Danielle Battaglia/The (Raleigh) News & Observer Sen. Thom Tillis called for oversight of the use of the U.S. Border Patrol in Charlotte during a Senate hearing Thursday. Border Patrol agents began appearing throughout Charlotte Saturday near places like grocery stores, schools and churches, rounding up Hispanic residents, often forcefully, and...

Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline A North Carolina administrative law judge has temporarily frozen Medicaid rate cuts for personal care services delivered in adult care homes. The ruling came after the North Carolina Assisted Living Association and dozens of companies challenged the 8% cut to Medicaid rates for personal care services in...

Rachel Heimann Mercader/CityView Before the cameras roll, before the microphones click on, and before the public meetings begin, the Fayetteville City Council gathers in a cramped room on the third floor of City Hall. These sessions are the council’s little-known dinner meetings. For nearly two decades, the gatherings have quietly...

Gerrit De Vynck & Nitasha Tiku/The Washington Post The Trump administration is drafting an executive order that would direct the Justice Department to sue states that pass laws regulating artificial intelligence, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person familiar with the White House...

Adam Wagner/NC Newsroom The agency tasked with overseeing the rebuilding of homes damaged and destroyed in Hurricanes Florence and Matthew failed to control its budget, resulting in an emergency appropriation from the General Assembly, and was slow to process applications, according to a new report from State Auditor Dave Boliek....

Dan DeWitt/Asheville Watchdog Owning the land beneath their mobile home has given Laura Garcia and her husband the security to replace its ceilings, rebuild its exterior, add on a front porch and apply a fresh coat of light gray paint highlighted with wine-colored trim. “Rather than depend on a landlord...

Amy McCraw/Hendersonville Lightning After hearing from state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom in a late-night email, county commissioners on Wednesday morning directed staff to begin working with contractors on a scaled-down version of the Clear Creek sewer project that might serve as the first phase of a planned sewer line in Edneyville....

Michelle Crouch/NC Health News & The Charlotte Ledger When a Charlotte man fell off a ladder last week and likely fractured his foot, his doctor told him he needed to go to the hospital for an X-ray. But the man, the Latino owner of a small construction company, refused to...

David Ford/WFDD Radio The 62nd annual Piedmont Craftsmen’s Fair gets underway this weekend with more than 100 artists participating. The artisans come from across the U.S. to showcase their work in clay, wood, glass, fiber, and more. About 30 of them hail from the mountains. Some had to cancel last...

Gary D. Robertson/The Associated Press Federal agents have now arrested more than 250 people during a North Carolina immigration crackdown centered around Charlotte, the state’s largest city, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Wednesday. The operation that began over the weekend is the latest phase of Republican President Donald...

Brian Dabbs & Francisco “A.J.” Camacho/E&E News The Trump administration wants to churn dirt on a bevy of new nuclear power plants. Electric utilities that power America have different plans. Despite forecasts for spiking electricity use and pledges from the Department of Energy to bolster nuclear power, utilities aren’t inking...

Rachel Crumpler/NC Health News Chris Hatton oversees a 15-officer police force in a small western North Carolina town in Jackson County — a place where he says many calls to 911 aren’t really police matters at all. A “suspicious” person loitering. Someone yelling in the street. A person rummaging through...

Bill Moss/Hendersonville Lightning Declaring that Henderson County commissioners had made “incorrect statements” about the status of a $12.7 million sewer system grant, state Rep. Jennifer Balkcom on Tuesday night asked commissioners to correct the record. “Given that the article’s language — including ‘lost,’ ‘defunded,’ ‘slapped around,’ and warnings that the...

WCHL Chapelboro While the longest federal government shutdown in the United States’ history garnered much attention across recent weeks, North Carolina’s government is facing its own operational roadblock. While the state is still functioning, it is doing so without a new comprehensive, two-year budget — becoming the last state in...

Nick de la Canal/WFAE Radio Yessica Arias, owner of Central Friends Tires, says U.S. Border Patrol agents took one of her employees, a Nicaraguan man who was her “best mechanic,” and had no criminal record. The man had been seeking asylum in the U.S. As part of a sweeping immigration...