Years of vacancies, low pay and high turnover have eroded staffing levels at North Carolina prisons, disrupting operations and raising safety concerns.
As the General Assembly prepares to return for a session this spring, North Carolina faith leaders and advocacy groups urged legislators to prioritize public education, affordable health care, and fair voting maps.
In 1994, low-income school districts sued the NC legislature over paltry funding. The saga known as the Leandro case became a snarl of court rulings and legislative obstruction that is still unresolved.
Michael Wray, a former 10-term state Representative running for his old seat in 2026, faces claims that he once told a fellow lawmaker to “watch out for the Blacks.”
The governor cited court rulings that blocked some of the cuts, but said the state’s Medicaid fund would still run out of money in the spring if Republicans failed to resolve their 6-month dispute over funding it.
Republicans control both chambers of the NC legislature, but have failed to pass a budget 6 months after it was due. Even conservatives are losing their patience. As a winter storm shut down schools across the Triangle this week, Republican leaders in the General...
Madison County, tucked in the mountains of western North Carolina, has no hospital and just three ambulances serving its roughly 22,000 people.
NC Rep. Phil Rubin, a Wake County Democrat, spoke with Cardinal & Pine last month as lawmakers had a chance to return to session and do something about Medicaid funding.
Federal judges will allow some of North Carolina state lawmakers' gerrymandered US House districts to go on, but this year's Trump-endorsed redrawing of a Black voting district is still up in the air.
With NC Republicans stalled on a budget deal, an ankle-monitoring program designed to stop domestic violence expires.
| February 5, 2026
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| December 17, 2025
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| December 10, 2025
