News And Views With Nc Policy Watch's Chris Fitzsimon

  Among the most disastrous public health development to afflict the United States in recent years has been the rise of the so-called anti-vax movement. Thanks to the unfortunate rise of misinformation, disinformation and misguided parental anxiety, millions of people – especially children – are being placed at serious and unnecessary risk of grave illness […]

We’re now six months into the second Trump administration and recent weeks, in particular, have been filled all kinds momentous and often disturbing news from Washington. Topping the list, of course, is the massive new budget reconciliation package – what supporters dubbed the “one, big, beautiful bill” that the president signed into law on July […]

  One of the most disturbing hallmarks of the Trump administration has been its relentless effort to defund public education – an effort that hit a new low earlier this month when Trump’s Department of Education announced suddenly and without warning that it would be freezing billions of dollars in essential funds – funds that […]

  It’s an article of faith in many conservative circles that the Trump administration’s tough anti-immigrant policies will free up jobs for U.S. born workers. New research from Economic Policy Institute senior economist Ben Zipperer, however, demonstrates conclusively that the opposite is the case. Zipperer’s calculations actually show that the net impact of mass deportation […]

  The North Carolina General Assembly has gone home for the month of July, and perhaps – depending on some of the political machinations between House and Senate Republican leaders – the rest of the summer. But that doesn’t mean there’s a lot to point to in the way of major accomplishments. Not only have […]

The new state fiscal year started July 1, and the state legislature is on vacation for most of the month, but that doesn’t mean we have a new state budget. Thanks to big disagreements between NC House and Senate Republicans, the state is listing along on its old budget and several major decisions – most […]

  Despite their failure to agree on a new state budget, North Carolina lawmakers are taking most of the month of July – the first month of the new fiscal year – off. Not surprisingly, this is not a situation that’s sitting particularly well with a lot of state employees as they wrestle with another […]

  North Carolinians received another powerful reminder recently that their state’s electoral politics are never boring, when Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis suddenly announced he will not seek reelection next year. The announcement has set off a flurry of activity in which it has sometimes seemed that more politicians are considering entering the 2026 Senate […]

  North Carolina was rocked by a political earthquake this past week when its senior U.S. Senator, Republican Thom Tillis, broke with President Donald Trump and then announced that he will not seek reelection in 2026. Tillis’s announcement – which came on the heels of his decision to oppose Trump’s hugely controversial omnibus budget bill […]

Among the flurry of bills approved by the General Assembly during the last week of June was an extremely controversial proposal that would make big changes to state energy policy, entitled the “Power Bill Reduction Act.” The bill would repeal a bipartisan 2021 law that committed our state to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent […]

  A new report prepared by the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice and the national public policy nonprofit D?mos finds more than 1.5 million North Carolinians are eligible to vote but aren’t doing so. The report is entitled “North Carolina’s Missing Voters,” and it finds that these nonvoters — nearly 20% of the state’s […]

A new state fiscal year commences July 1, but North Carolina will not have a new state budget to greet it. Plagued by major differences over issues like tax policy and pay for teachers and state employees, House and Senate Republicans were unable to reach agreement before commencing their summer break and so the state […]

  Conservative culture war legislation has been front and center of late at the North Carolina legislature, with GOP lawmakers advancing, among other things, bills to limit the rights of transgender people, promote censorship in our schools, ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in state government, and force local law enforcement offices to devote limited […]

  The attacks on trans people at the North Carolina legislature are clearly part of a coordinated national campaign from the political right that has also impacted a number of other institutions. This week marks the end of Pride Month and it’s clear that the anti-LGBTQ movement led by the Trump administration has managed to […]

In 2025, few societal phenomena pose a greater or more immediate threat to the mental and physical wellbeing of Americans than gun violence. Gun violence is now, quite shamefully, the leading cause of death for children and youth in our country. And when this sobering fact is combined with the ongoing rise in political violence […]

  “A new report from the state Department of Public Instruction confirms what school voucher opponents have been saying: universal voucher programs are a wasteful giveaway to disproportionately wealthy families who have already enrolled their children in private schools.” That’s the opening sentence from a recent essay authored by North Carolina Justice Center senior policy […]

  For the past two decades, no single individual has played a more prominent or important role in championing the rights and wellbeing of average working people in North Carolina than MaryBe McMillan. McMillan, who grew up in Hickory, served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the North Carolina AFL-CIO from 2005 to 2017, at which point […]

  Gerrymandering: it refuses to go away. Despite widespread and growing public awareness and outrage, North Carolina Republican lawmakers continue to use it to rig our state’s elections by drawing districts guaranteed to give themselves large majorities and dilute the power of Black voters. Fortunately, voting rights advocates and good government groups are refusing to […]

  One of the more remarkable facts about some of the policies that state and federal lawmakers adopt for public benefit programs these days is that they’re based not on facts or data, or the money and lives saved, but on gut feelings about the worthiness of the people who would be helped. Nowhere is […]

  One of the most vexing societal problems of the modern, social media-driven era is the ongoing crisis in youth mental health. The latest data on the number of children who suffer from depression and other symptoms – and who even contemplate or attempt suicide – are staggering. Happily, a small ray of light in […]