It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT. I'm Nick Craig.
Well, two major media outlets this morning, both CBS News and CNN, are reporting the possibility of conducted operations from U.S. border patrol teams in Charlotte over the next month or so. This is as crews are set for crews from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol are set to leave and end some of their operations that have been taking place in Chicago over the last couple of months. President Donald Trump posting on X last night, quote, I am proud to announce that Chicago, Illinois, despite all of the radical opposition and obstruction.
We have seen from the mayor and the governor has seen car thefts, shootings, robberies, violent crime, and everything else drop dramatically. Since the launch of the DHS Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago only weeks ago, shootings are down 35%, robberies are down 41%, and carjackings are down almost 50%. And this is just a small initial federal force, not a full surge. We have done in Chicago and in Memphis.
Now, it is not immediately the same. Obviously, the DHS operations and some of these customs and border protection operations are not inherently the same thing, but this is lending some evidence to the fact that federal forces are beginning their process of moving out of Chicago, which is what both CBS News and CNN are reporting and could put Charlotte on the list throughout the rest of this month to conduct some of these major operations in the Queen City. We did see over the last couple of weeks as well lawmakers urging the National Guard to be deployed to Charlotte to deal with rising costs. Crime. This is as pressure continued to grow and does continue to grow for local and state officials over some of those public safety concerns.
We saw just last week Congressman Mark Harris, Congressman Pat Harrigan, and Congressman Chuck Edwards all authoring a letter to Democrat Governor Josh Stein calling on him to deploy North Carolina's National Guard to Charlotte. The letter cites an alarming growth in violence across the city, which of course gained national attention earlier this year after 23-year-old Irina Zaruska was brutally murdered on the Charlotte light rail. We have seen that letter, Governor Stein responding to that, saying, Local, well-trained law enforcement officers who live in and know their communities are best equipped to keep North Carolina neighborhoods safe, not military service members. The letter from the three members of North Carolina's Republican Congressional Doc. Delegation came less than a month after the Charlotte Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police sent a similar request to Mayor Vilis of Charlotte, Governor Josh Stein, and President Donald Trump, and they requested the exact same thing: National Guard assistance over staffing shortages within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
So, crime and immigration do continue to be major issues across the Queen City. With yesterday being the Veterans Day holidays, a lot of government offices across the state and the nation were closed, so not many folks were immediately available for comment on, again, these two reports, one from CBS News, the other from CNN, on the fact that over the next couple of weeks, we could see Border Patrol agents being diverted from Chicago to Charlotte for operations targeting violent criminals. Those would be individuals that are in the country illegally. We will keep our eyes and ears out on that over the next couple of days. And we'll continue to bring you the latest right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
And when we get anything official, if we do get anything official, we'll have that coverage over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. In some other statewide news this morning, President Donald Trump has granted pardons to 77 people who have been accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election. This includes two major North Carolinians, including former Congressman and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorney Sidney Powell. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin made the announcement on X earlier this week with a list of those 77 people.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman. And many others were on the list of 77. Those are given a full, quote, full, complete, and unconditional pardon were allegedly involved in a scheme to organize alternative fake electors from battleground states that former President Joe Biden won, including states like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. We turn our attention to Mark Meadows, who served as Trump's chief of staff during his first term from March of 2020 to January of 2021 and is a former United States member of Congress from North Carolina. He served the 11th congressional district at the time he lived in western North Carolina.
We turn our attention to Sidney Powell. She is a Durham native, a graduate of UNC's School of Law, and served as an attorney for Trump during his first term in office. They were among some of the 18 people who were in. Indicted by the state of Georgia in August of 2023, along with the president himself. He was the former president at the time for alleged crimes committed during the state's 2020 election.
Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis claimed that the former president led a, quote, criminal enterprise to alter the results of the 2020 election. The pardon proclamation, which the president officially signed on Friday, begins by stating this: quote, This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation. He said that the pardons are granted to, quote, all U.S. citizens for conducting relative to the advice creation, organization, execution, submission, voting activities, participation in, or advocacy for any other slate of proposed presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any state or state-level official. The proclamation also makes it very clear that the president did not pardon himself.
It says directly in it, quote, this pardon does not apply to the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and none of the 77 people who are listed in these pardons coming out of the administration were charged at the federal level.
So the pardons are considered largely largely. Just kind of symbiote, just kind of symbols at this point, but they could prevent future administrations from prosecuting the alleged co-conspirator.
Some of those, if not almost all of those, legal challenges are continuing to go on in state courts across the U.S., most prominently in the state of Georgia. The alleged fake electors plot led to the events of January 6th, 2021 by Trump supporters, with Trump pardoning over a thousand of those individuals earlier this year as well. You can head on over to our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. We've got the story there. Trump pardons Meadows Powell in 2020 election interference case.
And we've got the list of all of the 77 individuals who were pardoned. Obviously, our attention and our focus on the two North Carolina natives, former Congressman Mark Meadows and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and U.S. and current attorney format. Former attorney for Trump Sidney Powell. Again, those details are available this morning over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
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Democrat Governor Josh Stein is again calling on the North Carolina General Assembly to fund the Medicaid rebase by convening a special session coming up on November the 17th. The governor said at a press conference late last week: Our state's Medicare program is in crisis, manufactured by our General Assembly, and people are suffering. Fortunately, because the General Assembly created this crisis, it can solve it as well. That is why I'm calling on the General Assembly to come back to Raleigh and do their jobs to fully fund North Carolina's Medicaid program.
Now, it is important to note that lawmakers were already scheduled to come back on November the 17th to vote on other bills, but Stein said it was under his right in the state constitution to call them back for an extra legislative session. The governor originally made the same plea back on September the 26th, asking both the House and the Senate to put aside their differences and come back for an agreement before the October the 1st deadline, in which Medicaid reimbursement rates would be cut to providers.
Now, obviously, October the 1st has come and gone at this point, but the arguments on both the governor's side and the legislature do essentially remain the same. Stein said that the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, that's NCDHHS, warned the General Assembly for months about the impending Medicaid shortfalls. He said that he'd urged the General Assembly to fill the breach, delaying the proposed cuts for the first three months of this fiscal year. While each chamber came to its own agreement that Medicaid needed more money, they have yet to this point agreed on a bill to send to the governor before that October the 1st deadline. Stein faced sharp criticism for refusing to move his October the 1st deadline to fully fund North Carolina's Medicaid rebase, even though House Speaker Destin Hall, who is the Republican from Caldwell County, has said that the program has more than enough money to last into early next year and that Stein and the Department of Health and Human Services have administrative tools to address any current gaps.
Hall and the chamber. Health appropriation chairs issued a press release on October the 1st, calling the governor's actions, quote, a political stunt that jeopardizes North Carolinians' access to health care. Hutt with Hall saying in the press release, Governor Stein's arbitrary Medicaid cuts are unjustified, clearly intended to manufacture a crisis. The legislature has given funds to sustain Medicaid well into 2026. This breathtakingly cynical move ignores years of precedent where the rebase has been supplemented even later in the fiscal year.
On September the 23rd, the House voted 111 to 0. It's not often that we cover legislation that's got true bipartisan unanimous support, 111 to 0 in favor of passing a House committee substitute of Senate Bill 403, which is aptly named Additional Medicaid Funds and Requirements that Fully Funds the Medicaid Rebase. The Senate passed its version of the bill on September the 22nd after it was discussed in the Senate's Appropriations Committee as well. About $319 million is needed to fully fund the Medicaid rebase, even though both the House and Senate have only agreed on $190 million that would be needed, and that was the amount that they reached in their two separate bills. They claim that that dollar amount $190, $190 million, I should say, is based on analysis by the bipartisan and nonpartisan General Assembly fiscal research.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hall's office issued a new press release this week in response to Stein's call for an emergency session stating that, quote, the North Carolina House of Representatives reaffirms its strong commitment to protect patients from the governor's politically motivated and unnecessary provider cuts. The release states that NCDHHS confirmed that although Medicaid was funded through April of 2026, rates were cut on October the 1st after the General Assembly appropriated $600 million for the rebase. Hall said that House lawmakers have already taken decisive bipartisan action to provide additional funds to the state's Medicaid rebase, passing three clean standalone bills in recent months to ensure that the state meets its obligations to patients and providers. Those include Senate Bill 403, House Bill 491, and the Healthcare Investment Act, which he said that the Stein administration has indicated any of them would lead to them, would lead rather to a drop in cuts.
Looking ahead, Stein said that the House remains willing to work collaboratively with the administration to monitor Medicaid spending through the fiscal year and, if necessary, appropriate additional funds to close any verified shortfalls. And then they made a clear verified shortfalls. Hall said, quote, the House has done its job to fund Medicaid with clean bills and is prepared to do more if needed. We need to resolve this matter quickly to prevent, to protect patients, support providers, and ensure the long-term stability of North Carolina's Medicaid program. Until recently, the General Assembly has worked with the executive branch to provide funding to Medicaid while also monitoring the program's integrity.
The administration should continue that practice. A spokesperson for Senate Leader Phil Berger also put out a statement in response to Governor Stein's late last week, a press conference saying, quote, Governor Stein's self-inflicted crisis is not an extraordinary occasion by any measure.
Now that the courts have stepped in to block some of his politically motivated cuts, he's attempting a new stunt to pass the buck. The General Assembly has already appropriated $6. Hundred million dollars to the Medicaid rebase. And instead of prioritizing funding for services, Governor Stein decided funding bureaucracy was more important. At Thursday's press conference, the governor said he told the legislature that NCDHHS could reverse the cuts if they sent him a bill funding the rebase.
While the House sent a clean Medicaid bill to the Senate, the Senate in return rejected it because of an unrelated political dispute. The Senate's version instead, the Senate version, included funding for the North Carolina Children's Hospital, which has been a point of contention between Republicans in both North Carolina House and Senate. The governor stated, I agree with the Senate on the substance of that political dispute, but it is absolutely wrong and frankly cruel to use sick and vulnerable people as a bargaining chip on an issue entirely unrelated to Medicaid funding. The members of the North Carolina General Assembly have had six months to take action to solve this problem, but they have failed. They have failed North Carolina, and they have failed the people of North Carolina, and now they have packed up and left town until next year.
It's shameful, end quote there from Governor Stein. The governor stated that it would be reckless to spend money knowing that it would run out of money at some point next year, adding that there are no guarantees that the General Assembly will come to an agreement on the budget. Stein said that there is also an option of using Medicaid contingency funds, but the legislature has stated that in law, the governor cannot access those monies without being given additional appropriations. The governor also noted that the state will keep running into funding gaps because the legislature has doubled down on its tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy residents, Affordable Care Act, health insurance, premiums. Are going up, and the federal government cut Medicaid by a trillion dollars, which he said will lead to a five will lead to $50 billion worth of cuts in North Carolina over the next decade.
So, this is very much a lengthy political dispute. Lawmakers in Raleigh, while yes, they have their issues and their differences, note that the Medicaid program is fully funded at least until April of 2026. Governor Stein and NCDHHS put some of these arbitrary cut deadlines in effect on October the 1st. It's seemingly to try and force the hands of the North Carolina legislature. They have not dealt with this.
They are scheduled to be back anyway on November the 17th. We will see if lawmakers in either chamber give it a crack again to try and get additional Medicaid funding through both chambers of the General Assembly. We'll keep our eyes on that as lawmakers are back in Raleigh next week. We'll keep you up to date right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. and on our website, CarolinaJournal.com.
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Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Stalk 1110-993 WBT. I'm Nick Craig.
Good morning to you. When in session, we spend a lot of time talking about the North Carolina General Assembly right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. We've got a brand new opinion piece over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. The headline, North Carolina Deserves a Functional General Assembly. To walk us through that this morning, the author of that piece, the senior vice president of research at the John Locke Foundation, Brian Balfour, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour.
Brian, quite the headline. Walk us through your piece over at CarolinaJournal.com. Yeah, so I think I'm just kind of expressing some frustration that voters across the state are feeling collectively.
So we're into November, right?
So we're well into the second quarter. Second fiscal quarter of the fiscal year that started July 1st, there's still no comprehensive state budget passed. And so I was just I thought it was beyond time to just finally call it out. And say, you guys need to get together and get this taken care of. Just calling on the elected officials to do what the people elected them to do.
And the baseline of that, the baseline expectation for that is passing a state budget so that state budgets know how to plan, school districts know how to plan for the year. We can certainly be critical about how much the government spends and that sort of thing, and we're certainly not backing down from that. But we also need to have a functional General Assembly that's doing the basic core things that they're elected to do and fund the basic functions of government. And so the state agencies can plan and figure out how they're going to serve the public. And Brian, it's not like you can point to split parties in both the House and the Senate as the reason for there not being a compromise going all the way back to 2010.
Republicans have held supermajorities at some points, simple majorities at others. They are in complete control of the North Carolina General Assembly, and this is, I'm sure, raising a lot of eyebrows for political observers across the state. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why I was labeling it as dysfunctional. It's like, come on, guys, you guys are from the same party.
You have majorities in both chambers. I mean, if it was different parties conflicting from the different chambers, that would be kind of expected if they come to a stalemate. But they're from the same party, as you said. That's been the case for well over a decade now. And still, failure to come to an agreement on a budget bill is very frustrating and very disappointing.
And unfortunately, has become the norm.
Now, we're looking back at the last few years. My colleague, fiscal policy analyst Joe Harris, wrote a piece that This is becoming the norm. We're now, it's a regular thing now that we're getting well into the fall with these biannual budgets, and that's just becoming more and more unacceptable. One of the things that North Carolina did a couple of years ago is unlike what we've seen up in Washington, D.C. over the last 40-some-odd days, is there's no such thing as a government shutdown in North Carolina.
There are pros to that, of course, Brian. The government doesn't shut down. State employees continue to get paid. On the flip side, though, there's really no incentive for the legislature to get together and hammer out a budget because, for all intents and purposes, everything continues to just chug away in the state. Yeah, exactly right.
It's really two sides to the coin there. The PRO, as you said, continues to fund the state government continues to fund the agencies at the level set from the prior year's budget, but it takes away that urgency, that urgency on the part of legislators to get something done in anticipation of the July 1st fiscal year. And again, it creates a lot of uncertainty with state agencies. They don't really know how to plan, how to plan their departments and the functions that they need.
So maybe we need to start considering other options to create some more urgency to get this budget passed. Maybe take a look at legislative pay. Maybe they don't get paid if they go past July 1st, or something along those lines, other ways to incentivize and create that sense of urgency to get that, to just get the basic. core function of what they're supposed to do, which is the state budget and what they were elected to do. Brian, you joined us a couple of months ago and we talked about this as negotiations were still going on and you kind of brought us up to speed to where things were.
And it seemed like at the time the debate was over some of the tax code policies between the House and the Senate. Since we last talked in some of your sources inside the General Assembly, is that still the major sticking point between Republican leaders in the House and in the Senate? Yeah, everything still continues to point to that, that difference between the chambers and how to treat specifically the personal income tax rates. The Senate side wanted to be more aggressive, keep the already scheduled rate reductions in play, even accelerate and add to them. The House wanted to add some kind of some backstops, if you will, increasing the revenue thresholds that needed to be met for those income tax reductions to go into place, which would make it, if you look at those thresholds, it would make it very, very difficult for those.
tax cuts to go into place.
So that's still really the biggest sticking point. And we've pointed out though, I mean, those differences are not so large that it couldn't be overcome by just if they just agreed to increase the rate of spending just by a little bit. Just kind of if you backed off and tried to spend a few hundred fewer dollars with the state budget, then those disagreements would be much more easily reconciled. Yeah, and of course, unfortunately, whether we're talking about the North Carolina General Assembly or Washington, D.C., or Brian, I might argue, many other legislatures across the state or across the country, I should say. The issues over cutting spending almost falls on deaf ears, seemingly a budget cycle after budget cycle.
So here we are in November. The General Assembly is set to return one more time before we flip the calendar over to 2026. From what you're hearing, is there any thought or any plan that this is going to be dealt with before the end of this calendar year? Or is this something that might be dealt with in the short session when they get back in? What is that?
I believe April of 2026? Yeah, I'm hearing no appetite for a comprehensive state budget the rest of this calendar year, which is very, again, very disappointing, very frustrating. When they come back next week, one of the things they may hopefully will address is the Medicaid rebase. Governor Stein has been calling on them to do that. That was something else I pointed out in my article is their failure to come to any sort of agreement to fully fund that rebase.
And that just really just broke down into just this childish finger pointing and blame shifting between the two chambers. That was really quite an embarrassment. And kind of, in my mind, anyways, one of the maybe the last straw that really compelled me to write this article about just how they need to get their act together.
So, Brian, as we look at this going forward, as you already laid out, the state will continue to fund and operations will continue with this, the last year budget that it continues to remain into effect.
However, this has become a big political talking point, specifically for Democrat Governor Josh Stein, who, of course, is always going to be, for the most part, at odds with the Republican-led General Assembly. He's been posting on social media a lot, pointing to just North Carolina and Pennsylvania as two states that are the only two in the country that don't have their budget. This is something that I would imagine is going to be on the minds of voters as we head into the midterm elections and the entire General Assembly is up for reelection in 2026. Yeah, that's one of the things that makes it even more surprising. You would think they would have, again, that urgency looking ahead to that election year to try to come together, create an agreement with the state budget, look like they're effective at governing and getting along and able to come together on how they're going to spend the taxpayers' money.
But no, for some reason, again, they're just the heads of the two chambers are not getting along. They're not coming to agreement. And there's really no hope for the rest of this calendar year, and we'll see what happens going into next year. I mean, primaries are going to be in the spring, so we'll see how voters react. Yeah, we will, of course, keep an eye on how those voters react.
Do you think this will play a big part as we head into next year? I mean, it's unfortunate that there's not as much attention as probably you and I would think should be on the North Carolina General Assembly. People, of course, spend a lot of time focusing on what's going on in Washington, D.C. But, Brian, as you and I and most of our audience knows, what goes on in the North Carolina legislature, what happens in Raleigh, has an immense amount of impact on our day-to-day lives. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, obviously, the shutdown coming out of D.C. is grabbing all the headlines, and I think kind of sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room. But, you know, once we get into next year, depending on if and when they come to a budget agreement, they might just end up going the whole fiscal year without one. Who knows? That's happened before, very recently.
But then, once we get into campaign season and the dollars start to flow in these campaigns, and you can pretty much bet, in particular, the Democrats are really going to use this as leverage to hold against Republicans come campaign season. Once they start spending money and educating the public about just how dysfunctional the Republican leadership has been, they could really score some points with the public, I think. We will keep our eye on what goes on in Raleigh. You can read more on Brian's piece this morning by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That story's headline: North Carolina deserves a functional general assembly.
We appreciate the insight and the analysis this morning. Brian Balfour, the Senior Vice President of Research at the John Locke Foundation, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. You know that big bargain detergent jug is 80% water, right? It doesn't clean as well. 80% water?
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Nothing says joy like a kid getting a brand new bike for Christmas, and that means it's time for Hancock's Bikes for Kids. We are asking you to consider bringing a new bike to WBT on Friday, December the 5th, from 5 to 9 p.m. The entire WBT team will be there to thank you for your generous donation as the 32nd annual WBT Hancock Bikes for Kids events takes place. It is benefiting Kids First of the Carolinas, and it is presented by Garage Door Doctor. That's coming up Friday, December the 5th, 5 to 9 p.m.
You can visit WBT.com this morning for event details. It's now 5:54 on the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110, 99.3 WBT. We continue our coverage this morning of the federal government shutdown, as it would appear as early as today that the United States House of Representatives. Representatives will vote on reopening the federal government. This is after lawmakers worked on a funding bill, and it survived a key vote in the United States House, a committee of the House, very early this Wednesday morning.
The bipartisan deal to end the now 43-day government shutdown did advance through the House Rules Committee overnight on Wednesday, with all Republicans supporting the measure, and as you are probably not surprised to hear, all Democrats against. It now moves to the full House for consideration, where multiple people familiar with GOP leaders believe it will pass with nearly all Republicans on board. Once it passes the United States House, there will likely be some objection from Democrats, potentially the ability for them to make some amendments to the legislation. Those will all likely fail. Once it officially passes the House, It will make its way to President Donald Trump's desk for a signature.
And while the President has not, I don't believe he has said outright whether he will or will not sign this legislation, he has consistently been in favor of reopening the federal government.
So I believe. From all the information we've got available this morning, strong indication that the bill, this legislation, would be signed by the president, this continuing resolution that would keep the federal government, at least in large part, funded through the end of January of next year. From that point in time, lawmakers will have until late January to come up with all of their appropriation packages and bills that are necessary to keep the federal government funded through the year.
However, programs like food stamps, which run through the United States Department of Agriculture, do have additional funding in this CR. They are funded all the way through October of next year, the end of the fiscal year.
So we will watch that unfold in Washington, D.C. today as many folks wondering about travel plans in the next couple of weeks leading into Thanksgiving.
Some major slowdowns and backlogs at major U.S. airports, including Charlotte, Douglas, over the last couple of days. It would appear that many of these issues. Issues will be resolved with the federal government reopening back pay for various air traffic controllers and TSA workers. We will keep our eye on Washington, D.C.
throughout your Wednesday. We'll keep you up to date at CarolinaJournal.com. And of course, continued coverage throughout the day right here on News Talk 1110 and 99.3 WBT.
Well, that's going to do it for a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next, followed by Good Morning BT. We are back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on News Talk 1110 and 99.3 WBT. Mm-hmm.
