Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Moral Monday demonstrators rally against North Carolina's anti-transgender House Bill 2 in May. A U.S. judge on Friday ordered the University of North Carolina to allow transgender students and staff to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, blocking enforcement of the state's controversial "bathroom bill" known as House Bill 2, while a lawsuit challenging the anti-LGBTQ legislation proceeds. "Today, the tightness that I have felt in my chest every day since H.B. 2 passed has eased.
Over the past three election cycles, Republicans in North Carolina won the governor's mansion, ousted Democratic Senator Kay Hagan, and built a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature. But with Donald Trump imperiling down ballot candidates and population demographics in the state undergoing a shift, those gains could soon be reversed.
Redistricting and lawsuits challenging the resulting new maps have gone together in North Carolina politics for what seems to be about as long as anyone can remember. Republican-created congressional districts that were hurriedly crafted earlier this year after a federal court ruled the district maps drawn in 2011 were racial gerrymandering again have been challenged in court.
To say that the last few weeks have been good for challengers to voting restriction laws across the country would be an understatement. Kennedy points to a cascade of rulings from several states that she says "stood up for the basic principle that all Americans deserve to have their voices heard at the ballot box without manipulation or suppression."
A privately issued ID card that enables illegal immigrants in North Carolina to identify themselves to police is getting national attention, though Republican lawmakers want to shut it down. The FaithAction ID program has issued more than 7,000 ID cards, recognized by police and some local organizations in 16 cities and 9 counties.
A federal appeals court ruled that a North Carolina law illegally targeted minorities with tougher ballot access rules, such as requiring photo identification to vote, adding a new partisan flashpoint in a swing state with a raft of hotly contested elections. The ruling Friday by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declared that the 2013 law violated the Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act by targeting black voters "with almost surgical precision."
In the campaign for North Carolina's 15 electoral votes, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton appears far ahead of Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump in both money and machinery. She's often stumped in the state, rolled out high-profile surrogates - President Barack Obama, for example - and is spending millions of dollars to assemble get-out-the-vote operations and fill the television airwaves with campaign ads.
The request for a preliminary injunction, filed late Tuesday, provides the most extensive look yet at the Justice Department's argument that the bathroom-access requirements violate federal law. The filing comes just after North Carolina lawmakers left the measure largely intact during their session that ended Friday, all but ensuring that the measure's fate will be decided in federal court.
In the days following North Carolina's first gubernatorial debate of 2016, polls show Gov. Pat McCrory and N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper neck-and-neck in one of the more closely watched governor's races in the country. A Public Policy Polling survey released in late June showed the candidates deadlocked at 41 percent.
The N.C. Department of Transportation's Division of Aviation wants to help drone owners understand new rules issued by the Federal Aviation Administration and how they impact drone operations in the state. Operators who received the required exemption or authorization from the FAA can continue to fly their small drones without further action.
Hillary Clinton is coming to North Carolina in her bid to capture the state's electoral votes for a Democrat for just the second time since 1976. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president scheduled a rally Wednesday afternoon at an exposition center at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds in Raleigh.
North Carolina has one of the most-polled electorates in the United States. As we head into a general election full of highly competitive races for governor, senator, president, and other offices, those of us who closely follow politics in the Tar Heel State will again appreciate the high frequency of polling available.