The GOP’s War on LGBTQ Young People is the Latest Backlash
Like a pack of roaming dogs, Republican state governments are racing to smoke out people who do not live their lives according to right-wing evangelical dogma. State after state has passed laws restricting the teaching of LGBTQ-affirmative content and targeting the...
A proxy fight for the soul of GOP?
With the battle over maps sucking the air out of the political conversation in North Carolina for the first two months of the year, the Republican US Senate primary has gotten little attention. That’s about to change. According to an article in Politico this morning,...
Ukraine and the Return of American Values
Reporting today indicates that President Joe Biden will look into banning the importation of Russian oil to the United States. While initially resistant to taking this step, the administration has come into agreement with Congress that targeting Russia's vital energy...
What a bunch of frauds
Republicans are doing their darnedest to convince Americans of the threat of widespread voter fraud by committing voter fraud. The latest perpetrator looks to be Mark Meadows, the dumbest man in politics. The former Congressman from NC-11 and former Trump Chief of...
Starving the Beast in North Carolina
In the frothy first days of North Carolina's "conservative revolution," reporter David Crabtree had a bone to pick with Josh Stein. Did Republicans really defund the North Carolina Cancer Hospital because they wanted to cut taxes for the wealthy, he asked. Personally,...
It’s time to tell Putin “NO more”
Ukraine should be our line in the sand. It probably should have been Syria, but now Vladimir Putin is pushing against Europe with a brutal war on the Ukrainian people. In the past, Putin’s army has destroyed population centers leaving little but rubble and bodies...
Biden Gave the Speech He Needed to Turn His Presidency Around
Last night, President Biden displayed some political strengths that had been obscured by political turbulence. Empathetic and instilled with the gravitas of a long career, Biden appeared to be, rather than a flailing first-term president, a commander-in-chief worthy...
Searching for the center
Last night, Joe Biden gave one of the least partisan State of the Union addresses in recent memory. He repeatedly mentioned bipartisanship, praising the Republicans for their co-operation on things like the infrastructure bill. Most of the his applause lines got...
Roots of Russian aggression
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on Russia, but almost 40 years ago, I took a bunch of Russian history classes in college. I was more interested in Russia in the 20th century, but I learned enough to see patterns emerge that go back centuries. While a lot of...
The GOP’s War on Public Education and Economic Development
Joe Killian is the documentarian of UNC's troubles. The NC Policy Watch reporter broke another probing story yesterday about political influence at our flagship school. Though the content it conveys pales in outrage to Trustees' attack on Nikole Hannah-Jones,...
Ukraine presents Biden an opportunity
The first text came from my son during school hours back on February 8. “Ukraine is going to war with Russia?” It sparked a conversation about international policy and spurred my son to start following the growing tensions. After Russia invaded, I got another text....
Instigators and enablers
Earlier this week, the three men who chased down Ahmaud Arbery and killed him were convicted of hate crimes in federal court. They are already serving long sentences, including life without parole for two of them, for his killing after convictions in state courts. The...