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  • Responding to Mental Health Crises in Chapel Hill
  • ICYMI: Foushee “Will Not Accept” AIPAC Money
  • Send Us Your Questions About Local Universities
  • Could NC Get Inter-City Passenger Rail?
  • Where Are East and West Raleigh Exactly?
(From left to right) Mari Hall, Heather Palmateer, Jennifer Melvin, and Alia Martin make up the CARE Team, which runs out of the Chapel Hill Police Department and the Orange County 911 call center.
Credit: Photo by Sarah Belcher

Good morning, readers.

Last May, the town of Chapel Hill launched a pilot program that dispatches specialists (known as the Crisis Assistance, Response, and Engagement, or CARE team) to respond to mental health related calls without police.

The program—which builds off of Chapel Hill’s 50-year history sending clinicians on mental health calls with police officers—relies on practitioners who have their own lived experience with mental health challenges, making the program unique in the country, freelancer Claire Murphy writes for the INDY.

So far, the program has been a success, and city leaders are hoping to expand its hours and reach. In its first year, CARE responded to almost 1,300 events and significantly reduced the number of arrests and forced hospitalizations that would have occurred with traditional police response, Claire reports.

But long-term funding for the program is uncertain, with federal cutbacks to mental health care closing several long-standing alternate response programs across the county.

Read more below about the CARE program and federal cuts threatening programs like it.

—Sarah W.

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U.S. Representative Valerie Foushee speaks at a town hall in Carrboro on August 5, 2025.
Credit: Photo by Chase Pellegrini de Paur

Foushee Won’t Take AIPAC Money in 2026

Scoop: Congresswoman Valerie Foushee’s campaign tells INDY’s Chase Pelligrini de Paur that she won’t take money from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in reelection bid.


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Send Us Your College Questions

Last call to send in all your questions about Triangle universities and college life. An INDY staffer will take on a reader question on the topic for the next installment of Ask INDY.


An Amtrak employee stands in the doorway of a departing train at the station in Selma, N.C.
Credit: Madeline Gray for The Assembly

Can NC Bring Back Passenger Rail?

A project evaluating new intercity passenger rail lines across the state—including some Raleigh routes—is igniting new passion for an old form of transportation, The Assembly reports.

If you’d like to advertise your business to The Daily’s 20,000-plus subscribers, please contact [email protected].

STATE: CNBC ranked North Carolina the top state for business in 2025, but notes our “almost complete lack of worker protections.”

STATE: The Trump administration has conveyed plans to shutter the EPA’s office in Research Triangle Park. North Carolina Health News reports the move would undercut research on public health issues like COVID and PFAS.

STATE: Relatedly, last week the EPA ended a program that helped low-income families in North Carolina get solar panels and reduce their energy bills, WUNC reports.

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