North Carolina

RALEIGH: State Capitol at 3 pm Monday.

CHARLOTTE: There will be a protest at Marshall Park in Charlotte at 3 pm on Monday (part of the planned protests in support of NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs).

ASHEVILLE, RUTHERFORDTON, BOONE — Common Cause NC hosting Griffin/Riggs protests on 2/17 at noon

While the campaign paid in advance due to Asheville's policy for short-notice bookings, Trump has a long history of failing to pay cities for billed rally fees, leaving the White House in January 2021 with at least $850,000 in unpaid rally debt. Most of the bills are still unpaid, including more than $500,000 owed to The city of El Paso, Texas.

Wife just sent me this link. Considering Debbie is dumping buckets on us North Carolinians right now, it helps to know where flooding is and might occur. I thought this map was super interesting personally.

Everyone please stay safe! Remember, if you're driving and can't the road through the water, don't risk it.

The state Board of Elections voted to authorize the alternative We the People party, allowing presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear on North Carolina ballots in November.

The Board rejected with a 3-2 vote along party lines the Justice for All party, Cornel West’s alternative party. Democrats rejected the Justice for All attempt to become a recognized party in part over questions about signatures on its petitions.

Tuesday’s votes came after weeks of deliberations, a request from Democrats on the board for an investigation into the petition efforts, and pressure from state and congressional Republicans to have both parties approved.

Republican-appointed leaders of the Environmental Management Commission have twice declined to advance proposed rules that would restrict industry’s release of some “forever” chemical pollution into drinking water supplies across North Carolina.

To further complicate things, the groundwater committee also asked DEQ to remove five of the eight chemicals from the list of what it wants to regulate.

An increasingly frustrated DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser, appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, said the commission is stalling full committee evaluation of the new rules, a departure from previous practices. “I hate to say that it wasn’t a huge surprise that they once again found reasons to move the goalposts and to not take action. It’s very frustrating,” Biser said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17335438

TL;DR: Inshore commercial shrimp trawling is devastating our marine fisheries by causing by-catch (untargeted marine animals trapped and killed in the nets) at a rate of 4 to 1 by weight.

North Carolina is the only state that still allows inshore shrimp trawling.

Here’s what the North Carolina Wildlife Federation has to say on the topic. It bugs me that they’re framing it as the loss of recreational flounder fishing being the primary consequence, but I suppose whatever brings more attention to the issue is a good thing.

The NC Wildlife Commission is holding a meeting Tonight at 7:00pm at the New Bern Community College

• It’s worth noting that the linked article is to WCTI which is a Sinclair station.

A 12-year-old boy who died at a North Carolina wilderness camp was smothered, according to an autopsy that was released on Monday.

The autopsy shows the boy's death is now being reported as a homicide. The child was found dead at Trails Carolina on Feb. 3. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services revoked the facility's license in May, saying it failed to comply with state regulations. The department said the camp failed to follow state law regarding the rights for people living with mental illness, developmental disabilities or substance abuse.

An April report by the state found that the camp failed to check if the boy was breathing while requiring him to sleep in a "bivy," a small sleeping-bag-like tent, that was covered by a plastic sheet. At some point, staff determined "there was an issue" with the zipper, according to NBC News. An unidentified staff member assigned to sleep next to the boy heard someone "breathing heavily" at one point, but couldn't determine if it was the boy or another employee.

Staff members called 911 when the boy did not respond to attempts to wake him and emergency personnel were unable to revive him, the camp said at the time.

In the wake of the boy's death, Trails Carolina was barred from taking in new admissions and all existing children were removed from the facility. Amidst the investigation, a former student sued the program, claiming staff members dismissed her claims of sexual assault by another camper in 2016.

Mark Robinson, the firebrand Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, has for years made comments downplaying and making light of sexual assault and domestic violence.

A review of Robinson’s social media posts over the past decade shows that he frequently questioned the credibility of women who aired allegations of sexual assault against prominent men, including Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, actor Bill Cosby and now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. In one post, Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, characterized Weinstein and others as “sacrificial lambs” being “slaughtered.”

Robinson has drawn scrutiny for his incendiary remarks on other issues, including about LGBTQ+ people, religion and other political figures. But his comments on domestic violence and sexual assault stand out for their tone and frequency, as well as Robinson’s repeated questioning of accusers.

While Robinson is, in some ways, emblematic of the Republican Party’s turn under Donald Trump toward rewarding inflammatory, sexist language, his dismissals of women threaten to test Robinson’s appeal with voters troubled by that history, in particular female voters.

Last fall, out of public view, the North Carolina Supreme Court squashed disciplinary action against two Republican judges who had admitted that they had violated the state’s judicial code of conduct, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the decisions.

One of the judges had ordered, without legal justification, that a witness be jailed. The other had escalated a courtroom argument with a defendant, which led to a police officer shooting the defendant to death. The Judicial Standards Commission, the arm of the state Supreme Court that investigates judicial misconduct by judges, had recommended that the court publicly reprimand both women. The majority-Republican court gave no public explanation for rejecting the recommendations — indeed, state law mandates that such decisions remain confidential.

Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University, explained that in the 2010s, North Carolina had policies designed to keep the judiciary above the political fray, such as nonpartisan judicial elections. However, the gradual dismantling of these policies by the Republican-controlled legislature has driven the court’s polarization, according to Hildebrand.

Preventing local governments from reducing plastic waste is just one recent example of the many ways Republican lawmakers have used the state budget, theoretically a fiscal document, to weaken existing environmental regulations or prevent more.

Since taking power in 2011, GOP leaders have introduced dozens of environmental provisions in state budgets, rather than standalone bills. That includes 2023 provisions preventing North Carolina from joining a cap-and-trade program that could have limited greenhouse gasses released by the state’s power plants and stymieing Gov. Roy Cooper’s efforts to shift trucks across the state from diesel fuel to electric power.

Since 2017, state environmental officials have been grinding their way toward regulating these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. While scientists know of thousands, DEQ identified eight present here that it intended to regulate in ground- and surface water.

But in April, the N.C. Chamber, the state’s powerful business interest group, urged the N.C. Environmental Management Commission to slow down and conduct more research before approving rules for the substances. Much of Chamber President Gary Salamido’s argument to delay setting new limits focused on new drinking water rules the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized this year for six of the eight PFAS the state is considering limiting.

He also pointed to the renewed Hardison Amendment, writing that regulators need to consider whether they are going further than the EPA’s rules.