The 2021 session of the General Assembly began in January, as the world was entering its second year of the pandemic. The hope was the COVID fog would lift, allowing a return to normalcy, at least in a relative sense, and that lawmakers could go about business as usual. Much was on the legislative agenda,...
North Carolina won’t be joining the growing number of states ending the mask mandates for public school students. In a meeting Wednesday, Feb. 10, with county health officials statewide, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services said the agency is updating the DHHS Strong Schools NC Public Health Toolkit k-12 to recommend “students and...
Ashworth’s Clothing in Fuquay-Varina opened in 1937. It survived through some trying times, such as World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Great Recession. Owner Steve Ashworth says the current state of the world economy offers some unique challenges, too. “This is unusual, especially the government’s lockdown in 2020, which impacted us,” he told...
A failure of duty caused by lack of planning, coordination, and communication left hundreds of Americans and tens of thousands of allies in Afghanistan after a botched withdrawal from the country in August 2021, a new Senate report says. The U.S. will have to deal with the fallout of this failure for years to come,...
The N.C. Commission for Public Health denied a petition from UNC-affiliated universities requesting that all 17-year-old seniors entering the college system be vaccinated against COVID-19. The action occurred at the commission’s Wednesday, Feb. 2 meeting. At the same time, groups called Citizen Advocates for Accountable Government and Moms for Liberty held a protest outside the state...
As the Biden administration and Congress struggle with plummeting approval numbers, a battle is being waged in North Carolina and other states over who will control the drawing of congressional districts. The 2022 elections could turn the balance of power to Republicans in Congress. The latest Cygnal poll shows 51% of likely voters surveyed said...
Support for the Opportunity Scholarship Program stands at 61%, according to a new Civitas Poll of likely voters presented by the John Locke Foundation. The results dropped during National School Choice Week 2022, an annual nationwide celebration of educational options for all students. The results were released during a virtual poll luncheon Jan. 27. The...
State Treasurer Dale Folwell is once again sounding the alarm on some nonprofit hospitals in the state, with a new report that shows low-income patients are being billed when they were eligible for charity care. This comes on the heels of a similar report released in October by Folwell, who oversees the State Health Plan...
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to make what could be a landmark ruling on the constitutionality of affirmative action after justices decided Monday, Jan. 24, to take up cases arising from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard University. The cases originated in 2014 when the nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions...
Former N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory is the preferred choice for the state’s U.S. Senate seat in 2022, according to a Civitas Poll of likely GOP primary voters released Thursday, Jan. 13. McCrory, a Republican, leads the primary field with 24% of the vote, compared to 19% for 13th congressional district Rep. Ted Budd and 7%...
Two of the Tar Heel State’s school choice programs have saved taxpayers between $74.1 million and $154.3 million through fiscal 2018, according to an updated analysis from the school choice advocacy organization EdChoice. Those figures translate to between $3,373 and $7,022 in local and state taxpayer savings for each student enrolled in these programs. “These...
