News & Views

Cecelia Holden, president and CEO of myFutureNC (Courtesy photo)

In 2019, with bipartisan support in the General Assembly and a signature from then-Governor Roy Cooper, North Carolina adopted one of the nation’s most ambitious education goals–to have two-million residents aged 25-44 with a postsecondary degree or industry-valued credential by 2030. The idea was and is that boosting these numbers will foster upward mobility and greater economic prosperity while meeting business and industry’s current and future workforce needs.

Since that time, the state has made some important and impressive progress in achieving the objective, but as Newsline learned in recent special extended conversation with Cecelia Holden, President and CEO of the bipartisan nonprofit My Future NC, the state still has a long way to go and must wrestle with some significant challenges if it hopes to hit its goal in the five years that remain.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Cecelia Holden, the president and CEO of myFutureNC.

Click here to download the 2025 State of Educational Attainment Report.

Pete Smith, Center for Responsible Lending (Courtesy photo)

Car title lending. Thankfully, a lot of North Carolinians have never heard of this particular business because it’s long been prohibited under state law. Unfortunately, many residents of other states are all too familiar with these frequently predatory loans in which borrowers sometimes pay interest rates of as high as 300% and face repossession of their vehicle if they miss a payment.

What’s more, as a new report from senior researcher Pete Smith of the Center for Responsible Lending documents in painful detail, surveys indicate that some car title lenders pay little attention to state lines. As a result, some North Carolinians have, despite our state’s official ban, fallen prey to these loans and the debt trap that so often comes with them. Smith’s report is entitled “Under the radar: Evidence of prohibited Vehicle-Tile Loans made in 22 states and DC” and Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with him recently in his California office to discuss it.

Click here to listen to the full interview with senior researcher Pete Smith.

Professor David McLennan (Photo: Meredith College)

A narrow majority of North Carolina voters supported Donald Trump in last November’s presidential election, but just weeks into his second term in office, large majorities oppose some of his highest profile policy ideas and initiatives, according to the latest Meredith College Poll.

Meredith pollsters asked likely voters for their views on an array of policy matters— both foreign and domestic — as well as a handful of North Carolina-specific issues. And while results varied somewhat depending upon the political party, race and gender of the voters surveyed, there were some clear and noteworthy takeaways about what most North Carolinians are thinking, and recently we caught up with the poll’s director, Prof. David McLennan to learn more.

Click here for the full interview with Prof. David McLennan.

Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (Photo: NCGA)

We’re now a month into the 2025 state legislative session and lawmakers have begun the process of crafting what’s always the most important legislation of the year — a new state budget. This year, thanks to the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene and growing softness in state revenue forecasts after years of regressive tax cuts, that work comes with some extra challenges.

Recently, in order to get a gauge on where things stand, NC Newsline caught up with Senate Democratic Whip Jay Chaudhuri of Wake County. And as Senator Chaudhuri told us, he’s quite concerned about some of the choices the legislature is likely to face, as well as the impact of the binge of federal funding cuts emanating from the Trump administration, and a state Senate bill that could force many health insurance plans — including the State Health Plan — to limit coverage of necessary procedures.

Click here to listen to the full interview with NC Senator Jay Chaudhuri.

NCAE president Tamika Walker Kelly (Courtesy photo)

Among the many deeply controversial proposals emanating from Washington these days is the Trump administration’s announced plan to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. Though details remain extremely sketchy at this point, it doesn’t take a PhD to grasp that such a plan would have devastating impacts across the country — from kindergarten through college — given the millions of students who depend on federal education funding and programming.

Not surprisingly, the proposal has sparked outrage and spirited opposition from thousands of teachers, and recently we caught up with one of their leaders, North Carolina Association of Educators president Tamika Walker Kelly. And as Walker Kelly told NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield, she and her fellow teachers will be actively opposing the Trump scheme, as well as a new proposal here in North Carolina that would negatively impact already inadequate teacher incomes by raising state health plan premiums.

Click here to listen to our full interview with NCAE president Tamika Walker Kelly.

Gunther Peck (Photo: Duke.edu)

The biggest story in North Carolina politics right now remains the unsettled race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Although multiple recounts show incumbent Democratic Justice Allision Riggs as the winner, Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin is seeking to have more than 60,000 ballots cast by registered voters thrown out based on technicalities — most notably that many voters’ records lack a Social Security or driver’s license number.

While the case remains tied up in litigation, that hasn’t stopped a lot of groups and individuals from examining and challenging Griffin’s action. One such group is the Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke and North Carolina Central Universities and recently Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with the group’s founder and co-director, Duke University History Professor Gunther Peck, to find out what they’ve uncovered.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Gunther Peck.

Gretchen Engel (Courtesy photo)

Two of the most hotly debated topics in law and policy — racial justice and the death penalty — have been on trial in a high-profile criminal case in Johnston County over the last year. In the case, a man named Hasson Bacote challenged the death sentence he received in a murder trial based on his contention that race, and racism played a role in the sentence he received — something that was prohibited at one point in our state under a law known as the Racial Justice Act.

Last week, in what is being widely hailed as a landmark decision, a superior court judge issued a lengthy and detailed ruling in which held that race had in fact played big and wrongful role in Bacote’s sentence. So, what exactly did the judge find and what does it mean for our state going forward? Recently NC Newsline sat down with one of the lawyers who represented Bacote — Center for Death Penalty Litigation executive director Gretchen Engel — to find out.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Gretchen Engel.

Chad Martin and Karida Giddings of the North Carolina Black Alliance (Courtesy photos)

While no one these days is safe from the destructive impacts of climate change and the pollution that plagues our fragile environment, poor people and people of color are disproportionately at-risk, as it’s their communities and neighborhoods that most frequently lie in flood plains, close to sources of toxic pollution, or in otherwise hazardous areas.

It’s this hard truth that gave rise several years ago to the environmental justice movement — a cause that seeks to shine a light on at-risk communities and spur public action to help them. Unfortunately, environmental justice is not something that’s popular with polluters or the Trump administration, and as NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield learned in recent conversation with Chad Martin and Karida Giddings of the North Carolina Black Alliance, this fact is leading to some very worrisome policy developments.

U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross (NC-02) (Photo: House.gov)

Whether it was his intention or not, Donald Trump has undoubtedly caused more havoc in the first few weeks of his second administration than any president in U.S. history. The sheer volume of orders, directives, memos, and PR stunts — many of them contradictory and half-baked — has given rise to an atmosphere of widespread fear and anxiety.

Fortunately, a large and fast growing group of advocates and elected leaders is pushing back. And one of the most thoughtful and articulate members of that group is Triangle-area U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross. Ross (NC-02) spoke eloquently at a January rally in Raleigh opposing Trump’s scheme to freeze trillions of dollars in federal appropriations and grants, and as she told NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield, she and her fellow Democrats in Congress and in state government have only just begun to fight.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Congresswoman Deborah Ross.

Deborah Dicks Maxwell (Photo courtesy of the NC NAACP)

Few political controversies in North Carolina loom larger right now than the effort of Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin to overturn the election he lost last fall to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs.

Griffin still wants the ballots of more than 60,000 disproportionately Black and young voters thrown out on technical grounds and recently, in response, Deborah Dicks Maxwell, the president of the North Carolina NAACP, penned a power essay condemning the purge idea as a dangerous ploy that threatens lasting damage to our state.

This past week, Newsline caught up with Maxwell from her Wilmington home where she displayed a sign reading “1898” — a reminder of the horrific racist coup perpetrated on that city many years ago in the aftermath of another controversial election.

Click here to listen to the full interview with the NC NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell.