Today marks 100 days since Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term, but efforts to deconstruct the administrative state were in motion long before his January inauguration. There is a framework by which the President, his advisers, and others conservatives have pursued this remaking of many government norms.

Durham-based writer David A. Graham is author of the recently released book The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America. He joins Due South's Jeff Tiberii to help us better understand that playbook.

Guest

David Graham, staff writer for The Atlantic; author of The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America

Chris Vitiello joins Leoneda Inge and Jeff Tiberii to discuss his work as Durham's poet laureate and as the Poetry Fox. Don Fick, founder and organizer of Repair Café NC, has been helping people fix lamps, clocks, toys, and even furniture for almost a decade. Don joins Due South’s Jeff Tiberii to talk about how Repair Cafe works to make things work once again – and helps build skills, and community, along the way.

On the North Carolina News Roundup...  Another development in the decade-long fight over control over the state election board. One Republican congressman is asking the Trump administration to remove red tape as Western North Carolina continues Helene recovery. The Trump administration's efforts to overhaul immigration are having reverberations in Durham and Charlotte. And with state lawmakers on recess, we’ll turn our attention to some more local issues in Zebulon, Pender County, and Lumberton. Plus, the prospects for Roy Cooper jumping into the 2026 US Senate Race. Co-host Jeff Tiberii talks with a panel of journalists about those stories and more, on Due South. 

Colin Campbell, Capitol Bureau Chief, WUNC

Claudia Rivera Cotto, Political Reporter, Enlace Latino NC

Brian Gordon, Business & Technology reporter for The News & Observer

Danielle Battaglia, Capitol Hill correspondent, The News & Observer/The Charlotte Observer/McClatchy

Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and N.C. State University have all reported visa terminations for some international students. How higher education institutions are responding, and what it could mean for the reputation, and future, of some of the world’s top research universities.  

As the federal implementation date for the Real ID Act looms, North Carolinians in need of DMV appointments to obtain compliant identification are facing challenges due to the agency’s backlog of cases.

Through music, food, and literature, the upcoming Biscuits & Banjos festival in Durham plans to spark conversations, collaborations, and support for attendees.  

Guests
Aaron Sanchez-Guerra, Race, Class & Communities Reporter at WUNC

Richard Stradling, transportation reporter for The News & Observer

Cicely E. Mitchell, festival producer of Biscuits & Banjos, and the owner of Durham Jazz Club Missy Lane’s Assembly Room 

As warm weather emerges in North Carolina, so do the snakes. A reptile expert tells us how to observe — and enjoy — snakes from afar. Then, an emergency medicine doctor tells us what to do if you’re bitten by a venomous snake: first, stay calm, and second, seek medical care.

Featuring:

Jeff Hall, reptile conservation biologist, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission

Charles J. Gerardo, MD, MHS, Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine and Professor, Emergency Medicine & Global Health, Duke University

The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in Durham is a historical site dedicated to the commemoration of the life and work of Reverend Doctor Pauli Murray, a queer, Black human rights and social justice advocate, priest, poet and organizer from Durham. The museum opened to the public in 2024 and is located in and around Murray’s childhood home. 

Last week, the Center lost a federal grant of over $300,000 from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Just weeks earlier, Pauli Murray’s biography page was removed from the National Park Service and the page for the Pauli Murray House was scrubbed of words like “queer” and “transgender.” 

Due South's Leoneda Inge talks with Angela Thorpe Mason, the Executive Director of the Pauli Murray Center. 

Then, a White House Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” cites content from the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) as an example of how the “Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.”

The NMAAHC has deep ties to Durham, where the late Phil Freelon, the museum’s architect of record, built his career. Architect Zena Howard worked with Freelon for many years and was senior project manager for building the museum. Howard joins Due South’s Leoneda Inge to reflect on the impact of the NMAAHC and the challenges that it, and many other public spaces focused on history, face today.

Due South's Leoneda Inge talks with Alice Randall, author of “My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present and Future.” And we welcome the future! Award-winning folk and country music artists Rhiannon Giddens and Rissi Palmer tell us how they’ve made it this far in the biz.

Alice Randall, Rhiannon Giddens, and Rissi Palmer will be in Durham later this week for Biscuits and Banjos – a music festival curated BY Rhiannon Giddens. Biscuits and Banjos runs April 25-27 in downtown Durham. Today’s conversation originally aired in April 2024. 

Featuring:

Alice Randall, author of My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future

Rhiannon Giddens, singer, musician and music historian

Rissi Palmer, country and Americana recording artist and host of the Apple Music Podcast, Color Me Country

Who has access to homeownership in North Carolina?
Spring is typically home buying time, but housing affordability concerns combined with general economic uncertainty may mean that even fewer people in the Triangle are looking or able to buy homes. News & Observer real estate journalist Chantal Allam joins co-host Jeff Tiberii to talk about the homeownership gap, the history of restrictive covenants in our region, and who has access to homeownership in North Carolina now.
Chantal Allam, Real Estate Journalist, The Raleigh News & Observer

Some Triangle residents turn to ‘co-living’ and ‘co-buying,’ rather than face affordable housing crunch alone
With no end in sight to the affordable housing crisis, renters, buyers, and developers are exploring new ways to create places to call home. Axios reporters Zachery Eanes and Brianna Crane have been reporting on “co-living” and “co-buying” as a way to reduce housing costs for individuals.
Zachery Eanes, reporter, Axios
Brianna Crane, reporter covering real estate for Axios, based in Charlotte

The curb appeal of Modernist homes, and the Millennials who are tearing them up
Why online Gen Z folks hate Millennials’ tendency to turn the inside of modernist homes “gray and boring.” How to protect historic homes from natural disasters, and an effort to restore Modernist homes lost in the California wildfires.
George Smart, founder and CEO of USModernist and NCModernist, the world's largest nonprofit educational archive dedicated to the documentation, preservation, and promotion of Modernist residential design 

Commerce and economic leaders in North Carolina say many large companies are in a holding pattern, waiting to make decisions on new factories, or other major investments. 

During Reconstruction, a community of free Black residents formed a “kingdom” in Western North Carolina. They called it “Happy Land.” Novelist Dolen Perkins Valdez’s new book of the same name gives a fictionalized account of this little-known Appalachian history.

And, a book about fixing the problems that lead to Black women facing death and disease at disproportionate rates in our current health care system.

Guests

Zachary Eanes, reporter Axios Raleigh 

Dolen Perkins-Valdez, assistant professor of literature at American University and New York Times best-selling author  

Wylin D. Wilson, Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University

The latest update in NC's Supreme Court race
We get an update on the still-undecided election for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Judges recently broke with precedent in upholding a lower-court ruling. Still, the saga is not over. Next stop: federal court. WUNC’s Rusty Jacobs fills us in. 
Rusty Jacobs, Voting and Election Integrity Reporter, WUNC  

‘Why it's so hard to find a good couch’ from WUNC's podcast The Broadside
Ahead of the High Point Spring Market, a look into the ways the furniture manufacturing industry has changed in recent decades, and the ways that has affected the quality of furniture, and the economics of building it here in North Carolina.

Major the Bull turns 21!
Durham’s beloved bovine icon Major the Bull turns 21 this year. We sit down with its sculptors, Michael Waller and Leah Foushee Waller, to discuss how the popular city mascot found its way to the seat of popular culture. 
Michael Waller and Leah Foushee Waller, sculptors of Major the Bull, founders of WallerFoushee Studios