In 2016, Sam, a transgender teen from Apex, decided to come out to her peers. Although she’d already started transitioning at home, she hadn’t told people in her social circleand she was worried. “There was some fear there,” her mom says. Soon after, the legislature passed HB 2, the so-called bathroom bill. That made things […]
Erica Hellerstein
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North Carolina Filmmaker Debuts a Harrowing Film of the Real-Life Handmaid’s Tale in Chapel Hill
The documentary, Birthright: A War Story, begins with a single, powerful quote: “All wars have collateral damage. This one is no different.” If you could boil down the premise of the searing and thoroughly researched film by Civia Tamarkin and Luchina Fisher, this is it. In the battle for women’s reproductive health access and bodily […]
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Civitas President Francis De Luca’s Lawsuit Challenging the Smithfield Agreement Is Thrown Out
On October 12, a Wake County judge ruled against a lawsuit filed last year by Francis De Luca, the president of the conservative Civitas Institute, over a 2000 settlement between Smithfield Foods and the state to fund a multimillion-dollar experiment to find more sustainable methods of disposing of hog waste. Filed last October, the lawsuit […]
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Brace Yourself: Thom Tillis Wants DC Politics to Look More Like North Carolina
Thom Tillis is all about the comparisons these days. Last week, it was reminding people watching the imbroglio between Trump and Gold Star families that Obama was way more disrespectful toward the troops than the current leader of the free world, who is presently picking fights with a grieving widow. But that’s old news. This […]
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Civitas Institute’s Francis De Luca Loses Lawsuit Over Smithfield Foods Agreement
A Wake County judge ruled earlier this month against a lawsuit filed last year by Francis De Luca, the president of the conservative Civitas Institute, over a 2000 settlement between Smithfield Foods and the state attorney general to fund a multimillion-dollar experiment to find more sustainable methods of disposing of hog waste. The news was […]
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Thom Tillis: Trump Has Shown “More Respect for Our Troops in Nine Months” Than Obama Ever Did.
President Trump set off a firestorm earlier this week when he falsely claimed that Barack Obama never contacted the relatives of fallen soldiers. Since then, he has been dogged by revelations calling into question the sincerity of his relationship with Gold Star families. The mother of a soldier slain in June claimed the president disrespected […]
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WaPo: Trump Stiffed a Local Gold Star Family Out of $25,000
In early June, Dillon Baldridge, a twenty-two-year-old soldier from Zebulon, was fatally gunned down by an Afghan police in a suspected insider attack. A few weeks later, President Trump called Baldridge’s grieving father to express his condolences and offer him $25,000. He also vowed to create an online fundraising campaign for the family. Neither of […]
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FERC Approves Atlantic Coast Pipeline, But N.C. DEQ Can Stop it in its Tracks
Last week, the INDY published an in-depth look at the controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a $5 billion infrastructure project by Duke Energy and Dominion Energy that would carry fracked gas through West Virginia, Virginia, and eight counties in eastern North Carolina. If approved and constructed, the pipeline would cross six hundred miles of the Southeast […]
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Duke Energy Wants to Build a $5 Billion Pipeline Through Eastern North Carolina. They’ll Have to Go Through Marvin Winstead First.
If you look closely, you can see the signs scattered throughout Nash County, poking out from sprawling fields and sun-scorched patches of grass. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are bright yellow with just one word: DANGER. Others are square and white with a circle and a slash. All of them have the […]
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Congress Allowed a Health Insurance Program That Helps 256,000 N.C. Kids Expire
As this weekend’s headlines came barreling indevastation in Puerto Rico, Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with the mayor of San Juan, Sunday night’s deadly mass shooting in Las Vegasyou might have missed another important, albeit less buzzworthy, story. Over the weekend, Congress allowed the popular program that provides health insurance to nine million children, CHIP, to […]