News & Views

Common Cause of North Carolina Policy Director Ann Webb (Courtesy photo)

Gerrymandering: it refuses to go away. Despite widespread and growing public awareness and outrage, North Carolina Republican lawmakers continue to use it to rig our state’s elections by drawing districts guaranteed to give themselves large majorities and dilute the power of Black voters. Fortunately, voting rights advocates and good government groups are refusing to give up in their efforts to end this pernicious practice and this week, they’ll be back in federal court in Winston-Salem.

The case is known as Williams v. Hall and in it, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice is challenging North Carolina’s 2023 congressional and state legislative voting maps on behalf of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Common Cause, and eight individual voters. And recently, Newsline sat down with Common Cause policy director Ann Webb to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Ann Webb.

Professor of law and policy Sara Rosenbaum (Courtesy photo)

One of the more remarkable facts about some of the policies that state and federal lawmakers adopt for public benefit programs these days is that they’re based not on facts or data, or the money and lives saved, but on gut feelings about the worthiness of the people who would be helped. Nowhere is this better evidenced than in the ongoing effort in Congress to mandate work requirements for low-income people enrolled in the Medicaid health insurance program.

The massive budget and tax bill passed by the U.S. House in late May would mandate just such a requirement – and this was in spite of mounds of research showing that work requirements are costly, ineffective, and in many instances, downright cruel. One expert who conducted that research is Sara Rosenbaum – she’s the Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor Emerita of Health Law and Policy at the George Washington University – and recently Newsline caught up with her to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Sara Rosenbaum.

Dr. Helen Egger and Rebecca Egger (Courtesy photo)

One of the most vexing societal problems of the modern, social media-driven era is the ongoing crisis in youth mental health. The latest data on the number of children who suffer from depression and other symptoms – and who even contemplate or attempt suicide – are staggering.

Happily, a small ray of light in this dark situation is the promising growth of new tools to provide online mental health care from a new firm known as Little Otter offering coverage for virtual mental health care for children and their families, which now accepts Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina insurance. And recently, Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with the women behind the initiative – Duke University child psychiatrist Dr. Helen Egger and her daughter, Little Otter CEO and co-founder, Rebecca Egger.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Helen and Rebecca Egger.

State Rep. Julie von Haefen (Photo: NCGA)

Well summer is here and with its arrival, the end of the state fiscal year will soon follow, and that means North Carolina legislators are under some pressure to pass a new state budget. Right now, however, despite complete Republican control of both the Senate and House, the two chambers remain far apart and that could portend a long hot summer at the Legislative Building.

So, what’s at the heart of the dispute and where do both budget proposals come up short? Recently to get a handle on these issues, how lawmakers got in this fix, and why the state might be better off if they listened for a change to some different voices, Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with a Wake County lawmaker who’s spent the better part of seven years trying to get her colleagues to open their minds to some new ideas, State Rep. Julie von Haefen.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Rep. Julie von Haefen.

Adam Rust (Courtesy photo)

A decade-and-a-half ago in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the financial crisis that sparked it, consumer advocates in North Carolina and around the country succeeded in spurring the creation of a new federal government watchdog known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In the years since, the CFPB has done prodigious work – winning billions of dollars in refunds for ripped-off homebuyers, student loan borrowers, and banking customers and even putting some predatory lenders out of business.

Now, however, the Trump administration and some congressional Republicans are heeding the calls of business lobbyists to gut the agency and recently NC Newsline caught up with Consumer Federation of America Director of Financial Services Adam Rust to find out just what such a move would mean.

Click here for the full interview with Adam Rust.

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

One of the greatest scandals in 21st Century America is that hunger – a genuine lack of adequate food — is a huge and fast growing problem for millions of people. 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 Trump administration cuts and more that are planned in Congress and the General Assembly, SNAP food assistance and other parts of our already threadbare and inadequate anti-hunger system will soon experience new, big and devastating cuts that are sure to worsen the problem. Not surprisingly, anti-hunger advocates are speaking up and demanding better and recently 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. 

Learn more about donating to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

State Rep. Phil Rubin (Screengrab)

Each year, the most important piece of legislation approved by the North Carolina General Assembly is the state budget bill – a massive document running to hundreds of pages that details billions of dollars in appropriations and scores of substantive law changes. It’s the kind of legislation that ought to feature days – if not weeks – of discussion and debate.

Despite this daunting situation, some members did their best to speed-read the budget and craft amendments on the fly and one lawmaker who proved most adept at this task was one of the House’s newest members – Wake County state Rep. Phil Rubin. And soon after the House finished with the budget, Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with Rubin for a special extended conversation to learn more.

In Part One of the conversation with Wake County State Rep. Phil Rubin, we discussed the state budget bill approved by the North Carolina House right before Memorial Day – including both the rushed process employed by GOP leaders and the fact that many Democratic members ended up supporting the bill because they saw it as a big improvement over the version passed earlier in the spring by the state Senate.

In Part Two, we dug deeper into some of the details of the budget proposal, including provisions that would politicize the state Board of Elections, as well as how the state plans to continue rebuilding parts of western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene, the big and worrisome new burdens that Congress and the Trump administration are soon likely impose on state government, and a pair of bills that could transform North Carolina government for the better – if only legislative leaders would allow them to be considered.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Rep. Phil Rubin.

NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan (Courtesy photo)

It’s now been eight months since Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc in western North Carolina and permanently altered numerous communities. And while the recovery work continues, one vitally important area that deserves much greater attention than it’s receiving is preparation for the next natural disaster.

As veteran journalist Laura Sullivan explains in a new PBS/NPR documentary entitled “Hurricane Helene’s Deadly Warning,” while the federal government spends tens of billions of dollars every year to repair damage caused by severe storms, much of the money goes to areas that are repeatedly flooded. Meanwhile, efforts to build back stronger and more resilient are often foiled by private interests and politicians who are only looking at the near term. The documentary is available on both the PBS and NPR websites. And recently, NC Newsline caught up with Sullivan – who spent months in western North Carolina after Helene hit – to learn more.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NPR correspondent Laura Sullivan.

Click here to watch the documentary.

Karen Brinson Bell joins NC Newsline's Rob Schofield to discuss her six year tenure as director of the NC State Board of Elections. (Photo: Clayton Henkel/NC Newsline)

Over the past six years, few public servants in North Carolina have had a bigger or more positive impact under more difficult circumstances than former State Board of Elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell. Despite woefully inadequate appropriations from the state legislature and relentless attacks from uninformed conspiracy theorists, Brinson Bell persevered, strengthened North Carolina elections and kept them among the nation’s most efficient and honestly run.

Unfortunately, those accomplishments were of little interest to the newly installed and hyper-partisan members of the board appointed by Republican state auditor Dave Boliek, who summarily fired Brinson Bell at their first meeting and refused to even allow her to deliver farewell remarks. Happily, Brinson Bell was kind enough join Newsline’s Rob Schofield this past week for a special extended conversation and in Part One of our chat, we explored some of the accomplishments from her term in office that she thinks will be the most impactful.

In Part Two, we turned our attention to some of the broader issues and challenges facing American elections – including the increasingly intense partisanship that led North Carolina GOP lawmakers to withhold election funding and, more recently, add seven new political appointees to the agency’s staff, and the unfortunate phenomenon of politicians spreading unfounded conspiracy theories and refusing to concede close elections.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Karen Brinson Bell.

Read the prepared remarks of Brinson Bell delivered at the Board of Elections meeting on May 7, 2025.

NC's Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Dev Sangvai

One of North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s first acts upon assuming office earlier this year was to name a new Secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, and from the looks of things thus far, the person to whom he turned, Dr. Dev Sangvai, was a winning selection.

Since taking office, Sangvai — a family medicine practitioner and Duke University professor – has quickly hit the ground running and emerged as forceful voice for commonsense in the often rancorous world of health care policy.

Most recently Sangvai has spoken out publicly and energetically in opposition to the massive Medicaid and SNAP food assistance cuts working their way through Congress. And as Sangvai reminded NC Newsline, his concerns about the cuts are about more than mere empathy for struggling families – they’re also based on hard data which show the devastating ripple effects the cuts will have on North Carolina’s overall health and economic wellbeing.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NCDHHS Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai.