Congresswoman Deborah Ross (Courtesy photo)

North Carolina Second District Congresswoman Deborah Ross joins NC Newsline to discuss her new redistricting reform proposal, and several other timely issues, including immigration, artificial intelligence, and the prospects for reviving an enormously successful anti-poverty tax credit.

States Newsroom reporter Ariana Figueroa

Read Figueroa’s latest piece on the sweeping bipartisan immigration legislation :

Rep. Kathy Manning (Photo: House.gov)

In a  special two-part conversation with North Carolina Congresswoman Kathy Manning we discuss the threats to reproductive freedom in modern America and some of the other key issues on the front-burner in Washington.

Durham Tech President JB Buxton (Photo: DTCC)

Thanks to a new $29.5 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Durham Public Schools are partnering with Durham Tech Community College to start a new high school program for students interested in pursuing healthcare careers after graduation. The program will enable students to attend an early college in which they’ll be prepared upon graduation to enter any number of several high-demand healthcare careers. Earlier this week, NC Newsline sat down with the President of Durham Tech, JB Buxton, to find out more. Read more about the early college initiative here.

Karen Brinson Bell (Photo: NCSBE)

It’s hard to believe, but another election year is well underway and voting-by-mail ballots are already available for the upcoming March 5 North Carolina primary. And in case you hadn’t heard. Some new law changes will make voting – both by mail and in-person – a little different this year.

Not only will voters need a photo ID – both to vote by mail and in person – but other changes will impact the due date for getting mail-in ballots returned, the access to polling places that partisan observers enjoy, and in some counties, whether your signature will be reviewed.

Fortunately, the folks running our elections remain among the nation’s best and, as NC Newsline learned in a recent extended conversation with State Board of Elections Executive Director, Karen Brinson Bell, optimistic that they can make the new laws work fairly and efficiently.

Carl Davis (Photo courtesy ITEP)

Ever since Republicans took control of the North Carolina legislature in 2011, they’ve passed income tax cut after income tax cut and bragged repeatedly of the supposed enormous benefits this has afforded to average North Carolinians.

A new report from the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, however, debunks such claims. As it turns out, not only have the tax cuts hollowed out a host of core public structures and services – most notably our K-12 schools – they’ve left the tax code unfairer than ever. Today, in fact, rich North Carolina households now pay 50-75% less of their incomes in state and local taxes than do folks in the middle and at the bottom.

And recently we caught up with the author of the report – ITEP’s director of research, Carl Davis, to examine some of the its sobering details.

Read ITEP’s new report: Who Pays?

Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons (Photo: NCGA)

Down through the decades, the relationship between the United States and China has gone through many iterations. In the mid-20 th Century, China was a closed, mysterious, and totalitarian state that was almost completely cut off from the global economy. Today, of course, that situation is dramatically different. While many basic individual freedoms remain in short supply for most Chinese, China has become an economic giant, the United States’ biggest partner and rival, and by any fair estimation, a nation that we ignore at great risk.

Fortunately, despite many recent tensions, efforts to keep our two nations connected and in conversation continue and recently, I caught up with a North Carolina elected leader who’s been part of such an effort, State Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons of Guildford County. Clemmons was part of a bipartisan

In Part Two of our interview, we shifted our gaze back home to domestic matters and, among other things, Clemmons’ deep concern about the threats to democratic government lurking on the state and national political scenes and her fervent hope that North Carolina Republican legislative leaders and budget writers will abandon their war on public schools and recognize the need to dramatically enhance education funding.

Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen (Courtesy photo)

One of the nation’s top pollsters – Tom Jensen – joins us to discuss what voters are thinking about some key national and state races at the dawn of a very important election year.

Kelan Lyons

Most Americans are aware of the outsized impact that rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court can have on our society, but as a steady drumbeat of stories from NC Newsline investigative reporter Kelan Lyons made clear in 2023, the state civil and criminal justice systems can also be hugely impactful and deserving of our close attention.

Recently, Kelan sat down for a two-part conversation with Newsline’s Rob Schofield in which we looked back at some of the top North Carolina courts and justice stories from 2023. In Part One of our chat, we discussed a state Court of Appeals decision in which a panel of judges ruled that quote “life begins at conception” (and how Kelan’s reporting likely led to it being withdrawn). We also discussed an end-of-year campaign launched by opponents of the death penalty, and the tragic story of a man who, effectively, got lost in the state prison system.

In Part Two of our conversation, we discussed his reporting on some other troubling news from the state’s prison system and a pair of important court actions with implications for the First Amendment and freedom of the press.

Read more of Kelan Lyons’ coverage here.

Investigative reporter Lisa Sorg

2023 was yet another big year for stories related to the environment – and, in particular, the seemingly countless ways in which human well-being was (and continues to be) endangered by pollution.

Here in North Carolina, NC Newsline environmental investigative reporter Lisa Sorg filed scores of stories documenting this hard reality, and recently, she sat down with Rob Schofield to discuss some of them – including the recent decision of the federal EPA to limit imports of the toxic forever chemical GenX, continued concerns about a new natural gas pipeline that’s proposed for parts of central North Carolina, the advances and setbacks of the environmental justice movement, and how the 2024 elections will likely impact state environmental policy. Read more of Sorg’s comprehensive coverage here.