him and his clients. “Part of engaging with the woods and the forest and the wilderness and getting away from society is engaging with both,” he said. “Because they’re both part of you.” The rule change could also open up parts of the Croatan National Forest to roads, according to reporting last fall by The Coastal Review.

Speaking of federal regulations, The Coastal Review also recently reported on an obscure rule change by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to overturn speed limits that now prevent collisions between ships and endangered right whales. “These gentle giants called our North Carolina waters home long before our coastal towns had names,” Michelle Bivens writes. “Today, though, these critically endangered whales are facing a crisis they can’t outswim — and a recent move by the federal government threatens to make a dire situation even worse.”

Fewer North Carolinians signed up for ACA insurance this year

When Congress allowed subsidies for health insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act to expire at the end of last year, experts predicted that millions of Americans would drop their coverage. They were right. According to NC Local, 214,000 fewer North Carolinians signed up for ACA insurance this year than last year. That decline marks the sharpest drop of any state in the county.

Health policy experts predict that more Americans will drop their coverage over the course of the year. Costs for some North Carolinians have increased by 30 percent or more. Last year, 975,000 North Carolinians, or 9 percent of residents, bought their health insurance through the ACA.

The two Duke alums shaping humanities funding

Most of the time, we explore how decisions made in DC affect our communities and institutions here in N.C. But sometimes influence works the other way. The Assembly reported this month on two Duke University alumni and another scholar with ties to Duke who are bringing conservative principles to grant-making decisions they make as board members for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

It’s a complicated story about the interplay among academia, money and influence. You may remember that Trump fired most of the staff at the NEH last year and reduced its advisory board to four members. According to The Assembly’s reporting, of the four remaining board members, three are the ones with N.C. ties who form the conservative majority. Among recently approved NEH grants is $2 million for President Trump’s archway across from the Lincoln Memorial.

N.C. sues over federal student loans

NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined in a lawsuit against the Department of Education to block cuts to student loans for degrees in nursing and other health professions, according to reporting by WUNC. “This is going to have a dramatic effect on the ability to afford an education in North Carolina in these medical fields,” Jackson said at a news conference earlier this month. Jackson has been part of a national effort by Democrats to block Trump’s agenda through the courts. As The News & Observer reported recently, Jackson has filed an estimated 20 lawsuits against the Trump administration, usually joining a coalition of other Democratic attorneys general.

How a N.C. woman was acquitted of killing the jailer who raped her

I have been fascinated by the story of Joan Little ever since I learned about her while researching my book, Beyond Innocence, The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt. While she was jailed in Beaufort County in 1974, she was raped by one of the guards. She fought back, stabbed him to death and fled. Long before the #MeToo and the Black Lives Matter movements, a jury believed this young Black woman was acting in self-defense against her White attacker -- and acquitted her. That verdict was big news at the time.

Now a documentary is revisiting her story. Free Joan Little, which was screened at the RiverRun film festival in Winston-Salem last month, will be screened again June 6 at the Charlotte Black Film Festival. If you can’t make the screening, you can read about the film in The Assembly’s Q&A with filmmaker Yoruba Richen.

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The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling late last month that set off another round of major changes to the electoral landscape with just months left before the midterm election. That ruling made congressional districts drawn to concentrate Black voters and benefit Black candidates – a longstanding practice under the Voting Rights Act – unconstitutional. Many southern states, among them Louisiana, where the case originated, Tennessee, Alabama, and South Carolina, are now rushing to redraw their maps. In some cases, that’s happening even after primaries have taken place.

North Carolina isn’t likely to join our neighboring states in the race to act on that ruling, says Lynn Bonner, who reports on elections for NC Newsline. The Republican-led legislature here already passed a set of maps designed to favor the GOP more heavily.

“There is not much more to do on the congressional level in North Carolina for Republicans, but I think where the action is going to be is at the municipal level, how counties and cities and towns might change their districts to limit Black representation,” Bonner told me in a recent conversation.

President Trump cheered the Supreme Court decision moments after it was announced. “That’s the kind of ruling I like,” he said.

It follows – and bolsters – his own more direct efforts to shape the electoral picture in a year when his relatively low popularity threatens his party’s chances of keeping control of Congress. In addition to pressing GOP state lawmakers to redraw congressional maps, Trump continues to press for more federal control over elections. He recently issued an executive order to limit mail-in ballots, which he falsely claims are part of rampant voter fraud across the country. That executive order has been challenged in court.

The new SCOTUS ruling, those Trump efforts, and similar efforts by the North Carolina GOP add up to a host of changes and potential confusion for voters heading into the 2026 midterms. We normally try to break things down in simple terms for DFDC readers, but with all that going on, we asked Bonner to wade into the nitty gritty with us. We are sharing a transcript of our conversation (which has been lightly edited for length and clarity) below.

Lynn said in our conversation that these matters move fast, and she was right. Just days after we spoke, Republicans in the NC Senate introduced a bill to shorten the early voting period in October to 10 days from 17.

We hope this information helps, but we want to know what’s still on your mind after you read. Send us your questions about voting and elections to downfromdc@gmail.com.

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Phoebe: States across the Southeast are scrambling to redraw their congressional districts now that the Supreme Court has ruled against districts that make it easier for Black candidates to win elections, a decision that critics say guts the Voting Rights Act. Partisan gerrymandering remains legal and because Black voters tend to be registered Democrats, it can be hard to untangle race and party affiliation. How do you expect this to play out in North Carolina?

Lynn: Before that decision, I asked a voting rights lawyer whether North Carolina would go back and redistrict again, and he said no, that Republicans had pretty much done all they could do to maximize their chances in North Carolina.

You remember last year, Republicans redrew a district in northeast and eastern North Carolina that is now represented by Don Davis, a Black congressman. When that district was challenged in court, [state] Senator Ralph Hise, elections committee chairman, said, well, we did it so that we could get another Republican seat. There is not much more to do on the congressional level in North Carolina for Republicans, but I think where the action is going to be is at the municipal level, how counties and cities and towns might change their districts to limit Black representation. If we see a lot of counties or cities going to at-large elections and eliminating wards or districts, that might be where all of the action is.

Phoebe: Another factor that makes it tough for some North Carolinians to vote is the state’s voter ID requirement. The NAACP has challenged that requirement, a federal judge, Loretta Biggs, recently denied the lawsuit. Can you talk about the status of NC’s voter ID requirement?

Lynn: The NAACP is appealing, but it’s doubtful anything is going to happen on the appeals court level before November. So practically, voter ID is in effect. The NAACP was challenging it based on the Voting Rights Act and a couple of constitutional amendments. Given what has happened in the meantime with the U.S. Supreme Court and the Voting Rights Act, I have questions about whether that appeal is going to be successful but nobody can predict what the Supreme Court is going to do.

Phoebe: Speaking of voter ID, there’s a referendum on the ballot in November to amend the N.C. Constitution to require voter ID. Since we already have Voter ID, what’s the story behind that?

Lynn: Well, this is a constitutional amendment to amend a constitutional amendment we already have. Voters passed a constitutional amendment for voter ID back in 2018 and this would change that to say that voter ID is required even if you’re not voting in person. So people who are voting by absentee ballot have to show ID, which they already do. I asked one of the bill sponsors, why not just change the law to say that? And his response was, well if we make it an amendment then it would be harder for future Legislatures to change, which is true.

I’d also like to point out that we are in a midterm election year where the president’s party is expected to lose seats. I think we can expect to see some things on the ballot in November that would be of particular interest in driving Republicans to vote even though they might be kind of be iffy about voting and voter ID is one of those things. It passed with 55% in 2018 … There’s also going to be a tax cap constitutional amendment on the ballot. There are others being discussed about the right to farm … If I were a cynical person, I would say maybe this is really about driving Republicans to the polls.

Phoebe: What else is the Legislature doing this session that could affect voting in November?

Lynn: Senate leader Phil Berger has talked about how the early voting period is too long. That’s something that we hear a lot about from Republican leaders. On the federal level, a piece of legislation called the SAVE Act would require people to show documented proof of citizenship to vote. That has stalled in the Senate, but there are, I guess, about a half dozen states that have passed their own versions of this law. There’s always this murmuring in the background that North Carolina might try to do this. But we’re getting close to November and we have not yet seen a bill like that. But anything can pop up. Legislators save a lot of the controversial stuff for late in the session and put a lot of it into the budget where people can’t suggest changes. It’s hard to say now what they’re going to do, if anything, but I always have my eyes open.

Phoebe: The N.C. Board of Elections, led by Republicans as are all the local boards, regulates how elections are run. You’ve reported on a number of new rules that will affect who can vote, whether their ballot will be counted and what local boards of elections can do. Can you explain the implications of some of these new rules?

Bonner: These are proposed rules and the public comment period for them has just opened and will be open until July 14th, so anyone who wants to comment on these rules can do so. The board will collect public comment and hold a public hearing before voting on the proposed changes. Those changes must then be approved by a body called the Rules Review Commission before they go into effect. The biggest one makes it easier for local boards of election to throw out a ballot when a person does not show voter ID. The way it works now is someone who doesn’t have an ID for some reason can file an exemption form saying, well I was not able to get a ride to the Board of Elections before voting to get a free ID or I couldn’t get to the DMV to get an ID. I saw one exemption from a person who said their car was repossessed with their license in the glove compartment so they were not able to retrieve it to show at the polls. As it is now, if an election board does not believe the reason, they can hold a hearing. In order to actually throw out that ballot, you need a unanimous vote of all five board members. What the change does is require only a majority, so only three board members would have to vote to throw out a ballot. I wonder what the standard is going to be for investigating whether someone has told the truth on their exemption form. There’s another proposed rule that would ban bullhorns or amplification outside the polling place. In 2024, there was a national group that had DJs at polling places as a kind of get-out-the-vote, just a party atmosphere kind of thing.

Phoebe: It’s already illegal for someone who is not a citizen to register to vote, but you recently reported on new rules about reviewing the registration rolls for non-citizens and removing those names.

Lynn: The proposed rules would set out a process for what would happen if someone was flagged as someone without citizenship. Late last year, the board just took up Homeland Security’s offer to feed all the voter registration data into a Homeland Security database that’s usually used to check for citizenship to see if people are eligible for public benefits or licenses. This database is being repurposed for checking voter registrations but the question is what happens if this system flags somebody? The concern about that has been from the beginning that this federal database produces a lot of errors and states that started using this first found that a number of people were flagged who were actual citizens and it appears that the system has, the federal system has a problem catching up with naturalizations. You know naturalized citizens are obviously eligible to vote but it appears that this federal database doesn’t recognize that quickly enough. And so people who are registered naturalized citizens were being flagged as non-citizens.

Phoebe: The president recently signed an order limiting mail-in ballots. It’s been challenged by Democratic attorneys general, including Jeff Jackson here in North Carolina. But could you talk about how those restrictions on mail-in ballots will affect North Carolinians?

Lynn: It involves a complicated passing of voter lists between the states and Homeland Security and the Postal Service where the Postal Service would be prohibited from delivering an absentee ballot to someone who is on this list. It’s kind of a dance between the states, Homeland Security and the Postal Service. As far as I know, the Postal Service at this point does not have a list of voters to not deliver ballots to. The order has been challenged in court and my sense is that a federal judge is going to say this is unconstitutional, so it’s still an open question at this point. It doesn’t seem like North Carolina is moving to enact this, but NOTUS reported that some states are starting to to move ahead with this. But it’s certainly something to watch, especially since this lawsuit is still in progress.

Phoebe: We’ve talked a little bit about the federal SAVE Act already, but are there any provisions that while it’s stalled in the Senate North Carolina is enacting locally?

Lynn: Well, something that’s flown a little bit under the radar is that the Board of Elections used to supply people who conduct voter registration drives with voter registration forms. And they decided, well, we’re not going to do that anymore. You’ve got to print them out on your own, which is a restriction for organizations that conduct drives, mostly nonprofits that have limited budgets. There is no law against voter registration drives [but] this move really limits voter registration drives.

Phoebe: Are there other changes on the horizon in North Carolina that voters should know about as we’re all making plans to vote in November?

Lynn: Something that I am watching for is where early voting sites are going to be approved for November. You remember there was a controversy over eliminating the early voting site at Western Carolina University for the primary, a campus that has had a site in the primaries and general elections for years. One of the things I’m going to be watching is where those sites are going to be for November, if they’re going to be on campuses. and if there is going to be some issue about where they go into communities as well. And I’m watching campuses for a particular reason because the state Board of Elections Chairman told me that he really doesn’t like campus sites because of the parking issue. That it’s hard for people to park. But I think it’s also important to mention that there’s a GOP lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, who has said numerous times that she thinks it’s too easy for college students to vote and has criticized campus sites. So there is kind of a stir against campus sites among the GOP.

Phoebe: We’ve been deep into the nitty gritty, but the larger question is whether we’re going to have fair and free elections in North Carolina, whether people who are eligible to vote will be able to vote, and whether their votes will be counted. What’s your assessment?

Lynn: I’ve been covering elections and voting for a long time. For the most part, there have been no huge problems with people getting their votes counted. But, you know, there are more and more challenges to voters, more and more challenges in lawsuits against voting and voting regulations, and whether the laws are being followed. We saw a slew of lawsuits a few years ago over voter registrations, overseas and military voters and what documents they must show.

This year, we’re going into a general election with recently changed rules - where local boards of election will have just a few days to count absentee ballots and provisional ballots. For local elections boards, that means contacting voters whose mail-in ballot envelopes had mistakes and asking them for corrections, and researching voters who cast provisional ballots to see if they are registered and for which races they can vote in. In many counties, doing this work will be a race against the clock.

We are grateful to Lynn for taking the time to speak with us. You can find more of her work at ncnewsline.com or follow her at @lbonner.bsky.social. If you found our conversation useful, we hope you will share the link with friends and neighbors and if you haven’t already, please subscribe.

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I’ve been collecting NC political stories for the last few weeks to share with you, but first, a reminder that it’s been 11 weeks since President Trump launched the war against Iran. That decision has disrupted the world economy, claimed the lives of 13 U.S. troops and more than 2,100 civilians, and cost American taxpayers more than $29 billion.

A lot of the discussion about the war gets reduced to the high cost of fuel, so it’s easy to forget about the carnage on the ground. That is, unless you’re one of the thousands of NC military families tracking deployments knowing that a child or spouse would soon be in danger.

Much of that danger comes from inexpensive drones, which Iran has used with deadly accuracy. According to this short documentary produced by The New York Times, our military is playing catch-up. The documentary focuses on Marines at NC’s Camp Lejeune who are just now learning how to use “first person view” drones in war. It all looks like a video game, one noted, until the target comes into focus.

“I think the most gut-wrenching feeling for me, though, is being able to see the faces and the people before they get hit with a F.P.V [first person view],” Cpl Edmund Comire told the New York Times. “So yeah, it’s scary.”

Congressional ethics inquiry comes to NC

The House Ethics Committee has been working for almost a decade to root out sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. The Assembly reports that Rep. Chuck Edwards, the Republican incumbent in North Carolina’s 11th District, is among the latest to be investigated, in his case over a relationship with a staff member. “In the mountains we have to shovel horseshit,” he told The Assembly before an event at Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock. “In D.C. I have to deal with horseshit. And these allegations are more horseshit.” Edwards represents a district that includes much of western NC, where residents are still recovering from Hurricane Helene. Although the district leans Republican, Edwards is expected to face a tough re-election campaign from Democratic challenger James Agier, a farmer who comes from a family of politicians.

The Assembly, in partnership with NOTUS, also reported that Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat from Charlotte representing the 12th district, was investigated back in 2023 over a relationship with a staffer and was cleared of wrongdoing. “The Committee closed the matter after finding no violation of any House Rules and, most importantly, no inappropriate or improper relationship,” a spokesman for Adams told NOTUS. A committee spokesman declined to discuss the case with NOTUS, but said it does not publish the names of lawmakers when allegations against them are unsubstantiated.

Sen. Thom Tillis in the spotlight

It’s been almost a year since Thom Tillis announced he would not run for re-election to the Senate. Since then, he’s been capturing headlines as one of the few Republicans in Congress to publicly criticize President Trump’s advisers, though he has not been critical of the president himself. That relatively recent, and relatively unique among GOP colleagues, penchant for criticism has made him the subject of plenty of media stories this spring. Here are some recent profiles of NC’s senior senator:

• NC’s Thom Tillis drops the filter as he prepares to leave the Senate, by Danielle Battaglia, for The News & Observer.

• “I’m not dead yet”: A breakfast with Thom Tillis, by Michael Graff, for The Charlotte Optimist.

• Inside Thom Tillis’ Playbook to Rein in Trump, by Brian Bennett, for Time.

On the campaign trail

North Carolina has been a battleground state for as long as I’ve lived here, which makes us a favorite destination for national political reporters. The Associated Press interviewed Black voters in eastern NC for a story on how Democrats are working to mobilize rural voters. “People want to look at the word ‘rural’ in North Carolina and equate it to the word ‘white,’” state Democratic party chair Anderson Clayton told the AP. “In my vision of a Democratic Party, when you talk about reaching out to rural voters, you are talking about rural Black voters.”

NOTUS reported briefly this month on how the Republican National Committee is getting a head start to target infrequent voters in 17 states, including North Carolina. And The Guardian US, the American arm of the British outlet, took a close look at the Democratic primary in the 4th District, which incumbent Valerie Foushee won by hair, as a case study on the political consequences for supporting, or in Foushee’s case not opposing, data centers.

Which NC beach was that anyway?

When former FBI director James Comey was charged last month in the Eastern District of NC with threatening the president over a photo of some seashells arranged to read “86 47”, much of the coverage focused on the significance of a president using the Justice Department to pursue his enemies – which is indeed a big deal.

But it left this North Carolina gal with some questions about how this happened in our state. Fortunately, my friend Jeremy Markovich, author of the North Carolina Rabbit Hole, had the same question I did: “Where, exactly, did James Comey find the “threatening” seashell message that got him indicted?” To the best of Jeremy’s sleuthing ability, the answer is somewhere on Emerald Isle. You’ll need to read to the end of his post to find out where.

We’ll be back later this month with more political news. We’d love to hear from you at downfromdc@gmail.com with feedback, a request for stickers or an invitation to speak to your civic group. In the meantime, please share the link with friends and neighbors, and if you haven’t already, please subscribe.

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Welcome back to Down from DC, where we have an update for you about the drought and our state’s farmers.

It’s been raining off and on all week, but not enough to reverse the drought that affects almost the entire state. According to data released earlier today by the National Integrated Drought Information System, drought in most of western NC and the Piedmont is classified as extreme, with slightly better conditions in the eastern part of the state, where the drought is considered severe. That’s partly because it’s been dry all year, with March the driest on record since 1895.

Last month, we explained how these conditions combined with the high costs of fuel and fertilizer created by the president’s War in Iran and the trade war he started with tariffs are putting many of our state’s 42,814 farms at risk.

The story hit a chord with readers, including the producers at WUNC’s Due South, which yesterday aired a conversation between me and host Jeff Tiberii on what I learned from talking with farmers across the state. Listen here.

Many thanks to the folks at WUNC for sharing our work with their listeners. If you want to keep up with WUNC”s broadcasts, you can stream them here. At DFDC, we are seeking more such collaborations with news organizations and civic groups. If you want to continue the conversation about the way decisions by our elected officials in DC shape our lives here in NC, let us know by emailing us at downfromdc@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you.

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Sometimes federal policy plays out quietly, without a lot of fanfare. That’s exactly how President Trump’s crackdown on immigration is now happening in North Carolina. Deportations surged last fall during “Operation Charlotte’s Web.” But once that ended, arrests continued in counties across the state. Jacob Biba and Lex Clay Alfonso with NC Local dug into the data last month. We are sharing that work with you today.

But before we get to that, a note: Earlier this year, I (Phoebe) spoke with the Reynolda Rotary Club here in Winston-Salem about our work at Down from DC. People were especially interested in how we evaluate the news sources we link to for independence, accuracy and the other ethical standards we expect of reliable news sources.

I’d love to continue having those conversations, so if you’re part of a civic organization, book club or any other group that would like to explore any of these issues with me, let me know. You can email me at downfromdc@gmail.com. I always like a good excuse for a road trip.

There were more than 6,300 ICE arrests in NC since Trump took office

By Jacob Biba and Lex Clay Alfonso

Federal immigration enforcement agents have arrested more than 6,300 people in North Carolina since President Donald Trump took office again last January, according to data obtained by the University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by NC Local. The figure is nearly twice the number of immigration arrests made in North Carolina during the previous two years combined.

Arrest data collected through March 10, 2026 shows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recorded 6,374 total arrests across the state, with arrests peaking in November with 776 recorded arrests. That same month, the Trump administration launched “Charlotte’s Web,” a U.S. Customs and Border Protection-led operation targeting “criminal illegal aliens” in the Charlotte area. Most of the people arrested in the weeks during and after the surge had never been convicted of a crime, an NC Local analysis found.

Arrests declined following the operation. In December, 600 ICE arrests were recorded in North Carolina. In January, the same month federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, 612 arrests were recorded. And in February, immigration agents arrested 576 people across North Carolina, according to the data.

Despite the decline, these monthly totals were still higher than arrest numbers before “Charlotte’s Web” when monthly arrests averaged 426 over the previous three months.

Nationwide, ICE arrests have more than quadrupled as of January, compared to the last six months of the Biden administration. Most arrested under Trump did not have a criminal conviction, despite officials’ claims that ICE was targeting the “worst of the worst.”

Where in North Carolina is ICE arresting people?

In North Carolina, the majority of ICE arrests have been concentrated in the Charlotte and Triangle areas. Still, arrests were recorded across the state, the rate of which has increased in the last five months, data showed.

In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, immigration agents had arrested 52 people through March 10, with all but one arrest occurring at the county jail. The number of arrests more than tripled over the last five months, coinciding with a new state law, “The Criminal Illegal Alien Enforcement Act,” that went into effect Oct. 1. The law forces local law enforcement agencies to work more closely with ICE.

Approximately two thirds of the arrests statewide were from local jails, state and federal prisons, and other “lockups,” according to the data.

In Henderson County, where the county’s sheriff’s office participates in ICE’s 287(g) program, more than 200 people have been arrested.

In New Hanover County, where Wilmington is located, 150 arrests have been recorded. In Dare County, in the northeastern part of the state, immigration agents have arrested 16 people.

More than 100 people have been arrested in Forsyth County, in the Piedmont. In neighboring Guilford County, where ICE is reportedly considering opening a detention center, the agency recorded 62 arrests.

In Gaston and Cabarrus counties, both of which border Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, more than 200 arrests have been made in each county.

Who is ICE arresting in North Carolina?

It is still unclear the identities of ICE arrestees in North Carolina. ICE, CBP and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both agencies, have not fulfilled several NC Local records requests seeking more information on those arrested.

But data indicates the overwhelming majority of people immigration agents have arrested were men. Most ICE arrestees were from Latin American countries, like Mexico and Honduras, and ranged in age from as young as 2 years old to 75 years old.

Immigration agents have arrested more than 50 children, according to data. Based on matching apprehension dates, locations and citizenship countries, at least 34 appear to have been arrested alongside women. More than 30 of these arrests occurred in the Charlotte area, data showed.

Read more about the data visualizations and their sources here. Data visualizations created by Lex Clay Alfonso for NC Local.

We are grateful to NC Local for making such work available for reprint. If you want to read more of NC Local’s work on immigration enforcement, you can find it here.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe and share our work with others.

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North Carolina is an agricultural state, with more than eight million acres in crops and grazing land. Think of the coastal plain, where by early summer fields of soybean, cotton and sweet potatoes disappear into the horizon or the Piedmont, where freshly tilled red clay is ready for planting.

It’s been an unusually dry month, leaving 95% of the state – and much of the rest of the country – in a severe drought or worse. It rained in parts of the state over the weekend, with more rain in the forecast this week, but not enough to replenish our reservoirs, our streams or our soil. For most of us, that has been a minor inconvenience. But for farmers, a drought during planting season means late crops, lower yields, and ripple effects throughout the year.

“We associate spring with showers and the color green. Yet, this spring has not produced as one would expect,” Phil Badgett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Raleigh office, told the Raleigh News & Observer. “It is concerning that a warm and very dry spring may lead to dry soils, even higher temperatures and fewer thunderstorms during the summer to meet all our water needs.”

For farmers, this climate debacle is converging with a few other man-made ones. Brandon Batten, the author of the Farm Facts Friday blog, called the drought “dire” for his farm in Clinton. “What this means for me, as a farmer, is that I am making a lot of hard decisions that will unavoidably affect the rest of my year and my potential for success,” he wrote. “The unseen toll of dealing with high costs of LITERALLY EVERYTHING and low returns from your efforts will make a young man old quick.”

Those high costs and low returns Batten is talking about have much to do with President Trump’s trade policies and his war in Iran. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran drove up prices on diesel fuel and fertilizer, both huge costs on a farm. On the demand side of the equation, what farmers can expect for their crops is a complex question. It largely depends on whether countries will again import commodity crops from farmers outside the U.S., as they did last year in response to the president’s tariffs. That lowers the price farmers here in N.C. can get for their crops.

In a report released in January, “How Tariffs Threaten North Carolina Agriculture: NC Farmers at Risk,” Jeffrey Dorfman, an economist at N.C. State University, estimated that farmers were at risk of losing $695 million, or a third of their income.

The report, which was commissioned by the free-market think tank the John Locke Foundation, came out before the U.S. Supreme Court recently struck down Trump’s 2025 tariffs. The president responded immediately by invoking a 1974 trade act to impose a new 10%tariff, which he pledged to increase this summer to 15%.

In an email to DFDC, Dorfman said that his estimate of the impact of tariffs on N.C. farmers holds. “I don’t think there are any significant changes to my assessment of the tariff risk situation except with worsening drought and increased diesel, fertilizer and chemical prices, farmers are in a more precarious financial position,” he wrote.

I wanted to better understand how these macroeconomic forces play out on North Carolina farms.

Philip Sloop, the president of the N.C. Soybean Producers Association, found a few minutes to speak with me this month about the business side of his Rowan County farm where he grows soybeans, corn and specialty crops of oats and barley for the craft brew industry across the Southeast.

“We already had razor thin margins and the cost of fuel and fertilizer have really put a dent in the margin there was,” he said. “We’re paying the price someone else sets and we’re selling what someone else sets the price at and we’re praying for good weather.”

I also spoke with Jim Eaton, whose family has farmed in Davie County since 1740. At 81, with help from his son-in-law and a neighbor, he farms about 2,000 acres. They grow soybeans, corn and hay and graze 150 head of beef cattle on land too hilly to plow.

Finally, I wanted to understand how federal policy is playing out on a small farm, one that doesn’t rely on commercial fertilizer or commodity pricing. Hillary Wilson Kimmel and her husband, Worth, who grow flowers and vegetables and raise pigs and cattle on their 45-acre farm outside Reidsville, spared a few minutes for me one late afternoon.

Here’s how they answered my questions about the major issues facing farmers. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.

What tariffs did to farmers

Jim Eaton: They have knocked prices down to below production cost in most situations. Historically, China has been our No. 1 buyer of soybeans, but because of the tariff policy, they went back to zero. During the last three years of our current president’s first term, we found ourselves in a situation on my farm where I had to borrow money to pay the bills for three years. Then during the first year of [the Biden] administration, soybeans went to 17 or 18 dollars and corn was between eight and nine and we got back in one year almost what we lost the previous three. That only lasted one year, but at least we had the one good year. {Then} soybeans got down to nine dollars, corn got down to a little over five. And that won’t even pay the cost of growing them.

Hillary Wilson Kimmel: “Basically all our supplies are up some percentage. I just finished today our spring tulip harvest. I ordered my tulips last July before the tariffs went into effect but paid for them after tariffs took effect. They went from 50 cents to 63 cents a bulb. I can’t pass that cost on to consumers. On our scale none of them individually make or break us, but overall they lead to less profitability. All of these are chopping away at the profitability of all our enterprises.”

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How the Iran war is impacting them

Jim Eaton: They keep talking about 20-25% of the oil worldwide coming through that Strait of Hormuz, but what they aren’t talking about is that approximately three quarters, over half of the nitrogen, comes through that straight too. Nitrogen is the biggest investment that we make. We may spend several dollars on phosphate and potash, but nitrogen is what it takes to grow corn. Nitrogen is up $300 a ton so far. Everything is on a world market. It’s no longer what happens in Davie County, it’s what happens in the world.

As soon as it became evident what was going to happen in Iran, I called my supplier. I had plenty of highway fuel. I’ve got 2,000 gallon storage here on the farm for the highway, but I was down to 500 gallons or less of non-highway, for the tractors and stuff here on the farm. So I called them and told them what I needed. I said, “What is it today?” And he told me. I said, “Well, go ahead and bill me fifteen hundred gallons. Bring it tomorrow.” And he did, and fuel is up to a dollar-and-a-half more now than it was three weeks ago. It had gone up a little bit, but not near as bad as it is now. And I told him, “Do not bring any more until I call you.” So I don’t know, but by mid-summer, I’m going to have to buy some more.

Philip Sloop: Obviously the fuel is hurting us really bad now. It’s close to doubled the price of diesel fuel when we already run on really tight margins. Between all the tractors and trucks to haul the grain we probably spend $60,000 on fuel. If you go to $3 and something to almost $5 for diesel fuel, it wouldn’t surprise me if we spent $20,000 to $30,000 more on diesel fuel right now. That is more harmful to us than the price of soybeans is the price of the fuel and fertilizer. That is what is hurting us the most right now.

The drought

Jim Eaton. Well, I remember as a child we had four seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall. For the past 20 years, we go from winter to summer and from summer to winter. Last year we were so wet that we couldn’t get the crop in the ground. This spring, so far, we’ve been so dry, and we had a little rain over [Easter] weekend, but it was barely a tenth [of an inch] and we’re not able to plant yet. The next rain is in two weeks, another ten to twelve days. Last summer we were too wet. This summer we’re too dry. But yes, the temperatures have changed. I mean, I remember as a child 70 years ago it would get really hot in July and early August, but now it just seems like it’s just hotter. The winters are warmer and the springs and summers are warmer, and that not only affects, say, the pollination of corn in July, but it also affects the insect population that survives over the winter.

The long term

Philip Sloop: Right now the urban sprawl, or whatever you want to use for it, that’s more worrisome to me than anything else. The U.S. has a lot of farmland and it is being gobbled up. That is more worrisome to us. Regulation, it may come and go, and prices go up and down, but if you take a piece of farmland and pave over it it can’t be made into farmland again.

Hillary Wilson Kimmel: We plan to be diverse and not have all our eggs in one basket.

Jim Eaton: Farming is a five-year cycle. You’re going to have a year or two that’s pretty tough. You barely get by. You’re going to have one bumper year, and then you’re going to have a couple of years that are okay financially. So it’s just been consistent all of my years. I started on a tractor on my daddy’s knee, at five years old. By seven, I had my own tractor driving it. And when I get over this hip surgery, I hope to get back on one here in the next week or two.

More about what’s coming down from D.C. to our farms

Federal policy shapes life on the farm in all sorts of ways unrelated to tariffs or the price of fertilizer. Here’s a roundup of recent stories that explain some of these impacts.

Contract worker or employee? Lisa Sorg of Inside Climate News reports on the years-long battle poultry farmers working under contracts with major poultry companies like Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods have been waging in federal court for better contract terms. Contract farmers also want the U.S. Department of Agriculture to create stronger protections. The agency has delayed rules that would have done that. “Growers have spoken on the need to level the playing field with more transparency surrounding how they are compensated and they believed progress was being made,” the American Farm Bureau Federation said in a prepared statement to Inside Climate News. “[We] look forward to reminding the administration during the public comment period that farmers come first and poultry companies should not be prioritized over the men and women who work to put food on the table for all of America’s families.”

How does climate change affect soil? WFAE reported this month on a phenomenon called “weather whiplash,” intense periods of heavy rain followed by drought that damages the soil. “When we’re in a prolonged dry period like we’ve been over the last few months, that means that soil really hardens up,” Corey Davis, North Carolina’s assistant state climatologist, told WFAE’s Zaxchary Turner. “When you get those first few rain events trying to come out of a drought, that moisture can’t really trickle down and penetrate the soil as well.”

Labor costs are down thanks to changes in the H-2A visa program: North Carolina is one of the highest users of the H-2A temporary visa program for farm workers, which reduced the wages farmers pay this year by between $1 to $7 an hour, depending on the state. The New York Times explains what the reduction in wage means for farmers and farm workers.

I learned a lot researching this piece. If you found it interesting, please share the link with friends and neighbors, and if you have not done so already, please subscribe. It’s free.

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The NC Legislature opens its short session this week to take up a host of unfinished business from 2025. As Lynn Bonner and Brandon Kingdollar report in NC Newsline, they’ll also deal with fallout from the budget bill Congress passed last year and a related shortfall in the federal Medicaid healthcare program, a gap that doesn’t yet include many of the well publicized cuts Congress made last summer that will have such an outsized impact in our state. That’s because Congress made sure that the most significant cuts won’t happen until after the midterm election in November.

So for now, all eyes are on what happens in our state capital. Here’s what to know about that and the other big items legislators will consider.

Can North Carolina lawmakers pass a budget?

A comprehensive state budget is more than nine months overdue, North Carolina’s Medicaid program is about to run out of money, and state employees and teachers are clamoring for raises.

The General Assembly returns to work Tuesday staring at the same divisions it left at its last regular meeting last year. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, has disagreements with the Republican-run legislature, and House and Senate Republican leaders don’t agree with each other.

Lame-duck legislators who lost their primaries, including Republican Senate leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham), one of the most powerful politicians in the state, as well as several House Democrats and Republicans, are wild cards factored into delicate budget negotiations.

House Republicans proposed average teacher raises of more than 8% over two years, with a big boost in starting teacher pay to $50,000 a year. The House budget also paused future cuts to the personal income tax rate. The House had proposed spending $32.6 billion in the current budget year.

Senate Republicans proposed teacher raises averaging 3.3%, and wanted the future tax cuts to go ahead as planned. The Senate proposed spending $32.3 billion this year.

Medicaid and the children’s hospital

One of the pressing issues for the legislature is a $319 million Medicaid shortfall. The health insurance program that covers about 3.1 million North Carolinians is about to run out of money, and Stein has been demanding the additional money for months.

Last year, bills that would have provided more Medicaid money were caught up in other budget disagreements between House and Senate Republicans and the funding didn’t come through.

In committee meetings over the winter and spring, Republicans have questioned state health officials about the Medicaid numbers and extent of the shortfall.

At a March event on civil debate about health care, Rep. Grant Campbell (R-Cabarrus) said he supported filling the Medicaid budget hole, but wanted to make sure it will really cost $319 million.

“I’m all for it if you can show me the money has been calculated appropriately,” he said.

House and Senate Republicans differed on funding a children’s hospital being built in Apex. Senate Republicans want additional funds approved for the hospital. They attached $103.5 million for the hospital to a bill on added Medicaid funding. House Republicans have resisted more spending on the hospital.

Automatic tax cut

The largest hang-up in budget talks between House and Senate Republicans is automatic tax cuts.

House Republicans want to pause those reductions, while Senate Republicans want the cut to go forward as planned.

The offices of House Speaker Destin Hall (R-Caldwell) and Senate leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) did not respond to requests for interviews.

Berger acknowledged in a recent press release that “progress was elusive” on tax issues in last year’s session, but said “circumstances do exist for us to reach an agreement on a comprehensive state budget.”

“Our policy success is largely grounded on the continuing exercise of discipline on two fronts — tax reduction and spending restraint,” Berger wrote. “Failure to adhere to fundamentals on either front will thwart sustaining progress in our never-ending competition with other states for economic growth, job creation, and a better future for our people.”

The tax cuts are based on revenue triggers that the state is expected to meet. But the reductions mean that the state will have less money to spend in future years.

The individual tax rate is scheduled to fall from 3.99% to 3.49% in 2027. The rate is to fall again to 2.99% in 2028.

Stein wants to pause the cuts too, and his Office of State Budget and Management projects that the first reduction will mean the state collecting $2 billion less each year.

The corporate income tax is being phased out, with elimination set for 2030.

The individual and corporate tax cuts will result in a structural budget deficit, reducing annual state revenues by $7.7 billion in 2033-2034, OSBM anticipates.

Federal fallout

A major federal law shifted more of the cost of providing food benefits, known as SNAP, from the federal government to counties.

The total increase to counties comes to $52 million starting in July, according to the NC Association of County Commissioners. The association is asking the General Assembly to cover the cost.

Sen. Jim Burgin, chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services budget committee, told NC Newsline the state can’t afford it.

The state will also need to foot the bill for monitoring new work requirements and verification requirements for Medicaid. DHHS officials have said that could run into the tens of millions of dollars.

Burgin said DHHS may be able to help the counties with additional tasks that will fall on local caseworkers.

Hurricane Helene relief

Stein is pushing lawmakers for a third round of recovery funding to western North Carolina, requesting $792 million in a March proposal.

Among the largest line items in the budget request is $100 million for repairs to private roads and bridges. Another recommendation would allocate $50 million for a revolving loan program to help local governments avoid budget cuts while funding repair efforts.

Republican lawmakers have grown skeptical of the governor’s handling of Helene relief, grilling recovery officials earlier this month over rising costs and a home rebuild and repair initiative that has completed work on just 30 houses since its inception.

“The numbers don’t add up and meanwhile, the citizens of North Carolina are suffering,” said Rep. Karl Gillespie (R-Macon), the House Majority Whip, at a Helene oversight meeting on April 2. “We’re going to have to have a lot more conversations and a lot more oversight and a lot more efficiencies in the program to ever make this work out.”

Bonner and Kingdollar, and the team at NC Newsline will keep up with what the legislature gets done over the session. Follow their work here.

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One of the four astronauts aboard the Orion capsule, Christina Koch, was raised in Jacksonville and educated at NC State. She has lived all over the world – the South Pole, Alaska and now Texas – but her home state kindled her early dreams of space travel.

“Growing up in North Carolina, the night sky is one of the things that used to inspire me. It is one of the things that made me want to be an astronaut,” Koch told WRAL News in 2020.

When I look up off my deck even with the glare of city lights, I can see the moon through a gap in the trees. This week, it appears as a waning moon, that odd bulging shape from full to crescent.

Koch and her shipmates have traveled 252,756 miles, further than any other human journey into space. When they reached the far side of the moon on Monday night, they beheld a moonscape no one has ever seen up close.

Just before the Orion capsule dipped behind the moon and temporarily lost radio contact Monday, Koch radioed NASA headquarters: “And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you, from the Moon. We will see you on the other side.”

Koch, along the way, has become a social media phenomenon. She dubbed herself “the space plumber” after making a fix to “the most important piece of equipment on board.” Artemis II followers are asking about the fitness routine that produced her buff arms. Celebrities are fan-girling her.

My friend Jeremy Markovich, publisher of the North Carolina Rabbit Hole, is a true space nut and seven years ago, he nabbed an interview with Koch when she was aboard the space shuttle. He reposted that interview last week and graciously allowed us to share it with you today. Here’s the link to the original. If you like it, we hope you will subscribe to his newsletter, where you will find all sorts of weird and wonderful stories about what makes North Carolina such a great place to live.

On April 1, the Artemis II mission blasted off to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. Its astronauts will achieve a number of firsts just by getting there. Jeremy Hansen will become the first Canadian to orbit the moon. Victor Glover, the pilot, will become the first Black man to circle it. And Christina Koch will become the first woman to do so.

Koch was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but grew up in Jacksonville, North Carolina, which she considers to be her hometown. She then went on to the North Carolina School of Science and Math in Durham before earning three degrees from North Carolina State University.

Afterward, her career took her all around the world: To the South Pole, Greenland, and Alaska. In 2013, she joined NASA’s astronaut program. Six years later, she blasted off for a record-breaking stay on the International Space Station (328 days, the longest ever spaceflight for a woman), and was part of the first female-only spacewalk.

During her time on the ISS, I was somehow able to convince NASA to let me interview Koch as she zoomed around the skies, nearly 250 miles above the earth (If you’re wondering how this technically works: NASA calls you on the phone, and then patches you through to space). I got 10 minutes to ask her any number of questions, including how her time in this state helped put her on the path that she’s on today.

“No one ever discouraged the girl from North Carolina that had a dream to become an astronaut,” she told me, “and I think that was the most important thing.”

That interview was part of a 2019 episode of Away Message (which is now the North Carolina Rabbit Hole podcast). In it, I went and found one of Koch’s teachers at the North Carolina School of Science and Math, who had aspirations to be an astronaut herself. I dropped that episode back into the podcast feed today. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

Since this episode aired, Koch received an honorary doctorate from NC State, which held a watch party for the launch.

If you want to see more images of the moon, here’s the link to the NASA website and for more about Koch, here’s the link to her page.

We will be back later this month, with more analysis of how federal policy shapes our lives here in our little corner of the earth. As always, please share this post with friends and family and if you haven’t already, please subscribe.

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Charlotte is the largest metropolitan area in the state and home to our senior U.S. senator, Republican Thom Tillis. That puts it at the center of one of the most consequential Senate races in the country. Tillis got his political start in Charlotte, where he was elected to the State House in 2006 and rose to be speaker. His retirement this year opens up the race between former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and Michael Whatley, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, that could determine which party controls the Senate and ultimately the balance of power in DC.

Charlotte has also been at the center of a lot of other political news over the past year, like the killing of Irina Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail system, which brought national scrutiny to the city. It’s also where the Trump administration focused its attention in November with an immigration crackdown that put the city on edge,

Rana Cash, the executive editor at The Charlotte Observer since 2021, leads the Queen City’s largest newsroom. Under her leadership, the Observer, with The News & Observer of Raleigh, was a finalist in breaking news for the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in journalism, for its coverage of Hurricane Helene. I spoke to her by video call this week to talk about the concerns and conversations that are most important to voters there in this most important year.

Cash had spent most of her career as a sports journalist, including stints covering the Minnesota Vikings and overseeing NFL coverage for Sporting News in Charlotte, before returning to news coverage at the height of the pandemic with a renewed commitment to holding power to account.

“I was a sports editor at the Louisville Courier Journal and Breonna Taylor was killed in Louisville and COVID was at an absolute peak,” she told me. “The world just felt so unsettled and scary and I came to the point where I really didn’t care about the score of another game or another coaching change or anything like that and felt like I had a lot more to contribute to the world of journalism.”

Below is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length, clarity and accuracy.

Phoebe: We’re just coming off a weekend of No Kings marches, including two well-attended ones in Charlotte that your team covered. What are the issues on people’s minds there?

Rana Cash: I asked our reporter, Mary Ramsey, who covers local government and politics, what she felt the mood was like out there, or what was on people’s minds. ICE was still near the top of what people are thinking about. Obviously the war in Iran, in large part through the lens of affordability. Gas prices now are close to $3.80 a gallon. I don’t think these issues are unique, but Charlotteans are paying close attention especially because somewhere between two and three thousand soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg are deployed to the Middle East. So people are paying attention from a military and economic standpoint, and thinking about immigration and ICE in a very real way.

I think people tend to look at things through the lens of their own pocketbooks, their own households, their own day-to-day lives. And, right now, things may feel difficult because of the affordability issues that are going on.

We have an election coming up. President Trump is not on the ballot, but midterms tend to be a referendum on the party that controls the White House. Do you see it playing out that way in Charlotte, or are local issues more likely to motivate voters?

Charlotte doesn’t find itself caught up with a lot of national attention. So when Border Patrol came here last fall for “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” we saw some things that I think caught a lot of Charlotteans, whether you were just a resident or an elected official, by surprise. It was very assertive. Close to 400 people were arrested. People were harmed and injured. Property was damaged, both, of American citizens and people who may have been in the country illegally. And it was so dramatic that I think that that will be fresh on their minds even as we get to the elections.

What surprised you about that operation?

Maybe I’m a bit naive, but it was probably even more intrusive than I anticipated. We had a story about a gentleman who was hanging Christmas lights for a woman that he was working for, and he’s on a ladder and they came and arrested him there. Businesses were shut down. I live in an area where there’s construction going on. There was no construction going on. It felt like a silent city.

Charlotte was shaken up by that. It’s just not the kind of thing that typically happens in this city. It has people still on edge. Will they be back? And it was hard to see our Latino friends, our Latino colleagues and businesses and places that we frequent, go into hiding in a way whether they had done anything wrong or not. I think that operation dealt an emotional blow to Charlotte that I’ve not seen very often since I’ve been here. I’m sure people are still thinking about it.

Are people still thinking and talking about crime and the tragedy on the light rail last year? And do you think that will be an issue in November?

I do think it will be an issue. There’s the loss of Iryna Zarutska, an Ukrainian refugee here in Charlotte, a working young woman who had done nothing wrong. She’s on the light rail and she ends up being killed by a man who is schizophrenic, who has had a long history of mental health problems as well as some interactions with police and had been in jail before. I think that will be something that pushes Democrats and Republicans to the polls. Donald Trump called for the death penalty for him. And JD Vance characterized Charlotte as a crime center, as similar to a third world country. Some people might have agreed with that in the bright light of what had just happened with Zarutska. It’s already a part of the Roy Cooper Michael Whatley’s Senate campaigns against one another and so it’ll be a persistent thread I think as we get closer to the elections.

Public trust in the media is at a low, and public officials including the Trump administration are piling on to further diminish the press. There are also economic headwinds and technological advancements, like AI, that make independent journalism harder than ever to sustain. How do you work to build trust among your readers and fulfill your watchdog job that is so essential for our civic life?

Trust is our most valuable asset. Without it, we really don’t have much at all. One thing across all the McClatchy (Which owns the Charlotte Observer and many other outlets) newspapers that we have adopted here is we do stories called reality checks. They’re essentially fact checks. And we do them for all types of politicians and elected officials and others. Everybody seems to stretch the truth a little bit to bend things in their favor during campaigns and I think it has been very effective for us to hold people accountable for what they are saying publicly to folks.

We’re also being transparent in our reporting. Where did you get this information? How do you know that? It’s a basic thing that we can’t get away from. So we’re leaning into our transparency. It comes down to accuracy. Take your time. Get it right the first time because trust is a fragile thing and it doesn’t take much to lose it.

We’re now venturing a little bit more into the world of AI, not written stories without a reporter’s involvement or without any editing on it or anything like that. But whether we use it as a tool or as part of some research, I think it’s important that we are transparent with our readers about that. We publish our ethics guidelines and policies so it’s very clear what we’re doing and what we’re not doing.

And then in our opinion pages, which is the place that really gets people most riled up, we do have conservative and liberal voices and our opinion editor Peter St. Onge does a wonderful job of making sure that we have balance and fairness, not balance forsaking full truth or anything like that, but different perspectives.

Thank you to Rana for taking the time to speak with me this week about politics, news and trust. I hope readers will check out The Charlotte Observer or your home town newspaper. If you find this Q&A valuable, please share with your friends and neighbors, and if you haven’t already, subscribe here to DFDC.

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Trump diverts wind farm funding to fossil fuel projects

The New York Times reported this week that the Trump administration is paying a French energy company close to $1 billion to halt the development of two wind farms, one off the coast of Long Island and the other off the Carolina coast. In exchange for forfeiting its leases, TotalEnergies will invest the $928 million in U.S. fossil fuel projects, mostly in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.

From the Times report:

The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels, a main driver of climate change, while throttling offshore wind power. It comes as the war in the Middle East has shocked global oil markets, prompting concerns about energy supplies.

The planned wind farm would have powered about 300,000 homes and businesses via turbines in federal waters 22 miles south of Bald Head Island. “It’s ludicrous and wasteful that the Trump administration is spending $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay off a company to stop it from investing private dollars to create the clean energy we need,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

Sacred mound returned to the Cherokee people

The town of Franklin deeded a grassy mound covering three-quarters of an acre back to the Cherokees late last month, returning a place of spiritual meaning, The Asheville Citizen Times reported.

“This was part of the heart of Cherokee territory, this area,” Michell Hicks, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, told a crowd that had gathered for the property transfer. “And so, as we think about the burden of bringing this mound back, it’s not just a piece of land. It’s part of us.”

As NC Local reported this month, the 1,000-year-old Noquisiyi Mound is the only such sacred place in NC to be returned to an indigenous tribe. There are 53 registered mounds in the state, most on private property, which were built for spiritual and communal ceremonies.

“There were many, many more, but they were eroded over time by natural causes or destroyed by humans,” Dylan Clark, deputy state archaeologist for North Carolina, told NC Local.

Jeff Jackson sues to stop Nexstar merger

Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined seven other Democratic attorneys general this month in an antitrust lawsuit to block the merger between broadcast companies Nexstar and Tegna. The proposed merger would consolidate television news in Charlotte, the Triad and northeastern NC.

NC Newsline reported that the proposed merger would mean that WCNC in Charlotte and WFMY in Greensboro would cease to operate as independent stations, sharing news coverage instead with WJZY in Charlotte and WGHP and High Point.

“Nexstar wants to buy one of its biggest competitors, gain more control over local news stations and Sunday afternoon NFL broadcasts, and charge millions of North Carolina families more for television,” Jackson said in a statement. “That’s exactly why antitrust laws exist, and I’m going to court to stop it.”

The deal is supported by Trump and has been approved by the Federal Communications Commission. In court filings this week, Nexstar said that blocking it now would “irreparably harm” the company.

Stokes County residents fight a proposed data center

With the growth of data centers across our state – 92 according to an industry count – residents worried about their size and energy use are trying to stop them.

Lisa Sorg, of Inside Climate News, reported this month on a lawsuit by residents of Walnut Cove and environmental groups against the Stokes County Board of Commissioners. The suit alleges that the commissioners made numerous procedural, factual and legal errors when they rezoned 1,844 acres for a data center to be built by Engineered Land Solutions.

The property includes farmland, family homesteads and a floodplain near the Dan River where archeologists have found Native American burial grounds.

“This is the place of one of our ancestors. It is a resting place, and there are many burial mounds and graves along the river, but her burial reminds us that these lands along the Dan River Corridor are not empty land waiting for development,” Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a member of the Occaneechi-Saponi tribe and the executive director of 7 Directions of Service, a plaintiff in the lawsuit told Sorg.

NC-based paratroopers activated

The Associated Press reported this week that at least 1,000 soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg will be deployed to the Middle East as the war in Iran, which Trump launched without Congressional approval, continues into a fourth week. Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne are trained to parachute into hostile territories.

It is not yet clear if those paratroopers would deploy to Iran itself. The incursion of American ground troops to the country would mark a significant escalation in the war. The Washington Post also reported on the deployment and its potential purposes:

Among the plans the administration is considering, according to U.S. officials, is a seizure of Kharg Island, Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf from which Tehran exports about 90 percent of its oil. U.S. officials have said that ground forces could probably seize the island quickly but may have to weather barrages of Iranian drones and missiles for as long as they are there.

A friendship born at UNC inspired a novel

It’s rare to read about the deep bonds of friendship, especially male friendship, which is why John Drescher’s story in The Assembly spoke to me. It’s the tale of three friends who met at UNC Chapel Hill in the 1980s. There they met a girl named Lily King, who became a novelist and adapted their story for fiction in the 2025 “Heart the Lover.”

“I don’t know that I see that quality of male friendship very often,” she told Descher. “I don’t know how much in everyday life men really lean on each other and care for each other.”

Drescher writes that friends of the trio are trying to figure out which parts of King’s novel are fiction and which parts fact. But the depth of the bond among the men is unquestioned. The friendship survived a love triangle with King and lasted through the deaths in 2001 and 2019 of two of the three men.

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The Senate this week took up debate on the SAVE America Act, a sweeping bill that President Trump is pushing, which would require proof of citizenship and make other changes to how we vote.

The prospect of the GOP-controlled Congress making it harder for Americans to vote this year has me thinking about the history of voter suppression in North Carolina, which dates back to the Jim Crow era (for more on that, read Thomas Mills’ post this week in Politics NC) and why people in power would want to try to pick and choose who gets to vote, especially in a politically divided state like ours. It may sound like a cliche from civics class, but in this state we are getting a real-time reminder that every vote really does count.

Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page proved that in his primary race this month to unseat State Sen. Phil Berger, president pro tempore of the Senate and by all accounts the most powerful Republican in the state. Page declared victory on Election Night with a lead of just two votes. By the time absentee and provisional ballots were counted last week, that lead had grown to 23. Now that Berger has asked for a recount, the race could easily drag on for months, but the value of a single vote should be clear to all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike.

I learned last year just how precarious the exercise can be.

It was just after the 2024 election, when North Carolinians supported Trump in the presidential race, Democrat Josh Stein for governor, and a handful of other Democrats and Republicans for statewide office including Democrat Allison Riggs to the state Supreme Court.

Riggs beat Jefferson Griffin, a justice on the state court of appeals, by 734 votes, but rather than concede, Griffin challenged 65,000 ballots, among them mine.

Griffin claimed that most of those ballots shouldn’t count because records from the voters who cast them were missing key information. He also challenged 5,509 ballots from voters like me who were overseas during the election and used the online portal that was designed to make it simple for soldiers deployed abroad to vote. The portal did not ask for a photo ID, which Griffin argued should disqualify the ballots. He had no way of knowing how I voted, only that I lived in Forsyth County, one of six urban, Democratic-leaning counties he targeted in his complaint.

It had never occurred to me until months later, when I was reading about Griffin’s challenge, that I might be denied this most basic right of citizenship.

After a recount by the N.C. Board of Elections upheld the vote, Griffin appealed to the N.C. Supreme Court, which sided with him on the absentee ballots like mine. Finally, in May, six months after the election, federal district court judge Richard Myers (a Trump appointee) ruled that there was nothing wrong with my ballot or the thousands of others Griffin had challenged. Riggs is now one of two Democrats on the N.C. Supreme Court, but the question of which North Carolinians may lose their right to vote this year remains.

Proof of citizenship

After Griffin’s challenge to my vote, this week’s debate over the SAVE Act feels more personal.

The Act would require voters everywhere to show photo ID at the polls. Doing so is already currently required in N.C. and supported by most Americans. It would also require proof citizenship to register to vote. The House passed the bill last month along party lines and this week the Senate began what is expected to be a long debate, with Democrats promising to filibuster to prevent a vote.

On its face, proof of citizenship sounds reasonable. But millions of American citizens lack the kind of proof that’s required by the bill, which puts them at risk of losing their right to vote. Voter fraud is rare, including by people who are not citizens. A review of voter rolls found they contained a minute number – fewer than 0.02 percent - of people who were not U.S. citizens. The study did not examine whether any of them had voted.

Here’s a rundown of an earlier version of the SAVE Act provided by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. The Senate version may differ slightly.

• Federal law is clear that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote in federal and state elections. Currently, states decide how to enforce this requirement. All states require new voters to attest to their U.S. citizenship when they register, and all states conduct voter list maintenance to identify potentially ineligible voters on the rolls. How they do that varies.

• The SAVE America Act would require states to collect and document proof of citizenship from voters, which few states currently do, and establish additional voter list maintenance processes. A recent University of Maryland study indicates that as many as 21 million eligible voters do not have easy access to documents proving citizenship.

• The bill would implement a strict photo ID requirement for federal elections and specify the types of identification accepted. While 36 states currently have voter ID requirements to vote, state approaches vary. Just 10 states fall into the strict photo ID category, as defined by NCSL.

• The bill’s identification requirements also specify that a voter ID document must indicate that the individual identified is a U.S. citizen. A handful of states denote citizenship status directly on driver’s licenses, and while applicants for REAL ID cards provide documentary evidence of citizenship status, the cards display the same gold star insignia for a citizen as for a lawfully present noncitizen. Currently, each state determines the types of ID acceptable to vote, and that often includes student IDs, hunting and fishing licenses or other state-specific identification cards.

• The bill would require voters registering to vote by mail to submit documentary proof of citizenship, which states do not currently require. It is unclear how the bill would affect online voter registration, which is an option in 42 states.

• The bill would require voters applying for and submitting absentee/mail ballots to submit a photocopy of their identification at both steps in the process, which most states do not currently do.

• The bill does not authorize federal funding for the new state responsibilities it creates, and it includes no phase-in period.

• States that can’t comply might face running state and federal elections separately, with separate procedures, or they might have to keep separate lists of voters who have not provided proof of citizenship and permit them to vote only in state or local races. Arizona already has such a “bifurcated” process, which has seen a stream of litigation dating to 2004.

• The bill would require states to run their voter lists through the Systematic Alien Verification of Eligibility system to identify potential noncitizens on the voter rolls. Many, though not all, states use this system as one resource for identifying potential noncitizens, but not at the frequency this bill envisions. There are also questions about the personal voter information states would be asked to provide to run records through the database.

Regardless of what happens in the Senate, the GOP’s push for stricter ID is gaining momentum. Last week, Florida’s GOP-controlled Legislature passed a law, which takes effect after the midterms, requiring proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote. And the N.C. Board of Elections is also considering rules to require proof of citizenship starting in May, just in time for voter registration for the November general election.

NC Local’s Jacob Biba has an FAQ on the restrictions the state is considering. In a nutshell, the state board will compare its voter rolls with a database run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called the Systematic Alien Verification of Eligibility system to identify registered voters who may not be citizens. Local election officials would notify the flagged voter and hold a hearing to determine their eligibility to vote through documentation like a birth certificate or a passport.

Again, the proposed rule sounds reasonable, but as Biba notes, the SAVE system is considered unreliable by its critics. An audit of the 2016 election by the N.C. Board of Elections found the federal database is not up to date and misses people who became citizens through naturalization. All told, that audit identified 41 noncitizens who cast ballots out of nearly 5 million voters. Compare that to the thousands of North Carolinians who lack the documents required by the new rules to prove citizenship.

The War in Iran

We still don’t know much about deployments for the 100,000 troops based in N.C. We learned last week that soldiers from Fort Bragg with the 3rd Battalion of the 27th Field Artillery Regiment are part of the fight, brought in for their expertise with a new weapon called a precision strike missile. The Pentagon has not disclosed where in the Middle East those soldiers are deployed or exactly where in Iran those strikes landed. The Pentagon is also not discussing whether other N.C.-based troops are involved in the war or what their role might be.

The war, launched by President Trump without Congressional approval, has spread throughout the Middle East. More than 800,000 civilians in Lebanon and 3 million in Iran are displaced, and according to NPR, it cost the U.S. $16.5 billion in just the first 12 days. So far, 13 U.S. troops have been killed, 16 people in the Gulf States, 14 Israelis, 770 Lebanese, and 1,200 Iranian civilians – among them 165 children and adults in an apparent U.S. strike at a school.

The Washington Post reported this week that the Pentagon has asked Trump for a $200 billion budget request to Congress. At a press conference Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegspeth called on Congress to fund an unspecified amount for the war. “It takes money to kill bad guys,” he said.

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We are also keeping a close eye on the war in Iran, which President Trump launched into over the weekend without congressional approval. Any major conflict like this has an outsized impact here in North Carolina, home to more than 100,000 troops and their families. We don’t know whether any North Carolina-based troops have been injured in the widening war. The six soldiers killed over the weekend in Kuwait by an Iranian drone were members of the 103rd Sustainment Command based in Des Moines, Iowa. Trump has warned of additional American casualties in a war that could drag on for weeks.

“Most people are really worried about what might happen,” Craig Black, owner of the All American Military Surplus in Fayetteville, told Spectrum News 1. “They’re mentally and physically prepared here at Fort Bragg. But across the community there’s actually a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen.”

If you have questions about how the conflict that’s now roiling the Middle East will impact our state, we’re here to help. Send us questions at downfromdc@gmail.com or comment below.

Who won, who lost and who’s still counting

And just like that, it’s general election time in North Carolina. Our state will be among the most consequential in the country this November, and voters knew the stakes: there was unusually high turnout for a primary during early voting, and this trend continued through Election Day, with 1.5 million out of 7.7 million registered voters casting ballots. Democrats and unaffiliated voters who lean Democratic seemed especially energized, with 200,000 more Democratic ballots cast than Republican ones.

Election officials are still counting provisional and absentee ballots and won’t certify the vote until March 13. But most races were settled by early Wednesday morning. Here’s what happened in the highest-profile races for federal office:

• At the top of the ballot, Michael Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee who was endorsed early by Trump, easily won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Now the race officially begins against former Gov. Roy Cooper, who won the Democratic primary, for the seat being vacated by Thom Tillis.

• In the 4th Congressional District, which favors Democrats, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam conceded Wednesday in a primary she lost by just 1,202 votes to incumbent Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee.

• In western N.C.’s 11th District, Jamie Ager, a farmer whose family has deep roots in N.C. politics, easily won the Democratic primary to challenge Republican incumbent Chuck Edwards in a district Democrats hope they can flip this year.

• In the 1st District, U.S. Army veteran Laurie Buckhout won the Republican primary, setting up a rematch with Democratic Rep. Don Davis in a district that was redrawn by the Legislature last year to favor Republicans.

Most of that was expected. But there were some big surprises in primaries for state house and senate seats. At least eight incumbent legislators in both parties lost to challengers, in what the New York Times called a political earthquake. The message from voters, at least in the Democratic primaries, was clear.

“The three House Democrats who were defeated all had one thing in common: they voted with Republicans last year to help override some of Gov. Josh Stein’s vetoes,” Colin Campbell wrote for WUNC.

Those ousters could have big implications for Gov. Josh Stein’s agenda, as well as how Trump’s agenda can affect the state. The veto override votes by the incumbent, centrist Democrats' included votes to move ahead legislation that supported President Trump’s immigration policy, one of the many ways in which the GOP-controlled state Legislature helps advance the president’s agenda. Other examples include redrawing congressional districts to favor Republicans and shifting control of the state board of elections from the Democratic governor to the Republican state auditor.

Then there’s the race that was perhaps the most impactful of any primary in the state, and which likely won’t be resolved any time soon: the most powerful Republican in the state, Sen. Phil Berger, trails Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page by two votes as of the latest tally. The race has not been officially called – there are provisional and overseas ballots outstanding, and it’s sure to go to a recount, reports WRAL. Berger has been Senate president pro tem since 2010 and went into the primary with the endorsement of President Trump. But Tuesday night, his challenger, Page, the popular sheriff of Rockingham County, declared victory.

“For the sake of North Carolina election integrity, I am hoping against hope that this race doesn’t get thrown to the court system to decide,” Andrew Dunn of Longleaf Politics wrote Wednesday, noting that Berger’s son is a justice on the state Supreme Court.

Paging Dr. Bitzer for a deep dive on turnout

DFDC readers likely know Michael Bitzer, one of our favorite sources for coverage of politics here. He’s the director of the Center for North Carolina Politics at Catawba College, and he’s allowing us to share the initial analysis he wrote early Wednesday morning based on what we knew then. For more by Michael, and to see when he releases his analysis of the official results, follow him here.

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When they say ‘every vote counts,’ they literally mean it

With all due deference to the U.S. Senate nomination contests, the real race of the evening was the N.C. State Senate District 26 Republican nomination battle between the most powerful GOP official for the past 15 years, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, and his home county sheriff and bête noire Sam Page.

When all the precincts reported and the results still unofficial, Page bested Berger by two votes.

Now, as my colleague Chris Cooper rightly noted, this election isn’t done—it’s not certified, there are likely votes out there that have to be considered, processed, and tabulated, the canvassing needs to be completed, recounts, and then any legal challenges posed before we officially know the Republican nominee for Senate District 26.

Specifically, as Chris notes in his way-too-late reflections posted at Anatomy of a Purple State:

• Military and overseas (UOCAVA) ballots are still coming in—and may continue to come in through March 12.

• Mail ballots that need curing still need to be counted.

• Provisional ballots needs to be counted (if they’re found to be accepted)

• Canvass, “the official process of determining the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly, resulting in the authentication of the official election results.” occurs ten days after the election. It will be open to the public.

• Because, even after all of that, the results will almost certainly be within one percentage point, there will then be recounts.

• Then there’s the possibility (read: near-certainty) of legal challenges after all of that is over.

• And, here’s a fun/terrifying additional one. The Yoda of North Carolina election law, Gerry Cohen, tweeted that “under a 1915 law, if there is a tie in a multi-county state senate race there is no recount—instead there’s an automatic second primary. If there’s a tie in the second primary, the primary is vacated and the party executive committee chooses the winner and is not limited to the tied candidates.”

In other words: stay tuned folks. The band at this rager ain’t done playin’.

U.S. Senate Primaries play out as expected for nominees, but not for voters

The tradition in North Carolina primary politics is that the party with the perceived ‘more competitive’ top-of-the-ballot contest draws the most attention/ballots. And that’s to be expected. And conventional wisdom was that this year the competitive contest was on the Republican side of the ballot.

Until 2026 said, yea, not so much.

Again, with unofficial results and counts, here’s how each party’s U.S. Senate contest played out in terms of ballots cast:

• Republican U.S. Senate: 625,667

• Democratic U.S. Senate: 824,798

Nearly 200,000 more ballots were cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican, with the total percentage split going 57-43 between the two major parties.

And across the state, the pattern is fairly predictable when it comes to where Democratic primary ballots outpaced Republican primary ballots, and vice versa:

The dominant Democratic urban counties, followed by the majority-minority counties of the upper northeast of the state, resemble a very typical pattern in N.C. county electoral patterns, along with the swath from the upper northwestern mountain counties slicing down in the central Piedmont region (basically Ashe cutting down to Randolph).

One stretch of counties is somewhat interesting at first glance: along the eastern South Carolina border, the range of Anson through Robeson is notable, as these rural counties had been trending more Republican in general elections, but Democrats had more primary ballots pulled. This may be something to watch come November.

One other set of notes: on the Republican side, Whatley secured 65 percent of the GOP primary vote. That’s right in line with my thinking about Republican primary electoral dynamics, where the Trump-endorsed GOP candidate garners two-thirds of the primary vote to everyone else. That fits a pattern going to 2022’s GOP nomination contest, with Ted Budd (as the Trump endorsee) and Mark Walker seeking the ‘Trump lane’, while in 2024, Mark Robinson carried that mantel and secured two-thirds of the vote.

On the other side, for a contest that ended up being a coronation for Cooper (92 percent of the vote), the Democratic primary’s energy in attracting voters (with a turnout rate of only 20 percent, same as four years ago) is something to consider as the lead-off in the general campaign (and yes, that begins today).

It’s not just party loyalty among the voters, it’s party adherence for elected officials

In today’s political environment, it’s not just the voters that are party loyalists in their habits, but nowadays the expectations are that elected officials will ‘toe the party line’ and not crossover to work with the other side of the aisle.

Three test cases of that dynamic were on full display last night, and the resounding answer from the primary voters was “toe the line or you’ll get the boot.” All three Democratic legislators who voted for overrides of their governor’s vetoes were summarily excused from renomination. And a fourth Democrat, trying to make a comeback after having been dismissed in 2024 for bucking his party, failed as well.

And it’s not just on the Democratic side enforcing compliance. The Republican House Freedom Caucus leader, Keith Kidwell, was defeated in his renomination bid for State House District 79 in what appears to be an intra-party fight against a fellow Republican representative and party leaders.

As a political scientist, I’ve noted the fact that the parties and voters have been sorting themselves for some time, and with that sorting comes party loyalty tests and allegiance. Tonight’s results show that when some officials buck their party, the party kicks back.

Now, the real fun begins: on to November.

Once the recounts, canvassing, and certification of the official winners is completed, some will say “it’s off to November.”

But for me, that chant begins today.

It looks like what we were expecting for November was set up in the primary:

• Cooper versus Whatley for the U.S. Senate, with expectations of being one of the most expensive contests in NC (maybe US?) history

• NC’s First and Eleventh Congressional Districts have their prime-time candidates on both sides

• Again, pending resolution of Berger-Page, is there a new dawn in #ncpol that comes with the defeat of the most powerful Republican elected official in the state? And the mad scramble to garner the state senate reins of power?

• Democratic enthusiasm is notable—is it sustained over the next nine months when they need their voters to show up and counter the built-in Republican registered voter turnout advantage in the general election?

Lots of questions, with future discussion (and sleep) to be considered.

Thanks again to Michael. You can find more of his work here. We’re taking next week off and will be back later this month with more political analysis and more discussion of how the news out of DC affects us here in NC.

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So far, it seems like they are.

As of Thursday, the N.C. Board of Elections reported that 475,455, out of more than 7 million registered voters, had cast a ballot in either the Democratic or Republican primary ahead of next week’s primary Election Day. It’s too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions about what these numbers mean. But Michael Bitzer, director of the Center for N.C. Politics at Catawba College, found that during the first twelve days of early voting, more North Carolinians cast early ballots than in either the 2022 midterms or the 2024 presidential primary.

“North Carolina’s 2026 primary electorate is not just ahead of past cycles—it is potentially reshaping expectations about which party is energized, who is participating, and how they’re voting,” Bitzer wrote this week.

If you or someone you know still has questions about where and how to vote, check out our voting guide. Remember, early voting ends Saturday afternoon and polls open again Tuesday morning for Election Day. We’ll know more about turnout and what it means after all the votes are counted next week.

In the meantime, here’s what our team is reading.

The latest in the incomplete voter records saga

A legal fight over North Carolina’s voter rolls has ended with a settlement that keeps more than 70,000 voters from being removed. The Republican National Committee and North Carolina GOP sued the N.C. State Board of Elections in 2024 to contest the registrations for 250,000 voters because their files lacked a driver’s license or Social Security number. Some voters have updated their files and now, under the new deal, the NCBE will continue to collect information but won’t purge remaining contested voters. Instead, voters can update their record when they show ID at the polls or cast provisional ballots.

The settlement doesn’t affect the 241,000 voters who received letters this year from the board of elections asking them to provide more information for their voter record. These voters are eligible to vote but the letters caused confusion. Nor does it affect a lawsuit filed by College Democrats of North Carolina against state and county election boards to reinstate early voting sites at N.C. A&T State University, UNC Greensboro and Western Carolina University.

Are any primaries here on the national radar?

Yes. The Assembly reported that PACs and Super PACs are pouring millions of dollars into the 4th Congressional District Democratic primary race between incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee and challenger Nida Allam – who currently serves as a Durham County commissioner.

The 11th Congressional District in western N.C. is also attracting national money and attention. NC Newsline reported this week that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is promising to support Jamie Ager, a 4th generation farmer from just outside Asheville, before he has even won the nomination to oppose GOP incumbent Chuck Edwards.

Michele Morrow has also been getting a lot of press in North Carolina for her campaign for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate. Morrow came from behind in 2024 to win the Republican nomination for Superintendent of Public Instruction, a race she ultimately lost to Democrat Mo Green. But as The Assembly reports, she is counting on her name recognition to overcome Trump’s endorsement of former Republican National Committee Chair and front runner Michael Whatley.

How serious is the primary challenge against Phil Berger?

Considered the most powerful Republican in North Carolina by many, Senate President Pro-Tem Phil Berger is in a close primary race with Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page. How that race shapes up next week will say a lot about our politics and the power local sheriffs wield in this state.

Can Democrats crack the rural-urban divide?

The Democratic National Committee is launching an “eight-figure” effort to win back rural voters, with North Carolina at the center of the strategy, Christa Dutton reports for NOTUS. “It’s the first time the committee has a program dedicated specifically to rural voters,” she wrote.

National Democrats aren’t the only ones working to mobilize rural voters. Rev. William Barber II, the former head of the North Carolina NAACP and founder of the “Moral Monday” protest movement, led a three-day walk earlier this month from Wilson to Raleigh to encourage voting in eastern N.C. Ashley Mitchell, a staff attorney at the law and policy center at Forward Justice, was among the thousands who joined the finale outside the old state Capitol. “They’re starting to understand their rights more, and they’re excited to get out to the polls in November,” she told the News & Observer.

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