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For the second time in two days, the Republican-majority high court rehears arguments in a case decided by a Democratic majority just months ago The North Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday on whether a voter ID law passed in 2018 was intended to discriminate against prospective voters of color.

The freedom to vote has faced serious challenges in recent years. New voting restrictions, rampant disinformation, threats to voters and election officials, and even violent attempts to overturn election results have led to growing concern about the future of our democracy and election process.

A Democratic court majority struck down maps as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders, but a new GOP majority has been asked to do an about-face. State Republican legislators Tuesday brought their argument that courts cannot bar partisan redistricting to a friendlier state Supreme Court than the one that ruled against them last year. 

Should students and faculty have more prominent voices on boards of trustees at UNC System schools? Should the system’s board of governors elect members geographically, be more transparent and open to public input? And will any of these suggestions matter to a Republican dominated legislature resistant to such changes? These were a few of the questions members of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina tackled in its third public listening session on Monday. The session, held at the Charlotte Area Chamber of Commerce, drew a sparse but vocal crowd – typical of the listening sessions held so far.

North Carolina elected leaders have enacted several ineffective and misleading laws over the years, but when it comes to undermining public confidence in government and taking advantage of vulnerable people, the badly misnamed “education lottery” has to be near the bottom of any “worst of” list.

CDC information shows that maternal mortality in North Carolina for women within 42 days of giving birth increased from a rate of 22 per 100,000 births in 2019, to 29 per 100,000 in 2020, and to 44 per 100,000 births in 2021, according to data released by the investigative news organization MuckRock. “It’s a huge jump, especially in such a short period of time,” said Keisha Bentley-Edwards, a Duke University researcher who studies health equity. Black women continued to be more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes.

One local bill at a time, state lawmakers have nearly tripled the number of partisan school boards across the state over the last decade — often over the objections of school board members themselves.  It’s a move some board members say is turning their school system from a hyperlocal, traditionally apolitical governing board into a contentious microcosm of national political debates.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said this week that interest rate increases could be higher and come faster if Friday’s unemployment data shows the nation’s labor market isn’t cooling off. Stock indexes fell after his comments.

WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans mostly agreed Wednesday that scientists and the intelligence community should fully investigate the origins of COVID-19 without political interference over whether the virus emerged from nature or through a lab leak.

Like so many things, for good or ill, it started on Twitter. A whole host of political scientists from across the country had just seen 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and were discussing it online. But then, much of the world was. Upon release the film, a climactic point in the phenomenally successful Marvel Cinematic Universe of interconnected superhero films, had a worldwide opening of more than $1 billion. It would go on to become the then-highest grossing film of all time, making nearly $2.8 billion worldwide.

The bills are broadly aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people deemed a risk to themselves or others. After he found out his fiancée had been shot and killed while walking her dog, a grief-stricken Rob Steele took his gun out of his safe. He unloaded the magazine, put the ammunition back in the metal box, then handed his firearm to a doctor.

State and local election officials across the country have begun pursuing strategies to combat election lies ahead of the 2024 presidential election: They’re meeting with community organizations, posting social media videos and even inviting skeptics to visit election offices in efforts to “pre-bunk” falsehoods they know are coming.

North Carolina has witnessed a spate of glowing and upbeat news reports and commentaries in recent days in the aftermath of last week’s announcement by Republican legislative leaders that they had reached an agreement to expand the state’s Medicaid program.

Lela Ali was in the Legislative Building last Wednesday as the organization she is part of, Muslim Women For, works to oppose a bill that would require sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials.  She also happened  to be sitting in the House gallery that day as lawmakers approved a bill along party lines that takes responsibility for the state’s three schools for deaf and blind students away from the State Board of Education and gives it to local boards of trustees. 

A half dozen modular homes are crammed in the elbow of the offramp from I-785 to US 70 on the fringes of Greensboro. In east Durham, a largely Black neighborhood is wedged in a chute of air pollution between the railroad tracks and NC 147.