“It is difficult to make predictions,” Dutch politician Karl Kristian Steincke once wrote. “Especially about the future.” But if you’re a reporter who carefully follows a few issues, you don’t need a crystal ball to have a fairly good idea of what to look for in the new year. Here are some stories we're certain we’ll be following and reporting on in 2023: 1. Renewed legislative assaults on LGBTQ people
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Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson
For going on two decades now, NC Policy Watch has been fortunate enough to be able to feature the expertly crafted, frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, and always thought-provoking commentaries of one of the nation’s top editorial cartoonists, John Cole. While it would be worth your time to look through all of John’s contributions to Policy Watch from the past here are some his best entries from 2022.
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Well, the season of giving is upon us again, and while it’s clear that North Carolina ethics statutes prevent public servants and other “covered persons” from receiving any gifts that might influence their official actions, the law includes a number of – nudge-nudge, wink-wink – exceptions, so one hopes that perhaps there is a way to make the following list a reality. For Senator-elect Ted Budd: A collector’s edition set of official Donald Trump superhero trading cards.
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Conservative pastors, political allies aim to tear down any wall between church and state When Pastor Ken Graves took the podium at Calvary Chapel Lake Norman in Statesville last month, he cut an imposing figure. Dressed in jeans and heavy boots, the sleeves of his work shirt rolled up to reveal the large tattoos on his massive forearms, he wore a leather holster on his belt.
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Recent church-based events test IRS rules, court allegations of Christian nationalism Gary Miller has a story he likes to tell about religion and politics. When serving as pastor of a church years ago, he was frustrated by how long it took to get a building permit. So he ran for city council - and lost by one vote. “I came back to my people Sunday morning,” Miller told a crowd earlier this month at Cross Assembly church in Raleigh. “And I said, ‘I’d like for everyone who voted for me to please stand’. And those that remained seated, I handed out voter registration cards.”
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You’ve undoubtedly seen the headlines by now. North Carolina’s perpetually controversial Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson – a man given to frequent public bouts of anti-Semitism and homophobia – has become enmeshed in yet another political storm of his own making. This time, the subject is abortion. After an old story came to light about Robinson paying for an abortion more than three decades ago for his wife Yolanda prior to their marriage, the Lt. Governor – a fierce present-day opponent of abortion rights – took to electronic media to proclaim the decades-old action “wrong.”
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At Tuesday night’s Wake County Republican Party convention, John Amanchukwu, a youth pastor with Raleigh’s Upper Room Church of God in Christ, gave the opening prayer. “There is a war in our public schools,” Amanchukwu said. “Our children are being turned out at an alarming rate. Our public education system is in shambles and our children have now become expendable....
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Conservatives target works dealing with race and LGBTQ themes Parents of sixth graders in a gifted language-arts class at Marvin Ridge Middle School received an email from their children’s teacher last month warning them that a book selected for the class’s unit on African American literature would at times be “uncomfortable.”
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Editor's note: For going on two decades now, NC Policy Watch has been fortunate enough to be able to feature the expertly crafted, frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, and always thought-provoking commentaries of one of the nation's top editorial cartoonists, John Cole. While it would be worth your time to look through all of John's contributions to Policy Watch from the past, we're happy to share 10 of the best entries from 2021 below.
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Last December, a three-year state ban blocking new, local non-discrimination ordinances expired. The ban was a legacy of the brutal fight over House Bill 2, the controversial law that excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from statewide nondiscrimination protections. Though a 2017 law (House Bill 142) partially repealed HB 2, it locked in place a moratorium on new LGBTQ protections — including nondiscrimination ordinances for employment and housing.
...Ho, ho, ho! It’s that time of year again – the fleeting period during which Americans of all stripes set aside petty partisan and ideological differences (hah!) and focus their attention on the one thing that, as humorist Jean Shepherd so accurately observed in his holiday classic “A Christmas Story," tends to unify us all in and around the winter solstice: “unbridled avarice.”
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