Johnny Casey/Asheville Citizen Times Forrest Gilliam has had the best interests of residents in his hometown in mind since before he was a teenager. Now, Gilliam will work with the state governor to help Western North Carolina towns in their rebuilds. The former Marshall town administrator and Madison County manager...

Jane Winik Sartwell/Carolina Public Press In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Helene, some in government and the news media were sounding the alarm on the prospect of population loss in affected areas of the state. The fear that there would be a mass exodus from the North Carolina mountains was...

Colin Campbell/WUNC Radio President Donald Trump’s megabill could cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for a federal food assistance program. Sometimes referred to as food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps cover the cost of groceries for low-income families. Both the House and Senate...

Joy Crist/Coastal Review Online Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard sent a letter June 30 to Senate Leader Phil Berger expressing “deep concern” about the last-minute changes to House Bills 442 and 441, which resulted in last week’s “Shrimpgate” protests. Following the surprise introduction of legislation that would...

Ben Humphries/Education NC “We are the union! The mighty, mighty union!” members of the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) chanted at meetings in school districts across North Carolina. The word choice — union instead of association — is intentional and represents an organizational shift. Though NCAE is classified as...

Taylor Knopf/NC Health News North Carolina is poised to receive $150 million from a new multi-state legal settlement with pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, for their alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic. Attorneys general from all 50 states and the United States’ territories finally...

Josh Boak/The Associated Press An analysis finds a critical group of U.S. employers would face a direct cost of $82.3 billion from President Donald Trump’s current tariff plans, a sum that could potentially be managed through price hikes, layoffs, hiring freezes or lower profit margins. The analysis by the JPMorganChase...

Kyle Perrotti/Smoky Mountain News An Asheville law firm has filed a civil suit on behalf of two minor female clients alleging that the girls were sexually abused while employed at a Bojangles fast food restaurant near Lake Junaluska in Haywood County. According to a press release, the suit, filed June...

Port City Daily A long discussed development in Southport has now been given the green light to move forward. On Monday, June 23, the Southport Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a comprehensive package of measures for the Waterway Community project, a 378-acre development off West 9th Street. After two project...

Becky Johnson/The (Waynesville) Mountaineer Six weeks after a week-long civil court trial between Shining Rock charter school and a former parent, a verdict is finally in. And the school lost. Former parent and board member Rebecca Fitzgibbon alleged that Shining Rock Classical Academy charged excessive fees for public record requests...

Evey Weisblat/City View When Starbucks barista Elijah Wittmeyer-Balthazar decided to start a union campaign at his Fayetteville store for the third time, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. The barista would have to contend with the usual challenges of union organizing: a fear of being retaliated against and the stigma...

Aaron Beard/The Associated Press North Carolina has taken an unusual route to establishing a succession plan for athletic director Bubba Cunningham, fittingly coming amid a new landscape of revenue sharing in college athletics. Cunningham will complete a 15th sports season as UNC’s AD before moving next summer into a new...

Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed cities and states to ban camping and sleeping in public. Since the landmark City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision, over a hundred localities have passed ordinances banning homeless people from camping or sleeping in public, according...

Rose Hoban/NC Health News On June 9, word started to spread that the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had unilaterally ended the terms of all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (known commonly as ACIP), the committee within the Centers for...

Paul Specht & Laura Leslie/WRAL News Political parties typically benefit from having an incumbent candidate on the ballot, but U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t bring that advantage to the campaign trail in 2026, Republican insiders and political scientists say. Tillis, first elected in 2014 over former Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay...