As the Trump administration ramps up deportations and pushes the boundaries of federal law, Durham is contending with the limits of its ability to protect its immigrant community. An organizer, a lawyer, a pastor, and a sheriff try to navigate the new reality.
Barry Yeoman
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Orange County Has Been Swept Up in the Nationwide Cultural Clashes in Education
Superintendent Monique Felder is the latest casualty.
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As Smithfield Appeals a Multimillion-Dollar Verdict, a Hog-Farm Neighbor Awaits His Chance at Justice After 20 Years of Hell
“Dad, why do we have to live like this? When I go to my friends’ house, I don’t smell this smell.”
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Born Before Stonewall: How LGBTQ Baby Boomers Are Helping Redefine What It Means to Grow Older
Editor’s note: This is an excerpt of a story by former INDY writer Barry Yeoman. You can (and should) read the entire piece here. There are days when I forget I’m gay. I have deadlines to meet, a dog to walk, an appointment with the barber to trim the last of my gray hair. There’s […]
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From Nixon to Trump: The Parallels between 1968 and 2016
A few weeks ago I started reading Nixonland, Rick Perlstein’s 748-page social history of the 1960s and ’70s through the lens of Richard Nixon’s presidency. I’ve gotten most of the way through the book and have been reflecting on how we seem to have landed, once again, back in 1968. Back then, following eight years […]
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RIP Paul Luebke, a Progressive Icon
When I first arrived in Durham, as a twenty-five-year-old hired by the INDY to cover state government, I spent countless hours sitting on Paul Luebke’s living-room sofa. Surrounded by piles of newspapers—and with his young son, Theo, coming and going—he immersed me into a years-long tutorial on North Carolina politics. Luebke, who died Saturday of […]
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The Trump Show: North Carolina Republicans Reckon with Their Party’s New Leader
SUNDAY NIGHT Before he left for the Republican National Convention, Bob Orr started reading William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He’d heard Donald Trump’s political ascent likened to that of Adolf Hitler. But as a retired judge who spent eighteen years on the N.C. Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, Orr […]
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The Republican National Convention, Day Four: “Eat and Drink Them Out of Publication”
Like every day at the Republican National Convention, this afternoon members of the North Carolina delegation are eating and drinking well. The social schedule is so heavy that state party director Dallas Woodhouse called it “the Bataan death march.” Today’s gathering is being held at Crop On Air Studio, an event space with a long […]
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The Republican National Convention, Day Four: Scenes from “A Dog Park, But for Humans”
I pulled up to Cleveland’s Kirtland Park at 11 p.m. Tuesday night. It’s in an industrial corner of the city, where old brick structures sprout vegetation and “for lease” signs—a narrow band of green sandwiched between the railroad tracks and Interstate 90, populated by a family of skunks. “Broken glass lurks,” said a handmade sign […]
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The Republican National Convention, Day Three: “Close Your Eyes and Take Some Soothing Breaths”
If there’s a carnivalesque center to downtown Cleveland this week, it’s the five hundred feet of East Fourth Street leading to the Republican National Convention’s perimeter fence. The narrow brick street is thick with delegates, journalists, musicians, souvenir vendors, obscure-issue protesters, and police officers imported from around the country. MSNBC has set up two makeshift […]