News & Views

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.

Attorneys Sara Harrington and Holly Stiles

Over the last several decades, much of the world has made significant progress in how it views and responds to the affliction we’ve come to refer to as substance use disorder. Whereas people who once struggled with the misuse of and addiction to drugs and alcohol were once dismissed as weak and flawed, we’ve learned that substance use disorder is an illness not unlike many others that can and should give rise to treatment rather than judgment and ostracization.

A recent lawsuit settlement should help advance this ongoing piece of societal progress. The case involved a pair of North Carolina skilled nursing facilities that sought to deny admission to an individual in violation of multiple federal laws because of his substance use disorder and recent drug use. The case settlement requires the facilities to develop and implement a Substance Use Disorder Non-Discrimination Policy and to implement several other modern, medically sound policies and recently, in order to learn more, we caught up with a pair of attorneys from the nonprofit that helped spearhead the case, Disability Rights North Carolina: Holly Stiles and Sara Harrington.

Click here to listen to the full interview Holly Stiles and Sara Harrington.

Bob Phillips, Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina

If there’s a single factor that’s playing the largest role in spurring the dysfunction and divisiveness that plague modern American politics, gerrymandering – the intentional rigging of electoral districts for partisan purposes – is it. With the assistance of digital technology and recent judicial rulings that have given them complete carte blanche, state legislatures across the country are making a mockery of fair elections by drawing and redrawing electoral districts to assure partisan electoral outcomes even before the candidates are selected.

And sadly, one of the national poster children for this destructive trend is North Carolina, where in response to the demands of President Trump, Republican leaders have signaled a willingness to redraw the state’s already rigged U.S. House map to expand their 10-4 majority to 11-3. Recently, in order to learn more about the GOP scheme and a new poll that shows strong bipartisan opposition to it, Newsline caught up with one of our state’s leading defenders of democracy and fair elections, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, Bob Phillips.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Common Cause of North Carolina executive director Bob Phillips.

Drew Ball, Natural Resources Defense Council (Photo: Screengrab from NC Newsline interview)

Despite the fact that they have yet to adopt a budget for the state fiscal year that commenced July 1, and are scheduled to return to Raleigh a couple more times this year, it appears that state lawmakers have wrapped up most of their action for the 2025 legislative session. And if that is in fact the case, one of the biggest losers in the Raleigh policy battles this year will have been our natural environment.

In addition to passing new laws to weaken important environmental protections, lawmakers have failed to fund a host of important public initiatives that are designed to clean up dangerous pollutants and strengthen communities to better withstand future natural disasters. And recently we caught up with one of our state’s top environmental policy experts — the Southeast Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Drew Ball – to learn some of the sobering details.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Drew Ball, Southeast Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.