RALEIGH — Nearly 200 students from across the state came to Raleigh for the 2024 Youth Legislative Assembly, an event where education and politics intersected from April 19-21. Participants of the Youth Legislative Assembly (YLA) spent two days attending committee meetings, doing team-building exercises, and debating and passing bills in each chamber. The event ended with a dance and games on Saturday evening. Committees spanned a wide range of topics including education, environment, judicial, public safety, homeland security and protecting energy sources in the state. The 411 offers an in-de ..read more

Was the passage by the House last Saturday and the Senate on Tuesday of the foreign aid package with money for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan a turning point in American foreign policy? It certainly was a turnabout in rhetoric and in partisan behavior. House Speaker Mike Johnson led the narrowly Republican House to pass by resounding margins bills to aid Ukraine (311-112), Israel (366-58) and Taiwan (385-34), and to sanction Iran and force the sale of TikTok (360-58). The narrowly Democratic Senate passed the whole kit and caboodle by a similarly lopsided margin (79-18). These results are broadly ..read more

Imagine, as a parent, receiving a call from your child’s school counselor notifying you that your child is proceeding forward with a life-altering decision. You don’t have the right to object. You are simply allowed to watch it happen. That’s what is going on in North Carolina public schools. In an attempt to stop secret gender transitioning at school, the Parents’ Bill of Rights, recently passed by the legislature, requires these schools to notify parents about a child’s desire to change his/her name and pronouns. Parents can’t stop this first step in transitioning. They are simply given a ti ..read more

RALEIGH — The “Dueling Dinosaurs” fossil exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh opened to the public on April 27. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper made an appearance to congratulate the museum staff and scientists on their work in making the exhibit a reality. During his ceremony remarks, Cooper praised the eight years of work that went into making the exhibit happen and said that North Carolina was the best around a lot of areas, “but now we’re the best in dinosaurs.” The governor participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the exhibit alongside officia ..read more

RALEIGH — A bill that would require North Carolina sheriffs to comply with requests by federal agents interested in picking up jail inmates believed to be in the country illegally passed a Senate committee Tuesday, making it the first major legislation to advance in this year’s work session. The bill already cleared the House last year but stalled in the Senate until it was approved by the chamber’s judiciary committee on a voice vote. The Senate action signals the measure is a priority for state Republicans who now hold narrow veto-proof majorities in both chambers. A full Senate vo ..read more

CHARLESTON, W.Va. —North Carolina’s and West Virginia’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in a case likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-6 in the case involving coverage of gender-affirming care by North Carolina’s state employee health plan and the coverage of gender-affirming surgery by West Virginia Medicaid. Specifically, North Carolina’s policy bars treatment or studies “leading to or in connection with sex c ..read more

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s Congressional delegation, led by Republican Sen. Ted Budd, is seeking to bring the 2027 World Military Games to the Tarheel State. The North Carolina delegation expressed interest in hosting the event in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. “We write to you today expressing our support and requesting your initiation of the bid process of hosting the World Military Summer Games during the summer of 2027 in the great state of North Carolina,” the letter reads. “The World Military Games (WMG) is a sporting event hosted every four years which brings our wo ..read more

It is without fail that any time a conservative march or rally is held, the mainstream media searches long and hard for that one lone person in the crowd who is carrying a Confederate flag. They then proceed to use that one person to portray the whole movement as hateful/racist/bigoted/whatever their word for the day might be. And if they manage to find a few people among them who genuinely are bad apples, the same rule applies. Strangely, those rules don’t apply when it comes to left-wing agitators, though, which we’ve seen over the last decade or so when it comes to protests held by left-win ..read more

RALEIGH — For as many times as Frederik Andersen bailed out the Hurricanes in their first round series against the Islanders, his teammates were due to return the favor. After Andersen toe-picked and fell to the ice late in the second period, leaving his net wide open for Casey Cizikas to score the tying goal just before intermission, his Hurricanes teammates picked him up in the third period. “Freddie has been keeping us in it for this whole entire series, and things happen on the ice,” Hurricanes forward Stefan Noesen said. “I think he just fell and it goes in. You try to buckle in and try t ..read more

RALEIGH — Over the past year, a nonprofit organization funded by the General Assembly to focus on “accelerating commercialized innovation from North Carolina’s universities” has been receiving criticism from a fellow nonprofit. NCInnovation (NCI) was established in 2020 and given $500 million in nonrecurring funding across the biennium through the “NCInnovation Reserve Fund” as part of the 2022-23 budget. Of the appropriation, NCI may use $50 million of the endowment as investment income in the 2023-2024 fiscal year and $90 million in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. NCI, per its website ..read more