Dean Timmons-Goodson
North Carolina Central University scored big. They landed former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Pat Timmons-Goodson as the next Dean of the NCCU School of Law. She brings both legal heft and a national reputation to Central. She can garner attention the school...
Mark Robinson and His Rivals, Part I
"We don't need the climate of hate that [he] is talking about. We don't need the climate of hysteria and fear that [he] proposes." Mark Robinson? No, I. Beverly Lake, a now-forgotten intellectual racist who confronted Terry Sanford in the 1960 primary for governor....
Out of touch
The special election in Wisconsin that gave Democrats a majority on their state supreme court offered Democrats in North Carolina some lessons. While access to abortion was the driving force, the overall extremism of the GOP broadened the reach of their message. The...
How did we get here?
If Donald Trump had never been elected president, almost nobody would be surprised at the jury’s finding that he sexually abused E. Jean Carroll. Trump has been notorious for his sexual adventures since the 1970s. He bragged about his sexual conquests on the radio. He...
Don’t Tread on She
For a male-dominated institution that rejected women's suffrage and voted against the Equal Rights Amendment four ties, the North Carolina General Assembly did...exactly what one would have expected them to do. Fulfilling the inevitable, the white Republican men in...
Manufactured outrage and suckers who engage
This weekend, the term “stochastic terrorism” came up twice in my Twitter feed, once accusing me of it and once accusing Governor Roy Cooper of it. I didn’t really know what it meant. I’ve heard the term in the back-and-forth on social media, but only had a vague...
Down to the crossroads
When Mark Robinson comes onto the stage at his rallies, his theme song should be “Crossroads” because Robinson has clearly sold his soul. Legend has it that blues musician Robert Johnson was just a mediocre guitar player who was more an annoyance than a...
Kicking the hornets’ nest
Republicans in the legislature may have just kicked the hornets’ nest. Yesterday, they announced a plan to ban abortions after 12 weeks, with a graduated series of exceptions for instances of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. There’s no exceptions for the...
The Most Interesting State in Politics
North Carolina has faded into the second tier of American political attention. Since its Obama-era heyday, the Tar Heel State has voted Republican too consistently to register as a marquee swing state, and most observers have shifted their gaze to the bluer states of...
Knowledge scares conservatives
Republicans are set on dismantling our public education system from the ground up. Their voucher plan subsidizes private schools at the expense of public ones while continuing to put more money in the pockets of rich people. Their plan to end tenure at UNC and give...
Dismantling public education
I remember when Republicans were first pushing the voucher scheme that will upend our public schools and turn many of them into underfunded warehouses for poor children. Back then, they insisted that “opportunity scholarships,” as they call them, were...
Elites
Mark Robinson’s candidacy in North Carolina is a test of Republican politics and the endurance of Trumpism. Robinson is an unabashed Trumpist, spewing most of his populist garbage and embracing his insulting and demeaning campaign style. Like Trump, he’s basing his...