Last week, The News & Observer published a story with an alarming headline: “Lyme disease is spreading in NC,” it read, “but whereand how fastdepends on who you ask.” The tick-borne illness, the article went on to explain, is on the rise in North Carolina, but its scale is up for debate. This is not […]
Erica Hellerstein
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An N.C. Congressman Tries to Defund the Congressional Budget Office
On Mondaythe same day the president attacked political rivals in a speech to Boy Scouts and the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on a health care bill that no one had actually seenMark Meadows, chairman of the Freedom Caucus and representative of North Carolina’s Eleventh Congressional District, proposed his own means of undermining democratic norms. […]
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Triangle Refugee Resettlement Agencies Try to Figure Out How a Recent Supreme Court Ruling Will Affect Their Clients
Last Wednesday, the Supreme Court again weighed in on on President Trump’s refugee and immigrant travel ban. While the high court had previously ruled that the administration could temporarily block anyone without a “bona fide” relationship to an American person or entity, this time it ordered the administration to expand its definition of bona fide […]
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Tillis, Burr Vote Yes on Motion To Debate Health Care Bill Despite Having Absolutely No Idea What It Contains
It’s the bill that just won’t die. After the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare seemed doomed to failure just last week, Senate Republicans narrowly voted this afternoon to begin debating a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite having no replacement in sight. Vice President Pence broke a 50–50 tie, after […]
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N.C. Congressman Mark Meadows Wants to Gut the Congressional Budget Office
U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, chair of the Freedom Caucus and representative of North Carolina’s Eleventh Congressional District, wants to make big changes to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office—the federal agency that has consistently projected that Republican efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare would leave more than twenty million Americans in the cold. In an amendment […]
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Triangle Refugee Resettlement Agencies Prepare for a Tough Road Ahead After Yesterday’s Supreme Court Decision
Yesterday, the Supreme Court made yet another consequential decision on President Trump’s refugee and immigrant travel ban. The ruling consisted of two parts. It said that travelers from six Muslim-majority countries who have family members here must be allowed to enter the country, but it also allowed the Trump administration to enforce tighter restrictions on […]
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With Medicaid Under Threat, an N.C. Pastor Laced Up His Shoes and Began Walking to Washington
On an otherwise uneventful Sunday in early July, fifty-one-year-old pastor James Brigman was preaching about Abraham and Isaac when he says God delivered to him a simple message: practice what you preach. Brigman has a daughter with special medical needs, and he’d been thinking about the Senate’s health care proposal, which could make drastic cuts […]
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Trump More Corrupt Than Nixon, and Health Care Is a Disaster for the GOP, PPP Survey Finds
It’s been another blockbuster week for the GOP. After spending seven years slandering Barack Obama’s signature health care law and pledging to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, Republicans woke up this morning to a harsh reality. Their signature promise to replace Obamacare failed abysmally, after four Senate Republicans defected—some because it was […]
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Meet the Small-Town Pastor Walking to DC from North Carolina to Protest Medicaid Cuts
On an otherwise uneventful Sunday, fifty-one-year-old pastor James Brigman was preaching a sermon about Abraham and Isaac at his church in Rockingham when he heard a voice. Not just any voice, mind you, but God’s, with a simple message: practice what you preach. Brigman has a daughter with special medical needs, and he’d been thinking […]
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Hogwashed: A Powerful Special Interest. Shameless Politicians. Failed Regulations. An In-Depth Look at Big Pork in North Carolina.
On Wednesday, the INDY published the third and final installment of our investigative series into North Carolina’s hog-farming industry. The first story examined claims by lower-income African-American residents of eastern North Carolina that neighboring hog farms have polluted their properties and efforts by lawmakers to shield pork producers from litigation. The second looked at the […]