The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) can continue its race-based admission policy for its undergraduate programs, …
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/577336-judge-rules-university-of-north-carolina-can-continue-race-based
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Sarakshi Rai
The North Carolina state Senate on Wednesday voted to approve legislation that would allow residents to bypass the longstanding requirement to obtain a permit from the local sheriff in order to purchase a handgun. …
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/568502-north-carolina-legislature-passes-bill-eliminating-pistol-permit-system
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Celine Castronuovo
Unconfirmed tornados spawned by Fred already caused damage in places in Georgia and North Carolina.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/more-30-unaccounted-north-carolina-after-flooding-fred-n1277121
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The Article Was Written/Published By: The Associated Press
All of the hikers were able to leave the mountain on their own after the strike near MacRae Peak.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weather/four-hikers-hurt-after-lightning-strike-north-carolina-mountain-n1276820
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Phil Helsel
In North Carolina, children as young as 6 years old can be prosecuted in juvenile court, the lowest age set by law in the United States, but a bipartisan effort is working to raise the minimum age of delinquency to a whopping 10 years old. — Read the rest
Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/07/01/north-carolina-can-prosecute-6-year-olds-but-theyre-trying-to-stop.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=north-carolina-can-prosecute-6-year-olds-but-theyre-trying-to-stop
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Jess Sabine
The GOP-led North Carolina Senate passed a trio of election measures on Wednesday that will likely be stalled by the time they get to the Democratic governor’s desk.One of the measures passed wou…
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/558876-north-carolina-senate-passes-trio-of-election-measures
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Lexi Lonas
The 42-year-old Black man was fatally shot by Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies on April 21 while in his car during an attempted arrest.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-carolina-sheriff-s-deputies-justified-fatally-shooting-andrew-brown-n1267744
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The Article Was Written/Published By: David K. Li and Antonio Planas
A North Carolina judge on Wednesday ruled against the release of police body camera footage in the killing of Andrew Brown Jr.Superior Court Judge Jeff Foster said that there was “compelling public interest” in the…
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/550716-judge-rules-against-release-of-police-body-camera-video-in-brown-killing
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Marty Johnson
Pat McCrory, the former Republican governor of North Carolina, is planning to launch his campaign for the state’s open Senate seat this week, according to people familiar with his plans.
The former governor, who won the office in 2012 and lost reelection in 2016, would begin the primary in the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr as an early frontrunner.
McCrory has been expected to run for Senate for months, but he has not publicly indicated that a decision was finalized. He’s expected to formally launch the campaign this week and has been assembling a state and national team for the campaign, according to a source familiar with his plans.
North Carolina is expected to be one of the most expensive races in the country next year and is a key state for Republicans to hold as they aim to win back the Senate majority from Democrats, who control the chamber 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties.
Former Rep. Mark Walker is the only major Republican candidate in the race so far and has been consolidating endorsements since launching his campaign in December. Rep. Ted Budd is also seriously considering a bid. Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and campaign adviser, has said she is considering running in her native North Carolina but has not yet taken any public steps toward launching a campaign.
Recent polling conducted for McCrory shows he would enter the race with a large lead over Walker and Budd, as well as extremely high name identification among likely Republican primary voters, according to a copy of the polling memo obtained by POLITICO. His high name ID and an early lead in a hypothetical primary matchup are not surprising given his past statewide campaigns and one term as the state’s governor, while neither of the potential opponents has run statewide before.
The survey was conducted by Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies, and the memo was addressed to McCrory and Paul Shumaker, a veteran Republican operative in the state who has worked with Burr and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). Shumaker declined to comment Monday morning.
The memo said McCrory was viewed favorably by 58 percent of likely primary voters and unfavorably by 13 percent. Walker was viewed favorably by 20 percent of GOP voters and unfavorably by 4 percent; Budd was viewed favorably by 16 percent and unfavorably by 5 percent.
McCrory led with nearly half the vote in a hypothetical three-way matchup: 48 percent, compared to 13 percent for Walker and 9 percent for Budd. He also led both in one-on-one matchups. The polling memo did not include Lara Trump.
The poll surveyed 500 likely GOP primary voters by interactive voice response from April 6-8, with a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Democrats are actively contesting the seat, after failing to unseat Tillis last November. Thus far, state Sen. Jeff Jackson and former state Sen. Erica Smith are in the race. Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, is expected to run and could launch a campaign soon, while former NASA astronaut Joan Higginbotham, who has never run for elected office, is also considering a bid.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/12/former-north-carolina-governor-senate-run-480960
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The Article Was Written/Published By: James Arkin
Republican leaders in North Carolina have introduced Senate Bill 514. If passed, this Bill would ban people under the age of 21 from receiving medical care vital to their transition. While this is shocking enough, it would also require state employees to out LGBTQ children to their parents. — Read the rest
Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/04/08/north-carolina-republicans-want-to-deny-care-to-transgender-youth.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=north-carolina-republicans-want-to-deny-care-to-transgender-youth
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Jessica Smith
A North Carolina elections official had to block her own late mother’s absentee ballot in this month’s election, as state law specifies that all voters must be alive on Election Day, regardless of how the vote was cast….
Source: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/526335-north-carolina-elections-official-blocked-her-late-mothers-vote
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Sarah Polus
The Tarheel State could be the canary in the mine on Election Night
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/north-carolina-polls-us-election-2020-predictions-b1535413.html
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Andrew Naughtie
Democrat Cal Cunningham holds a comfortable 10-point lead over Sen. Thom Tillis (R) in the closely watched North Carolina Senate race, according to …
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/523613-north-carolina-democrat-cunningham-leads-tillis-by-10-points-in-new-poll
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Max Greenwood
Earlier in the day, in a defeat for Republicans, the court declined to take another look, on a fast track, at the issue of late arriving mail ballots in Pennsylvania.
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-won-t-block-mail-ballots-north-carolina-arriving-n1245195
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Pete Williams
Time was dwindling for thousands of North Carolina voters to fix absentee voting errors as elections officials hustled out an updated process for handling mail-in ballot problems two weeks before Election Day
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/north-carolina-scrambles-inform-voters-absentee-errors-73730338
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A bitterly divided federal appeals court has denied an attempt by Republicans to block an agreement by North Carolina state officials allowing absentee ballots in next month’s election to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and received up to nine days later.
The Tar Heel State typically counts absentee ballots that arrive up to three days after the election, but last month the State Board of Elections agreed to extend that window to nine days due to the increased ballot requests related to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as well concerns about mail delays due to recent Postal Service changes.
In a ruling released Tuesday night, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals voted 12-3 to deny an emergency stay that GOP legislative leaders sought to reimpose the ordinary, three-days-after-Election-Day rule.
The Richmond-based appeals court issued no majority opinion explaining its decision, but backers and opponents of the ruling filed 45 pages of opinions jousting and wrangling over the legal issues, often in a vitriolic tone not commonly seen in such courts.
While many liberals have decried the concerted campaign by President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans to fill the federal appeals courts with conservative appointees, the lineup in Tuesday’s decision contained some surprises.
Although all three dissenters were Republican appointees, the 4th Circuit’s three Trump appointees voted with all the court’s Democratic appointees to deny the relief sought by two North Carolina GOP officials, Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore.
The judges in the minority said the extension — backed by a state-court consent decree — threatened “chaos” and deprived the North Carolina legislature of its constitutionally mandated role. The dissenters also issued an unusual plea to Berger and Moore to urgently take the fight to the Supreme Court.
“This case presents a clean opportunity for the Supreme Court to right the abrogation of a clear constitutional mandate and to impart to the federal elections process a strong commitment to the rule of law. Allowing the Board’s changes to go into effect now, two weeks before the election and after half a million people have voted in North Carolina, would cause yet further intolerable chaos,” Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson and Steven Agee wrote in an opinion joined by Judge Paul Niemeyer.
“We urge plaintiffs to take this case up to the Supreme Court immediately. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Now,” the dissenting judges added.
The dissenters said that, without a clear signal from the Supreme Court, a flood of litigation threatens to mire the upcoming election in confusion. Many of the cases seek to persuade state judges or executive officials to extend ballot deadlines or waive requirements like witness signatures on account of the pandemic.
The dissenting judges argued that those moves usurp the power the Constitution gives to state legislatures to set rules for federal elections in their states.
“Endless suits have been brought to change the election rules set by state legislatures,” the dissenters wrote. “This pervasive jockeying threatens to undermine public confidence in our elections. And the constant court battles make a mockery of the Constitution’s explicit delegation of this power to the state legislatures.”
Two judges in the majority, James Wynn and Diana Motz, accused the dissenters of wildly exaggerating the impact of the ballot-receipt extension at issue and ignoring Supreme Court precedents governing election litigation.
“Reading the dissenting opinion … one might think the sky is falling,” Wynn wrote. “The change is simply an extension from three to nine days after Election Day for a timely ballot to be received and counted. That is all.”
Wynn noted that the North Carolina elections board often intervenes to adjust ballot receipt deadlines, having done so twice for hurricanes in the last two years.
Wynn, an appointee of President Barack Obama, also took aim at the dissenters’ stance by invoking states rights’ rhetoric more often heard from conservatives. He also accused the dissenting judges of twisting a 2006 Supreme Court decision, Purcell v. Gonzalez, that advises federal judges not to make last-minute changes in state election procedures.
“Our colleagues justify federal court intervention — the one thing Purcell clearly counsels against — based on their own notions of what the Supreme Court should have said in Purcell,” Wynn wrote. “We cannot agree with such an expansion of federal court power at the expense of states’ rights to regulate their own elections.To do so would amount to inappropriate judicial activism.”
Wynn also said his dissenting colleagues’ claim that voters would be befuddled by the changes was unfounded in a case about how to treat ballots postmarked by Election Day.
“It is difficult to conceive what chaos our colleagues can possibly be envisioning here,” he wrote. “Voter behavior cannot be impacted by our decision one way or another. … The deadline extension only changes two things: more votes cast by mail will be counted rather than discarded because of mail delays, and fewer voters will have to risk contracting the novel coronavirus by voting in person. Only a grotesquely swollen version of Purcell would consider this ‘voter confusion,’ or in any way harmful.”
On Monday, a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that extended the ballot-receipt deadline in that state until three days after Election Day. Four GOP-appointed justices would have blocked the order, but Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the high court’s liberals to deny a stay. The result left the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in effect, at least for now.
Many of the legal arguments in the North Carolina case are similar, although its route through the state and federal courts was more byzantine.
The Supreme Court’s deadlock on the election-related issues could be broken as soon as Monday, when the Senate is expected to vote on President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy created by the death last month of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
It is unclear which election-related emergency applications will be pending at the high court if Barrett is sworn in next week and whether she or the broader court will be reluctant to make interventions in the election process with just days to go before the Nov. 3 vote.
An attorney for the North Carolina GOP leaders who unsuccessfully sought intervention from the appeals court, Berger and Moore, did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday night asking if the legislators plan to take up the dissenters’ suggestion of an immediate plea to the Supreme Court.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/21/north-carolina-ballot-extension-430662
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The Article Was Written/Published By: Josh Gerstein
