North Carolina becomes the latest state to file or pass legislation prohibiting foreign entities from purchasing farmland.
North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, will serve his fifth term as Speaker when the General Assembly convenes for the long session in January, making him the longest-serving Speaker of the House in North Carolina history. The NC House Republican Caucus unanimously reelected Moore on Friday.
Having learned the lessons of tyranny under British rule, our state forefathers and their successors intentionally made our governor one of the weakest in the nation.
North Carolina has now been under Gov. Roy Cooper’s unilateral statewide state of emergency for over 33% of his entire tenure in office – or nearly 600 days. The current order was impressed upon the citizens of North Carolina on March 10, 2020, without following statutory mandates to consult with the Council of State. In...
It has been 450 days since Gov. Roy Cooper put North Carolina under a state-of-emergency order due to the COVID pandemic. State lawmakers are demanding concrete information on when it will end. On Tuesday, leaders in the N.C. House formally asked Cooper to provide the scientific data used to justify continued emergency restrictions. In a...
Rep. Julia Howard, R-Davie, has been removed from her powerful role as senior chair of the state House’s tax-writing Finance Committee. Howard has been reassigned to the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, where she’ll serve as a member at large. That news comes in a statement to Carolina Journal from House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, Speaker Pro...
A bill introduced by House Majority Leader John Bell, R-Wayne, is meant to help improve crisis intervention and services for veterans suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues. House Bill 370, No Veteran Left Behind Act, creates a pilot program for several military and veteran heavy counties in North Carolina to improve and expand...
A group of N.C. House lawmakers have introduced a bill to, they say, strengthen and clarify current law to require approval from a majority of the Council of State for emergency actions by the governor. “This is not a Republican or Democrat issue,” said Rep. John Bell, R-Wayne. Bell is House majority leader. “We can...
Each week, staff at Carolina Journal looks back at the week in N.C. politics and chooses several interesting, relevant stories you may have missed. Reopen the schools: Five parents are challenging Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ decision to start the school year with full-time remote learning. The group of parents filed a lawsuit Sept. 3 in Mecklenburg County...
As a three-judge panel heard a second week of testimony in Common Cause v. Lewis, defense attorneys and witnesses tried to cast doubt on the ability of statistical analysis to predict how North Carolinians would vote in legislative elections. Plaintiffs have produced several expert witnesses who illustrated how their computer-simulated district maps would produce more...
N.C. lawmakers, one could argue, have had unprecedented success this legislative session in reforming the state’s archaic laws governing spirituous liquor. Senate Bill 290 — which passed the Senate, 39-4, and was sent to the House, where it passed the House ABC Committee and now sits in the House’s Rules Committee — is one example. ...
