Featured Articles

Step 1: Repeal House Bill 2, North Carolina’s sweeping anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Step 2: Strengthen penalties for individuals who perpetrate crimes that violate the safety, security and privacy of people in public bathrooms or dressing rooms.

This past Saturday’s 11th annual HKonJ-Moral March on Raleigh was by any estimation, a rousing success. At a point in time in which caring and thinking people are being inundated with multiple calls to action on a daily – if not hourly – basis, tens of thousands of people found the time and energy to make their way to downtown Raleigh to denounce Trumpism and the destructive actions of the North Carolina legislature and promote a vastly different vision of American society.

On Friday, January 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that severely restricts immigration from seven Muslim countries, suspends all refugee admission for 120 days, and bars all Syrian refugees indefinitely. Even though the courts have temporarily blocked the President’s actions on immigration and refugees, this is only a temporary halt to the ban. Meanwhile, the mere introduction of these harsh restrictions on immigration and refugee resettlement has serious, long-term consequences for our new political landscape.

1.3 million---number of people with a serious mental illness who will lose health care coverage if the Affordable Care Act is repealed (“ACA Repeal Would Jeopardize Treatment for Millions with Substance Use Disorders, Including Opioid Addiction, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 9, 2017)

North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law HB2 was featured on Jeopardy Thursday night. The answer was "HB2 is this state’s controversial public facilities privacy and security act, aka the Bathroom Bill."

President Donald Trump has paid a lot of lip service to rounding up the “bad hombres” but it turns out he wants to deport a much larger group of immigrants than he led America to believe.

Trump signed an executive order in January to enhance “public safety in the interior of the United States.” The order did away a previous deportation priority list promulgated former President Barack Obama’s administration and is expected to have dire consequences for a majority of unauthorized immigrants, not just individuals with criminal convictions.

Six days into his presidency, President Trump ordered construction of the border wall that he so often referenced during his campaign. His stated purpose was to “ensure the safety and territorial integrity of the United States.” While no one would argue that safety and border security aren’t among the President’s most important priorities, the wall strategy comes with tremendous liabilities and it deserves our scrutiny.

A N.C. Senate confirmation hearing was postponed Wednesday morning after a court order restraining the Senate from holding hearings to confirm Gov. Roy Cooper’s cabinet nominees.

Larry Hall, the former Democratic N.C. House member tapped by Cooper to head the Department of Military and Veteran Affairs, chose not attend the meeting at which he was to be vetted.

Overlooking the all caps, italics, bolded passages and occasional exclamation marks, on its face the two-page letter sent by eight North Carolina lawmakers looked overblown but possibly informed.

Last month, the lawmakers — all Republicans — wrote to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, asking him to permanently close the Desert Wind farm just west of Elizabeth City. The letter quoted impressive-sounding government-funded studies about the threat of wind turbines on military radar. It cited a meticulous set of facts and figures. It listed footnotes in superscript, just like the MLA academic style book instructs.

The 2017 General Assembly session is only a few weeks old but there’s already a compelling example of what’s wrong with the way things are being done in Raleigh and why the conventional wisdom about the legislature often misses the real story.

Leaders of the North Carolina General Assembly have taken a lot of disastrous turns – both substantive and procedural – over the past six years. Denying health care and unemployment insurance benefits to hundreds of thousands, slashing taxes on the rich, eviscerating voting rights, waging wars on science, the environment, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ equality, pushing loaded guns into every corner of the state, and just generally undermining the health of government; the list of regressive policies goes on and on.

Gunther Peck is an associate professor of History at Duke University specializing in 19th and 20th century American social and cultural history, comparative immigration and labor studies.

New information about the written responses from Education Secretary-nominee Betsy DeVos to questions posed by a Democratic Senator should cause more problems for her embattled nomination.

In a tumultuous first two weeks in office, President Donald Trump has broken with norms and precedents of his office, spawned dozens of lawsuits, generated historically low public approval numbers and some of the largest protests in U.S. history.

Historians and political scientists in North Carolina agree the Trump presidency is, in many ways, without precedent. They are also expressing concern about Trump’s impact on the institution of the presidency, the functioning of the nation’s government and the standing of the U.S. in the world.