It's 505 and welcome in to a Wednesday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour on Charlotte's FM News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. A federal grand jury in North Carolina has indicted former FBI director James Comey on charges of making threats to harm President Donald Trump. The charges stem from a 2025 Instagram post involving seashells arranged on a beach with the message 8647. The slang term 86 means to throw out, get rid of, or to refuse, according to, well, slang terms and how people use them, with Trump being the 47th American president.
U.S. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch announced the indictment Tuesday afternoon at the The U.S. Justice Department's Washington headquarters. FBI Director Cash Battelle and U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle joined Blanche for the announcement.
The indictment includes two counts. First, it charges Comey with knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States. While in the reading now directly from the document, while in the Eastern District of North Carolina, Comey publicly posted a photograph on internet social media site Instagram, which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out 8647, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of intent to do harm to the President of the United States, according to the official indictment. The second count charges Comey with knowingly and willfully transmitting in interstate and foreign commerce a communication. That contained a threat to kill President Donald Trump specifically.
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said in a news release, threatening the life of the President of the United States is a grave violation of our nation's law. The grand jury returned an indictment alleging that James Comey did just that. At a time when this country has witnessed violent incidents followed by deadly actions against President Trump and other elected officials, the temperature needs to be turned down and anyone who dials it up and threatens the life of the President will be held accountable. Blanche continued by saying during the news conference, you are not allowed to threaten the president of the United States of America. That's not my decision.
That's Congress's. And their decision in a statute that they passed that we have charged multiple times in a year. FBI Director Cash Patel said in the Justice Department news release, James Comey disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump's life and posted it on Instagram for the world to see. As the former director of the FBI, he knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post. This FBI and our DOJ partners purposes on rigorous intervention and investigations that follow the facts.
And now Mr. Comey will be held fully accountable for his actions. The main reason we are talking about this story this morning here on the Carolina Journal News Hour is that the federal grand jury that indicted Comey on these two charges, it was. From and is in North Carolina with Eastern District of North Carolina. Attorney Ellis Boyle also appearing at the DOJ press conference yesterday.
We have talked about him many a time over the last year and a half. This is what he had to say at the DOJ headquarters yesterday. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General. Earlier today, a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned a true bill.
and dining Mr. James Comey. with committing two felonies. Count one. He knowingly and willfully made a threat to kill and to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States.
In violation of 18 USC 871A. Count two, he knowingly and willfully transmitted in interstate and foreign commerce. a communication that contained a threat. to kill President Trump. in violation of eighteen USC eight seven five C.
Mr. Comey will be given every form of due process. All citizens are entitled to receive to include a trial by a jury of his peers. In the Eastern District of North Carolina, it doesn't matter who you are. We take all threat cases seriously.
and prosecute Anyone who violates federal law regardless of title or status. That's U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle from the Eastern District of North Carolina, a grand jury under his jurisdiction going through yesterday, or at least presumably over the last couple of weeks and months, and indicting former FBI director James Comey. The since deleted social media post did prompt significant backlash last year as the caption on the photo read, Cool shell formation on my beach walk. Of course, alongside the photo that we are talking about.
Comey then deleted the post and followed up by saying, I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which allegedly now happened here in North Carolina, which I assume were a political message. I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down. Of course, many kind of balking at the commentary there from former FBI director James Comey as the head of the nation's top law enforcement agency. Not knowing what 8-6 meant in that context, many scoff at and find completely unbelievable.
This is the Justice Department's second indictment of James Comey in seven months. In September, he faced an indictment on charges that he lied to and obstructed Congress during testimony in 2020. That case was dropped when a judge concluded that the prosecutor handling the case had been appointed illegally.
So, this is going to be a fascinating story to watch play out on the national political stage. A strong North Carolina connection as well. Again, with this indictment coming from a grand jury in North Carolina, it is not immediately clear what exactly the next steps are here. The former FBI director releasing a video on social media last night claiming that he is, in fact, innocent. He did not do anything wrong, claiming he is not afraid and that he is, quote, ready to go.
So, we'll be keeping an eye on this as it relates to North Carolina. Carolina with this happening in the Eastern District. We'll bring you the details right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. We are also following some breaking news out of the North Carolina legislature on this early Wednesday morning. A current member of the North Carolina Senate, Terrence Everett, announced late Tuesday night that he is resigning from his position within the North Carolina General Assembly and dropping out of what is likely to be one of the most closely contested races in the North Carolina Senate.
Again, talking about the General Assembly. In a post on his Facebook account last night, he cited a new role with the North Carolina Voter Protection Alliance. He has served as the group's executive director since it launched several months ago and highlighted that he was stepping away, writing in part: Since returning to the legislative session, it has become clear that defending our democracy requires my focus and dedication. The Republican Majorities in the legislature are hell-bent on assaulting our democracy, suppressing voting rights, and restricting North Carolinians' access to the ballot box. This is a fight we must win, and I am determined to defend our state's democracy at all costs.
He continued in his Facebook post, saying, For that reason, in my consultation with my family and closest advisors, I have made the difficult decision to resign from the North Carolina Senate and will withdraw my name from the 2026 general election ballot. Previously, Everett served several terms in the North Carolina House, where he was controversially kicked out of his office and moved to a broom closet in the legislative building in Raleigh after failing to follow basic decorum within the legislature. He then transitioned over to becoming a member of the North Carolina Senate in Raleigh at the General Assembly and has served a single Term there originally running in 2024 for the Senate. This is going to be a fascinating race to watch as we head deeper into 2026. According to the most recent details from the Civitas Partisan Index, which is a product of the John Locke Foundation, Senate District 18, which includes a little bit of northern Wake County and Guilford County, is what is deemed in our survey as a D plus zero, meaning that it is a toss-up district, almost 50-50% chance of a Democrat.
Or Republican winning that race.
Now, with the fact that there is no longer an incumbent in that seat, in Senator Terrence Everett announcing again that he is resigning his post, presumably effective immediately, and will be filing a petition with the Board of Elections to remove himself from the ballot coming up in 2026. That leaves an open seat with no incumbent and the possibility for a Republican to pick up that seat and to continue to retain power in what will be a very tight election for Republicans who have held the majority now going back 15 years here in North Carolina. There's no additional detail this morning on Everett's decision. He again announcing that he is going to be stepping away from his post as a member of the North Carolina Senate to focus on outside projects, mostly seemingly dealing with voter protection, his words, here in North Carolina. The candidates.
The Republican candidate in that race is an individual by the name of Chris Stock. He is a former aide to Republican Senator Brent Jackson. We do not know if or when there will be a Democrat challenger announced in this race.
However, when we find out the details, we'll pass them along to you right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour. 21 minutes past the hour. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, turning our attention to some additional statewide news this morning. Governor Josh Stein and state education officials officially have had their first meeting of the North Carolina Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education. That happened earlier this week by touting four historic milestones in the state schools, including the highest graduation rate in state history.
But unfortunately, the same meeting also had some very concerning information, including data showing that roughly 45% of public school students across the state are not proficient in reading and math. NAPE reading scores are moving in the wrong direction, and the state's chief accountability officer tells the commission that the school's grading system itself needs to be replaced. Governor Josh Stein said, quote, clearly there are good things happening in our schools, but we know there is much more work to do. We cannot rest on our laurels. This 30-member commission was created in March via executive order by the governor and announced in coordination with Senate leader Phil Berger, the Republican from Rockingham County, as well as House Speaker Destin Hall, the Republican from Caldwell.
The commission convened at North Carolina State University last week to begin a 10-month review of teacher training, student advancement, school operations, accountability, and education leadership. We'll start with school accountability. According to Michael Mayer, the chief accountability officer for the Department of Public Instruction said, quote, what you measure is what you value. He said that before criticizing the state's current A through F grading system for public school performance. That system, Marr said, flags hundreds of more failing schools than peer states with comparable test performances, including roughly 400 more F-rated schools than the state of Florida.
Part of the gap reflects a North Carolina's threshold and 85% or higher earns an A, where Florida sets the same grade at 62. The AF grading system is heavily dependent on test scores with 80% based on proficiency and 20% based on year-over-year growth. Back to Meyer, he said, quote, we have a current system that doesn't accurately reflect performance in our public schools. He added that North Carolina could, quote, easily lower the bar to match proficiency rates of peer states, but has chosen not to, citing neighboring states that have had to overhaul their standards after their own tests overstated student performance compared to what those NAPE results look like. Like.
Reading and math proficiency, this is a major discussion across North Carolina, across the state's 1.5 million public school students. Only about 55% scored at or above grade level on state tests in 2025, with state officials noting that math performance is improving at most grade levels, while reading unfortunately is not. The state's National Assessment of Education Process or NAIP reading trend is heading in the wrong direction. Even as that math performance is at or above some of the national averages, third-grade reading proficiency, the focus of the state's multi-year science and reading investment, has not yet shown gains on end-of-grade exams. With Marr saying that the student population is still dealing with this and is bifurcated in some ways, as top performers keep rising, while the bottom-end and middle students either are staying completely flatlined or, in some cases, even declining in their reading proficiency in third grade.
Other data presented at the meeting underscored the depth of challenges facing public schools. Chronic absenteeism, with students missing 10% or more of the school year, sits at 26%. And while that is down from the pandemic peak of 32 percent, it remains nearly double the historical baseline in North Carolina, which has been around 15 percent. With Maher telling the committee, let's let that settle in. 400,000 children out of 1.5 million were chronically absent.
A separate facts and figures report distributed by commissioners by Best NC, a nonprofit education advocacy group, showed that 44% of North Carolina teachers entered the classroom in 2025, designated as unprepared, which was up from 43% a year earlier. Brenda Berg, the CEO of Best NC and a member of the commission, said that the increase is being driven by growing reliance on residency programs that draw from less prepared candidate pools. Of course, one of the major discussions within education here in North Carolina is education funding, with the governor leading the conversation on that. He noted that North Carolina ranks 49th nationally in per-pupil spending and 51st when measured as a share of the state's economy. economy.
South Carolina, he said, invests $5,500 more per pupil and pays teachers on average $3,700 more per year. Stein cited a teacher he recently met who had moved from South Carolina to North Carolina.
However, that happened back in the early 2000s because the pay was better in North Carolina at the time. But that teacher is now considering moving back south because the difference has reversed. With the governor telling the committee, we are acting like we are a poor state when we are not. The commissioner's co-chairs framed the work differently earlier in the day, with one of the co-chairs in particular, Don Martin, who serves as the chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, saying, Improving education is not just about more money. It is also about determining if our current investments are yielding the best possible results.
Another co-chair, Annie Faircloth, a sample County farmer and business owner called for a clear-eyed analysis of those investment results. With her going on and telling the committee, the business community is excited to be part of the unique moment to look at K-12 education with fresh eyes. It is my goal and my pledge to you that this work will produce meaningful and actionable results. In terms of some of the next steps here, the Commission's 19 voting members are currently weighed towards the K through 12 establishment. 13 are educators with three each from business and higher education.
10 legislators from both parties serve as non-voting ex officio members.
So they're part of the discussion, but they are not part of any votes coming out of the committee. The first three working meetings will focus on teacher training and student achievement, followed by administrative operations and educational leadership in the fall. A final report is expected out of this commission set up by Governor Josh Stein earlier this year, February of 2027, which would be right around the time that the legislative long session is really kicking off next year. State Superintendent Mo Green's best in the nation by 2030 goals, which include public school enrollment growth as a tracked metric alongside graduation rates, AP performance, and NAPE scores, frame much of the Commission's data review. They have another meeting scheduled coming up here in less than a month on May the 18th.
We will be keeping an eye on this Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education.
Some of the discussion and conversations coming out of that group. You can read more about this first meeting over on our website this morning. CarolinaJournal.com. Look for the story with the headline: NC Schools Commission begins work amid lagging proficiency. It's 5.36.
Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM. WBT, I'm Nick Craig. Good Wednesday morning to you. We are tracking some pretty major news out of the North Carolina State Board of Elections this morning. A shocking number.
34,000 individuals seen on North Carolina voter rolls are actually deceased. This is all coming through the recent decision by the North Carolina State Board to upload voter databases here in the North Carolina to a federal database system that deals with eligibility for federal benefits. To walk through some of those details this morning, it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation to the Carolina Journal News Hour. Andy, over the last couple of days, getting this press release from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Before we get into some of the more pertinent details, right off the top, you follow elections very closely here in North Carolina. 34,000 dead voters on the rolls. What do you make of it? Yeah, it is a lot. We also remember for some context is that North Carolina removes dead voters from voter rolls pretty much on a weekly basis.
Each of the counties gets a report from state officials.
So this is a subclass, at least presumably, I have not seen the data, but this should be a subclass of people who have registered to vote in North Carolina, have moved out of state, and have died out of state because they don't get the notice from North Carolina.
So this is a lot. I don't. I'm not surprised that once you get this kind of data, this would be the kind of numbers you get. Yeah, and without getting too deep and kind of caught up in the weeds on this, Andy, when you die here in North Carolina, there's a death certificate. It goes through the register of deeds, it goes then to the state government and back to the local register of deeds office.
There is a process in place, unfortunately. It will happen to everybody. You will die, and your family or your next of kin goes through this process. And as you just noted, presumably or hopefully you are removed from the rolls, but there are even issues with that process as well, with individuals dying in North Carolina that have remained on the rolls, at least for some period of time. That happens.
And anytime you get this kind of a large data system, there are gaps and problems. There are times when officials There are mistakes made in the process, and then officials have to correct those. And sometimes, I know there was this one story, I forget the county that it was in, where an election official had to challenge her own mother's ballot. Because her mother had submitted an absentee ballot and had died before election day. And in North Carolina, you have to be an eligible voter on election day.
And so she had to remove her mom's ballot, which is sad but honorable thing to do. And so, yeah, this is the kind of process we have to try to make sure that the voter rolls are clean, at least as clean as possible. And it really looks like this. Bringing on this additional federal data is going to help local election officials do that better.
Now, Andy, there is already a process in place. Presumably, when you die, you should no longer be voting. Of course, that would indicate some level of voter fraud if somebody was voting in your name. But presumably, if you die, you were no longer casting a ballot. After a certain period of time, those voters are supposed to automatically fall off the rolls, correct?
Yeah, that's true. And it's an eight to 10 year process, depending on at what point in the election process you die. Essentially, if you go through a couple of elections, federal elections, so every two years, and you have no contact of any kind, either voting or changing your registration or anything like that with your county board of elections, you're made into an inactive voter. And then after another two federal election cycles as an inactive voter, then you are removed from the voter rolls.
Now, I'll go back to that inactive stage. They'll actually send a notice to the person to that their address on file just to make sure so that if you respond to that, then, okay, you're good. And they'll keep you as an active voter.
So there are safeguards in place to make sure that they don't accidentally remove somebody who shouldn't be removed. Andy, this decision to upload this data or to cross-compare this data with this federal database, which is known as SAVE, I'll note for our audience, this is in no way related at all to the SAVE Act that has been up for discussion, which is also relating to elections. As I understand, this SAVE system, it deals with federal eligibility for health care, food assistance, various things that you would be eligible for through the federal government. This was not a bipartisan decision to provide this data and to cross-compare this data with this federal database. It was split evenly along party lines, 3-2.
Yeah, it was. And this is the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database from the Department of Homeland Security. And so this is a way, you know, originally conceived a way to make sure the people receiving benefits are actually citizens. As the capabilities of that database have grown, you can do other things like check them up against, for example, voter registration databases.
So this is a new tool that states across the country have to help verify their databases. And there were objections from kind of the usual suspects. The Democrats objected to it. They said that this would be a way of suppressing people who are not actually dead. And they were really objecting to this search for people who are not citizens when they were doing this process.
That was the real fight over this. And, you know, we'll see what happens when they go through this process. I remember I gave testimony in favor of the proposal when they did a Public comment hearing. I was the only one who actually spoke in favor. They had whole organizations of people.
It was a mob. I got booed. First time I've ever gotten booed at a public comment. The state board of elections official had to quiet the room and tell them they had to respect my right to speak.
So there was definitely some passion. On this issue. And I'm expecting that we're going to see something similar pretty much with every rules change that we come through. You know, when Democrats were in charge, the protesting crowd, well, they had nothing to protest against. But now, with Republicans pushing through things that they believe will help secure elections, I think we can expect protesters at just about every state board hearing from now on.
Andy, I don't want to give you any PTSD, but you did speak and you mentioned that you spoke in front of this meeting in favor of using this federal database system that you just described. Can you briefly walk us through why you were in favor of that and why you remain in favor of that now?
Well, the essential thing is, we don't know. Nobody can tell you how many non-citizens are on our voter rolls. I suspect it's not many, but we know for a fact it's not zero. We just had that case down in your neck of the woods in eastern North Carolina, where a Canadian was registered. He was never flagged in any audit or any voter registration check.
He just basically lucked out. In essence. And so How many more cases like that are there? We don't have, or at least we didn't have a systematic way of checking these things. We had occasional partial audits that would net a few dozen here or there.
But this is going to be a systematic way to verify the citizenship of people who are registered vote in North Carolina. And it has safeguards to make sure that we don't remove people who are eligible voters. Let's go back to the 34,000 deceased individuals. We just got this information within the last day from the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Presumably, Andy, they will begin the process of, I guess, maybe doing some additional cross-comparison and cross-checks on this data and then begin actually removing those voters from the rolls.
Yep, that is the plan. This is going to be implemented by the county boards. They're the ones to actually. That are actually in physical control of the voter rolls.
So, this data will come from the state board down to the counties. They'll go through their own verification processes to make sure that those folks are, in fact, dead. Probably going to be checking their residency as well because if they died out of state, they're probably not at their last location.
So there will be verification processes in place just to make sure. And there may be a couple of people that are on this list inadvertently, and they've got a process in place to make sure they don't remove anybody who is not, in fact. You know, not that. And Andy, I think a lot of the discussion here, and we can broaden out and expand this conversation going back a couple of years. There's been long, large, and pretty vast political discussions over deceased voters and individuals, again, who have the intent and want to commit fraud in voting, not only here in North Carolina, but across the United States.
These dead voters, unfortunately, are very good avenues for, again, those individuals that are willing and able to commit a crime. Yeah, it is a risk, especially if there is a group that has information that knows that somebody is dead or has moved out of the state and can take advantage of that.
Now, there are safeguards in place to prevent that, but just like there are safeguards to prevent other crimes, the enterprising criminals will find a way around them.
So, the more that we can remove these opportunities by fixing the voter rolls before an election, the less likely we're going to have this kind of crime during an election.
So, I think it's a good question. Good idea to go ahead and get this done whenever you can. An ounce of prevention, as it were, can prevent some of these problems from really coming to a head in the future. Yeah, I love what you said there, Andy, about removing those opportunities for, again, individuals that are knowing and willing and capable of breaking the law and don't have any remorse about doing it.
Some phenomenal points that we'll keep an eye on as this state board of election data continues to go through this save federal database system. And we'll continue that conversation with Dr. Andy Jackson from the John Locke Foundation. We appreciate his insight this morning. You're listening to the Carolina Journal News Hour.
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Good morning again. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour, Charlotte's FM News Talk, 107.9 FM, WBT, keeping our attention on some statewide news this morning. Here's some positive news. North Carolina has fewer low-income households than it did 14 years ago and more upper-income ones, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census data by the Carolina Journal.
The shift mirrors the conclusion of a recent national study from the American Enterprise Institute that challenges the common political claim that America's middle class is hollowed out. The study published in January by economists Stephen J. Rose and Scott Winship finds that the core middle class has shrunk because of growing upper middle class that has absorbed millions of households previously considered to be in the middle income or middle class. The two economists wrote in their study, decrying a shrinking or hollowing out of the middle class is just a gloomy way of saying that the upper middle class has boomed and fewer families are in hardship. Nationally, the upper class, defined by the authors as families earning roughly $133,000 to $400,000 in today's dollars, grew from 10% of families in 1979 to 31% in 2024.
Over that same period, the share of families classified as poor or near poor fell from 30% to just 19%. The core middle class shrank from 36 to 31 percent, with the authors arguing that this decline is explained by upward mobility, not downward pressure. With them writing, it is simply inaccurate to characterize the shrinking middle class as reflecting diminished economic security rather than material progress. And here in North Carolina, the numbers bear that out. About 535,000 North Carolina households earn at least $100,000 a year in 2010, which is equivalent to roughly $144,000 in today's dollars.
But by 2024, nearly 878 households earned at least $150,000 a year, clearing an even higher real income bar. Joseph Harris, who is a fiscal policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, said that inflation-adjusted figures tell a consistent story at both ends of the distribution, saying in part, even when using higher cutoffs to account for inflation, the share of households at the bottom has declined. In 2010, about 9% of North Carolina households earned less than $10,000, which is roughly $14,000 in today's money.
However, in 2024, about 8.7% of households earned less than $15,000, which is a higher threshold, yet a still a smaller share. He added that the top end tells the same story, but in reverse, noting in 2010, 14, right around 14.5% of North Carolina households earned $100,000 a year with inflation. That works out to about $143,000 in today's money.
However, in 2024, Nearly 20% of North Carolina households earned at least $150,000. Again, a higher bar, but a much larger share that cleared it, suggesting that the middle class isn't shrinking because more households are falling behind, but because more are moving up. The AEI report runs counter to the 2024 analysis from the Pew Research Center, which reported that the middle class falling from 61% of households in 1971 to 51% in 2023. Rose and Winship say that the Pew Research used relative definitions of middle class tied to median income, meaning that the middle class can appear to shrink even when everyone's income rises. You can read more on this report.
We've got it linked up over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. We are keeping a close eye on Raleigh today as week two of the legislative short session is set to close out. We are not expecting any additional votes on veto override, not expecting any budget proposals to be brought forward. We did see some movement on the Medicaid rebase yesterday in Raleigh, officially passing the North Carolina House and Senate, with lawmakers expected to be back in Raleigh once again next week as we head into the month of May.
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're back with you tomorrow morning, 5 to 6, right here on Charlotte's FM News Talk. 107.9 FM WBT.
