News & Views

Lee Rainie, director of Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center

President Donald Trump created a new task force last week focused on artificial intelligence, which he has renamed “super intelligence.”

Tech leaders have called repeatedly called on Washington to create guardrails for the industry, with Anthropic warning its own investors that the rapidly advancing models could pose “existential risks to humanity.” But even with that dire warning, none of the leading developers appear ready to slow the pace of development.

So, what’s next for industry? Will we see guardrails at the state level in the near future.

To learn more, Newsline recently sat down with Lee Rainie, director of Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center.

Will AI make work easier or workers obsolete? A new NC survey looks at what workers think

The Center recently conducted a nationwide survey that found U.S. adults fear artificial intelligence will undermine people’s sense of meaning and weaken social bonds, even as daily users report increased use and benefit from the bots.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Lee Rainie, director of Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center.

Amanda Rosa of Extreme Weather Survivors

It’s been two years now since Hurricane-turned-Tropical Storm Helene devastated a large swath of the southeastern United States, including much of western North Carolina. But as anyone paying even a little attention is painfully aware, Helene was just one of a growing array of weather-driven disasters to impact our world in recent years. What’s more, as the impacts of climate change and continued expansion of human development into once natural areas continues, the potential impacts of these disasters – storms, wildfires, floods, extreme heat, deadly air pollution, drought – are only going to get worse unless society takes several swift and decisive actions.

Of course, one necessary predicate to action is for average people and their leaders to fully grasp the severity of the problem and, in particular, the havoc that weather-driven natural disasters can wreak. And to this important end, a new nonprofit has emerged in recent years that aims to shed a light on these hard truths while at the same time providing a pathway for the millions of people impacted by extreme weather events to share their stories with similarly affected people, and find a measure of healing. The group, appropriately enough, is called Extreme Weather Survivors. And recently to mark the anniversary of the Helene disaster, the group was in western North Carolina to highlight the huge recovery challenges that remain. And this past week, Newsline caught up with the organization’s Director of Outreach, Amanda Rosa.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Amanda Rosa.

Matt Calabria, director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina

It was two years ago this past week that Hurricane-turned-Tropical Storm Helene inundated and devastated large swaths of western North Carolina with unprecedented rainfall and flooding. All tolled the disaster took more than 100 lives, inflicted more than 60 billion dollars in damage and wrecked many significant segments of the region’s economy.

For Gov. Josh Stein, who took office just three months after the storm hit, Helene recovery quickly became the Number One priority for his new administration and a multi-year project that would come to occupy a huge proportion of his time and attention. And with such a huge, unprecedented and unexpected logistical and political challenge suddenly on his lap, Stein quickly found an intelligent and dedicated administrator to serve as, in effect, the state’s recovery czar — former Wake County Board of Commissioners member Matt Calabria. And this past week, Newsline caught up with Calabria for an extended conversation about how things are going.

In Part One of our recent conversation with Calabria, we took stock of how the recovery  is proceeding – the successes, the challenges and the works still to be done — two years after the disaster devastated much of our state’s mountainous western region.

Mountain strong: North Carolina marks the 2-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene

In Part Two of our conversation, we dug deeper into several of these subjects – looking not just at the heroic work that’s been done to clean up the mess and rebuild the private homes and public infrastructure destroyed by the storm, but also the huge challenges that continue to confront the region’s economy and the wellbeing of the people who’ve stayed and are trying to rebuild their lives, as well as the need to better prepare for the inevitable future natural disasters that are sure to impact the state.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Matt Calabria, director of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina.

Dr. David Wohl

We’re now several years, thankfully, past the COVID-19 pandemic, but as even a casual glance at daily news headlines reminds us, the challenge posed by infectious diseases is not going anywhere anytime soon. And with the arrival of fall weather and the holiday gatherings that will soon be right around the corner, it’s an excellent time to check in with one of the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease experts — Dr. David Wohl.

Dr. Wohl is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UNC, and he’s spent over 20 years leading research into the prevention and treatment of HIV. In 2020, he helped lead the UNC clinical and research response to COVID-19. And this past week, Dr. Wohl was kind enough to make some time to chat with NC Newsline about how North Carolinians can best protect themselves and their families from any number of dangerous infectious diseases.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Dr. David Wohl , Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UNC.

Emily Donovan, Clean Cape Fear

One of the most important and worrisome threats to our natural environment and human health to emerge in recent decades is a group of chemicals commonly referred to as PFAS. Also known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS are especially pernicious because they’re toxic, cause all kinds of health problems, and don’t break down in the environment. For the last several decades, corporate polluters spewed vast quantities of PFAS into the air and water in southeastern North Carolina, thus contaminating public water systems and thousands of private wells.

Thankfully, one especially important and effective group that’s emerged in response to this problem is the nonprofit Clean Cape Fear, and recently Newsline caught up with the group’s co-founder Emily Donovan as she returned from testifying before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Clean Cape Fear co-founder Emily Donovan.

NC AG Jackson, DEQ reach $590M settlement with chemical firms over PFAS

Jason Husser (Photo: Elon.edu)

The fall midterm elections are just six weeks away and that means that North Carolinians will soon cast their ballots in an array of races that will both help determine the makeup of the next Congress and General Assembly, and whether future legislatures and governors will have two the most important tools they use to fund government – that is, income and property taxes – greatly restricted.

At such a moment, it seemed like an excellent time to check in on some of the latest public opinion numbers – both with respect to the election, President Trump’s popularity, and a policy issue that remains very much in the spotlight (marijuana legalization) – with Elon University pollster Jason Husser.

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

Alexandra Sirota (Photo: NC Budget & Tax Center)

The latest public opinion survey shows generally strong support amongst voters for a trio of proposed constitutional amendments that will appear on the North Carolina ballot this fall that address incomes taxes, property taxes and voter photo ID.

However, Alexandra Sirota, the executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, says while all three amendments may sound superficially appealing, when one digs below the surface, it quickly becomes apparent that each one will likely have long lasting and deeply problematic impacts while providing few if any real benefits to average North Carolinians.

Click here for the full interview with Alexandra Sirota, executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Budget and Tax Center.

Amy Beros and Liz Reasoner (Courtesy photos)

Thanks to soaring prices and big cuts to federal food assistance, hunger is quickly growing worse across North Carolina. The latest conservative estimate is that one out of seven North Carolinians is “food insecure” – a number that’s way up in just the last five years and now even higher than during the pandemic. How did we get into this situation, how are food aid organizations trying to respond, and what more should all of us be doing? Recently, as part of Hunger Awareness Month, Newsline explored those questions and more in a special extended conversation with a pair of experts: Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina President Amy Beros and Food Bank of the Albemarle CEO Liz Reasoner.

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with North Carolina food bank leaders Amy Beros and Liz Reasoner we explored the remarkable and unhappy fact that – thanks to the toxic combination of rising prices and big cuts to federal funding for food assistance, the scourge of hunger is on the rise in North Carolina, and is now worse even than during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Part Two of our chat, we dug deeper into the scope of the crisis, the huge practical challenges that many struggling households face in acquiring healthy food, the daunting problems that food banks and pantries face in serving the growing number of people in need, and how ultimately, it’s incumbent upon all of us to ask and expect more from elected leaders – particularly in Washington – if we’re going to see any meaningful improvement in the situation.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina President Amy Beros and Food Bank of the Albemarle CEO Liz Reasoner.

Chris Blue, North Carolina Law Enforcement Trust & Legitimacy Project (Courtesy photo)

One of the big problems confronting law enforcement departments in these politically charged times is the simple failure to communicate. And one of the main sources of this problem according to former Chapel Chief of Police Chris Blue is that law enforcement agencies often aren’t doing enough to affirmatively earn the trust of the communities they serve. As Blue wrote in a recent guest essay for NC Newsline, law enforcement leaders have a responsibility to stand up for the principles that underpin the rule of law — fairness, accountability, equal treatment and respect for constitutional rights – as well as to actively participate in public conversations about law enforcement and public safety, even when it’s difficult to do so.

To advance this cause, Blue recently helped launch a new nonprofit called the North Carolina Law Enforcement Trust & Legitimacy Project and recently he sat down with Newsline to share some details.

Listen to the full interview with Chris Blue with the North Carolina Law Enforcement Trust & Legitimacy Project.

Senator Natalie Murdock (Photo: NCGA)

As the cost of living continues to soar across the country and worsen the growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else, a major contributor to this troubling trend is the cost of energy and public utilities. Indeed, as North Carolina State Senator Natalie Murdock of Durham and Chatham counties has recently highlighted in several forums, the situation has grown so dire that many households one might even think of as middle or working class are finding themselves facing utility shutoffs.

And as Murdock also highlighted, this trend took a deadly and tragic turn recently when a Rocky Mount family that was trying to rely on a generator to provide electricity after having their power shut off, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. And this past week as another climate change-fueled heat wave baked our state, Newsline caught up with the senator for an extended conversation about the tragedy and some of the ways in which our state’s public policies are leaving average residents without basic protections that ought to be basic human rights.

In Part Two of our conversation, we examined another area in which our warming climate is causing suffering – the workplace – as well as two other policy issues that are front and center right now in the public sphere: the growing movement to curb the development of energy-sucking data centers, and the ongoing debate over voting rights and election administration in light of controversial recent actions by North Carolina Republican lawmakers and regulators.

Click here for the full interview with Senator Natalie Murdock.