This holiday season reached for the one butter that never disappoints Kerry Gold. made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy, and perfect for baking. whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerry Gold's high butterfat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture. Holiday treats will taste extraordinary. It's 5.05 and welcome in to a Tuesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT.
I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you.
Well, several additional laws took place back on December the 1st here in North Carolina, including one that allows employees and volunteers at non-public schools to carry weapons on school property if authorized by those school officials. We start off this morning by looking at all of these pieces of legislation with House Bill 193. The short name on that is Firearms Law Revision, which would allow a person to carry a concealed handgun on property shared by a school and a place of worship during religious services or functions. Also, the penalty for assaulting or threatening executive, legislative, court, or elected officials are increased in this bill, House Bill 193. The bill was introduced by the North Carolina General Assembly by Representative Jeff McNeely, the Republican from Iredale County, earlier this year.
When he introduced the legislation, he said, quote, this is a good common sense bill that talks about your Second Amendment rights and private property, and I hope you'll support it.
However, this became a very partisan bill in the legislature, with Representative Laura Budd, the Democrat from Mecklenburg County, saying at the time that the bill does not provide anything other than tragedy. That was a direct quote from her, saying she went on to say it was not a God-given right or constitutional right to possess a gun. Democrat Governor Josh Stein vetoed the bill back on July the 9th of this year, citing concerns that it would make children less safe. At the time, the governor stated: just as we should not allow guns in the General Assembly, we should keep them out of the schools unless they are in the possession of law enforcement. We cannot substitute the protection offered by well-trained law enforcement officers by asking teachers and school volunteers to step in and respond to crises while armed.
A few weeks later, it was overridden by the House and Senate and did become law here in North Carolina. This is incredibly relevant, again, as we talk about many private schools that are on the property of church grounds or right next to, or in some cases, even in a church building. This would give the opportunity for individuals to carry on those properties where the idea of hiring private security is not feasible, is not financially feasible for these institutions. It is now in effect, and we will watch it play out here across the state of North Carolina. Another piece of legislation now law going into effect: House Bill 805, which prevents the sexual exploitation of women and minors.
It requires adult content websites to verify that. Users are at least 18 years old and to secure written consent from every person featured in the site's images, including separate consent for each sexual act depicted. The measure also mandates that platforms establish a formal process for removing images as well as other content, assign staff to handling takedown requests, and display a clear notice explaining how users can request removal. Those websites must comply with such requests from the state of North Carolina within 72 hours, and violations could carry civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day.
So there's obviously some serious financial incentive here. These provisions were included in a broader bill aimed at affirming biological definitions of sex, expanding parental rights in education, and restricting the use of state funds for sex transition procedures. That legislation, House Bill 805, is law here in North Carolina. The legislation was passed in response to President Donald Trump's executive order, which was titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. That EO affirms that the United States recognizes only two sexes, male and female.
Stein vetoed the legislation like the other on July the 3rd, but lawmakers overrode the veto. With unanimous Republican support and one Democrat vote. Other portions of the bill took effect or will take effect on January the 1st, but the vast majority of House Bill 805 is now in effect. Another piece of legislation taking effect in December, House Bill 612, that's the Foster Care in North Carolina Act. It's a permanent injunction that prohibits any contact by a defendant with the victim of violent offenses for which the defendant is convicted with the victim's immediate family or both.
This is that for the duration of the injunction is the lifetime of the defendant. Also, a parent or any other person providing care to or supervision of a child less than 16 years of age who intentionally inflicts any serious physical injury upon or to that child or intentionally commits an assault upon the child which results in any serious physical injury physical injury. To the child will now be charged and can be charged of a Class D felony that is dealing with the foster care system in North Carolina, House Bill 612. House Bill 251, various disaster recovery reforms, assures that alleged political discrimination based on affiliation or speech doesn't influence emergency relief efforts across the state of North Carolina. Theft of temporary housing during an emergency is also covered in this bill.
Additionally, a person caught looting or trespassing during an emergency would be found guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor for trespassing again during that state of natural disaster or emergency. This legislation came to fruition after a FEMA worker was fired in the fall of last year for allegedly politically discriminating in disaster aid distribution after Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida. The governor did sign both the previous House Bill 612 and House Bill 251 into law at the end of June of this year, so they have been in law for some time.
However, Many of the provisions going into effect on December 1st.
Some other pieces of legislation now in effect is Senate Bill 391. That's a DOT omnibus bill dealing with the Department of Transportation. It states that motor vehicles having a gross weight rating of 26,001 pounds or more shall not be operated in leftmost lanes of a controlled access highway with six lanes or more. It also eliminates the requirement for inspecting window tints, which of course is relevant here across North Carolina, and requires drivers with tinted windows to roll them down for law enforcement if they are pulled over or law enforcement approaches their vehicle. Senate Bill 311, the Law and Order Act, includes harsher penalties for burglary, package theft, reckless driving, street racing, shoplifting, and other offenses.
It also includes the possibility of fines or prison time for certain picketing activities. This includes any protesters or workers on strike, who block roads or businesses, and don't allow things like emergency vehicles or regular everyday people to travel down those roads to work, school, wherever they may be traveling. Senate Bill 375, also known as Harrison's Law, cracks down on campuses by expanding bans beyond college to include grades 9 through 12. The bill was named after an individual, Harrison Kwaki, who died from a head injury sustained during a hazing ceremony at Lenore Ryan University all the way back in 2008. The new bill expands the legal definition of hazing beyond physical.
Physical injury to include things like forced consumption, sleep deprivation, and threats. The bill also includes penalties and requires schools to implement anti-hazing policies. And finally, Senate Bill 416, the Personal Privacy Protection Act, bars state agencies from collecting or disclosing nonprofit donor data and imposes penalties on officials who disclose said information. The legislature passed the bill, but the governor vetoed it. Lawmakers argued it protected free speech, and the bill was overridden in a vote of 13 to 19 in the Senate and 74 to 46 in the House.
That legislation did go into law and is now officially effective law here in the state of North Carolina. We've got some additional details on all of these laws that we are covering this morning. Many of them passed by the legislature back in the summer when things were really hot and heating up in the General Assembly, but many of them had official start dates of either December the 1st or January the 1st.
So we will have more of these. Pieces of legislation as we head into the month of January. You can get some of these additional details on these pieces of legislation by visiting our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. The headline story there: new NC laws including public safety and donor privacy take effect. It's 5:21.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-99.3 WBT. We have documented recently some of the growing concerns with the North Carolina DMV, whether it's long wait times in person, the inability to schedule an appointment online. It is a major source of frustration for citizens across the state of North Carolina, whether they're just moving here and trying to get an ID or go through the process of renewing or getting a real ID.
However, there is some improvements that can be made, and we're looking forward to some of those details this morning to walk us through a new 35-page recommendation from the head of DMV, Teresa Opaca, CarolinaJournal.com, joins us on the news hour. Teresa, we've probably chatted about this in a variety of different manners. Half a dozen times or so over the last couple of months, this new 35-page report highlights some of the main differences and changes that the DMV can make. What do you make of this? Sure.
Good morning, Nick. Thanks for having me.
So yes, Commissioner DMV, Commissioner Paul Tyne promises things will be getting better, hopefully, within the next five years with this comprehensive plan that was put out. There have been A myriad, numerous, several. You can use any adjective you want, complaints about the DMV over the past few years for people taking off vacation time, time off of work to go wait in line. Across the state, maybe not even nearby, and then, oh, sorry, you're out of luck, you have to come back because they already went through the line and they have to come back again and again, or you're trying to get an appointment online, getting up or waiting till midnight, or getting up at the crack of dawn to try to schedule an appointment with no luck.
So they're hopeful that all of this is going to be taken care of with this comprehensive plan. They say things are already been set in motion and hopefully they will. But this is a five year strategic plan. It's not going to happen overnight. One of the main concerns with this, which we've discussed before, they call it the legacy systems, which they've had computer systems that are at least 20 to 30 years old.
And that seems to run across the whole gamut of state agencies. There's old equipment, old legacy equipment, or like the old DOS systems you'd see with the green lettering on the screens, big, huge. Mainframes.
So we're hoping to see some improvement, and they put this report out, and hopefully, there will be.
Well, and Teresa, you talk about some of these legacy computer systems. That not only plagues governments here in North Carolina, from the state to, I'm sure, even some local municipalities, but this is a nationwide problem. Whether we're talking about the federal government or probably, and I don't want to throw any of our neighboring states under the bus, but probably every other state, Teresa, is dealing with this in some manner or another. These systems are very expensive. In cases, going back even 20 or 30 years, millions, potentially tens of millions of dollars invested in these computer systems.
But as technology has rapidly intensified so much over the last couple of years, these systems are really, truly starting to show the rage, and it's causing issues all over the place. It is, it is. And I know I've mentioned a couple of times talking with you. I know one state in particular, because I came from that state, Pennsylvania, their unemployment compensation system, they were using DOS Legacy, I think maybe up until a few years ago, but that was just from like the 1980s that they were using the system. Not all that long ago, they updated it.
So yes, many states, not just North Carolina, have this issue. And the priorities were listed in this plan that Commissioner Tyne outlined all those that First is building a streamlined digital experience, right?
So that's a great thing. They want to make 70% of all transactions available to be completed online. Right now, that stands at 60%. And also to increase transactions to be completed online to go up even further as well. There's another, excuse me, another market demarcation for that as well.
And, you know, Teresa, one of the, of course, the frustrations that we've heard from our audience on, if you've gone on any local Facebook pages, you've probably seen it is those excessive wait times getting the increase there. And I was honestly surprised to hear that 61% of those transactions are taking place online. But to get that into the either low, mid, or even upper 70s, you would imagine that that would have almost an immediate impact on some of those wait times on DMV offices. Again, not just in our metros. We're not just talking about Charlotte or Raleigh.
We're talking all the way from the mountains to the coast. This is a system-wide issue. Right. It's definitely across the state, not in isolated pockets. It's everywhere.
So yes, that's another point of that outline, that they want to reduce the Well you know The 15-minute average in-person driver's license transaction time to 12 minutes. That's one of the points. And resolve 75% of callers' issues on the first call is another one. Going back again about the modernizing technology, they want to do that within three years.
So, hopefully, within three years, they're going to actually modernize all the technology that would replace that 30-year-old legacy system. But, yeah, the wait times are not an isolated issue in certain areas of the state. It is definitely across the state. And Teresa, one of the groups that has dealt with this probably the hardest are parents that have got children that are getting close to driving age. Not only do they have to go to the DMV to go and get a learner's permit, but in some cases, they've got to go back an additional two more times in the span of just 12 to 24 months to get their children's or teenagers' licenses upgraded from a learner's permit to a regular Class C driver's license.
I mean, you can imagine the headache there, as you mentioned, taking vacation time. If you're an hourly employee, just missing out on wages so you can go sit in a DMV line for eight or nine hours. I mean, that's just not sustainable long term. Oh no, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
There was a new law that went into effect. Also, yesterday it was expand remote driver's license services. Portion of that already went into effect, which that has helped significantly for people who don't have a real ID. They can now renew online. They don't have the figure right in front of me.
But another portion of that law deals with teenagers, teen drivers. That allows them to upgrade from their level two provisional license to a level three full provisional. Teens can also upgrade that level three provisional to a regular Class C license online on their 18th birthday. We also have that story online at CarolinaJournal.com.
So you can go back and see that.
So that's another portion of getting things moving along was having another law passed.
So that actually works as well. Teresa, you mentioned this back a couple of minutes ago, and I want to hit on it again. You cover state government very closely. This is some encouraging news, but you mentioned this is a five-year plan. We know most of the time in government, things do not happen very quickly.
In reading through this 35-page report and getting the article up over at Carolinajournal.com, it does look like, however, there are some of these shorter-term improvements that they're looking to make. I guess maybe milestones is maybe the good word to use to describe getting some of these systems in place so that it's not five full years till we see some improvement. It looks like as they begin to trend some of these numbers up on online transactions, things will slowly begin to improve by the time we hit that five-year mark. Right. And they've been working on this already.
They've improved scanners. I think so with the scanning time is reduced.
So I just mentioned about the new law passed for getting a nonreal ID License holders to go renew things online. That's also, you know, definitely cut down on wait times. Wait times have decreased. Like they said, they want that average wait time for people to be around 15 minutes.
So they are taking some steps. They've opened some new offices across the state in different areas. There are things that they are doing right now. Also, you know, just boosting employee morale. That was another bad thing that came out of the audit from state auditor Dave Bollock.
Employee morale was at a terrible low because they were just Overwhelmed with all the work. Places just look pretty shabby. You know, the employees had old, I guess, old work clothes, things of that nature. They're trying to get that built up as well. But they also want to become more customer focused.
They want to achieve customer satisfaction. They said right now that's not actually being tracked. They want that to go up to 85%.
So they are working on it. They're trying to streamline some processes. And actually, by this time next year, they should also have a DMV performance dashboard sometime in 2026. They didn't say when exactly. Kind of like there's been performance dashboards.
You'll see them on the state auditors website. There's like Helene Recovery Dashboard, all these different dashboards that have been implemented over this past year.
So the DMV is also planning on doing that next year. Yes, some very encouraging information from this. Teresa, you've got a link to the full thirty five page report plus some of the things that you highlighted, including the state auditors' report and some other reports out on the DMV over the last couple of years. Where can folks go and get those details this morning? Sure, they can head on over to Carolinajournal.com.
We appreciate the update. Teresa Opeka joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. It's 5:38. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 1110-993 WBT. I'm Nick Craig.
Good morning to you.
Back in May, the United States Justice Department brought a legal challenge against the North Carolina State Board of Elections over voter registrations and a voter registration form that has had some issues over the last couple of years here in North Carolina. That process has played out over the last couple of months, and it seemed like everything was resolved and heading towards the right direction.
However, there seems to be kind of a kink in the hose on that this morning. To walk us through some of those details, Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Mitch, the state board seemed to correct the issues. The Justice Department said, looks good to us. What's going on this morning?
Yeah, you set it up well, Nick, in that this was a lawsuit that started in May and seemed to be over in September. Once the suit was filed by the Justice Department, a new state board of elections looked at the issues and said, yes, they've identified issues that are important. It looks as if North Carolina had, for a number of years, had incomplete information in its voter registration list, didn't comply with the Federal Help America Vote Act for a number of voters not having either a driver's license number or last four digits of the Social Security number.
So the state board came up with a plan to correct that and to fill in the missing information. And by September, four months into the litigation, lawyers for the Board of Elections and lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division basically came up with a deal to settle the lawsuit. Not too long after the settlement was filed in U.S. Chief District Judge Richard Meyer's courtroom.
He signed off on it, but then not too long after that. The Democratic National Committee on one hand and the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans on the other hand, which is a group that's working with Democratic operative Mark Elias' law firm, so basically is the stand-in for Mark Elias and his part of the Democratic operation. They filed paperwork asking Myers to reconsider his decision, saying, look, This settlement is not going to protect all the voters. We have tried to intervene in this case in the past. You did not allow us to intervene, but you should allow us to intervene and you should reopen this settlement so that we can be in this case as defendants working against this settlement that we don't think is going to help voters.
Now, not too long after the DNC and the Elias clients filed their paperwork, the federal government shutdown happened. And so the U.S. Justice Department filed paperwork with Myers Court saying, hey, could you pause this case at least during the shutdown? Our lawyers aren't even allowed to do any work on it. And Myers responded: he said, Yes, he put everything on hold.
And basically, that was where things stood at the last point that the case was on hold. But now, some weeks after the shutdown has been finished, and the government is back open again, the latest development is that the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has filed its paperwork saying that no, there's no reason to reopen this settlement. There's no reason for the DNC or the Alliance for Retired Americans to have any involvement in the case. They've already made their arguments.
They're basically just trying to make the same arguments that have already been turned down again. And so the settlement should be allowed to stand.
So the final piece of this potentially is for Myers to say probably, yes, the settlement's going to stand. If Myers reopens it, then it would. Reopen the case for more consideration. It's also possible that if Myers does not reopen the suit, that these two parties, the Democratic National Committee and the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans, could try to go to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and say, look, the judge should have reopened it. Look at our arguments.
We think we should be defendants in this case to help represent our voters. But at this point, There is the settlement. The settlement remains in effect unless Either Judge Myers reopens the case or a higher court tells him that he should.
So, Mitch, I guess my next logical question with this is: the state board, as you mentioned in your open, has been working on the process of repairing some of this. There's currently a process ongoing at the State Board of Elections level called the Voter Registration Repair Project, in which they're going through the roles, correcting individuals that did not have that information-either a full driver's license number or the last four digits of a social security number. The Justice Department has said, All right, looks like you guys are kind of trending in the right direction on this, getting the old stuff cleaned up. The voter registration form now makes it abundantly clear that you have to fill out this information. What's the argument here from the DNC and the Elias groups as to why this settlement is not sufficient?
They're not arguing about the idea of adding this information to the voter rolls. They're not saying that there's anything wrong with that. Of course, the Help America Vote Act requires that. The concern all along from these groups is that both the Justice Department Run by the Trump administration and the State Board of Elections, now run by a Republican majority, are going to somehow use this process to disenfranchise voters. That they're going to say, oh, you have Not, you don't have the complete information, so we're going to remove you from the voter rolls.
Now, one other thing that is part of the settlement is that during the next time that a voter heads to the polls, if the information is incomplete, they'll have to cast a provisional ballot and then provide the information for the ballot to count. And critics, including the Democratic Party and its allies, have said that this basically amounts to turning these voters into kind of second-class citizens of some sort because they have to go through a more involved process to cast a ballot. And so, They're really not objecting to the compilation of this information and making sure that it is complete. What they are objecting to is their fears about what will happen to voters who don't have the complete information and whether they could either be removed from the polls, which or from the voting rolls, which no one has said is going to happen, or that they would have to cast a provisional ballot and thus be cast into some sort of inferior status that would violate their constitutional rights. And this is interesting, Mitch.
Even though it was low turnout, we just had municipal elections back in early November in North Carolina. And the state board reported after those elections that, yes, there were in fact some individuals that had to vote provisionally and get that required information to the state board of elections by the time that the county canvas took place. But from all accounts, I hadn't seen any media reports or anything else that have come out that this was some widespread disaster that took place across North Carolina. Again, I'll note low turnout. We'll likely see more in the primary in 2026 and undoubtedly in the November 26 midterm election, but everything seems to be going pretty smooth from all accounts.
Yeah, and remember we're talking about a small subset of North Carolina voters.
Now, by small, I'm still talking about once this process started, there were more than 100,000 voters they were talking about. But that is when you compare it to the millions of people who are registered to vote and the even larger millions of residents of North Carolina. It's a small subset. I think that most of the people who are in this situation of not having the complete information. They just don't have that complete information because they weren't asked for it.
For a number of years, North Carolina had a form that did not make it clear that it was mandatory for this information to be provided, and so not all the information was provided. I think. Most voters who find themselves in the situation of not having provided this information are happy to do it. The one group of voters that Really is being targeted by the initial Help America Vote Act provision is to ensure that the people who are registered to vote are eligible to vote. Because if you're not here legally, if you don't have a social security number or are not allowed to have a driver's license because you are not here legally, you would not be able to comply with this.
And that is really what the idea of making sure the voter rolls are cleaned up is all about: to ensure that the people who are casting ballots in North Carolina or anywhere for that matter, but we're talking about North Carolina in this case, that the people who are casting ballots are people who are eligible to register to vote and then thus eligible to vote. That's not going to be a huge number of people who are in the tens of thousands now who still don't have the complete information, but it is going to be a not zero number. And so, you want to make sure that people who are eligible to vote have the correct information and that those who aren't eligible to vote don't vote.
Now, everyone should be clear on that and should have that as a goal: that only those people Who are eligible to vote should vote. Democrats are raising a lot of concerns about this process, partly, I think, at least because they see Republicans running the process and think there must be something underhanded because Republicans are behind it. Shocker that Democrats would raise that kind of argument. And of course, The whole idea about trying to get this information compiled correctly was initially a Republican argument against a Democratic-run state board of elections. Republicans filed a lawsuit in 2024 saying Democrats had caused the problem and weren't collecting the information.
So the two parties are playing the roles that you'd expect them to play. And what we should hope will happen is that as many people as possible will get the complete information by the time we get to the next big election for 2026. We'll obviously continue to track the progress. We get some regular updates from the North Carolina State Board of Elections on that registration repair project. They're providing some of those numbers as they continue to go down as more and more folks provide that information.
And we'll also keep an eye on the courts on this matter as well. We appreciate the information this morning. Mitch Kokai from the John Locke Foundation joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Yeah. It's 5:55.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, News Talk 11:10-99.3 WBT. As the holiday shopping season officially kicked off over the last couple of days, U.S. commerce hit a record of $11.8 billion for the holiday shopping weekend, according to national figures from Adobe Analytics. Residents of North Carolina appear to be embracing the digital shopping surge that happened yesterday on Cyber Monday more than packing malls and brick-and-mortar stores. As a brand new poll from High Point University shows, that many in the state are opting for online or blended shopping over in-stores Black Friday and the frenzy that normally takes place during that day.
According to the report from Adobe Analytics, it reads mobile devices have cemented their dominance as 2025 is poised to be the first full year mobile makes up more than 50%. 50% of online shopping. With Adobe forecasting mobile revenue shares, they hit a record of 56.1% this holiday season, while 7 in 10 retail site visits will take place on a mobile device. On Cyber Monday in North Carolina, 44% of the state's residents that were participating said that they planned to shop online, according to that high point survey. By contrast, only 33% said that they planned to shop on Black Friday.
Now, this is interesting. When asked which day they'd prefer if they could only choose one, 25% picked Black Friday, while 35% picked Cyber Monday. The High Point University poll also found that 31 percent of North Carolinians planned to do most of their holiday shopping online, while just 17 percent expected to rely primarily on brick-and-mortar or big-box stores. Another 38% said that they expect to split their shopping between both online and in-store shopping. Spending has continued to intensify in North Carolina for this holiday season.
According to our most recent Carolina Journal poll, 67% did say that they plan on spending a little bit less than they did last year for the holiday shopping season. You can read some additional details on that story this morning by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com. That's going to do it for a Tuesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next. Followed by Good Morning BT.
We're back for you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on News Talk 11.10 and 99.3 WBT. This holiday season reached for the one butter that never disappoints. Carry gold. made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy, and perfect for baking. whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerry Gold's high butterfat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture.
Holiday treats will taste extraordinary. Yeah.
