North Carolina Rep. Carla Cunningham (D-Mecklenburg) speaks on the House floor on July 29, 2025. Cunningham voted to override on Gov. Josh Stein's vetoes, breaking with her Democratic Party colleagues. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)

It’s no surprise that State Rep. Carla Cunningham – a Democrat from Mecklenburg County — declined to speak with reporters this week after helping to override Gov. Stein’s veto of a mean-spirited and ill-conceived anti-immigrant bill.

That’s what often happens when a politician puts their foot in their mouth.

House Bill 318 will force local sheriffs – even when it makes their communities less safe—to cooperate with federal ICE officials in detaining people merely accused of criminal offenses.

It’s one of the ham-handed tactics the Trump administration has been using to terrorize immigrant communities and round up good people for deportation.

Unfortunately, all of this seems to have escaped Cunningham, who not only provided the decisive ‘yes’ vote, but who also gave an uninformed speech in which she accused immigrants of exploiting and abusing native born Americans and implied that immigrant cultures are inferior.

The bottom line: Cunningham embarrassed herself and her constituents – many of them foreign born – with her cruel rant. One prays she’ll awaken soon from her delusions.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

A woman cries after her husband is detained by federal agents during a mandatory immigration check-in in June in New York City. The Trump administration’s arrests have been catching a smaller share of criminals overall, and a smaller share of people convicted of violent and drug crimes, than the Biden administration did in the same time frame last year. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

New research from the national news organization Stateline highlights some of the big flaws in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

While the administration has made much of its supposed commitment to cracking down on violent criminals and blaming Democrats for failing to do so, the research actually reveals a significant decline in this realm under Trump.

Indeed, the numbers show that while Trump’s ICE has rounded up more people, the Biden administration did a much better job in capturing individuals convicted of serious crimes.

During the first half of 2024, 53% of the people arrested for being unlawfully present in the U.S. had been previously convicted of crimes. Under Trump, the number has dropped to 40% as ICE has resorted to mass roundups. Arrests for those not convicted of any crime have nearly tripled.

The bottom line: When combined with the practice of using terror tactics like masked officers and ignoring due process, these numbers reveal an immigration enforcement regime that is at once cruel, incompetent and un-American. The need for change is urgent.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

Technologists say the hazy definition of “artificial intelligence” leaves a wide opening for companies to over-promise or over-market the capabilities of their products – or even render “AI” more of a marketing gimmick than a real technology. (Photo illustration by tolgart/Getty Images)

The rapid development of artificial intelligence has the potential to spur amazing advances in human society that are definitely worth pursuing.

That said, AI also has the potential to do dreadful harm that we must guard against.

As one of the nation’s tech leaders, OpenAI’s Sam Hartman, explained recently, for all of AI’s amazing potential, it’s also easy to envision a world in which foreign adversaries could use AI to take down the power grid, or break into financial institutions and steal wealth from Americans.

And it’s in light of this that North Carolina leaders should resist proposals from the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans to remove AI guardrails by eliminating safety and environmental regulations and prohibiting states from enacting consumer protections.

The bottom line: As Hartman admitted, there remains much we don’t understand about AI and a real possibility that it could cause society to quote “veer in a sort of strange direction.” Elected leaders should do all they can to maintain human control over this powerful technology.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

A photograph of US President Donald Trump and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is displayed after being unofficially installed in a bus shelter on July 17 in London, England. The president is facing criticism from his usually loyal Republican “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) supporters over suggestions that the administration is hiding details of Epstein’s crimes to protect the high profile figures he associated with, which included Trump (Leon Neal/Getty Images).

Twenty years ago, investigative reporter Barry Levine started covering a wealthy socialite named Jeffrey Epstein. Five years ago, after he was convicted of sex crimes and died in jail, Levine published an acclaimed book on Epstein.

And last week, as the controversy surrounding mountains of FBI data and evidence about Epstein slowly consumed the government and threatened the Trump presidency, Levine penned a powerful essay in the New York Times detailing the questions to which Americans deserve answers.

His central message – quote “With the exception of redactions required to protect the innocent and materials that must be withheld while under court seal, the complete F.B.I. files should be released.”

And amazingly in these divided times, most North Carolina Democrats and Republicans agree. As Senator Thom Tillis put it succinctly, “release the damn files.”

The bottom line: President Trump, as well as many other prominent people were close to Epstein and for the good of the country, Americans deserve to know the full truth about whether any of them were involved in his criminality.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

Governor Josh Stein applies his veto stamp to a bill on Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (Screenshot from Governor’s Office X video.)

Like the rest of the nation, North Carolina faces some enormous policy challenges these days. Thanks to sustained disinvestments in an array of core public services, our state is fast becoming coarser, less healthy and more divided.

Unfortunately, Republican legislative leaders seem unconcerned. Rather than working with Governor Josh Stein to tackle our numerous outsized problems, they spent the recent legislative session advancing divisive culture war bills and failing even to pass a new state budget for the fiscal year that began July 1.

And now, rather than honestly owning up to and addressing their shortcomings, they’re returning to Raleigh this week to double down on them with a plan to override Stein’s vetoes of several destructive and hyper-partisan bills. And the overdue budget? It’s nowhere in sight.

The bottom line: Caring and thinking lawmakers of both parties should take a stand against this failed and divisive strategy by sustaining Stein’s vetoes and sending a message to legislative leaders that it’s past time to end the games and work together for the good of all North Carolinians.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

Photo: Clayton Henkel

Over the last 87 years – particularly during the 20th Century – few innovations in the American economy have done more to lift up average people than the minimum wage.

As it was first conceived and applied, the federal minimum wage law assured that a person who worked full-time was paid enough to support their family. And for many decades, the minimum wage actually worked that way.

Unfortunately, in recent decades—thanks to opposition from the political right – the federal minimum wage has remained mired at the absurdly inadequate level of seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour. Indeed, it was 16 years ago today that it was raised to that level.

And while many states and cities have gone ahead and raised their minimum wages to much higher levels in recent years, in most others – including North Carolina – it’s still legal to pay the pitiful sum of seven-twenty-five an hour.

The bottom line: It’s long past time to once again make the minimum wage a living wage, and the failure of Congress and the North Carolina legislature to do so is simply inexcusable.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

President Donald Trump holds up the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that was signed into law during an Independence Day military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Alex Brandon - Pool/Getty Images)

There was always something that didn’t quite add up when American conservatives complained about federal budget deficits. Despite their supposed commitment to fiscal discipline, no factor has played a larger role in soaring deficits than Republican tax cuts enacted under presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Indeed, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, modest income tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy helped spur budget surpluses that began to retire the federal debt. Similar strategies during the Obama and Biden years led to declining deficits.

Unfortunately, as the Congressional Budget Office reported last week, the new megabill signed into law by President Trump will again cause the deficit to soar by trillions of dollars. Oh, and the CBO notes that it will also cause 10 million people to lose access to health insurance.

The bottom line: The only area in which Trump’s big bill is “conservative” is in the lack of care it extends to human beings. When it comes to fiscal policy, it’s an exercise in undisciplined runaway spending of the highest order.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

Photo: Getty Images

When state lawmakers first opened the door to school vouchers in North Carolina, they billed them as quote “opportunity scholarships,” and assured us that their only goal was to help low-income kids escape failing public schools.

Today, more than a decade later, it’s clearer than ever that that explanation was simply part of a deceptive shell game.

As a damning new report from the group Public Schools First highlights, the excuse that vouchers were all about helping poor kids has long been abandoned – along with all income limits on the program — and today vouchers are fully exposed for what they always were: a scheme to undermine public education and have taxpayers fund private schools.

Confirmation of this can be seen in the report’s finding that the state’s private schools (many of which are exclusive and discriminate) have raised their tuition to mirror the subsidy provided by vouchers.

The bottom line: The destructive impact of vouchers on public education in our state continues to be of a magnitude that’s matched only by the blatant dishonesty of the proponents who ushered them in.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

(Photo: Clayton Henkel)

North Carolina Republican lawmakers’ mad rush to slash income taxes on corporation and the wealthy in recent years has produced many disastrous impacts. See, for example, our threadbare and crumbling public schools.

But there’s another big and negative impact: the effect on property taxes.

Thanks to fast rising home prices, there’s a growing need to update and raise property tax exemptions for seniors and other homeowners on fixed incomes so they’re not forced out of their homes.

Unfortunately, because of plummeting income tax revenues, the state is much less able to aid county governments in filling revenue holes that would develop if property tax exemptions were raised.

And so it is that counties have been forced, reluctantly, to oppose bills in the state legislature that would raise property tax exemptions.

The bottom line: By slashing income taxes, state legislators have unjustly shifted responsibility for funding core public services further onto people of modest means like senior homeowners. All North Carolinians should demand better.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) (Photo: Screen grab from Senate.gov)

After almost 12 years, it’s familiar by now, but sadly, the pattern in which Senator Thom Tillis raises hopes that he’ll act with courage and then backs down at the last minute continues to repeat itself in maddening fashion.

The latest incident: Tillis’s utterly inexcusable vote last week to endorse President Trump’s nomination of an embarrassingly unqualified lawyer named Emil Bove for a lifetime appointment to a federal appeals court. Bove is so unqualified and has committed so many questionable acts that more than 900 former Justice Department officials weighed in to oppose him.

After Tillis broke with Trump recently on his disastrous megabill and announced his decision to retire next year, it raised hopes that he was now free – not unlike the late John McCain – to put the good of the country ahead of Trump’s demands.

The bottom line: Unfortunately, as his vote last week showed, Tillis is no John McCain. And that means North Carolinians will have to endure a continuing series of inscrutable votes and policy stances for the next 18 months.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.