News from the South - North Carolina News Feed

Diversity and equity efforts quietly being eliminated at NC agencies

Published

5 months ago

February 7, 2025

Staff Editor

carolinapublicpress.org – Lucas Thomae – 2025-02-07 08:00:00

Feeling emboldened, NC agencies taking ASAP approach to DEI efforts

by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press
February 7, 2025

State departments and agencies have begun to scale back their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — some openly, others quietly.

State Auditor Dave Boliek and Labor Commissioner Luke Farley, both freshly-elected Republicans, announced their intentions to eliminate DEI from their internal policies in late January press releases.

Their announcements came on the heels of President Donald Trump issuing several executive actions that take aim at DEI efforts in the federal government. Nationwide polling suggests that Americans are about evenly divided on the issue. However, surveys from the Pew Research Center in 2023 and 2024 show that public support for DEI initiatives might be waning.

Additionally, a number of top companies and major colleges have scrapped DEI programs despite making significant investments to establish them just years earlier.

Taking cues from the national party leadership, some Republican state officials like Boliek and Farley have taken aim at DEI since coming to power after the 2024 elections.

In a late January press release, Boliek argued that “the negative effects of DEI are backed by years of research and studies.”

“DEI is divisive and brings little-to-no return on investment of time and resources. My goal in the Auditor’s Office is to establish a professional workplace where individuals are valued and measured based on merit. Corporations across the country are abandoning DEI, as are colleges and universities, and it’s time for the government to do the same,” the release read.

But skepticism about DEI is not solely a Republican trait it seems.

Other agencies that fall under the umbrella of the executive branch — even those led by Democratic appointees — seem to have gotten cold feet over their diversity initiatives, which in some cases included hiring DEI-specific personnel.

The Departments of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Public Safety and Health and Human Services have all taken steps to distance themselves from DEI with little fanfare, Carolina Public Press has learned.

‘Diversity’ cut from the list

Both the Office of the State Auditor and the Department of Labor said they will no longer consider DEI as a performance measure for their employees.

Performance assessments for state government employees are structured according to a system created by The Office of State Human Resources. Each year, agencies must select certain values to use as a guideline to assess workers. Those values are derived from a list provided by the state.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion” was one of 22 included on the list from last year’s assessment cycle.

So when Boliek and Farley — who declined requests to be interviewed — announced they were eliminating DEI as a performance measure, it meant that “diversity, equity and inclusion” will not factor into upcoming employee reviews.

There’s no indication that either agency’s actions will affect the job status of any of their staff members. A spokesperson from Boliek’s office confirmed that there is nobody on staff with DEI-specific duties.

However, Boliek said in his press release that his office would be conducting an “internal review” in order to identify and scrub diversity, equity and inclusion standards across the department.

Party lines

Other Republican-run state agencies are following suit or already have been.

An official from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which has been led by Commissioner Steve Troxler since 2005, said that the agency also planned to drop DEI from its performance assessments.

The change, which mirrored the actions of the Department of Labor and Office of the State Auditor, was not publicly announced.

Meanwhile, spokespeople from the Department of Insurance and the Office of the State Treasurer told CPP that their internal policies had no DEI initiatives to eliminate.

“I applaud the actions taken by Auditor Boliek and Commissioner Farley,” said State Treasurer Brad Briner in a statement. “I am grateful to be in a position in which we are not forced to remove unfair performance evaluation metrics and can instead focus on valuing employees for the important contributions they make to our state.”

What’s in name?

State agencies headed by Democratic leadership, both elected and non-elected, have generally been more open about their efforts related to diversity and inclusion practices at their workplaces.

That may no longer be the case, as illustrated by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Public Safety removing references to DEI from within their offices beginning last year.

In 2024, the state health department changed the name of its DEI office to the “Office of People, Culture and Belonging.” The reason for the change was to “allow for a greater understanding and flexibility in viewing the work of the office,” the department explained in its annual Equal Employment Opportunity plan.

CPP requested interviews with top leaders, but was told by a spokesperson that “staff are not available.”

Additionally, the department did not respond when asked if it intends to continue operations at the Office of People, Culture and Belonging for the foreseeable future.

Similar changes are taking place at the Department of Public Safety. Since 2022, one of the department’s top leaders, Sherry Hunter, had been the deputy secretary for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Law Enforcement. Her job was to “help DPS achieve the departmental goal of reflecting and representing North Carolinians from all walks of life.”

In August, however, Hunter’s title was changed to “Deputy Secretary for Law Enforcement and Strategic Relations” although her job description remained the same.

She recently began a new role as “Deputy Secretary of Professional Standards” — a change which has yet to be announced publicly or reflected on the department website.

Spokeswoman Laura Hourigan told CPP that Hunter will be leading an entirely different section of the department in this new job.

The department does not intend to hire a replacement for her previous DEI-specific position.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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US House votes to yank funding for NPR, PBS, foreign aid, sending bill to Trump’s desk

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July 18, 2025

Staff Editor

ncnewsline.com – Jennifer Shutt – 2025-07-18 05:46:00

SUMMARY: On July 2, 2025, the U.S. House approved legislation to cancel $9 billion in previously authorized spending on public broadcasting and foreign aid, marking only the second time in over 30 years Congress approved a presidential rescissions request. The 216-213 mostly party-line vote sends the bill to President Donald Trump for signature. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will lose $1.1 billion in funding for NPR, PBS, and local stations. The bill also cuts $8 billion in foreign aid but protects HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and maternal health programs. This follows Senate approval with some adjustments and reflects the White House’s push to focus spending on American interests.

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The post US House votes to yank funding for NPR, PBS, foreign aid, sending bill to Trump’s desk appeared first on ncnewsline.com

News from the South - North Carolina News Feed

Missing voter information the objection of NC search

Published

17 hours ago

July 17, 2025

Staff Editor

carolinapublicpress.org – Sarah Michels – 2025-07-17 14:07:00

by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
July 17, 2025

North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes is setting off on a mission to correct 103,000 North Carolinians’ voting records from which some information is missing.

He maintains that the process, dubbed the Registration Repair Project, will not remove any eligible voters from the state’s voter rolls.

According to the state elections board, 103,270 North Carolina registered voters have records that lack either their driver’s license number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or an indication that they have neither.

Last year, this missing information became the stuff of headlines, lawsuits and the high-profile election protest of Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who lost his bid for state Supreme Court to the incumbent justice, Democrat Allison Riggs, by 734 votes.

In April, the North Carolina Supreme Court declined to remove ballots from the count based on missing identification numbers; they said the state elections board, not voters, was responsible for a faulty voter registration form that didn’t make it abundantly clear that this information was required.

While Griffin lost, the issue he raised remains salient for a newly Republican elections board and the U.S. Department of Justice, which promptly sued the state board over alleged violations of the federal Help America Vote Act’s voter registration provisions.

Thursday, Hayes told reporters that a process he unveiled in late June to gather these missing identification numbers had begun in earnest.

“We must put this issue behind us so we can focus our attention squarely on preparations for accurate and secure municipal elections this fall,” he said.

The plan to collect missing information

There are two groups of voters under Hayes’ plan.

The first group includes registered voters who have never provided a driver’s license, the last four digits of their Social Security number or an affirmation that they lack both. The state elections board has asked county election boards to check their records for these numbers, in case they were provided but not correctly entered into the voting system.

In early August, the state elections board will send letters to the remaining voters in this group requesting the missing information. If affected voters do not comply, they will vote provisionally in future elections. The elections board will create a flag on these voters’ records for poll workers.

The second group includes registered voters whose records do not show that they’ve provided an identification number, but have shown additional documentation at the polls proving their identity and eligibility under HAVA. These voters may vote a regular ballot.

However, the elections board will still send them a letter in a second mailing asking for the missing identification number to bolster the state’s voter records. Even so, if they do not oblige, they still will not be at risk of being disenfranchised, NCSBE General Counsel Paul Cox said.

County election boards have already made progress, and their work will continue as the mailings go out, Hayes said.

Voters can check to see whether they’re on the list of those with missing information by using the Registration Repair Search Tool. If voters don’t want to wait for the August mailing, they can submit an updated voter registration form using their driver’s license through the online DMV portal or visit their county elections board in person with their driver’s license or Social Security card.

“We anticipate the number of voters on the list will decrease quickly as word spreads about this important effort,” Hayes said.

The State Board of Elections unanimously approved the plan last month, despite some concerns from Democrat Jeff Carmon about putting up an extra obstacle for voters because of a problem with missing information that the voters didn’t cause.

“It’s hard to understand starvation if you’ve never felt the pangs of hunger,” Carmon said. “It’s the same situation with voting obstacles. Your perspective of an obstacle may not be the same as someone who’s consistently had their identity and their validity questioned.”

Nonetheless, Carmon and fellow Democrat board member Siobhan Millen ultimately voted in support of the plan.

Same ballot, different rules

Normally, when a voter casts a provisional ballot, the county elections board determines whether their ballot counts by the post-election canvass, held nine days after an election.

Voters may have to provide documentation or information to prove their eligibility to vote in order to be accepted.

The same process applies to the 103,000 affected voters, with a catch. Their vote may be accepted for federal contests, but not state contests, due to a difference in law.

According to the DOJ’s interpretation, the National Voter Registration Act requires all provisional votes of “duly registered voters” to count, Cox said.

But the state elections board has interpreted the state Supreme Court and North Carolina Court of Appeals’ decisions in the Griffin case as requiring a driver’s license, the last four digits of a Social Security number or an affirmation that a voter has neither before accepting their votes in state and local contests.

Under a recent election law change, county election boards have three days to validate and count or reject provisional ballots.

But sometimes, mismatches happen during validation due to database trouble with reading hyphenated names or connecting maiden and married names, for example, Cox said. The board has designed a “fail safe” in case this comes up.

When there’s a mismatch during the validation process, state law allows voters to provide additional documentation — like a driver’s license, bank statement or government document with a voter’s name and address — to prove their eligibility.

“A big chunk of these voters will have already shown HAVA ID, and that’s because in the past, when this information was not supplied, the county boards would still require these voters to show that alternative form of HAVA ID when they voted for the first time,” Cox said.

Poll workers will ask provisional voters to provide this additional documentation so that they can mark it down for later, if validation doesn’t work, he added.

Democrats threaten countersuit

Last week, the Democratic National Committee threatened the state board with litigation if they went ahead with their plan regarding those with missing information.

The letter claimed that the plan would remove eligible voters from the rolls illegally.

Hayes disagrees. In his view, he’s just following the law.

“It’s not the fault of the voters,” he said. “But at the same time, we’re required by the law to go back and collect this information, which should have been done at the time, and it certainly should have been done in the intervening time.”

He also clarified that North Carolina’s photo voter ID requirement won’t suffice for the impacted voters. They still have to vote provisionally so that their identification numbers can go through the validation process, he said.

As for whether his fully fleshed out plan will appease the DNC?

“We hope so,” Hayes said.

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Missing voter information the objection of NC search appeared first on carolinapublicpress.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article presents a balanced and factual report on North Carolina’s voter registration issue, focusing on the administrative process and legal context without overt editorializing. It includes perspectives from both Republican and Democratic figures, highlights legal rulings and procedural details, and covers concerns from Democrats alongside the state elections board’s explanations. The language is neutral, aiming to inform about the complexities of voter ID requirements and the Registration Repair Project without endorsing a particular political stance or framing the issue through a partisan lens.

News from the South - North Carolina News Feed

Cary's Camp Ignite sparks next generation of women in firefighting

Published

19 hours ago

July 17, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – ABC11 – 2025-07-17 18:15:03

SUMMARY: Cary’s Camp Ignite inspires high school girls to pursue firefighting, a traditionally male-dominated field. The camp, drawing teens from seven counties, offers hands-on training in a supportive environment to build confidence and skills. Its motto, “You can’t be what you can’t see,” reflects efforts to increase female representation in fire service. Recent milestones include the first African American female lieutenant and Hispanic female captain in Raleigh Fire Department. Alumni like Katie Nelson, now a volunteer firefighter, help mentor newcomers. Fire departments across the region, facing staffing shortages, actively recruit women. The next Camp Ignite will launch in spring 2026.