As we enter the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, here’s the stay of play: North Carolina is a state in play.
All in Opinion
Cooper and Buttigieg survey storm damage and receive updates on recovery efforts
Governor Roy Cooper joined United States Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in Western North Carolina for a briefing on recovery efforts with federal officials and view damaged areas in Asheville and Canton. The Governor and Secretary Buttigieg also visited a damaged section of I-40.
John Hood: Why College Return-on-Investment Matters
RALEIGH — The University of North Carolina system enrolled more students this fall — about 248,000 — than ever before. But continued growth is far from ordained. Indeed, as America’s college-age population levels off and then begins to decline over the next decade, many institutions will see enrollment declines. Some will be forced by shaky finances to merge or shut down.
John Hood: Helene Shows Value of Fiscal Restraint
The devastation wreaked on North Carolina by Hurricane Helene will take weeks to assess, months to clear out, and years to repair or rebuild. Second only to the value of the lives lost will be the exorbitant fiscal and economic costs of our recovery.
John Hood: Helene Brought Out the Best in Carolinians
As we mourn the deaths and grapple with the destruction inflicted on our state by Hurricane Helene, I submit that the storm has brought out much that is good about North Carolina — and much that is vile about social media.
Op-Ed: Embracing Innovation and Economic Growth During North Carolina Drive Electric Week
As the former Executive Director of the NCGOP and a proud conservative, I have always believed in the values of freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity. Here in North Carolina, we’ve long understood that to secure our future, we need to focus on policies that drive job creation, economic growth, and responsible stewardship of our natural resources.
Thousands of pounds of food, fresh water arrives in western NC as massive clean-up begins
Governor Roy Cooper and top members of his administration got a firsthand look Monday at the devastation Hurricane Helene brought to North Carolina’s mountains. Thirty-four storm-related deaths have been confirmed in the state with 600 more reported as missing in Buncombe County.
Linda Hunt Williams - Raiding Medicare: A Terrible Idea
North Carolina’s Medicare enrollees are feeling the squeeze after the Democrats’ promises of reduced Medicare costs and better health care go unfulfilled. Over two years ago, the Biden-Harris administration introduced the “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) despite strong and unified GOP resistance. The left stood confidently behind the Biden-Harris Administration’s initiatives, despite rising costs and empty promises.
John Hood: Democrats Got Post-Debate Bounce
RALEIGH — Republican Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson was likely to lose the 2024 gubernatorial election to Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein before the September 19 CNN piece tying him to a series of grotesque posts made more than a dozen years ago on a pornography site.
John Hood: Pro-Hamas Protestors Strike UNC Again
On April 30, a mob of pro-Hamas protestors defaced public property at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and yanked down, for a brief time, the American flag fluttering over a prominent part of the campus called Polk Place.
BJ Murphy: North Carolina - The Battleground of Faith and Swing Voters
North Carolina’s future isn’t locked down by Republicans or Democrats—it’s the independents and swing voters who hold the real power." With 16 electoral votes at stake, faith is influencing both sides, but weaponizing religion to win political points only deepens the division. In this battleground state, independents will be the ones to tip the scales in 2024.
OPINION: Public school failures behind demand for private school vouchers
North Carolina General Assembly voted this week to clear the Opportunity Scholarship Program waitlist. This will give over 50,000 more students in the state vouchers to attend the private school of their choice.
John Hood - Let a Thousand Billboards Bloom
RALEIGH — Put me down as entirely unsurprised that media companies are adding commercials back into their streaming services as a means of making them profitable. Advertising has never been as unpopular as its critics imagine — a truth that North Carolina policymakers should embrace as they try to finance new infrastructure without irritating taxpayers.
John Hood: Debates will inform state voters
RALEIGH — Brace yourself. The arrival of Labor Day traditionally begins the homestretch of electoral campaigns. You may well join millions of fellow voters in utter exhaustion with the politics of 2024. But I promise you the candidates and their surrogates are raring to run this final leg of the race.
OPINION Recession: Not if, but when
In reaction to an array of economic indicators pointing toward an upcoming recession, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated during an August press conference that the Federal Reserve would be shifting its focus from quelling inflation to promoting employment. This change in language signals a transition toward interest-rate cuts soon.
John Hood: Campus peace for everyone
Now that fall term has begun for most colleges and universities, we’re about to witness one of the most predictable phenomena in modern American politics: for every raucous or violent campus protest that gets significant media attention, Democratic candidates will lose voters.
Op Ed: Opportunity Scholarship A Critique of the Second “Duke Attack”
Jane Wettach of Duke Law School’s Children’s Law Clinic was on the attack again. "School Vouchers in North Carolina – The First Three Years” was authored by Professor Jane R. Wettach of the Children's Law Clinic, Duke Law School in March, 2017. In May 2020 she released another broadside.
OPINION: War on 3rd parties could come back to haunt Dems in November
For years, the Carolina Journal has been following Democratic Party efforts to keep third parties off the ballot. The Democrat strategy makes some sense practically, since the fewer left-of-center options there are, the more Democrats can dominate that voter pool. But it was always a strategy with some risks.
John Hood: Downtowns Change, Like It or Not
Four years ago, communities in North Carolina and beyond were reeling from the COVID-induced Great Suppression. After spiking into double digits in April 2020, the state’s headline jobless rate was still a painful 7.3% by August, with some 376,000 fewer North Carolinians employed than on the eve of the pandemic.
John Hood: First congress met in North Carolina
RALEIGH — Before the United States had a Congress, North Carolina had a Congress — and this week marks its 250th birthday.