Meech Carter (Photo: NCLCV)

Few national policy changes of the past year have drawn more attention or caused more controversy that President Trump’s on-again off-again economic tariffs. But when it comes to lasting global impacts, it’s all but certain that tariffs will pale in comparison to another controversial policy shift – the Trump administration decision to abandon our nation’s commitment to combating climate change.

This past week, representatives from around the world convened in Brazil for the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP30 — a key opportunity to check in on how the world is doing in meeting the climate pledges made by scores of nations under the Paris Agreement. And sadly, as we learned in a recent conversation with North Carolina League of Conservation Voters Clean Energy Campaigns Director Meech Carter, the news – especially here in the U.S. – is not encouraging.

Click here for the full interview with Meech Carter as we discuss climate change, energy policy, and the absence of the U.S. at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Mary Carroll Dodd is the owner of Red Scout Farm near Black Mountain

One of the most visible and controversial economic policy shifts to be implemented during the first year of the second Trump administration has been the return of big economic tariffs (that is, federal taxes) on foreign imports. The President claims that tariffs will boost domestic businesses, but results thus far – especially given the on-again-off-again way in which they’ve been applied and removed — have been, at the very best, mixed.

One North Carolina businessperson who can testify to the challenging ways in which tariffs have impacted their business is western North Carolina farmer, Mary Carroll Dodd. Dodd is the owner of Red Scout Farm near Black Mountain, where she farms on land her family has owned for 125 years. And as she told Newsline when we caught up with her a few days’ back, tariffs have been anything but a boon to her business.

Click here for the full interview with Mary Carroll Dodd. 

NC Newsline political reporter Galen Bacharier

The federal government shutdown continued to have an array of devastating impacts in recent days and, by any fair estimate, one of the most harmful has been the shutoff in SNAP food assistance. While a pair of federal court rulings appear to have forced the Trump administration to restart benefits for the millions of families who rely upon them, at last report, those benefits will be at just half of previous levels – a change that will guarantee a spike in hunger and suffering.

So how is this playing out in North Carolina? How many people are being adversely impacted and what if anything can be done to lessen the impact? Recently, we sat down with a journalist who’s been watching and reporting on this situation – NC Newsline reporter Galen Bacharier.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NC Newsline reporter Galen Bacharier.

Rebecca Cerese (Courtesy photo)

The government shutdown and its devastating impact on millions of federal workers and average citizens is not the only dysfunction emanating from Washington these days. Thanks to the refusal of Congress and the Trump administration to extend health insurance tax credits enacted during the Biden years, millions of Americans are facing astronomical price spikes for Affordable Care Act health insurance policies for the New Year.

So, how bad is the situation and what can average North Carolinians do – both to urge Congress to act and to learn about how to fashion solutions to cope with the price hikes? Recently, Newsline sat down with one of our state’s most knowledgeable health care policy experts – Rebecca Cerese of the North Carolina Justice Center – to hear some answers to these and other closely related questions.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Rebecca Cerese of the North Carolina Justice Center.

Fact sheets and additional resources: 

Melissa McDonald

Amid the federal government shutdown and the pause in SNAP benefits, a growing number of groups and individuals are coming together and collaborating to promote the success and well-being of students and their families.

One such group in our state is the North Carolina Community Schools Coalition – a nonprofit that’s working hard to promote a model across the state in which traditional public schools become the hubs of their communities – not just for K-12 education, but for an array of core public services and structures – something that’s especially important at a time like the present when core government services have been going away.

And recently, NC Newsline caught up with the Coalition’s Director of Services, Melissa McDonald, to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Melissa McDonald of the North Carolina Community Schools Coalition.

Jared Bernstein (Courtesy photo)

Over the last couple of decades, few if any American economists have played a more prominent role in the national debate over the economy or in actually crafting economic policy than Jared Bernstein. Bernstein served as chair of the national Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

And recently Bernstein was kind enough to join NC Newsline for a conversation about the current state of the U.S. economy and, among many other things, how the ongoing rise in inflation combined with growth in unemployment signals the arrival of the dreaded phenomenon known as stagflation, and how President Trump’s chaotic policies – most notably the imposition of tariffs on imported goods and services – are fueling what could well be a very destructive and hard-to-reverse economic trend.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired September 21, 2025.

Senator DeAndrea Salvador (Photo: NCGA)

It’s almost impossible to turn on one’s computer, phone or TV these days without hearing about or, indeed, experiencing the impact of AI – artificial intelligence. The rapid rise of this remarkable technology is reshaping our world in many important ways – some that provide grounds for great hope and others that give rise to profound concerns.

Not surprisingly, AI’s rapid rise is also spurring discussion of a raft of ethical and public policy issues – from questions of privacy and consumer protection to the need to regulate so-called deepfakes, to the very question of how humans assure that they retain control over the technology. Thankfully, some smart leaders have begun to pay close attention to the policy implications of AI, and here in North Carolina, one of those leaders is Mecklenburg County State Senator DeAndrea Salvador. And recently Sen. Salvador joined NC Newsline for a special two-part conversation in which we discussed some of these issues, and how for her, AI is a deeply personal matter.

In Part One of our extended conversation with State Senator Salvador of Mecklenburg County, we dove into a discussion of AI – artificial intelligence – the hopes and fears to which it’s giving rise and, in Senator Salvador’s case, how AI allowed an online talk she had given a few years’ back to be excerpted and manipulated for use in corporate advertising without her consent.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of the important policy implications of AI’s rapid rise, some of the legislation that she and others have introduced to help steer things in what they hope will be a healthy direction, and a new AI leadership council that Gov. Josh Stein has established (and on which Salvador serves) that will try to keep AI working for North Carolinians rather than the other way around.

Click here to listen to the full interview with State Senator DeAndrea Salvador.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired September 21, 2025.

Samuel Gunter, executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition.

North Carolina faces a dire shortage of affordable housing. One need merely talk to friends and family members – even those with middle class incomes – to understand just how difficult it is to find affordable rental housing, much less homeownership opportunities.

That said, the numbers are bleak. The National Low Income Housing Coalition released a report this past summer entitled “Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing” which showed how the wages that millions of hourly workers are earning don’t come close to what’s necessary. In North Carolina, a full-time worker must earn a minimum of $27.14 per hour to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment. So how did we get here, how are policies in Washington deepening the crisis and what should we be doing? Back in August, Newsline got a chance to explore these questions and more in an extended conversation with the executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Samuel Gunter.

In Part One of our extended conversation with the executive director of the North Carolina Housing Coalition, Samuel Gunter, we dug into some of the details of our state and national affordable housing shortages, why the current market is failing millions, and why the latest budget cuts and policy changes emanating from Washington are not going to help.

In Part Two of our chat we turned to several related matters, including the way in which natural disasters and the Trump administration’s immigrant deportation policies are dramatically worsening the situation and how the recent Trump executive order targeting homeless people for arrest or involuntary commitment represents another significant step in the wrong direction.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Samuel Gunter.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired on August 3, 2025.

Amy Beros (Photo: Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC)

In 34 central and eastern North Carolina counties, one-in-five people – that’s well over half-a-million men, women and children – suffers from food insecurity.

And sadly, things aren’t going to get better any time soon. Indeed, thanks to recent acts of Congress and the state legislature, SNAP food assistance and other parts of our already threadbare and inadequate anti-hunger system are experiencing new, big and devastating cuts that are sure to worsen the problem. Not surprisingly, anti-hunger advocates are speaking up and demanding better and back in June Newsline caught up with one such leader – the President and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, Amy Beros.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Amy Beros.

This is a rebroadcast of our interview that originally aired on June 8, 2025.

Pollster Jason Husser

Few areas of modern American popular culture have undergone greater or more rapid changes in recent years that college sports. Thanks to a series of successful legal challenges, the nation’s longstanding practice of treating college athletes as amateurs has been completely upended and, especially at big schools engaged high-profile sports like football and basketball, teams have become professionalized, with many athletes switching schools yearly, and raking in multi-million dollar deals under so-called “name image and likeness.”

In a time of such rapid change and upheaval, it comes as little surprise that many people who were used to how things once worked – be they university leaders or average citizens and sports fans — are experiencing a sense of disorientation and discomfort. And this fact was made clear in some recent opinion surveys conducted by the Elon University Poll and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, and recently Newsline caught up with the Elon poll director, Prof. Jason Husser, to learn more.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation Husser, we discussed some of the results of the recent opinion surveys of university leaders he oversaw on the subject of the rapid changes that have been underway in college athletics – particularly the professionalization of once amateur sports and the newfound ability athletes enjoy to transfer from school-to-school.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into some of these issues, the concerns that many university leaders have about how these changes are impacting low revenue sports, and, in addition, how these views compare and contrast to what a poll conducted this past summer revealed about the attitudes of the general public.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Elon University Professor Jason Husser.