Thomas Beaumont, Bill Barrow & Steven Sloan/The Associated Press Republicans once saw North Carolina and Georgia as promising pieces of their strategy to keep control of the Senate. But hopes of winning the two states have been fading, and the GOP is increasingly focused on playing defense elsewhere with five...

Aaron Sánchez-Guerra/WUNC News The Census Bureau is proposing rules with major changes to how the U.S. population will be counted in the 2030 Census, raising alarms among state demographers and nonprofit leaders in North Carolina. The proposed rules from the Trump administration includes how and whether race and sexuality are...

Jonathan Lowe/WSOC News The new chairman of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education pleaded guilty in 2008 to 39 counts tied to a $20 million federal mortgage fraud scheme, a Channel 9 investigation found. The discovery comes as the school board faces scrutiny over district contracts and prepares to launch its...

Lucas Thomae/Carolina Public Press Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced it had canceled health insurance for 760,000 people covered under Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, based on findings from an anti-fraud task force. Nobody seems to know how many North Carolina residents were affected by the...

Alan Wooten/The Center Square  Regulation of college sports, potentially corralling a volatile period of amateur athletes zooming forward with multi-million dollar deals and major conferences expanding their footprints as valued TV properties, includes the support of both North Carolinians in the U.S. Senate. Protect College Sports Act of 2026, known...

Emily Walkenhorst/WRAL News North Carolina school leaders say they had fewer teacher vacancies at the start of this school year, according to a new survey from the North Carolina School Superintendents Association. Superintendents reported 2,009 teacher vacancies as of Sept. 18, part of 6,265 total employee vacancies. Superintendents reported 2,155...

Christine Zhu/NC Newsline An approximately three-mile line of vehicles stretched through Rodanthe on Monday as hundreds of vacationers sought to board the emergency ferry leaving Hatteras Island on the North Carolina coast. Last week’s nor’easter — a coastal storm with the strongest winds blowing from the northeast — severely damaged...

Frank Daniels IV/The Southern Pines Pilot With talk from the grass-roots on up in recent months about surveillance technology — particularly regarding Flock-branded and other automated license plate readers — many have called for elected officials to respond with protective measures. In an effort to answer those calls, the Pinehurst...

Anthony Goodman/The Sampson Independent Sampson County commissioners have thrown their support behind the Clinton City Board of Education’s pursuit of a new $49 million elementary school that members say would consolidate two of the district’s oldest campuses and dramatically change how its youngest students move through the school system. During...

Kenneth Lee Jr./WFAE Radio The Charlotte Area Transit System will launch a wave of service improvements starting next week. Following last year’s “yes” vote for the 1-cent local sales tax referendum to fund transit, CATS will roll out the first wave of improvements from its 2055 Transit System Plan next...

Sarah White/The Waynesville Mountaineer Almost 90 Haywood residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed in Helene are still waiting to find out if FEMA will pay them for their property. So far, only 25 applications for the FEMA buyout program have been approved. Another 87 applications are still waiting for...

Emily Sawaked/Port City Daily Cape Fear River Watch and the Southeastern Environmental Law Center sent a letter to Chemours earlier this week claiming it has not adhered to a 2019 consent order with the state by continuing to allow PFAS into groundwater and the river. Chemours denies the negligence claims...

Kirsten Korosec/TechCrunch Crusoe, a Denver-based AI data center startup that recently raised $3.9 billion, has ended plans to use a new line of stationary power plants developed by fellow Denver company Boom Supersonic. Founded in 2018 as a bitcoin miner that ran on excess natural gas from oil fields, Crusoe...

Lucas Thomae/Carolina Public Press Wake County leaders gave the go-ahead Monday for a controversial combination between Raleigh-based WakeMed and Atrium Health, the state’s largest hospital system, which is based in Charlotte. In spite of significant public opposition to the deal, which critics fear will increase prices for patients and decrease...

Tori Newby/IndyWeek In late July, the Durham County Board of Elections posted on Facebook calling for Republicans to sign up to work the polls this election season. Commenters swiftly voiced concerns that the board was only looking for voters from one party and that independent voters were left out of...