Receive the morning news briefs delivered to your email inbox every morning. Click here to sign up.
Redistricting Reformers Hopeful About Legislation This Year
Lawmakers who want to reform the congressional redistricting process in North Carolina say uncertainty over pending map litigation and the shaky balance of power at the legislature make them more optimistic their ideas will be voted on this year.
House Democrats and Republicans filed legislation on Wednesday to create a "nonpartisan" redistricting commission that would propose new legislative and congressional maps after each decennial census.
Courts have ruled that past maps drawn by Republican lawmakers are illegal racial gerrymanders. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next month on whether the current congressional lines also contain excessive partisan bias.
Senate Republican Proposal On K-12 Construction Clears Panel
An idea pushed by North Carolina Senate Republicans to generate more public school construction money without additional borrowing has cleared a key committee.
The Senate's budget-writing panel voted Wednesday for a measure to expand a recently created fund that pays down state debt and helps agency and university construction projects.
The legislation would direct a higher percentage of state revenues to the fund and also distribute proceeds to K-12 school and community college construction. Republicans say the proposal could mean $2 billion more for public school building over nine years.
Cooper Honors Black Musicians, Artists
A musician who's received a genius grant, North Carolina's poet laureate and the founders of the National Black Theatre Festival are among those being honored by the governor and first lady as part of Black History Month.
Gov. Roy Cooper's office said in a news release that Cooper and his wife, Kristin, will honor about 50 African-American musicians and artists from North Carolina during a reception Thursday at the Executive Mansion.
Among those being honored are Rhiannon Giddens, who received a MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 2017, and state poet laureate Jaki Shelton Green. Also being honored are the late Leon Hamlin, founder of the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, and his widow, Sylvia Sprinkle-Hamlin, the festival's executive producer.
Anne Firor Scott, Groundbreaking Historian, Dead At 97
Anne Firor Scott, a prize-winning historian and esteemed professor, has died. She was 97.
Her death was announced last week by Duke University, where she taught for 30 years. Additional details about her death were not immediately available.
Scott upended the male-dominated field of Southern scholarship by pioneering the study of women in the region. She received a National Humanities Medal in 2013.
Scott's "The Southern Lady: From Pedestal to Politics 1830-1930" was published in 1970 and is now regarded as among the first major works of its kind.
Grandfather Mountain Records 121 Mph Wind Gusts
Hurricane season is five months away, but Grandfather Mountain has recorded winds that reached the equivalent of a Category 3 storm and set a record in the process.
Mountain officials posted to social media that winds reached 121.3 mph at approximately 4 a.m. Wednesday. The previous record of 120.7 mph was set on Dec. 21, 2012.
Officials said that at 7 a.m., wind gusts were reaching in excess of 100 mph.
300x250 Ad
300x250 Ad