News & Views

Lauren Fox, Senior Director, Policy & Research, Public School Forum (Photo: ncforum.org)

At the start of the 2025 state legislative session, few needs in our state stand out as more obvious and dire than the ones we see in our public schools. From teacher pay to facilities to student well-being to the way we track performance in and demand accountability from the schools we fund, public education in our state continues to reel from almost a decade and a half of legislative neglect.

And while Republican legislative leaders continue to display little interest in reversing this pattern of neglect this year, the needs are no mystery. Indeed, the nonpartisan Public School Forum of North Carolina recently released a short, sweet and obvious list of public education priorities that would, if followed, make a huge and positive impact, and recently NC Newsline caught up with one of the experts who crafted it, the Forum’s Senior Director for Policy & Research, Dr. Lauren Fox.

Read the Top Education Issues for the current biennium.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Dr. Lauren Fox.

File photo of Lynn Bonner/ Photo of State Supreme Court signage by Clayton Henkel

The big political story in North Carolina right now continues to revolve around the unsettled election for a seat on state Supreme Court. Multiple recounts confirmed that the incumbent justice, Democrat Allison Riggs, was the narrow winner over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin, but nearly three months after Election Day, Griffin has yet to concede. Instead, he’s gone to court in an effort to have the ballots cast by more than 60,000 registered voters thrown out on a variety of technical grounds, in hopes it will reverse the election results.

Last week, a new chapter in the saga unfolded when the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over whether the matter should be decided in state or federal court, and the day after arguments were heard, Newsline’s Rob Schofield caught up with veteran reporter Lynn Bonner, to discuss where things stand and what might be next.

Click here for the full interview with reporter Lynn Bonner.

Read more of Bonner’s reporting here.

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

Wind energy. Whether it’s offshore or on land, wind energy is a booming and enormously promising industry that can play a big role in ending our heroin-like addiction to fossil fuels. What’s more, because of its geography, North Carolina is extremely well-positioned to benefit from its growth.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Drew Ball.

Sen. Sydney Batch (Photo: NCGA)

As the North Carolina General Assembly prepares to begin its 2025 session in earnest this week, Senate Democrats have a new leader. After several years at the helm, veteran Raleigh lawmaker and former state House Speaker Dan Blue recently turned over the reins to another member of the Wake County delegation — State Senator Sydney Batch.

Batch, an accomplished attorney who lives in Apex, is the first woman of color to serve as a party leader in the legislature, and as quickly became obvious during a recent conversation we had, she’s a smart and tough politician who will bring a refreshing surge of energy to a delegation that’s long been wrongfully consigned to minority status as a result of partisan gerrymandering.

Click here to listen to NC Newsline’s full interview with Leader Batch.

WCU political scientist Chris Cooper (Screengrab from News & Views interview)

As everyone knows by now, Donald Trump is president of the United States again. And while there are obviously many Americans who welcome this news and see Trump as a victim, a hero, and someone who will somehow restore “greatness” to the nation, for millions of others, the chief emotions that Trump’s return has spurred are fear and anxiety over what the country might come to resemble under a president who embraces a brand authoritarian rule the nation has never before experienced.

And yet, despite these deeply conflicting views and emotions, politics, elections, and law and policymaking will go on and recently, Newsline’s Rob Schofield got a chance to check in with someone who keeps track of such things in our state better than just about anyone else, Western Carolina University political scientist, Professor Chris Cooper.

Click here to list to the full interview with Professor Chris Cooper.

Duke Health OB/GYN Dr. Beverly Gray (Photo: Courtesy of Scholars@Duke)

Few policy debates received more attention in last November’s election than reproductive freedom. Strangely, however, despite widespread evidence that significant majorities favor abortion rights and the right to contraception — see for example the results of numerous ballot initiatives — Republicans opposed to reproductive freedom managed to win the presidency and control of the new Congress and to maintain control of the North Carolina legislature.

So, what does all this mean? How are women and the physicians who hope to serve them faring in the states where abortion rights have been limited or eliminated? And will North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein’s recent executive order that seeks to protect physicians and patients help?  Recently, Duke Health OB/GYN Dr. Beverly Gray — who co-hosts the new podcast “Outlawed” — joined NC Newsline to discuss these and other questions.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Dr. Beverly Gray.

Attorney Eliza Sweren-Becker of the national Brennan Center for Justice (Courtesy photo)

The big political news story in North Carolina right now revolves around the yet unsettled election for a seat on state Supreme Court. Multiple counts confirmed that the incumbent justice, Democrat Allison Riggs, was the narrow winner over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin. But more than two months after Election Day, Griffin has yet to concede. Instead, he’s gone to court in an effort to have the ballots cast by more than 60,000 registered voters thrown out on a variety of technical grounds, in hopes it will reverse the election results.

It’s a remarkably audacious strategy that has spurred numerous citizen protests and additional lawsuits, and as we learned in a recent conversation with attorney Eliza Sweren-Becker of the national Brennan Center for Justice, it’s also something that has many observers deeply concerned about the precedent it could establish for elections across the nation.

Sweren-Becker serves as senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Eliza Sweren-Becker of the national Brennan Center for Justice.

Marco Guzman (Courtesy photo)

Among the actions that the new Trump administration is expected to make a top priority in the coming days is an aggressive new mass deportation initiative targeting the nation’s millions of undocumented immigrants. It’s a plan that may sound superficially appealing to many Americans, but as we learned in a recent conversation NC Newsline had with Marco Guzman — a Senior Policy Analyst with the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy – it’s also a plan that will, if implemented, bring a host of unwanted consequences.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Guzman.  Read ITEP’s report here.

Logan Rockefeller Harris (Courtesy photo)

For 30 years now, the nonpartisan North Carolina Budget and Tax Center has been our state’s preeminent research nonprofit in the fields of fiscal and economic policy, and in recent years one of its signature products has been the biennial Living Income Standard report. The report documents what it actually costs for families of various sizes to make ends meet in all of the state’s 100 counties. Recently the group released its 2025 report and as Newsline’s Rob Schofield learned in a conversation with the author – BTC Research Manager Logan Rockefeller Harris – the report shows once again why both the federal government definition of poverty and North Carolina’s minimum wage law are hopelessly out of date.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Harris.

Click here to read the 2025 Living Income Standard report.

North Carolina League of Conservation Voters Director of Governmental Relations Dan Crawford (Photo: nclcv.org)

As has been the case for several years now, at the start of 2025, no single issue poses a greater threat to the long-term well-being of North Carolinians – and indeed, all Americans — than the global climate crisis. From the economy to public health to natural disasters to immigration to species extinction, global warming from fossil fuel use is rapidly and negatively transforming our planet.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost. As North Carolina League of Conservation Voters Director of Governmental Relations Dan Crawford explained in a recent excellent op-ed for NC Newsline, North Carolina has made a good deal of encouraging progress on the environmental policy front in recent years and is poised to build on those accomplishments in 2025. And recently we caught up with Dan to learn what some of our priorities should be in the new year.

Listen to our full interview with Dan Crawford here.