Podcasts Archives • NC Newsline

Emily Donovan, Clean Cape Fear

One of the most important and worrisome threats to our natural environment and human health to emerge in recent decades is a group of chemicals commonly referred to as PFAS. Also known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS are especially pernicious because they’re toxic, cause all kinds of health problems, and don’t break down in the environment. For the last several decades, corporate polluters spewed vast quantities of PFAS into the air and water in southeastern North Carolina, thus contaminating public water systems and thousands of private wells.

Thankfully, one especial...

Jason Husser (Photo: Elon.edu)

The fall midterm elections are just six weeks away and that means that North Carolinians will soon cast their ballots in an array of races that will both help determine the makeup of the next Congress and General Assembly, and whether future legislatures and governors will have two the most important tools they use to fund government – that is, income and property taxes – greatly restricted.

At such a moment, it seemed like an excellent time to check in on some of the latest public opinion numbers – both with respect...

Alexandra Sirota (Photo: NC Budget & Tax Center)

The latest public opinion survey shows generally strong support amongst voters for a trio of proposed constitutional amendments that will appear on the North Carolina ballot this fall that address incomes taxes, property taxes and voter photo ID.

However, Alexandra Sirota, the executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Budget and Tax Center, says while all three amendments may sound superficially appealing, when one digs below the surface, it quickly becomes apparent that each one will likely have long lasting and deeply problematic impacts while providing f...

Amy Beros and Liz Reasoner (Courtesy photos)

Thanks to soaring prices and big cuts to federal food assistance, hunger is quickly growing worse across North Carolina. The latest conservative estimate is that one out of seven North Carolinians is “food insecure” – a number that’s way up in just the last five years and now even higher than during the pandemic. How did we get into this situation, how are food aid organizations trying to respond, and what more should all of us be doing? Recently, as part of Hunger Awareness Month, Newsline explored those questions...

Chris Blue, North Carolina Law Enforcement Trust & Legitimacy Project (Courtesy photo)

One of the big problems confronting law enforcement departments in these politically charged times is the simple failure to communicate. And one of the main sources of this problem according to former Chapel Chief of Police Chris Blue is that law enforcement agencies often aren’t doing enough to affirmatively earn the trust of the communities they serve. As Blue wrote in a recent guest essay for NC Newsline, law enforcement leaders have a responsibility to stand up for the principles that underpin the rule of la...

Senator Natalie Murdock (Photo: NCGA)

As the cost of living continues to soar across the country and worsen the growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else, a major contributor to this troubling trend is the cost of energy and public utilities. Indeed, as North Carolina State Senator Natalie Murdock of Durham and Chatham counties has recently highlighted in several forums, the situation has grown so dire that many households one might even think of as middle or working class are finding themselves facing utility shutoffs.

And as Murdock also highlighted, this trend t...

Patricia Stottlemyer (Courtesy photo)

Each year around the Labor Day holiday, the international nonprofit, Oxfam, conducts and releases a study in which it ranks the best and worst states in the U.S. to work. The researchers preparing the report examine a long list of indicators – more than three dozen – that help them determine how well average workers are paid, treated, and respected in the workplace in hopes of inspiring public officials to enact more and better worker-friendly laws and policies.

Unfortunately, for North Carolina workers, the 2026 Best States to Work Index once again...

Brooks Fuller (Courtesy photo)

With Labor Day right around the corner, it means that the fall election season is upon us, and this year, there’s another development that’s heralding its arrival – controversy surrounding voting rules. Republican officials at both the state and local level have been acting in recent weeks to erect new hurdles for voters to negotiate.

Among the changes that have either been enacted or proposed: plans to eliminate Sunday voting in many places and new rules that would make it easier to discard mailed ballots and harder for voters...

Emily Mason(Photo: Environment NC)

Despite the efforts of the Trump administration and climate change deniers, solar energy continues to make enormous strides around the world and is quickly becoming our most efficient and affordable source of power generation. Simple economics are making it so.

That said, there are still many things that our elected leaders can and should do to make this transition go even faster and a new report from the nonprofit research group Environment NC highlights one that deserves attention. According to “Solar Schools for North Carolina,” our state could make...

Noel Nickle (Courtesy photo)

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the last time the state North Carolina put a person to death in punishment for a crime. And despite the many deep flaws in the death penalty – huge costs, systemic racism, convictions of innocent people — and fact that this moratorium has not led to any increase in violent crime – indeed the rates are down significantly – death penalty supporters are trying to restart executions.

Meanwhile, as executions remain on hold, more than a 120 people sit on the state’s death row at great expense and prosecutor...

Jason Husser (Photo: Elon.edu)

If you pay any attention to politics and elections you know that the coming weeks will feature an avalanche of so-called horse race polls that test and report on the strength of various candidates as we head toward the fall midterm election. At such a time it becomes easy to think of North Carolinians as being sharply divided into two political camps based on their partisan affiliation or candidates of choice.
However the director of the Elon University Poll, Jason Husser, said the truth is that most North Carolinians d...

Former NC Court of Appeals Judge Chris Brook

If there’s a branch of North Carolina state government that’s undergone the largest transformation in recent decades – both in its role and its make-up – it’s likely the state courts. Thanks in large part to an aggressive effort spearheaded by Republican legislators and funders, a combination of law changes and the dedication of millions of dollars in campaign spending have combined to make the state’s judiciary vastly more partisan and our judges more ideologically divided.

That said, it’s also true that even as this transform...

Meredith College political scientist and pollster David McLennan (File photo)

As anyone who’s watched a college or professional sporting event in recent years is well-aware, the rapid spread of online gambling has brought transformative – and many would say deeply troubling – change to what has long been one of the most important social institutions in our country. In just a very few years, sports gambling has gone from an unlawful underground activity into a huge and ubiquitous business run by giant corporations.

So, what do average North Carolinians make of this rapid change in our societ...

Keith Poston, Wake Ed Partnership (Courtesy photo)

All across North Carolina, students, parents and teachers are preparing for the start of a new school year and, unfortunately, one of the most vexing challenges that’s accompanied this time of year for the last several is the struggle many public school teachers face in properly equipping their classrooms. Thanks to the state legislature’s serial underfunding of basic things like school supplies, teachers in our state typically resort to spending an average of more than $1,600 of their own funds per year just to get their classrooms up to...

Inside Climate News reporter Lisa Sorg

One of the most worrisome challenges to human health to emerge in recent decades has been the growing environmental omnipresence of a class of chemicals known as PFAS. Often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down naturally and can remain in soil and water indefinitely, PFAS are used in countless consumer products.

One of the best known is a chemical known as GenX. It gained widespread notoriety a few years back when it came to light that a factory run by the chemical company Chemours had be...

Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper

With the 2026 midterm elections less than 100 days away, it a great time to check in with one of the state’s foremost experts on politics and elections, Western Carolina University Professor of Political Science, Chris Cooper.

This past week, Newsline got a chance to catch up with Cooper for an extended conversation in which we delved into an array of front burner topics. In Part One of our chat, we focused on the issue of our elections, themselves – how they’re run, how President Trump has repeatedly sought to sow...

Director of Development and Communications Sara Walker and main office Home Delivery Site Manager Melissa Evers

One in four Americans is 60+ and one in two lacks the income to pay for basic needs. That’s where “Meals on Wheels” makes a difference serving 13 million seniors nationwide. Recently, NC Newsline sat down with two staff members from the Wake County operation: Director of Development and Communications Sara Walker and main office Home Delivery Site Manager Melissa Evers.

Click here to listen to the full interview with Sara Walker and Melissa Evers of Wake County Meals on Wheels

Rep. Marcia Morey (D-Durham) (Photo: NCGA)

State Rep. Marcia Morey of Durham County is one of the many experts who’ve expressed concerns about how the state budget debate played out.  While she’s happy about raises that some teachers will get, she’s concerned about those teachers and state employees who will receive a relative pittance.

And as Morey also pointed out to Newline during an extended conversation this past week, there were a lot of other very important (and in some instances deeply concerning) provisions in the budget – some of which have only...

Public Ed Works executive director David Rice

After more than a full year of delay at the legislature, North Carolina finally has a new state budget and as is almost always the case, what the new budget does and doesn’t do for public education is among the matters receiving the most attention.

The good news is that a lot of teachers will get some decent raises this fall. Unfortunately, the bad news is that those raises don’t apply to all teachers or school personnel. What’s more, thanks to inflation and the ris...

SEANC Executive Director Ardis Watkins (Courtesy photo)

Despite listing many concerns, Gov. Josh Stein signed the $34 billion state budget bill into law on July 7. One high-profile area that state employees and teachers felt didn’t go far enough was in compensation for those who keep North Carolina’s public structures and services up and running. While the budget does include decent, if long overdue, raises for some, for most it’s a paltry 3% that fails to keep up with inflation and rising health premiums. Newsline sat down with Ardis Watkins, the executive director of the State Employees Associ...

NC Newsline government and politics reporter Brandon Kingdollar.

North Carolina’s new state budget runs more than 600 pages and includes dozens of other law changes unrelated to spending – many of which are only slowly coming to light and public awareness. NC Newsline state government reporter Brandon Kingdollar followed the twists and turns of the budget making process and recently joined us to discuss some of the controversial pieces of legislation included in the $34 billion spending package.

In Part Two of our discussion, we turned our attention to legislative efforts to ban hemp products and to alte...

Catawba College political scientist and pollster Michael Bitzer

There’s a longstanding pattern in American politics that in most off-year elections, the party of the president tends to lose support and right now, that’s looking more and more like what we’ll see this fall in North Carolina. According to new polling from the Catawba College YouGov Survey, support for President Trump, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee Michael Whatley, and other GOP candidates generally has waned significantly – especially among unaffiliated voters.

So, what’s driving this shift and how significant is it? Recentl...

North Carolina Black Alliance Director Marcus Bass (Photo: Claire Michal/NC Newsline)

Republican leaders at the North Carolina General Assembly have pursued few objectives with more zeal than their crusade to overhaul state elections. Repeatedly, GOP leaders have advanced new laws that make voting more difficult and the oversight of elections more partisan. A new omnibus bill that sprang up at the legislature in recent weeks doubles down on that strategy. To get a better idea of what’s been going on and what’s at stake, NC Newsline sat down for an extended conversation with the exec...

Documentary producer Cristin Severance (Courtesy: WRAL.com)

News deserts. At first blush, it seems like strange term in an era in which most people are regularly inundated on their devices with boatloads of emails and other messages about developments in the world around them. Unfortunately, as even a cursory look at the news landscape across the United States right now quickly reveals, vast swaths of the country – including many parts of North Carolina – are today totally bereft of local newspapers and trained journalists dedicated to carefully watching and reporting on their communities.

And as Ne...

Rep. Deb Butler (Photo: NCGA)

After more than a year of waiting, it appears the North Carolina General Assembly will vote later this week on a comprehensive budget for the new fiscal year that begins July 1.

Newline recently sat down for an extended conversation with New Hanover County State Representative Deb Butler to discuss the lack of open debate in crafting the final spending plan and the public’s right to know.

In part two of our chat, we turned our attention to some other matters of controversy in Raleigh right now...

Sen. Lisa Grafstein (Photo: NCGA)

With a new state government fiscal year set to commence on July first, North Carolina state legislators have still yet to pass a budget for
the year that’s coming to an end on June 30th. We’re the only state in the union in which this is the case.

While the state has continued to function at a basic level, the lack of funding certainty, and even minimal raises for teachers and other state employees, has caused enormous hardship. Meanwhile, even as the budget and the negot...

Will Scott, North Carolina Policy Director (Photo: Courtesy EDF)

When a utility company like Duke Energy plans for the future, it tries to predict how much electricity its customers will need a decade from now. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, much of that process amounts to a guessing game in which utility company profits often play a much bigger role than keeping ratepayer bills low or protecting our natural environment.

And right now, this appears to be very much the case at the state Utilities Commission as it reviews Duke’s latest carbon plan for...

Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson (Courtesy photo)

As the effects of climate change continue to grow and spread at an alarming rate, it can be easy to become overwhelmed.

But as author Dr. Katharine Wilkinson documents and explains in her new book, “Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home,” the keys to tackling and adapting to climate change are, despite the recent national policy reversals, there for individuals and communities to embrace — and fast becoming so obvious and cost-effective that no amount of cynical politics will likely be able to derail them. R...

Dr. Hope Thompson is an expert on climate adaptation policy, comprehensive risk management, and equitable disaster resilience. (Courtesy photo: NRDC)

One of the most expensive and worrisome immediate impacts of climate change and the weather disasters it spawns is the fast-rising cost of homeowners insurance. Here in North Carolina and in many parts of the country, these soaring costs are a big contributor to the housing affordability crisis that plagues so many communities.

As Newsline learned in a recent conversation with Natural Resources Defense Council climate adaptation expert, Dr. Hope Thompson, there are several practical...

States Newsroom national democracy reporter Jonathan Shorman

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, hardly a day goes by in which there is not some brazen, precedent shattering action by the president or his allies.

Indeed, the orders, directives, proposals and court rulings are coming at such a rapid pace that it’s easy to become numb to them and what they might portend for our country.

Fortunately, many excellent journalists continue to chronicle and analyze these developments. One of the best is States Newsroom Democracy Reporter Jonathan Shorman. And r...

Amy Beros, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina

Genuine food insecurity in which people don’t know where their next meal is coming from is a subject that merits a lot of attention. By any fair assessment the fact that literally millions of North Carolinians – a large percentage of them children – go to bed hungry in the world’s richest nation is, or at least ought to be, a gigantic scandal.

As grim as some of these numbers are, recent actions in Washington – most notably big cuts to fed...

Brooks Fuller (Courtesy photo)

Ever since Republicans captured control of the state legislature at the outset of the last decade, North Carolinians have been witness to a steady stream of proposals designed to make voting harder and more complicated and make the day-to-day oversight and regulation of elections more partisan. And now, with yet another national election of great importance just over five months away, new proposals are being introduced.

One such measure in the state Senate would reduce the state’s early voting period from 17 days to 10 despite the enormous bipartisan popularity of...

NC Newsline government and politics reporter Brandon Kingdollar.

North Carolina state lawmakers are in the midst of the 2026 legislative session and, as had been expected, several important proposals are advancing that could impact everything from alcohol sales to the state constitution.
On the alcohol front, it appears that the recent ongoing trend to move the state away from longstanding blue laws continues as the demands of retailers and producers seem to slowly be overcoming the objections of religious conservatives and other alcohol opponents. And recently, as part of a wide-ranging two-part conversation with NC Newsline government...

Alexandra Sirota (Photo: NC Budget & Tax Center)

Republican state legislative leaders made headlines in recent days by announcing that they have finally reached agreement on a new state budget. But even as that long overdue news was being made, the lawmakers also moved to advance a series of state constitutional amendments that would, if enacted, have massive implications for future state budgets and core public services.
Topping the list: a proposal to slash the already existing cap on state income taxes and another to cap local property taxes — moves that would almost certainly further evi...

Jackson Ewing (Photo: Courtesy Duke University)

Earlier this month, regulatory commissions in North and South Carolina approved a merger between the two energy monopolies that dominate electricity production and distribution in our state: Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress. The merger comes at a time of rapid consolidation in the energy industry. Indeed, even as the merger of the two Duke entities is moving forward, Florida-based NextEra announced that it is acquiring Dominion Energy, which serves part or northeastern North Carolina.

So, what does all of this mean? What do the companies s...

Wake County State Rep. Phil Rubin

It appears that, finally, after a year-long delay that has left North Carolina the only state in the union without a budget for the current fiscal year, Republican state legislative leaders may soon give final approval to a comprehensive budget plan and send it to Gov. Josh Stein.

Of course, as is usually the case, funding for public education was and remains one of the most hotly debated budget items. And while it appears that teachers will finally receive some long overdue but still modest raises, as we learned...

NewDEAL CEO Debbie Cox Bultan (Courtesy photo)

When it comes to politics and policymaking, the present era is among the most divided and rancorous in modern American history. At the national level, the U.S. seems as if it’s more divided than ever on a host of basic issues. But is this really the case?

CEO of the national nonprofit, the NewDEAL Forum, Debbie Cox Bultan, says when you dig a little past the surface, it becomes evident that, in many ways, Americans are not as divided as it might seem. Especially at the st...

Southern Coalition for Social Justice Senior Counsel Chris Shenton (Courtesy photo)

One of the greatest achievements of the American Civil Rights movement was the enactment more than 60 years ago of a law known as the Voting Rights Act. Though it had several provisions, the basic objective of the law was simple – it was to eliminate centuries of deep-seated racial discrimination that had infected and polluted U.S. elections by assuring that all the nation’s citizens had an opportunity to be full participants in our democracy.

Unfortunately, despite the progress the law has helpe...

Photo: Clayton Henkel/NC Newsline

Last week was national Teacher Appreciation Week, a time to celebrate educators who show up for their students every day. Unfortunately, for many of the teachers in North Carolina, underappreciated – especially from state lawmakers – is the main thing they’re experiencing these days.

On May 1st, thousands of educators, advocates and allies converged on Halifax Mall behind the state Legislative Building in Raleigh to protest the lack of a state budget and scheduled corporate tax cuts that may leave school districts with even less money next year.

NC Newsli...

Justin Parmenter (Courtesy photo)

Thousands of North Carolina public school teachers and their supporters converged on Raleigh this past Friday to demand that state lawmakers end their chronic lack of support for public schools. That the participants in the “Kids over Corporations” rally had a strong case to make is hard to deny. Their event took place just days after a new report placed North Carolina 46th in the nation for teacher pay for the current school year — down three spots from last year — and 39th in the nation for per pupil spending.

One exper...