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It's 505 and welcome in to a Thursday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour News Talk 1110-993 WBT. I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you.
Well, Governor Josh Stein, as we have been talking about all week, did make his way to Washington, D.C. yesterday to advocate for somewhere in the ballpark of $13.5 billion in additional relief for Western North Carolina. This, of course, all ahead of the one counter-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene and its impacts across the entire state of North Carolina, but more predominantly, the destruction in the western half, posting a variety of pictures to social media around 6 p.m. last night. The governor can be seen in pictures with both of our U.S.
Senators, Tom Tillis and Ted Budd, alongside delegates from North Carolina, which did include the mayor of Asheville. Other photos show some sort of working session ongoing between a couple of people in the room there, including Tim Moore, Virginia Fox, Greg Murphy, just a couple of the congressmen seen in this picture shuffling through papers as a debate is ongoing between the state and federal government. Josh Stein advocates for more. He did post in that social media post on his official at nc underscore governor x account: quote: I am ready to work with anyone and everyone to rebuild Western North Carolina. I am in Washington, D.C.
today to continue to advocate for the federal funding for Hurricane Helene recovery. I applaud the efforts of our congressional delegation to date, and I look forward to working with them to secure the resources the people of Western North Carolina deserve. With that, we are getting some announcements and have over the last couple of days of additional monies from the federal government to Western North Carolina. Earlier this week, Tim Moore, who represents, of course, the 14th Congressional District, announced that more than $2.5 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that's FEMA, will be used to rebuild the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge, which as many pieces of infrastructure was almost completely destroyed by Helene almost one year ago. The congressman put in a press release, quote, the bridge is a historic and beautiful piece of Lake Lure that's become part of the area's identity.
I am grateful for the Trump administration and FEMA for stepping up with the funding needed to rebuild it. This project will support local tourism and marks another step in rebuilding western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. Funding for this project is authorized under Section 406 of the Robert T. Stafford Act and will provide for a complete replacement of the historic three-span arch pedestrian bridge, which connects the small towns of Lake Lur and Chimney Rock. Both of those towns maybe you hadn't heard of or weren't familiar with up until about a year ago.
Those two towns getting an incredible amount of national and statewide media attention due to the vast amount of destruction left in the wake of Helene. The scope of the work includes demolition, excavation, and construction of a new structure to meet current codes and standards, with the total project costing somewhere in the ballpark of $2.8 million. And great news for those two local towns and for local governments in western North Carolina, as 90% of that $2.8 million will be financed through the federal government. government. According to the website built in 1925, that bridge carried traffic between Lake Lure and Chimney Rock for some 85 years.
The flowering bridge, completed in 2010, connects Lake Luhr and Chimney Rock, and beginning in 2011, it became home to a garden of more than 2,000 species of plants, both planted and cultivated by community members and volunteers. According to a the uh a website statement before the demolition of the bridge and before all of of course uh Helene rolled through that area, it reads, Our beloved old bridge, as you know it, will be coming down. But the Lake Lur Flowering Bridge volunteers are dedicated and resilient. We still plan to create special places on what will remain that will make you proud and excited to visit. Demolition of what was left of the bridge after Haleem did begin in the month of August.
Before Haleen, that area, the bridge itself, and some of the gardens around it had become a huge hotspot for local tourism. Brian Balfour, the VP of research of the John Locke Foundation, told the Carolina Journal, quote, as Helene recovery efforts continue, legislators should take care to focus funding on the most urgent priorities. Based on the August monthly report from Homeland Security, the Federal Disaster Relief Fund is scheduled to be drained and have $1.6 billion in unfunded obligations for various relief efforts across the country in September. Such a situation will require an additional infusion of tax or borrowed funds to see that those relief obligations are met. David DiOreo, mayor pro tem for Lake Lure, did not respond to Carolina Journal's request for a comment at the time of publication.
As we continue to follow this, as next week is the one-year anniversary of Helene and all of the impacts and devastation, we will continue to follow these projects, some of these one-off projects that do get announced, like this bridge between Lake Lure and Chimney Rock. Governor Josh Stein, again, visiting Washington, D.C. yesterday, posting some photos on social media, indicating he's meeting with lawmakers, trying to advocate for more than $13.5 billion. As you heard in the immediate aftermath of the storm, and we even mentioned and talked about right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour, this has always and was always going to be an incredibly slow recovery process.
Now, a lot has been done in the last 12 months, but a lot more work does need to be completed. To get the state back to the western half of the state back to some semblance of normalcy. That includes funding for the Department of Transportation, as major roadways, including Interstate 40 in the western half of the state. While they are reopened in some temporary manner, they are not at full speed. They do not support the normal throughput of traffic that you would expect a major U.S.
artery like Interstate 40 to house.
So, between that, some of the small towns that have completely blown through their budgets trying to get their community back to normal, all of that continues to be a major topic of discussion. And those were some of the points that were made earlier this week by Governor Josh Stein as he held that Monday press conference at Blue Ridge Community College, where he did, in fact, request and put it out publicly that he was looking for an additional $13.5 billion from the federal government. A lot of that coming from HUD Housing and Urban Development to continue to fund housing, either complete rebuild or reconstruction or repair and maintenance grants across the western half of North Carolina. As the governor noted, more than 74,000 homes. were damaged by the storm and very few of them not only didn't have but many were not eligible for flood insurance based on the area in which they lived there was no insurance carrier that would provide flood insurance as the many of those folks did not live in an area that was prone or there was even a thought would be prone to flooding as Helene absolutely a 1,000 year storm dumping so much rain across western North Carolina We'll continue to track all of that coverage.
We've got a lot of great articles and have had many over the last year over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. More particularly, you can read about that bridge, the headline story. Moore announces $2.5 million in FEMA funding for Lake Lore Bridge. Get those details at CarolinaJournal.com. Tropic Fan Fest is on at Tropical Smoothie Cafe now until Sunday, September 21st.
And you know what that means? A free smoothie with bowler food purchase for Tropic Awards members every day, all week. Download. our app and join to get it on the fun. Terms and conditions apply.
It's 5:20. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Stock 11:10-993 WBT. One of the legal stories that we've been keeping tabs on over the last couple of months surrounds legal action taken from the United States Department of Justice against the North Carolina State Board of Elections. This has to deal with voter rolls and voter registration forms, HAVA IDs, which deal with things like the last four of your social security number or a full driver's license number. And over the last couple of weeks, it looked like that lawsuit would be in its process of winding down.
However, not everybody is necessarily in favor of that. To walk us through some of those details this morning, Mitch Kokai, the John Locke Foundation, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, the state board, the DOJ said, all right, looks like things are headed in the right direction. We can probably wind this thing up. It looks like some Democrat groups are now trying to insert themselves into the process.
That's exactly right. And in fact, these groups have been trying for a while to insert themselves into the process. Remember that back in May, The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections over alleged non-compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, saying that North Carolina's voter rolls were not in compliance because too many people did not have either a driver's license number or the last four digits of the Social Security number. As soon as the suit was filed, the State Board of Elections, which was Under new leadership at that point, responded saying, Look, we know this is an issue.
We're going to address it. They came up with the plan to address it. And after several months of back and forth, the U.S. Justice Department and State Board of Elections basically came to a deal saying that the state board will move forward with this process to get this information. In the meantime, anyone who doesn't have this information on their voter rolls will have to cast a provisional ballot.
No voter will be dropped from the voter rolls. It would just be that they would have to take this additional step to vote the provisional ballot. U.S. Chief District Judge Richard Myers saw the deal, signed off on it, said, This is fine. You're going to have to report back to me, Board of Elections, basically every couple of months for the rest of the year, and then on an annual basis after that, until this deal is finalized.
Midway through 2027, so basically after the 2026 election cycle. But then, about a week after that decision from the judge, Myers, in this case, we saw that the Democratic National Committee and a group called the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, which is basically a client for Mark Elias, the Democratic operative who's been involved in election lawsuits on the national level and state level for a number of years. They filed paperwork this week saying that, look, Judge, you should go back and revisit this and allow us to intervene in this case as defendants. They had asked this before, and the judge did not allow them to intervene. He basically did not rule, kind of just set their motions aside and didn't do anything about them.
Now they're saying, look, we should be involved in this process, and there should be an adversarial case here because the state board and the U.S. Justice Department are on the same side, and they're not on the side of the voters that we represent, and we would like. to raise some complaints about this process the State Board of Elections is using.
So we have yet to see whether Chief Judge Myers is going to respond. He has already basically said the deal is fine, the deal is finalized, and I'm going to keep jurisdiction of this case, but the deal is fine with me, and we'll see how it plays out. The court filings from the Elias clients and the DNC are asking him to revisit that decision, but there's no word yet that he will. What will be interesting to see is if he makes no decision about the intervention by these Democratic and left-leaning groups, will they try to appeal to the Fourth Circuit and say the fact that he didn't say anything means that he's denying us? And Fourth Circuit, you should step in and make him insert us into this case so we could try to fight what the State Board of Elections is doing.
It might make sense, Mitch, to kind of go through some more of this process. It's unfortunate that everything now, pretty much in our society, turns into a political battle. That's unfortunately what the discussion over these have ID numbers and some of the voter registration forms and old data that the State Board of Elections has had now for going on the better part of 10 or 15 years. No voters are getting kicked off the rolls as this ongoing lawsuit has taken place. The state board has been sending out letters to individuals, giving them multiple free, I'll note, options to make sure that their information is all squared away.
And once again, in compliance with that federal Help America Vote Act, which I'll also note goes back to the early 2000s. That's been enshrined in federal law for the better part of two decades now. Nobody's getting kicked off. The state board is doing, I think, probably going above and beyond what you would expect to make sure all of these voters have the required information so their votes do count and make sure that there is no ability for voters. fraud Mitz, what's the issue here?
Why is this turning into a knockout, drag-out political fight? Just trying to follow the federal law here. Why is that so controversial?
Well, part of the concern from the groups on the left is that this is going to be used in some way to eventually drop voters from the rolls. That's something that they've been raising ever since the Republican Party first filed a lawsuit on this issue in the summer of 2024. Remember, that was a case that we talked about because it had a lot of interest. And then this was a major issue once again in the Jefferson Griffin versus Allison Riggs State Supreme Court, a never-ending case that went on for months and months before Jefferson Griffin finally conceded and allowed Allison Riggs to take her eight-year term on the state Supreme Court.
So throughout this process, as first the Republican Party, then Jefferson Griffin, then the U.S. Justice Department raised concerns about this incomplete information, Democrats and their allies have said that this is a way for Republicans to strike people from the roles. And they say that even if they aren't being removed from the roles, having to cast a Provisional ballot is a step that makes them sort of a second-class citizen because they aren't being able to vote the same way everyone else is.
Now, it remains to be seen whether that legal argument is going to hold any water with anyone. It doesn't seem likely that it would with Chief Judge Myers. But if this case ends up getting back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, depending on the panel that hears the case, there might be some interest in saying that having to cast a provisional ballot somehow makes a voter a second-class voter or a second-class citizen, and so they can't be required to have to do this. But basically, the argument from the Democrats and their allies is that this is a way to try to disenfranchise voters that Republicans would like to get off the voting rolls. They've also raised in some recent court filings concerns that this settlement would somehow give the federal government access to all of this information about.
About driver's license numbers and social security numbers that the federal Justice Department shouldn't have. I'm not sure whether that argument's going to hold much water either, but that's one of the latest things that's being claimed by the Democrats and their allies.
Now, of course, this is only because it's the Trump administration running the Justice Department. If it were still the Biden administration running the Justice Department, the Democrats and their allies would almost certainly be on the same side as what the Justice Department wanted to do in that instance. Yeah, definitely seem to be grasping at straws, at least with some of those arguments made in those court filings. A story that we thought was going to probably be in the rearview mirror does continue to be relevant here across the state. We'll keep an eye on the details over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Tropic Fan Fest is on at Tropical Smoothie Cafe now until Sunday, September 21st. And you know what that means? A free smoothie with bowler food purchase for Tropic Awards members every day all week. Download our app and join to get it on the font.
Terms and conditions apply. It's 5:36. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993WBT. An interesting story that we're tracking over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. The United States House Judiciary Committee is set to hold a field hearing in Charlotte coming up in just a couple of weeks on September the 29th.
This is in relation to the August the 22nd murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Irina Zaruska, who was fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light rail. Authorities have charged 34-year-old DeCarlos Brown Jr. with that crime. He is a repeat offender. He has been arrested and charged somewhere in the ballpark of 14 times with prior convictions, including armed robbery, larceny, breaking, and entering.
He allegedly stabbed the 23-year-old three times in the neck back on August the 22nd on the Charlotte light rail. Representative Jeff Van Drew, the Republican out of New Jersey, who is the chair of the Oversight Subcommittee, confirmed the hearing while Representative Mark Harris, who represents North Carolina's 8th congressional district, called it a step towards justice. North Carolina legislative leader, Speaker Destin, or House Speaker Destin Hall and Senate leader Phil Berger have announced a new anti-crime measures or a set of those, including efforts to end cash bail and reinstate the death penalty, arguing that the soft on crime policies by many Democrat-run cities across North Carolina have allowed individuals like DeCarlos Brown Jr. to continue to commit offenses and continually be released from jail.
So it is going to be interesting to see as essentially a field trip is going to be happening for the United States House Judiciary Committee. That field hearing will happen in the Queen City on September 3rd. The 29th, as we get closer to that, I'm sure we will get some additional details about where that meeting is going to take place and who will all be involved. And as I noted, the North Carolina General Assembly is set to be back in Raleigh next week, starting on Tuesday, where they are likely and could potentially pass some additional legislation in Raleigh to put some more penalties in place for places across the state that do have issues with repeat offenders and have issues. With some of these soft on crime policies that are being described by lawmakers, we'll continue to follow the details on both of those stories and the broader story as a whole as justice for Irina Zaruska does continue to be demanded by not only folks in North Carolina but across the country.
That continued coverage over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. It's now 5.38. You're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour. We've got some new details this morning in a legal case surrounding the North Carolina State Health Plan. That is the health service that teachers, firefighters, police officers, and many other public employees across the state of North Carolina utilize for their health insurance.
All of this deals with transgender payments and dealing with some of these transgender surgeries here in the state of North Carolina. To get us up to speed this morning, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, we chatted about this a month or so ago. It was a big case from the United States Supreme Court last year dealing with some similar things in a different state, Tennessee. It's now having some ramifications here in North Carolina.
Things have been moving over the last couple of weeks. Get us up to speed there if you would. Yes, first, a little bit of background. North Carolina's state health plan has an exclusion that blocks coverage of treatments that are suggested and requested mostly by transgender patients. And so that exclusion has existed for most of the health plan's existence in recent years.
And a lawsuit challenged the exclusion, saying that this was a violation of constitutional rights. In a very close ruling, the full Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted eight to six to force the state health plan to provide this coverage. And so the state health plan has been providing this coverage, these disputed treatments that are generally requested only by transgender patients. And the case went up on appeal to the U.S.
Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court hasn't tackled the merits of this case. But what it did do was after it ruled in that Tennessee case, We're talking about called Skirmetti, which upheld a Tennessee law that banned hormone therapy and other treatments for transgender teens. After that ruling came out, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order in the North Carolina case and it vacated or threw out. That fourth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and said, okay, now it's time for you to revisit this case in light of what we just said in this Tennessee case, Skirmetti case.
So the most recent development is. That decision came down in late June. Nothing had happened really at the Fourth Circuit since then. And so, fairly recently, the lawyer for the state health plan sent a letter to the clerk of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and said: Look, based on what the U.S.
Supreme Court said, you should vacate this injunction. That has forced The North Carolina State Health Plan to provide this coverage, vacate that injunction and send the case back to the federal trial judge and force the trial judge to rule in our favor, in the state health plan's favor. basically arguing that what the Supreme Court said in the Skirmetti case is going to be just on point with what the North Carolina dispute is all about. And the Supreme Court would rule in exactly the same way. such that the state health plan would win.
So about a week after that letter, The plaintiffs in this case, who are represented by the group Lambda Legal, sent their own letter to the Fourth Circuit saying, Not so fast, you shouldn't drop this injunction. What the Supreme Court said does not mean that you should get rid of this injunction at the trial court level and rule in favor of the defendants. There are a number of differences between this Skirmetti case and our case, and in fact, the ruling in Skirmetti actually upholds what we're trying to do to force the state health plan to provide this coverage. Basically, the case sits in the hands of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
It has these competing letters now from. The defendant, which is the state health plan, and the plaintiffs, who are the ones challenging the exclusion of the state health plan. It's not clear at this point what, if anything, the Fourth Circuit is going to do. The only thing that was clear is that the Supreme Court vacated what the Fourth Circuit did the first time around.
So the Fourth Circuit could send the case back to the trial court. The Fourth Circuit could order new briefings, another oral argument, and say, Well, you know, now we're going to reapply the Schermetti case to this case and see whether that leads to any kind of different result or not. But certainly, this case is going to be brewing for a while, and the two sides in this case take a very different Attitude about what the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Tennessee case means for us here in North Carolina.
So you mentioned, again, that close Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, that the 8-6 vote there, then the decision from the United States Supreme Court to vacate. That appeals court ruling, at least as it stands right now. But then there's also this injunction involved.
So, does the state, where we sit here this morning, is the state required to cover those kinds of medical expenditures, medical coverage that would traditionally fall under what would be described as gender reaffirming care or things of that nature? Are they legally required the state health plan to do that right now? It is. It is. And that has been true ever since the initial trial court ruling in this case.
Once that came down, the treasurer's office, which runs the state health plan, issued a news release at the time saying we will comply with the court order. We're going to appeal, but we will comply with the court order as long as it stands. And so the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in that very close split vote, with the full court hearing the case, Basically, affirmed what the trial judge said.
So, throughout that time, ever since the initial trial court ruling, the state health plan has been offering coverage for these treatments and will continue to do so unless the injunction is gone and the U.S. trial court judge in this case is required to rule in favor of the health plan. Until then, all of these treatments are covered as was dictated by the initial trial court ruling and upheld by the Fourth Circuit. And the debate right now is whether what the U.S. Supreme Court did in the Tennessee case, the Skirmetti case, means that the state health plan should win in North Carolina.
The U.S. Supreme Court didn't say so. All it said was the Fourth Circuit needed to revisit this case based on what the Supreme Court said in Skirmetti. That doesn't say one way or the other whether the state health plan or the plaintiffs win. Both sides.
think that what was said in Skermeti Supports what they want to see as the ruling in North Carolina, but now it really sits in the hands of the Fourth Circuit to decide what to do next. Obviously, this continues to be a relatively controversial and pretty hot political topic with some of these treatments and surgeries. We'll continue to track the legal progress. You can get some additional details over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Tropic Fan Fest is on at Tropical Smoothie Cafe now until Sunday, September 21st. And you know what that means? A free smoothie with bowler food purchase for Tropic Awards members every day all week. Download our app and join to get it on the font. Terms and conditions apply.
Good morning again. It's 5:53. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT. If you've been with us all week, we covered details earlier about how Governor Josh Stein. On Monday, he was out in western North Carolina, specifically at Blue Ridge Community College, where he was advocating for more money for Western North Carolina, announcing that he would be requesting an additional $13.5 billion from the federal government as the state next week hits the one-year mark of Hurricane Helene's devastation and destruction across western North Carolina.
The storm was estimated to have caused somewhere in the ballpark of $60. billion dollars worth of damage. The governor also announced earlier in the week that he would, in fact, make his way up to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to continue that advocacy work and continue to put the pressure on the federal government to release additional funds. And it would appear that's exactly what happened yesterday as opposed on the governor's official X account last night.
Shows him in a couple of different pictures alongside our two United States senators, Tom Tillis and Ted Budd. In another picture, The groups can be seen around a table having a conversation. I see Addison McDowell. Former House Speaker, now Congressman Tim Moore, Greg Murphy, Virginia Fox, some other lawmakers, Chuck Edwards, also in the room as well. As they're around some sort of a square table, all of them have got papers and charts in front of them as they appear to be discussing some of the ongoing needs and some of the money that is needed for Western North Carolina.
It is a very large ask from the North Carolina governor. Again, $13.5 billion from the federal government. A vast majority of that would come from HUD Housing and Urban Development, as he is requesting an additional $8 billion to fund the Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery, also known as a CDBGDR grant. Currently, HUD has awarded $1.4 billion to the state of North Carolina through that grant program with the goal, with the objective of rebuilding homes, helping small businesses. And repairing some level of infrastructure without having to deal with the hassle of cash flow problems with a general reimbursement program where a local government has to expend all of the money and wait for checks to come rolling in from the federal government.
Governor Stein noted earlier in the week that roughly 74,000 homes in the western half of North Carolina were damaged by the storm and pointed to the fact that very few of them were eligible or even had flood insurance due to the mountainous terrain and really the general thought by insurance carriers and coverages that you would not need and would not be eligible for flood insurance up in the mountains of western North Carolina. With that, many of those folks are not receiving coverage from their insurance carriers due to the massive amount of flooding and water impacts from that storm. We wait to see exactly what the federal government will do in terms of this 13 and A half billion dollar request. We've seen some commentary over the last couple of days from President or last couple of weeks, I should say, from President Donald Trump sending more money to the state for not only Helene, but Tropical Storm Chantal, which affected the central portion of the state. The General Assembly has appropriated more than a billion dollars at this point.
And while a lot of work has been done over the last 12 months, a lot of work remains and continues to need to get finished to get Western North Carolina back to some semblance of normalcy. We'll continue tracking all of that over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
Well, that's going to do it for a Thursday edition. WBT News is next. Followed by Good Morning BT. We're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on News Talk 1110 and 99.3 WBT. Tropic Fan Fest is on at Tropical Smoothie Cafe now until Sunday, September 21st.
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