Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s lawsuit challenging the transfer of his election appointment power to the Republican state auditor is effectively over after the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the shift in a 5-2 ruling. The court ruled the legislature can assign executive powers within the executive branch, dismissing separation of powers concerns. Democratic justices dissented, arguing the decision ignores voter intent and undermines executive authority. Critics worry this sets a precedent for legislative control over elected officials’ powers. Democrats plan to engage voters, monitor election boards, and aim to flip court seats in 2028 to counterbalance Republican influence.
by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press May 28, 2025
Technically, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s lawsuit against Republican leaders over the transfer of his election appointment power to the state auditor could go on for a number of months. But practically, it’s over.
Friday evening, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the North Carolina Court of Appeals did not break any rules by allowing the power shift to go into effect on May 1, when a new State Board of Elections was appointed by Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek.
While the court did not technically rule on the state constitutional questions at play — does the power shift violate separation of powers or the governor’s duty to faithfully execute the law? — it clearly signaled its approval of the power shift in a 5-2 decision.
Now, the majority Republican Court of Appeals will decide on those questions.
Ultimately, its decision may be appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court to review again. Since the case deals only with the state constitution, there are no federal court appeal options, said Martin Warf, attorney for Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger.
North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton confirmed.
“State court is where this is going to begin and die,” she said. “That’s what Republicans knew going into it.”
How we got here
For nearly a decade, Republican lawmakers have pushed for an elections appointment power shift.
Their various attempts have included a failed constitutional amendment creating an eight-member board with equal party representation, a law shifting appointment power to the legislature and an elimination of the board altogether to form a new Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement.
All have fallen short. Until now.
Last December, the legislature passed Senate Bill 382, a Hurricane Helene relief bill that also shifted elections appointment power from the governor to the state auditor, a newly Republican-held office.
In April, the Wake County Superior Court ruled 2-1 that taking away the governor’s election appointment power would hinder his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
A week later, an anonymous three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals handed down a ruling allowing the power shift to go into effect while they considered the issue. The ruling did not include an explanation.
While Stein asked for the state Supreme Court to step in and postpone the changes until a full decision was made, the court did not do so. If that wasn’t enough to make the court’s stance clear, its Friday opinion certainly did the job.
According to the court’s reading of the state Constitution, the governor may head the executive branch, but he doesn’t “unilaterally exercise the executive power.” That’s for all 10 Council of State members, including the auditor, to share. Furthermore, the General Assembly is granted power under the state Constitution to assign many of those executive powers as they please, the opinion stated.
Separation of powers issues brought up by Stein are irrelevant, the opinion stated. While the legislature is the one making the decisions, the transfer of power is contained within the executive branch.
Democratic Justices Anita Earls and Allison Riggs dissented.
Earls accused her colleagues of “gaslighting” by claiming to not decide the constitutional issue while laying out their logic for supporting the power shift anyways. The majority opinion ignores precedent on executive power, and gives the legislature free rein to “reshuffle the powers and responsibilities of constitutional officers who are elected by the entire state,” she added.
“If the voters of North Carolina wanted a Republican official to control the State Board of Elections, they could have elected a Republican Governor,” Earls wrote. “If they wanted David Boliek (the Auditor) in particular to run our elections, they could have elected him Governor. The voters did not.”
After power shift, what’s next?
Democracy North Carolina policy director Katelin Kaiser worries that the state Supreme Court ruling will create a culture of fear.
What if Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green pushes back on the legislature’s stance on DEI? Are they going to modify his powers, Kaiser asked.
“It creates a requirement of loyalty to the North Carolina General Assembly,” she said. “Rather than the separation and balance of powers, it’s the General Assembly’s say, and if you don’t fall in line, you could be next.”
The courts won’t offer any relief, Clayton said, so instead she’s looking to another source of power: people’s voices.
It’s as important now as ever for educated voters to show up to election board meetings, Clayton said.
“It means making sure that we are present and vocal, and that we’re not also appointing folks that are going to just agree with what the Republican majority on the board says,” she said.
Further down the line, re-electing Justice Earls and flipping Republican state Supreme Court seats in 2028 is the Democratic plan, she said.
“We know that Republicans do not believe in fair and impartial judgments anymore,” Clayton said. “They believe in partisan acts and empowering their own party to ignore the Constitution.”
Kaisersaid Democracy NC will bolster its county election board monitoring program and continue advocating for elections officials. For example, they’d like the legislature to change a 1999 law that allows county elections directors to be paid as little as $12 an hour.
“We’ve seen time and time again that their workload increases, and yet, many times the state does nothing to support,” she said.
There’s no question that Republican legislators will win the case, Common Cause policy director Ann Webb said. The only question is how long it will take until the litigation officially ends.
“I think the question is really up to the Governor at this point, whether to continue to pursue this case, recognizing that it’s been signaled from both of these courts where they stand,” Webb said.
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: Center-Left
This article tends to present the issues from a perspective sympathetic to Democratic viewpoints, emphasizing concerns about Republican-led power shifts in North Carolina’s election appointment process. It highlights Democratic criticisms and warnings about potential erosion of checks and balances, quoting Democratic officials and advocacy groups extensively. At the same time, it provides detailed factual court rulings and includes Republican positions, though with less emphasis. The tone and framing suggest a moderate left-leaning bias focused on defending democratic norms and questioning conservative legislative actions.
SUMMARY: A federal judge blocked President Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose broad global tariffs, prompting the administration to seek a delay and vow to appeal. The ruling stemmed from lawsuits by states and businesses challenging Trump’s declared emergency as fabricated. The decision boosted financial markets but injected uncertainty into economic forecasts. Trump delayed tariffs on the European Union after they agreed to talks, defending his policy as vital to restoring American jobs and correcting trade imbalances. Some companies, like Macy’s, plan selective price increases due to tariffs. Steel, aluminum, and auto tariffs remain unaffected, being imposed under separate laws.
The court said Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally impose some tariffs.
Former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 2,490 individuals nationwide convicted of federal nonviolent drug offenses, with nearly 300 from North Carolina—the most of any state. The action targets outdated sentencing policies, particularly the harsh disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences, which disproportionately affected Black Americans. Crack cocaine offenses carried much harsher penalties despite chemical similarities to powder cocaine. Efforts to reduce this disparity began in the 1980s and included the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 and the First Step Act of 2018. The commutations seek to address past injustices, reduce mass incarceration, and acknowledge that many sentenced individuals would receive shorter terms under current laws.
by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press May 29, 2025
In one of the most sweeping clemency actions in U.S. history, hundreds of people convicted of federal nonviolent drug offenses in North Carolina will return home this year. Days before leaving office in January, former president Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 2,490 such individuals nationwide.
The commutations aimed to correct what the administration called “outdated” sentences, particularly those related to crack cocaine — a category where enforcement and sentencing have historically had a disproportionate impact on Black Americans.
Commutation is one of the executive clemency powers granted to the president in the U.S. Constitution. It stops just short of a full pardon, allowing the president to shorten the length of a person’s sentence without fully forgiving the crime.
Everyone granted a commutation would have received shorter sentences under today’s policies, Biden said in his announcement of the action.
The case for clemency
Nearly 300 of those commutation recipients were convicted in North Carolina, more than any other U.S. state, according to an analysis from Carolina Public Press. Of those 292 commutation recipients, nearly half were convicted of possession with intent to distribute “cocaine base”, more commonly known as crack.
Since the 1980s, offenses involving crack cocaine have been treated more harshly by prosecutors than powder cocaine. This is despite no chemical difference between the two forms of the drug.
Under federal law, possession of 28 grams or more of crack cocaine merits the same five-year minimum sentence as possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine.
People sentenced for crack cocaine are more likely to be Black, while people sentenced for powder cocaine are more likely to be Latino or white, according to a data brief authored by Princeton University students in December.
Elissa Johnson, a former attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center who currently leads criminal justice campaigns for bipartisan advocacy group FWD.us, told CPP that 88% of clemency recipients were Black, many of whom were sentenced under the crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity.
“Clemency was an opportunity to address those past injustices with an understanding that it doesn’t make sense to keep people in prison longer, when we know that those sentences would be shorter today,” Johnson said.
Reform efforts stretch decades
The crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity was first written into law in 1986 by a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Biden, then the junior senator from Delaware.
The original statute was even more strict — a 100:1 difference in sentencing thresholds between crack and powder cocaine.
The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced that disparity to 18:1, and in 2018 Donald Trump signed the First Step Act, which retroactively reduced sentences for people convicted of crack cocaine-related offenses prior to 2010.
Four years later, then-Attorney General Merrick Garlanddirected all federal prosecutors to treat crack cocaine the same as powder cocaine during sentencing. That policy has remained untouched since Trump returned to the White House this year.
Lawmakers have introduced bills to codify the change into federal statute a couple times over the past few congressional cycles, but it has yet to be brought to a vote in either chamber.
A group of current and former Democratic lawmakers signed a letter to Biden in November asking him to use his powers of clemency to reduce the sentences of people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. Two members of Congress from North Carolina, Rep. Alma Adams, D-Charlotte, and Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-Chapel Hill, signed that letter.
Foushee commended Biden’s actions in an email statement.
“Mass incarceration attacks the most vulnerable Americans — and these pardons, including 263 people incarcerated in North Carolina prisons, helps keep families together and prevents intergenerational trauma,” she said.
The anatomy of federal drug cases
The vast majority (78%) of the 292 people offered commutations for crimes prosecuted in North Carolina were charged with distribution, manufacturing or possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute.
Crack was the most common drug cited in those charges, with powder cocaine in a distant second, followed by heroin, fentanyl, marijuana and methamphetamine.
The crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity reveals itself in the North Carolina data. Commutation recipients convicted of possessing crack cocaine with intent to distribute served 13 years, five months on average — nearly two years more than powder cocaine cases.
Other common charges among the North Carolina commutation recipients were conspiracy to commit drug offenses, use or possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, unlawful possession or transfer of firearms and aiding and abetting.
Most drug crimes are prosecuted at the state, not federal level. The commutations involve only federal cases. Federal law enforcement typically becomes involved in instances of drug trafficking across state or national borders.
However, most people convicted of drug trafficking at the federal level did not hold a leadership or supervisory role in the operation. According to the aforementioned Princeton research, only 6% to 7% of all individuals sentenced for crack cocaine trafficking between 2015 and 2022 held a supervisory role in the operation based on data from the United States Sentencing Commission.
What clemency data doesn’t show
Exactly why North Carolina had the most commutations of any other state is difficult to answer.
One possibility is the location of the Butner federal prison complex in Granville County, which houses 5,000 inmates across four facilities of varying security levels. The complex includes the largest medical complex in the federal Bureau of Prisons system, which operates a drug treatment program.
“It’s the largest prison hospital in the federal system with lots of people who are very sick,” Ben Finholt of the Wilson Center at Duke Law explained in an email.
“And many of those people are worthy clemency recipients.”
Of course, such a designation is subjective, and there are no guidelines given to U.S. presidents about who may be offered clemency. People with medical conditions can often make sympathetic candidates for clemency.
Russ Ferguson, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, told CPP in an email that while his office respected the authority of the president to grant clemency, he did not think the sentences that Biden commuted were “unfair or disproportionate.”
Sixty people sentenced in the Western District received a commutation from Biden, although Ferguson prosecuted none of them. He replaced a Biden appointee who resigned her position soon after Trump took office in January.
“We put a great deal of effort into calculating and arguing for appropriate and fair sentences for every defendant we prosecute,” Ferguson said.
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: Center-Left
This article presents a generally factual account of President Biden’s clemency actions focused on nonviolent federal drug offenders, emphasizing racial disparities in sentencing and historical context. It highlights criticisms of past sentencing laws and references bipartisan reform efforts, while including supportive quotes from criminal justice advocates and Democratic lawmakers. The coverage is sympathetic to the clemency initiative and its social justice goals, but also notes opposing views from a U.S. Attorney defending sentencing fairness. The framing and choice of sources lean moderately left by focusing on systemic injustice and reform, without overt partisan language or ideological advocacy.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-29 07:46:00
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein warns that repealing the $891 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 could cost the state tens of thousands of jobs by 2030. Highlighting North Carolina’s leadership in clean energy with over 20,000 jobs and $24 billion in investments, Stein urges Congress to protect these tax credits that bolster clean energy growth. The Tax Foundation critiques the Act’s costliness, while Rep. Mike Johnson calls for reforms. New clean energy projects, like Boviet Solar’s $294 million factory in Greenville expected to create 900 jobs, exemplify the sector’s growth. Repeal could also raise electricity costs by $200 annually for families.
(The Center Square) – Repeal of the $891 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 could cost North Carolina “tens of thousands of jobs by 2030,” Gov. Josh Stein says.
The first-term Democrat took advantage Wednesday of the annual Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State University in Raleigh to champion the state’s energy sector.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein
Governor.NC.gov
“North Carolina is a leader in the clean energy economy, and we are home to more than 20,000 clean energy jobs and $24 billion in clean energy investments,” Stein said. “Our state is well-positioned to continue that success, and I urge Congress to protect the clean energy investments that have contributed to our state’s prosperity.”
The Tax Foundation, a leading nonpartisan nonprofit with mission to examine tax policies leading to greater economic growth, says the tax breaks of the Inflation Reduction Act have proven more expensive than originally forecast. U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., speaker of the House of Representatives, says the reform is “somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer.”
Transcribed, it’s elimination of policies not working and tweaks to those that do work, the Tax Foundation says.
Greenville is the latest new home for the clean energy industry. Boviet Solar celebrated a grand opening of the first phase of its factory there in April enabling annual photovoltaic module output capacity of 2 gigawatts. The second phase is expected to be in operation next year.
The facility is valued at $294 million. State and local incentives over a dozen years are $34.6 million for the Vietnamese solar company. The projection is for the entire project to yield 900 new jobs.
Stein said repeal of the Biden administration act would also cost “billions in clean energy investments spurred by clean energy and manufacturing tax credits.” His office says families in the state would likely have an annual increase of $200 to their electricity costs.
He’s hopeful the congressional delegation of 10 Republicans and four Democrats will retain the clean energy tax credits.
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
The article offers a straightforward report on the differing perspectives regarding the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and its impact on North Carolina, primarily featuring statements from a Democratic governor advocating for the continuation of clean energy tax credits, alongside references to analyses from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation and a Republican congressional leader expressing a more cautious view of the legislation. The language remains factual and neutral without endorsing either position, presenting both the economic benefits claimed by supporters and the concerns highlighted by critics. This balanced presentation, with no evident framing favoring one ideological position, aligns with neutral, factual reporting rather than advancing a particular political bias.
