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The Bottom Line from NC Newsline
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Every weekday, NC Newsline editor and veteran North Carolina policy observer Rob Schofield offers a 60-second take on the key policy issues that impact North Carolinians.
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Our final one-minute commentary
Aug 1500:01:05Tap to summarizePhoto: Clayton Henkel/NC Newsline Two decades ago, the leaders of Capitol Broadcasting Company had a bold and courageous idea: to devote one minute each night after the simulcast of the WRAL News on Mix 101.5 to a no-holds-barred commentary from veteran journalist and political observer, Chris Fitzsimon. For more than a decade, Fitzsimon held forth on scores of vitally important and frequently controversial issues with insightful takes that spoke truth to power and championed the rights of average North Carolinians. In 2017, I was fortunate enough to inherit that role and since then I’ve done my best to build on Chris’s pioneering work. As the old saying goes, however, all good things must come to an end and so it is that this will be — for now anyway – the final commentary in this series. It’s been a great run. Fortunately, the tradition established here continues online. So, if you’d like to keep consuming commentaries that speak truth to power, be sure to make visiting ncnewsline.com a regular part of your week. And so, for one final time: for NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →Bernie Sanders tells it like it is
Aug 1400:01:06Tap to summarizeSen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour in Asheville on August 10, 2025. (Screengrab You Tube livestream) He may now be 83, but few if any American political leaders do a better job of truth-telling and connecting with young people than Vermont’s sagacious Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders was in Asheville this week as part of a national “Fight the Oligarchy” tour and as NC Newsline’s Clayton Henkel reported, the senator pulled no punches in blasting the ruthless and un-American authoritarianism that President Trump and his minions are seeking to inflict on the nation. As Sanders rightfully observed, quote “we are living in a nation in which in many respects we have become an oligarchic society, where our country is being run by a handful of multi-billionaires, and these people worship wealth and they worship power and they could care less about how they get what they want.” Sanders noted further the scandalous fact that one man – Elon Musk — owns more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households. The bottom line: Sanders is too old to run for president again, but his message is fresher and timelier than ever. The nation needs to hear it repeatedly. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →The gerrymandering mess threatens to spiral out of control
Aug 1300:01:05Tap to summarizeDemonstrators gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. to demand fair districting maps. (NC Newsline file photo) Gerrymandering. Most Americans are familiar with this phenomenon in which politicians rig electoral maps and elections for partisan purposes. But unless you’re a serious political observer, you may not be up to speed on just how far out of control this practice has gotten of late or, indeed, how unless something is done soon, it could spiral out of control. And make no mistake: the threat is real. Right now, in Texas, Republican legislators are, at the urging of President Trump, attempting to make a mockery of the 2026 midterm elections by rigging congressional maps in unprecedented ways. And this situation is only fueling efforts in other states – by Republicans and Democrats – to follow suit. It’s a frightening situation that, as we’ve seen repeatedly in North Carolina, makes general elections uncompetitive and gives candidates from the middle no chance of winning. The bottom line: Gerrymandering has come to be one of the greatest threats to American democracy and it’s essential that congressional leaders at some point soon muster the courage to end it. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →The legislature’s mini-budget won’t get the job done
Aug 1200:01:04Tap to summarizeA state flag flies outside the North Carolina Legislative Building on May 8, 2025. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline) As has so often been the case with a legislature that refuses to work and negotiate in good faith, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein had little choice last week but to sign the so-called mini-budget that state lawmakers approved a few days earlier. With the new fiscal year already well-underway and numerous vital public programs and services in jeopardy, Stein understandably had no appetite for provoking a crisis by vetoing what he rightfully described as a “Band-Aid budget.” All that said, the mini-budget bill is deeply and destructively flawed. Among many other things: it fails to provide meaningful raises for teachers and state employees, fails to provide the minimum funding required to keep the state’s Medicaid program healthy, and fails to renew the hugely successful Healthy Opportunities Program that had slashed health expenditures and improved outcomes for low-income Medicaid enrollees. The bottom line: The mini-budget is but the latest example of legislative leaders failing to fulfill their basic duties of governance. All North Carolinians should demand better. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →Simple cruelty
Aug 800:01:05Tap to summarizePhoto: Getty Images The next time someone tries tell you that the North Carolinians with Medicaid health insurance are lazy slackers who participate in a wasteful program that warrants the massive bloodletting President Trump just approved, tell them talk to an actual frightened person who depends on the program. Someone like Maddie Wertenberg. She’s a Wake County mom who had private health insurance, but who still only avoided being stuck with life-altering hospital bills for the care of her premature baby, because he was so tiny he qualified for Medicaid. Or someone like Crystal Upchurch. She’s a lifetime Raleigh resident who is only alive because Medicaid covers the cost of the daily dialysis treatments she receives. The bottom line: Proponents of Trump’s big bill may say they have no intention of cutting off people like Maddie and Crystal, but the massive funding cuts make it inevitable that vast numbers of people with similar stories will be sentenced to crippling debt and premature death. And the sheer cruelty at work here, and the terror its inflicting on millions of good people, is hard to overstate. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →Task force outlines some commonsense first steps to address state’s child care shortage
Aug 700:01:06Tap to summarizeChildren engaged in sensory exercises, often used in special education classrooms. (Photo by Getty Images) Early childhood education. Across much of the rest of the world, free, public early childhood education is a basic right. At a time in which it’s necessary for almost all parents to work in order to make ends meet, these nations have long recognized that there’s no good reason to hold off on providing free public education until children enter Kindergarten. If it hopes to continue to compete and advance, at some point, the U.S. simply must move to make free public education from birth a basic right. Until that time, however, there are some obvious and commonsense steps that should be taken in order to make early childhood education more affordable, and to its credit, a state task force led by Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt recently recommended several – including raising state child care subsidies, establishing partnerships with North Carolina public schools and universities and creating a state child care endowment. The bottom line: The current state child care system is broken. And the task force recommendations are an obvious first step toward constructing something much better. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →A simple and commonsense tax proposal
Aug 600:01:05Tap to summarize(Photo: Getty Images) Tax policy can be maddeningly complex and confusing. Indeed, keeping it that way is one tool the super-rich use to avoid paying their fair share. As Alexandra Sirota of the nonpartisan North Carolina Budget and Tax Center recently observed, however, it doesn’t have to be that way. As she notes, there’s a simple and commonsense solution that would dramatically improve our state’s regressive tax system and raise close to a billion dollars per year – a millionaire’s tax. By raising the state personal income tax rate on annual incomes over a million dollars to seven percent – a rate that would still be lower than what millionaires paid as recently as 2013 – North Carolina would realize an annual boost in state revenue of around $980 million. That would be enough to help insulate the state from the massive cuts in federal dollars that are about to be enacted in Washington. The bottom line: Right now, North Carolina taxes people of fabulous wealth and those living in poverty at the exact same rate. A simple millionaire’s tax would do much to cure this grave inequity. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →Lack of air conditioning in state prisons is cruel and unusual punishment
Aug 500:01:05Tap to summarizeAn incarcerated person working at a North Carolina prison. As a workaround to a labor shortage, North Carolina is relying on some of its incarcerated workforce to install air conditioning in prisons. (Photo from the Department of Adult Correction website.) There are many things that have changed for the better in North Carolina prisons over the last century. That said, it’s also true that North Carolina summers have always been miserably hot and that commercial air conditioning was first introduced nearly a century ago — facts that render the lack of air conditioning in many of our state’s prisons today an absolute scandal. The Department of Correction has been pursuing an initiative to finally end this tortuous situation, but there remains a long way to go as many facilities remain unairconditioned. And that harsh reality is a threat to everyone in the facility – guards and incarcerated people alike – especially men and women prisoners who are elderly and in bad health. The bottom line: As with the lack of adequate staff and so many other inhumanities in our prison system, it’s our cheapskate legislature’s refusal to appropriate adequate funds that is ultimately to blame. One wishes each lawmaker would have to spend a summer night in one of these facilities to experience the cruel and unusual punishment their inaction is inflicting. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →New and damning school voucher data confirm worst fears
Aug 400:01:05Tap to summarizePhoto: Getty Images Ever since North Carolina legislators established the so-called “Opportunity Scholarships” school voucher program, sponsors and proponents have pitched it as a means of helping low-income students escape struggling public schools. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, a new report from the Department of Public Instruction shows that this was all baloney. The DPI researchers found that just sixty-seven hundred of the state’s eighty-thousand-plus vouchers in the current school year went to students who had attended a North Carolina public school in the prior year. And while the data for kindergartners were not yet available, it’s clear that as much as ninety percent or more of new vouchers in 24-25 were for students who have never attended a public school. In other words, the vast majority of voucher money is going to parents – most of them well-off – who never had any intention of sending their kids to public schools. The bottom line: School vouchers in our state have nothing to do with quote “opportunity” and everything to do with undermining and privatizing public education. Other explanations are simply false. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
Transcribe →Democratic lawmaker embarrasses with uninformed anti-immigrant speech
Aug 100:01:05Tap to summarizeNorth Carolina Rep. Carla Cunningham (D-Mecklenburg) speaks on the House floor on July 29, 2025. Cunningham voted to override one of Gov. Josh Stein's vetoes, breaking with her Democratic Party colleagues. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline) It’s no surprise that State Rep. Carla Cunningham – a Democrat from Mecklenburg County — declined to speak with reporters this week after helping to override Gov. Stein’s veto of a mean-spirited and ill-conceived anti-immigrant bill. That’s what often happens when a politician puts their foot in their mouth. House Bill 318 will force local sheriffs – even when it makes their communities less safe—to cooperate with federal ICE officials in detaining people merely accused of criminal offenses. It’s one of the ham-handed tactics the Trump administration has been using to terrorize immigrant communities and round up good people for deportation. Unfortunately, all of this seems to have escaped Cunningham, who not only provided the decisive ‘yes’ vote, but who also gave an uninformed speech in which she accused immigrants of exploiting and abusing native born Americans and implied that immigrant cultures are inferior. The bottom line: Cunningham embarrassed herself and her constituents – many of them foreign born – with her cruel rant. One prays she’ll awaken soon from her delusions. For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.
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