News & Views

Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons (Photo: NCGA)

While it can certainly have many appealing aspects, serving in the North Carolina General Assembly can also be a very difficult assignment. The pay is less than minimum wage and has been frozen for decades. The length of sessions has gotten much longer and more unpredictable. And, of course, in recent years, the political rancor and conflict have increased significantly.

One lawmaker who’s managed to successfully negotiate these challenges in recent years is Rep. Ashton Wheeler Clemmons of Guilford County. Recently, however, Wheeler Clemmons announced that she’s resigning from her seat to take on a new job with the UNC system, and this past week she was kind enough to sit down with NC Newline and share some reflections as she prepares to depart.

Attorney Jason Pikler (Photo: Courtesy NC Justice Center)

Debt buying.

You may never have heard of it but amazingly, debt buying – a scheme in which companies buy old and stale claims from creditors for pennies on the dollar and then file lawsuits against thousands of debtors who may not even remember the debt – is a big and often predatory multi-million-dollar industry.

Several years’ back, North Carolina passed a consumer protection law to guard against some of the industry’s worst excesses, and recently a team of consumer protection attorneys led by the North Carolina Justice Center’s Jason Pikler, secured a sizable settlement on behalf of thousands of consumers against one very large debt buyer known as Portfolio Recovery Associates. And this past week, NC Newsline caught up with Pikler to learn more about debt buying, the settlement, and some basic tips for consumers.

NC State Professor of Political Science Steven Greene (Photo: NCSU)

The political news has been coming at us like it’s shot from a firehose as of late and that was certainly the case this past week in and around President Joe Biden’s historic announcement that he will not seek reelection, and the remarkable jolt of electricity that his passing of the torch to Vice President Harris provided to Democrats.

So what does all this mean for the fall election – both nationally and here in North Carolina? Will the Democrats’ newfound energy last? Is the vice president ready for the challenge? And who will she pick as her running mate?

Recently, NC Newsline’s Rob Schofield discussed all these questions and several others with NC State Professor of Political Science Steven Greene.

Jennifer Roberts and Bob Orr (Courtesy photos)

One very hopeful development for the security and honesty of elections in North Carolina in recent months has been the emergence of the North Carolina Network for Fair, Safe and Secure Elections.

The bipartisan group is led by former Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts and former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr and for some time now they’ve served on a group known as the Commission on the Future of North Carolina Elections that’s been working hard to examine how our elections are conducted, to identify strengths, weaknesses and needs, to debunk myths, and to boost public confidence in democracy. And happily, as they told NC Newsline when we caught up with them this past week, their latest findings indicate that there are both good reasons for confidence in our elections and some simple improvements worth investing in that could make the situation even better.

Learn more about the upcoming Trusted Elections Tour, a grassroots project initiated by The Carter Center.

Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy Professor David Schanzer (Courtesy photo)

We’re in the midst of the dog days of summer, but it’s been anything but quiet of late when it comes to this year’s national presidential election. Between the horrific assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, the convening of the Republican National Convention that followed close on its heels, and the ongoing debate surrounding the readiness of the two main candidates and their sharply differing views on a host of key issues, the election has been THE national news story in recent weeks.

In Part One of our special extended conversation with national politics and terrorism expert Prof. David Schanzer of Duke University, we discussed the recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and any connection it might have to our current heated political environment.

In Part Two of our chat, we continued our discussion of President Biden’s legacy and what it would mean for Democrats to nominate a different candidate, what we can and can’t glean from public opinion polls, and importantly, the fact that the election will serve as a referendum on a host of enormously important policy debates with huge implications for the nation’s future.

Editor’s note: Our interview with Professor David Schanzer was recorded in advance of President Biden’s announcement on July 21, 2024 that he was withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

Read more from David Schanzer at the Perilous Times substack.

Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen (Courtesy photo)

For the last 17 years, one of the nation’s most knowledgeable and accurate political pollsters has been based right here in North Carolina. Over the course of numerous primary and general elections during that period, Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling has dissected and accurately forecast literally hundreds of races across the country. And with this year’s election now just a few months away, Jensen is once again busily analyzing the trends in voter attitudes.

NC Newsline caught up with Tom in his Raleigh office late last week and learned that President Biden’s much-criticized debate performance has actually had little impact on voters thus far and that this November is likely to still be a nail-biter – both for the presidential race and for a number of statewide races here in North Carolina.

Prof. Chris Cooper of Western Carolina University

As the nation heads towards one of its most important elections in modern history, a major ruckus has arisen among some Democrats around President Joe Biden’s age and whether his performance in a recent presidential debate with Donald Trump indicates that it’s time for him to step aside in favor of a younger candidate.

In Part Two of our conversation, we shifted to some of the unprecedented challenges faced by Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump, including his recent criminal conviction for falsifying business records, his search for a vice presidential running mate, his apparent attempt to disavow Project 2025 – a blueprint for a second Trump administration developed by his aides and supporters – as well as some of the things we can look forward to at this coming week’s GOP nominating convention and the Democratic event that takes place next month.

This interview was recorded July 8th, in advance of the weekend events in Butler, Pennsylvania. 

Bob Phillips, Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina (Screengrab from press briefing)

The North Carolina General Assembly wrapped up its 2024 “short session” recently and once again, it was a tough session for many basic aspects of democratic government.

Whether they were unveiling secretly written proposals to overhaul state campaign finance laws, placing new unfunded obligations on election administrators, or cementing in place law changes that will make voting more of a challenge, lawmakers stuck to the same playbook they’ve used in recent years. All that said, as Newsline learned in a recent conversation with one of the state’s top good government watchdogs, Common Cause of North Carolina executive director, Bob Phillips, things might well have been worse had lawmakers not abruptly ended the session when they did.

NC Tenants Union executive director Nick MacLeod

North Carolina has always been a state in which the law has allotted very few legal rights to residential tenants. Unless the actions of a landlord are truly outrageous – and sometimes even when they are – tenants rarely prevail when they seek to push back against evictions or fight for better rents and treatment. And in the post-pandemic era of high rents and scarce housing of any kind, this situation has gotten significantly worse.

One organization, however, that’s working hard to resist this tide by helping to organize residents of housing complexes across the state is a group based in Durham known as the North Carolina Tenants Union. And recently NC Newsline got a chance to learn more about the group and its work and mission in a special extended conversation with its executive director, Nick MacLeod.

In Part One of our conversation, we learned how this newly formed nonprofit has been working hard in several communities across the state to build a movement dedicated to the idea that tenants should have more of a say about the homes in which they live.

In Part Two of our chat, we learn more about some of the group’s work with local organizers to help groups of tenants speak with one voice and negotiate for better rents and living conditions. We also talked about how state landlord-tenant law makes it virtually impossible for untrained tenants to represent themselves in court – or to even understand proceedings that can put them out on the street – and how providing people facing eviction with access to basic legal representation could make an enormous difference.

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

It’s been two years now since the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion care and since then, numerous states – including North Carolina – have moved rapidly to end or greatly restrict abortion access. In 2023, Republican state legislators in Raleigh enacted a law that both bans abortion after the 12th week of gestation and imposes several additional burdensome restrictions for early term abortions.

So, what’s been the effect of these changes – both on the health of women and the pregnancy care they receive and the health professionals who try to provide that care? Recently, NC Newsline caught up with one of the state’s best-informed experts on these subjects, Duke Health OB/GYN Dr. Beverly Gray, to find out.