North State Journal Vol. 7, Issue 40

Biden ‘disinformation czar’ registers as a foreign agent

Washington, D.C.

The Biden administration’s proposed disinformation czar has registered as a foreign agent.

Nina Jankowicz filed papers indicating that she is working for a British ‘antidisinformation’ group that takes funding from the U.K. government, according to a report in the Daily Caller.

The documents registering Jankowicz as a foreign agent, required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), say she “supervises research, executes business strategy, oversees the establishment of Centre for Information Resilience’s research, communicates with the media, and briefs individuals and officials on CIR’s research.”

According to the outlet, it is a one-year contract that began in September, a few months after the Biden administration abandoned its plans for a Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security.

State gas tax will increase in 2023

Raleigh

The motor fuels and alternative fuels tax rate for the period of Jan. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2023, will increase from 38.5 cents to 40.5 cents per gallon, according to the N.C. Department of Revenue.

The motor fuel excise tax rate is calculated by using the motor fuel excise tax rate of the preceding calendar year, multiplied by a percentage. The percentage is 100% plus or minus the sum of the annual percentage change in state population for the applicable calendar year, multiplied by 75% and the annual energy index percentage change in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, multiplied by 25%.

In addition, the inspection tax will remain at .0025 cents per gallon.

USA advances in World Cup

Doha, Qatar

The USA Men’s National soccer team defeated Iran on Tuesday by a 1-0 score to advance to the knockout round of the World Cup. Star striker Christian Pulisic scored the only goal of the game.

GOP’s new committee leaders prepare blitz of investigations

WASHINGTON, D.C. — House Republicans are promising ag gressive oversight of the Biden administration once they assume the majority next year, with a par ticular focus on the business deal ings of presidential son Hunter Biden, illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and the origi nations of COVID-19.

Republicans won’t have enough votes to advance key legislative priorities if there is no Democrat ic buy-in, but their oversight of government agencies could put Democrats on the defensive and dampen support for the Biden ad ministration going into the 2024 presidential elections.

Some of the lawmakers expect ed to lead those investigations once House Republicans select their new committee chairs: Judiciary’s big role

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is ex pected to serve as the next chair man of the House Judiciary Com mittee. Jordan helped form and then lead the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus. Presi dent Donald Trump thought so highly of Jordan that he presented the congressman with the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presi dential Medal of Freedom.

The Judiciary Committee han dles oversight of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and issues such as crime, immi gration and protection of civil lib erties. It’s typically one of the most partisan committees on Capitol Hill, yet Jordan’s combative style stands out even there. The com mittee would be the place where any effort would begin to impeach a member of the Biden adminis tration, as some Republicans have been proposing for Homeland Se curity Secretary Alejandro Mayor kas.

Jordan’s inquiries to the admin

istration in recent months make clear the committee will investi gate the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. He has also advocat ed for a wide-ranging look at the Biden administration’s immigra tion policies and the origins of COVID-19.

“All those things need to be in vestigated just so you have the truth,” Jordan told conservative activists last summer at a confer ence.

Oversight’s long list

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is ex pected to serve as the next chair man of the House Oversight and Reform Committee and has made clear that investigating President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will be one of his top priorities. The Repub licans say their investigation of Hunter Biden’s business dealings is to “determine whether these ac tivities compromise U.S. nation al security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality.”

Comer has also been laying the groundwork for investigating the situation on the U.S-Mexico bor der. He sent a letter to Mayorkas seeking an array of documents and communications pertaining to the administration’s border policy. “We cannot endure another year of the Biden Administration’s failed border policies,” the letter said.

But that’s just a slice the com mittee’s focus.

“We’re going to investigate be tween 40 and 50 different things,” Comer said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.” “We have the ca pacity. We’ll have 25 members on the committee, and we’re going to have a staff close to 70. So we have the ability to investigate a lot of things.”

The federal government’s spending in response to COVID-19 will also be scrutinized.

Members named in commission to reform UNC System appointments

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — The day before Thanksgiving, North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper named the members of a com mission he created that will find ways to “reform and strengthen” how UNC System board mem bers are chosen.

Former UNC System presi dents Tom Ross (2011-16) and Margaret Spellings (2016-19) were designated as the co-chairs by Cooper at a press conference announcing the commission.

Joining Ross and Spellings are three lawmakers: current House

Cooper also named W. Lou is Bissette Jr., an attorney with McGuire Wood & Bissette in Asheville; Dr. Nicole Dobbins, an associate professor of spe cial education at North Carolina A&T; Ann Goodnight, an edu cation philanthropist and wife of billionaire CEO and founder of SAS Institute Jim Goodnight; Dr. Clifford A. Jones, Sr., a senior pastor at Friendship Mission ary Baptist Church in Charlotte; Gary Locklear, a retired former superior court judge; Karen A. Popp, an attorney with the global law firm Sidley Austin LLP; Hon. Judge Cressie Thigpen, Jr., an

See COOPER , page A2

UNC enrollment dropped in 12 of 16 system schools

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — Enrollment in 12 of the 16 UNC System schools declined this fall for the first time in nine years, accord ing to the 2022 Fall Enrollment Report. Only four schools saw increased enrollment; Eliza beth City State, Fayetteville State, N.C. A&T and UNC Chapel Hill.

The report was presented at the Nov. 16 meeting of the UNC Board of Governors’ Commit tee on Educational Planning, Policies, and Programs meet ing.

Per the report, the overall en rollment for fall 2022 across the UNC System was 239,663 stu dents. That is a decrease of 4,837 students (almost 2%) f rom the previous fall and the lowest to tal enrollment since Fall 2018.

New student enrollment also fell. First-time freshmen de creased by 390 (just over 1%)

Gov. Roy Cooper says changes needed to ‘reform and strengthen’ how board members are chosen

Majority Leader Rep. John R. Bell IV, current UNC Board of Governors member and former state Rep. John Fraley, and cur rent state Sen. Gladys A. Robin son.

The Associated Press

NC A&T penalized for outof-state over-enrollment; board seeks out-of-state tuition hike

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE | AP PHOTO

From left, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, speak to reporters following a Republican Conference meeting at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

DAVID SINCLAIR | FOR NORTH STATE JOURNAL

The Blessing of the Hounds is a Thanksgiving tradition in Southern Pines that has endured for more than a 100 years. It marks the first of the season for the Moore County Hounds. The riders and hounds gather to receive a blessing from a local priest in a tradition that dates back to medieval times.

“We believe that there have been hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars wasted over the past three years, so that spans two administrations, in the name of COVID. We want to try to de termine what happened with the fraudulent unemployment insur ance funds, the fraudulent PPP loan funds, some of this money that’s being spent for state and local governments in the COVID stimulus money,” Comer said.

Afghanistan in focus

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Tex as, is expected to serve as the next chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which will be investigating the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. McCaul reiter ated a request in mid-October for various documents and directed the State Department to preserve all records related to the chaotic withdrawal, which included the loss of 13 U.S. service members killed during a suicide bombing attack.

“The way it was done was such a disaster and such a disgrace to our veterans that served in Afghani stan. They deserve answers to the many questions we have,” McCaul said on ABC’s “This Week.” He added: “Why wasn’t there a plan to evacuate? How did it go so wrong?”

Spotlight on energy and taxes

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., is expected to serve as the next chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has the broadest jurisdiction of any au thorizing committee in Congress, from health care to environmental protection to national energy poli cy. Republicans on the committee have already spent months inves tigating the origins of COVID-19 and are expected to continue that work in the next Congress.

Reps. Jason Smith, R-Mo., Adrian Smith, R-Neb., and Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., have expressed interest in serving as the next chairman of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, which has already been seeking docu ments related to the spending in the nearly $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that Democrats passed early last year.

I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 2:1

We must test all our pleasures and amusements by this rule:

“Lovers of pleasure — rather than lovers of God; having a form of godliness — but denying its power.” 2 Timothy 3:4-5

Is the love of pleasure and amusement growing on you — gaining the power and authority over you? Is it dulling the keenness of your zest for spiritual pleasures?

Is it making Bible study, prayer, communion with Christ, and meditation upon holy themes — less sweet enjoyments than they once were? Is it making your hunger for righteousness, and for God — less intense? Is it interfering with the comfort and blessing which you used to find in church services, or in Christ’s work?

If so, there is only one thing to do — hurry to return to God, to abandon the pleasure or amusement which is imperiling

ENROLLMENT, from page A1

and new graduate students de creased for the first time in eight years, dropping by 1,425 (7.84%).

New transfer student enroll ment declined for the fourth straight year, coming in at 15,623 for 2022 it’s lowest level since 2013. The report says the transfer drop “mirrors” national trends.

The UNC System continued to see significant enrollment de mand from first-time freshmen outside North Carolina. The per centage of out-of-state first-time freshmen increased from 15.9% in 2021 to 18.4% in 2022. This represents a significant one-year increase, and the 2022 percent age is the highest in the past 10 years.

The report says external pro jections had anticipated a “signif icant dip in North Carolina high school graduates in 2022 and sig nificant national declines over the next decade.” In the same vein, the report says the number of high school graduates is project ed to peak around 2025 and then decrease through 2037 to levels similar to that of 2015.

Looking at enrollment from a diversity perspective, minority and underrepresented ethnici ties increased for the 10th year in

your soul, and to find in Christ, the joy which the world cannot give, and which never harms any aspect of life.

We must test all our pleasures and amusements by this rule: Are they helping us to grow into Christlikeness and spiritual beauty?

a row. Per the report, one out of every three students in the UNC System is now classified as an un derrepresented minority student.

“Between the fall of 2013 and the fall of 2022, the percentage of students enrolled in the UNC System from an underrepresent ed minority group (American In dian or Alaska Native; Black or African American; Hispanic or Latino; or two or more races) in creased from 29.1 percent to 34.7 percent,” the report states. “The largest increase was for individ uals who identify as Hispanic or Latino, who increased from 4.7 percent to 8.7 percent during that time.”

Out-of-state student demand for UNC System schools was “unprecedented” this year, and according to the report, four schools exceeded their caps for out-of-state enrollment: N.C. A&T (41%), NC State (19%), UNC Wilmington (20%) and Western Carolina (22%).

This is the second year in a row N.C. A&T has exceeded its 35% out-of-state cap and the Board of Governors voted to fine N.C. A&T $1.97 million as a result. The fine will go to the UNC Need-Based Financial Aid Program.

Board member and former statehouse senator Joel Ford op

“All things are lawful — but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful — but not all things edify.” 1 Corinthians 10:23

J.R. Miller was a pastor and former editorial superintendent of the Presbyterian Board of Publication from 1880 to 1911. His works are now in the public domain.

New transfer student enrollment declined for the fourth straight year, coming in at 15,623 for 2022 — it’s lowest level since 2013.

posed the fine, saying he “can’t punish a HMSI (historically minority-serving institution) for being successful.” Following Ford’s remarks, the chairman of the board’s budget and finance committee, James L. Holmes, in dicated further discussion of the program was needed.

Just this past spring, the board had increased out-of-state enroll ment limits at five schools includ ing N.C. A&T. Caps were raised to 25% at Fayetteville State and Winston-Salem State, 35% at N.C. A&T and N.C. Central, and 50% at Elizabeth City State Uni versity.

The Board of Governors’ Ed ucational Planning Committee has recommended that the board increase the out-of-state cap from 18% to 25% at five more schools to include East Carolina Universi ty, UNC Asheville, UNC Greens

boro, UNC Pembroke and West ern Carolina University.

Enrollment drops could have a financial impact since the UNC System receives state funding. But with out-of-state de mand increasing, the UNC Board of Governors has signaled it will raise the out-of-state enrollment cap at five more of the system’s schools.

U NC System officials plan to ask lawmakers next year for addi tional funding for UNC Asheville, UNC Greensboro and UNC Pem broke where the decline in stu dents has been particularly sharp and the Board of Governors has proposed a funding drop cap for the affected schools, according to a report by Business NC.

Additionally, finances might be shored up through a 5% outof-state tuition increase which appears to have been approved by the Budget, Finance and Infra structure Committee at a Nov. 9 Board of Trustees meeting. The increase for out-of-state under graduate student tuition would take effect next year. That 5% translates to a tuition increase of $1,780. Tuition will go from $35,580 this year to $37,360 next year for nonresident undergrad uates. In-state tuition will not change.

COOPER, from page A1

other retired judge who served on both the superior court and court of appeals; John L. Townsend, III, the current UNC Investment Fund chair; and CEO Emeritus of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Brad Wilson.

Except for Dobbins and Good night, all the members of the com mission have served on a UNC System board or individual insti tution board at some point in time.

The governor created the Com mission on the Future of Public Universities in North Carolina through executive order 272 is sued on Nov. 1. A 15-member com mission will evaluate the current governance structure of the entire University of North Carolina Sys tem which serves around 240,000 students.

The governor’s executive order lists three main tasks, the first of which is to determine who should appoint the members of the UNC System Board of Governors as well as the members of each insti tution’s Board of Trustees.

The other two goals laid out by Cooper are deciding how to ensure that the composition of those boards “reflects the region al, ethnic, racial, gender, gender, political, and economic diversity of the state” and create a “set of principles and responsibilities” that should apply to all members of those boards.

The commission will meet up to four times and return recom mendations to Cooper’s office within eight months or sometime around July 1, 2023.

Any recommendations the commission makes will likely be

symbolic as the General Assem bly would have to approve any changes. Following the midterm elections, Republicans now hold a supermajority in the Senate and are one vote shy of a supermajority in the House.

“The UNC system is the envy of the nation for what we have built here,” Cooper said during a press conference announcing the commission. “But there are signs of trouble that come when all of the appointed leaders are chosen by too few. We have an appointed university leadership that doesn’t come close to reflecting our diver sity.”

Cooper, now in the final two years of his second term, wants to change the voting member se lection process used by the legis lature that has remained largely unchanged for decades.

In 2017, the General Assembly altered the appointment method for certain campus trustee board positions by moving them from the governor’s purview to that of the legislature. The commission’s recommendations could hand those appointments back to the governor’s office, however, The Associated Press reported Cooper said he’d ask that change not take effect until 2025 when he leaves office.

Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) and House Speaker Tim Moore’s Chief of Staff Neal Inman were apparently not buying the governor’s commission pitch, per comments reported by The Asso ciated Press.

“You’d have to be naïve to think the purpose of this ‘commission’ is to do anything other than rec ommend the governor obtain par

tisan appointments to university boards,” Berger said.

Inman pointed out the state constitution places governance of higher education with the Gener al Assembly. Inman also agreed with Berger’s sentiments, writing in an email there is “no interest in changing the structure of the UNC system, regardless of what ever report this politically-moti vated commission produces.”

At the news conference an nouncing the new commission held at the Executive Mansion, Cooper was joined by both of the former UNC System presidents Ross and Spellings.

“Seeking unbiased review and recommendations on proposed reform from bipartisan leaders with first-hand experience build ing our great universities will en sure the UNC System’s continued success and I appreciate President Ross’s and President Spellings’s willingness to lead this commis sion,” Cooper said in the news re lease that followed the press con ference.

The governor’s announcement of the commission went on to claim, “a spate of controversies over the last few years has led to concerns that boards plagued by undue political influence and bu reaucratic meddling hinder effec tive university governance” and blamed “instability and political interference” for impacting the system’s reputation and student experiences.

Ross was hired in 2011 to head up the UNC System. At the time he took over as president, the na tion’s economy was in a recession that resulted in system budget cuts and a 55% increase in the av

erage tuition between 2008 and 2011.

While president, Ross along with then-UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt oversaw the investigation by former feder al prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein into allegations of widespread ac ademic fraud by student athletes at Chapel Hill from 1993 to 2011.

Published in October 2014, the Wainstein report detailed more than 3,000 students had been en rolled in “paper classes” that didn’t exist outside Chapel Hill’s Depart ment for African American stud ies.

In 2015, 31 of the 32 Board of Governors voted to fire Ross, who left the role officially in 2016 af ter receiving a raise in salary to $600,000. Democrats, including Cooper, characterized the firing as Ross being “forced out.” He was a former Davidson College presi dent as well as a former judge. He also headed up the left-leaning Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

A former U.S. education secre tary under President George W. Bush, Spellings was Ross’ replace ment. She oversaw a turbulent period as Cooper and the legis lature fought over the Charlotte Ordinance that allowed men into women’s bathrooms and the sub sequent passage of House Bill 2 that reversed the ordinance.

Spellings’ appointment was met with protests by various stu dent groups. During her brief tenure, she also presided over protests demanding the removal of Confederate statues like Silent Sam on the UNC Chapel Hill campus.

Spellings resigned in 2018 after just two years on the job with a parting severance of

PUBLIC DOMAIN

“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” by Isaak Asknaziy (19th Century) is an illustration from Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopedia.

Firearms advocacy group files second permit delay lawsuit against Mecklenburg sheriff

has been a backlog at the VA which is under no obligation to provide information for background check services on non-veterans.

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — The largest gun rights advocacy group in the state is following through on its promise to file a second lawsuit over contin ued delays to concealed carry per mits against Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden.

Grassroots North Carolina (GRNC) will be filing a complaint and request for injunctive relief with the U.S. District Court For The Western District Of North Carolina. The complaint alleges violations of both the Second and 14th amendments.

“Despite a consent order requir ing him to obey North Carolina law, Sheriff Garry McFadden ap pears to be deliberately delaying and obstructing concealed hand gun permit applications by flood ing the Veterans Administration with records requests, even for applicants who never served in the military,” GRNC President Paul Valone said in a statement.

Per the complaint, GRNC says sheriffs in the state’s other 99 counties have been able to issue or deny all Concealed Handgun Per mits (CHP) applications within the statutory 45-day window, yet Mc Fadden is dragging out application processing for more than a year.

In its press release, GRNC al leges McFadden has been delaying permit issuance by making “nu merous irrelevant mental health records requests to the VA [Veter ans Administration].” The group says McFadden is making the re quests not just for veteran appli cants but for all concealed hand gun permit applicants. The result

“McFadden seems to think he can play a game of ‘Whac-A-Mole’ in which we win an injunction and consent order requiring him to issue handgun permits in com pliance with North Carolina law, only to have him exploit yet an other abusive interpretation of the law,” said Valone. “But McFadden is mistaken. As we have said pre viously, Grassroots North Carolina and Gun Owners of America will file as many lawsuits as necessary to ensure that this sheriff and other sheriffs comply with the law.”

GRNC notes the requests made by McFadden are redundant since the “NICS Improvement Act of 2007” requires the VA to report mental health disqualifications to the National Instant Background Check system, the system state law requires sheriffs to access to pro cess firearms applications.

The complaint also charges that McFadden is misinterpreting state statutes by claiming that he has 45 days after his office receives mental health records to process applica tions even though the law states the time limit is 45 days and receipt of mental health records.

“With our legal hand strength ened by the recent Supreme Court decision in NY State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen, we have a strong position to win this suit, meaning McFadden’s obstructionism serves only to unfairly burden the taxpay ers of Mecklenburg County with the costs of pointless litigation,” Valone said.

The firearms advocacy organi zation successfully sued McFadden over permit delays in 2021, result ing in a preliminary injunction and consent order issued in May and June of this year, respectively.

The preliminary injunction is sued in May by Judge Karen

Eady-Williams ordered McFadden to process pistol purchase permits within the 14 days required by state law and concealed carry per mit applications within the 45 days as required by state statute. Ad ditionally, McFadden’s office was directed to request mental health records to process concealed hand gun applications within the state law requirement of 10 days and to process fingerprints for concealed carry applicants within five busi ness days.

The June 2022 consent order re quires McFadden to comply with state law that says pistol permit purchase applications have to be processed within 14 days, finger printing for concealed carry per mits must be done the same day the application is made, and all requests for mental health records for concealed handgun applicants must follow state law and be done within 10 calendar days of receiv ing the application.

The consent order also directs McFadden to either issue or deny a concealed carry application within 45 days after receiving the appli cation and mental health records.

The order specifically states that McFadden “shall not otherwise vi olate or fail to comply with” state laws governing the issuance of pis tol purchase and concealed carry permits.

McFadden is not the only sheriff to be successfully sued by GRNC over permit delays.

In August 2021, the same month GRNC first sued McFadden, a fed eral judge ordered Wake County Sheriff Gerald Baker to pay more than $26,000 to the plaintiffs in a pistol permit delay case original ly filed in April 2020. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and GRNC filed the suit along with Kelly Stafford, a member of GRNC and a Wake County resident who has been denied a permit by Baker.

Pence calls on Trump to apologize for dinner with ‘antisemite’ Kanye

By Jill Colvin The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday said Donald Trump “demonstrat ed profoundly poor judgment” and called on him to apologize after the former pres ident had dinner last week with a Holo caust-denying white nationalist and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West days after launching his third campaign for the White House.

“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holo caust denier, a seat at the table and I think he should apologize for it. And he should de nounce those individ uals and their hateful rhetoric without qual ification,” Pence said in an interview with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert airing Monday night.

“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier, a seat at the table and I think he should apologize for it.”

Trump has said that he had “never met and knew nothing about” Fuentes, who had accom panied Ye, before the meeting. But he has so far refused to acknowl edge or denounce the positions of either Fuentes or Ye, who has made his own series of antisemit ic comments in recent weeks, leading to his suspension from social media platforms and the end of his ties with major companies like Adidas.

The meeting has been criticized by Jew ish groups like the Zi onist Organization of America, which hon ored Trump just two days before his cam paign launch, Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Chris tie, another potential Trump 2024 rival, who has become an outspo ken Trump critic.

Former Vice President Mike Pence

Still, Pence, who is considering his own potential run against his former boss, said he does not believe Trump is antisemitic or racist and said he would not have served as Trump’s vice president if he was.

“But I think the president demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving those indi viduals a seat at the table and as I said, I think he should apologize for it,” he added. “He should de nounce them without qualifica tion.”

Trump had dinner last Tues day at his Mar-a-Lago club with West, who is now known as Ye, as well as Nick Fuentes, a farright activist with a long history of antisemitic and white nation alist commentary.

“This is just anoth er example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Par ty in 2024,” Christie told The New York Times.

On Saturday, Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, another potential 2024 rival, de nounced antisemitism as “a can cer” without directly referencing the dinner or the president under whom he served.

But other top Republicans, including many considering challenging Trump for the GOP nomination, have so far remained silent, underscoring the hold Trump maintains over the party even as he has been blamed for their worse-than-expected show ing during the midterm elections.

Advisory group continues work revising school grading model

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — Attempts to re design the way North Carolina K-12 public schools are graded continued this month.

The advisory group set up to explore the topic, led by the N.C. Department of Public Instruc tion’s (NCDPI) Office of Innova tion, involves dozens of individ uals, including state officials and lawmakers as well as members representing education consul tants and education nonprofits.

“This process is really import ant, as it allows us to hear from many educators and school lead ers across the state,” State Super intendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt said in a state ment. “Importantly, we are start ing to see some consensus and overlap among stakeholders on the indicators that should be in cluded in the proposed redesign. The work ahead will encompass even greater stakeholder outreach as we continue to discuss possible indicators and seek feedback on emerging trends and themes.”

The group’s primary focus is finding a way to represent school

quality in a way other than the current and unpopular “A-F” grading system, and it is now ex ploring expanding the system to include more academic and non academic criteria.

The current system was imple mented by the General Assembly in 2013. The first school grades for the 2013-14 school year were released by NCDPI in 2015. At that time, Democrat June Atkin son was the state superintendent.

Schools earn an overall nu merical score on a scale of zero to 100 and a corresponding per formance letter grade of A, B, C, D or F — hence the name of the current model.

Under the A-F system, schools

are assigned a letter grade based on two weighted metrics. Eighty percent is based on student

achievement mainly involving test scores but also including ad vanced course participation and graduation rates. The other 20% is tied to academic growth.

A statewide survey conducted in October by education site Ed ucationNC in partnership with NCDPI showed 90% of respon dents favored a model that in cludes more than test scores.

The results were discussed at the advisory group’s Nov. 7 meet ing.

In addition to test scores, the top academic indicators deemed most critical to measure school quality by respondents included closing gaps, graduation rates, postsecondary pathways and

courses offered outside of the core.

For nonacademic indicators, respondents overwhelmingly said “durable skills.” Other top indi cators included school climate, teacher effectiveness, work-based learning, as well as extra-curric ular activities, intra-curricular activities and teacher attendance.

“This work is important and exciting,” Deputy Superintendent Michael Maher said in a press statement. “We’re starting to get a sense of which indicators are im portant. This advisory group has rolled up its sleeves and is work ing hard to inform other leaders about this process and the goal of the work outside of formal meet ings.”

Maher went on to say the NCD PI team overseeing the work will travel the state over the course of the next month to meet with ed ucation stakeholder groups “to narrow down the possible list of indicators for inclusion in the model.”

The advisory group’s next meeting will be in December, at which time feedback from stake holders on the narrowed list of in dicators will be discussed.

Complaint alleges Garry McFadden is using a loophole involving medical records to slow-walk permit approvals

“This advisory group has rolled up its sleeves and is working hard to inform other leaders about this process and the goal of the work outside of formal meetings.”

Deputy Superintendent Michael Maher

AP PHOTO

Ettore Russo fires his pistol at an indoor shooting range during a qualification course to renew his Carry Concealed handgun permit at the Placer Sporting Club in Roseville, Calif.

AP PHOTO

Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks at the annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition on Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in Las Vegas.

Murphy to Manteo Jones & Blount

November is American Indian Heritage Month in NC

Gov. Roy Cooper signed a proclamation earlier this month naming November as American Indian Heritage Month to observe and celebrate the history and heritage of American Indians in the state and nationwide.

North Carolina is home to eight state-recognized tribes: the Coharie, Eastern Band of Cherokee, Haliwa-Saponi, Lumbee, Meherrin, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Sappony and WaccamawSiouan. The state also has four urban Indian associations including the Cumberland County Association for Indian People, Guilford Native American Association, Metrolina Native American Association and the Triangle Native American Association.

State and Federally Recognized Tribes

Coharie

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians*

Haliwa-Saponi

Urban Indian Organizations

Cumberland County Association for Indian People

NC closes out COVID-19 relief fund allocations

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — On Nov. 16, the North Carolina Pandemic Recovery Office (NCPRO) announced the closeout of $3.6 billion in Coronavirus Relief Funds.

submitted its final reports to the U.S. Department of Treasury and the North Carolina General Assembly.

More details about how North Carolina utilized Coronavirus Relief Funds and COVID-19 funding are located on the NCPRO website under its Funding Data Dashboard: https://ncpro. nc.gov

As of July 1, 2022, North Carolina has received more than $110 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funding through three pieces of legislation, the CARES Act of 2020, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 (CRRSA), and the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

State and Federally Recognized Tribes

Lumbee

Meherrin

Coharie

Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians*

Sappony

Haliwa-Saponi

Waccamaw Siouan

Lumbee

Meherrin

*Federally Recognized

Guilford Native American Association

Urban Indian Organizations

Metrolina Native American Association

Cumberland County Association for Indian People

Triangle Native American Society

Guilford Native American Association

“Coronavirus Relief Funds were among the first to get into the hands of local leaders, at a time when we were just beginning to realize the magnitude of COVID-19’s impact on our economy, schools, government services, and healthcare system,” NCPRO Executive Director Stephanie McGarrah said in a press release. “Closing this chapter is a major achievement for NCPRO’s staff and everyone who worked with us during one of the most difficult periods in our state’s history.”

The funding was appropriated by the General Assembly for the most urgent needs across the state during the pandemic and was distributed through a network that included NCPRO and more than 1,700 state agencies, local governments, hospitals, schools, businesses and nonprofits, per the NCPRO release.

In addition to aid for state and local governments, the CARES Act also included programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Interest Payments and enhanced unemployment benefits.

More than 130,000 American Indians reside in North Carolina, making our state the second-largest American Indian population east of the Mississippi River and the seventh largest American Indian population in the nation, according to the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs.

Occaneechi Band of the Sapon Nation

Sappony

Waccamaw Siouan

*Federally Recognized

WEST

Potters market returns after two years

McDowell County

The 34th annual Appalachian Potters Market will run on Dec. 3 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the McDowell High School in Marion. It comes three years after the 33rd annual. As with so many local events, the Potters Market was canceled each of the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to local potters, some of the top potters from Asheville will be in attendance.

The event will also feature live music, coffee and baked goods, and a clay ornament crafting activity for both children and adults.

Smoke from wildfires causes traffic problems

Haywood County

More than 75 firefighting personnel and helicopter crews have been working to fight the wildfire known as the Hurricane Ridge Fire near Harmon Den since the day before Thanksgiving. The blaze has continued to grow and was at 150 acres by the end of Thanksgiving weekend. An incident management crew is expected to arrive on Monday, and rain in the forecast could help slow the fire’s progress. Smoke from the fire has closed local roads and is causing more traffic problems on a section of Interstate 40 where traffic was already slowed due to road construction.

Metrolina Native American Association

Triangle Native American Society

PIEDMONT EAST

Man charged with setting church, Bible on fire

Moore County Shane Deante Jones, 24, of Eagle Springs, was arrested after allegedly breaking into a church and setting the building and the altar Bible on fire. The Candor United Methodist Church in Montgomery County suffered fire damage on Saturday, and an investigation concluded the blaze was set intentionally.

Jones was arrested and charged with breaking and entering of a place of worship, burning a church or religious building and burning personal property.

TV meteorologist, pilot die in news helicopter crash

Police: 1 shot at Walmart, officers search for shooter

Man returned to prison for trafficking

North Carolina received $3.6 billion out of the $150 billion in Coronavirus Relief Funds provided to the states, as well as local governments and U.S. Territories, by Congress through the 2020 CARES Act.

Per NCPRO, the funding amounts included $1.35 billion to state and local Governments, $826 million for health, $664 million went to public services, $478 million for education, $208 million for business relief and recovery, $36 million in individual relief, and $21 million was allocated to infrastructure.

According to the release, NCPRO has

The Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 (CRRSA) provided North Carolina with an additional $9 billion for additional Economic Impact Payments and more than $4 billion allocated to state agencies for specific programs.

Of the $4 billion, the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER II) program received $1 billion. North Carolina received more than $31 billion through ARPA. Included in that allocation were $12 billion in nongrant based Economic Impact Payments and $8 million in other grants. Another $3 billion was supplied for continuation of ESSER. State leaders appropriated an additional $10 billion for other programs, $5 billion of which went to the State Fiscal Recovery Fund.

WLOS

Woman charged with felony in hit-and-run Wikes County

An arrest was made and charges filed in a fatal hit-and-run accident that occurred on Nov. 17. That night, a pedestrian trying to cross N.C. 18 in North Wilkesboro was struck by a southbound Honda Civic. The car then fled the scene. Police responded, and Rolando Aguiar Lopez, 68, of Wilkesboro was pronounced dead at the scene. An investigation eventually led to the arrest of Abby Andrea Lozada, who was charged with felony hit-and-run. MY FOX 8

Middle schooler faces charges after basketball fight Swain County

WLOS

The basketball game between Swain Middle School and Robbinsville Middle School ended in chaos when a Swain player grabbed a Robbinsville player from behind, picked him up and slammed him to the floor. The player was knocked unconscious and was taken to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a concussion. The player’s family is now pursuing charges against the student from Swain.

Murderer to be paroled

CBS17

Mecklenburg County A helicopter pilot and a meteorologist from WBTV died following the crash of the station’s helicopter next to an interstate highway near Charlotte. WBTV broadcasters who had been reporting on the crash identified their colleagues on air. The men were identified as meteorologist Jason Myers and pilot Chip Tayag. The crash occurred along Interstate 77. Johnny Jennings, chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, said no vehicles were involved in the incident. The chief said preliminary witness accounts indicate that the pilot made some “diversionary” maneuvers and “probably saved some lives.”

Robeson County

One person was injured in a shooting inside a Walmart. Lumberton police say that officers were called to the Walmart for a report of gunshots on Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Officers weren’t able to find a shooter or any victims, but surveillance video showed the shooter fleeing as the store was evacuated. Officers were working to find him. The victim arrived at a hospital with a gunshot wound that wasn’t considered life-threatening. Police say the shooting appears to be an isolated incident between two people who know each other.

Nash County Monseque Harper of Rocky Mount will be returning to prison. He was originally convicted in 2017 for conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute heroin. He was released from his four-year sentence, and police received reports that he was dealing the drug again. At a probation hearing, Harper admitted he violated probation by distributing heroin. He also did not complete his required community service as part of his release. He has been sentenced to three-and-a-third years in federal prison for violating probation.

Newton chosen by NC Senate Republicans to be new majority leader

WITN

Surry County William D. Joyce, 57, was convicted in Surry County Superior Court in 1989 on seconddegree murder charges in a 1985 incident. He received a life sentence as well as an additional 40 consecutive years for robbery with a dangerous weapon and larceny of more than $200. Joyce will be paroled, however, as part of the Mutual Agreement Parole Program, sponsored by the North Carolina Post-Release Supervision and Parole Commission, to release inmates convicted of crimes before 1994. Parolees must agree to improve educational and training programs and a self-improvement process. Joyce will not be released until 2024.

MY FOX 8

Cherryville woman celebrates 105th birthday

Gaston County Lorene Summey wanted 105 birthday cards — one for each year of her life — but ended up with more than 1,200, with more arriving daily. She has received cards from all 50 states. Other cards have arrived from as far away as England. Her first birthday party ever celebrated her 105th with dancers and a miniature pony. Cherryville Mayor H.L Beam and Gaston County Commissioner Allen Fraley both attended. Gov. Roy Cooper declared her birthday, Nov. 23, as “Lorene Summey Day” in Gaston County. Beam called the Cherryville native the oldest person living in either Gaston or Lincoln counties.

AP

AP

County health board appoints new director

Beaufort County

JaNell Octigan will take over as the new health director of the Beaufort County Board of Health. Octigan was appointed by the board earlier this month and will take over on Jan. 1. She replaces James Madson, who is retiring at the end of the year. Octigan has worked with the board of health since she was an intern in 2012. She was then hired as a public health education specialist and promoted to human services planner/ preparedness coordinator. For the last nine years, she has served in a variety of officer roles.

Gas station worker stabbed to death

Johnston County

An employee at a gas station in Johnston County was fatally stabbed on Friday. The employee was stabbed inside the bathroom of a Murphy Express gas station on I-40 near Clayton. Police were able to find and arrest a suspect, who was hiding in the woods near the gas station. The victim left the bathroom, called for help and collapsed. A customer in the store and one who had been outside pumping gas both attempted to help, but he was pronounced dead on the scene.

“This

In

(R-Mitchell)

Tom McInnis (R-Moore)

Jim

ABC 11

(R-Lenoir)

WITN

WLOS

North State Journal

RALEIGH — The 30-member N.C. Senate Republican caucus elected Cabarrus County state Sen. Paul Newton to be their new majority leader in the upcoming 2023-24 legislative biennium on Monday. Newton, a retired Duke Energy executive, will take the reins following the retirement of state Sen. Kathy Harrington (R-Gaston).

is a great honor. I’m so appreciative of the support I have received from my colleagues and am ready to build on our prior success of lowering taxes, improving the quality of education, and spending responsibly,”

Newton said in a statement. The Republicans kept Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) as the chamber’s president pro tempore for a sixth consecutive term. Berger said Newton “is a leader within our caucus and acutely aware of what policies are needed to improve our state, and we will all benefit from having him serve as our Majority Leader.”

addition to Newton’s elevation to majority leader, state Sen. Ralph Hise

will be deputy president pro tempore, state Sens.

and

Perry

will be the Senate whips, and state Sen. Carl Ford (R-Rowan) will return as caucus liaison.

STATEment

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

EDITORIAL | FRANK HILL

history versus ‘1619’ fiction

THANKSGIVING IS A UNIQUELY American holiday. It has its religious and historical roots in the Jamestown, Virginia, and Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, settlements in 1619 and 1620, respectively.

Historical revisionists such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times have sought to overturn the meaning and tradition of Thanksgiving as well as the entire establishment of the American colonies by publishing what generously can be called a fictional account of the founding of America, the 1619 Project.

Veracruz, Mexico, where they most certainly would have died in the silver mine operations there.

The British common law which prevailed at the time in the colonies afforded most, if not all, of these landed slaves the opportunity to be freed from indentured servitude after a period of time which is borne out by subsequent legal records and history.

There were no African slaves in the Dutch colonies of Breukelen, Haarlem and Waal Straat in New York which were established starting in 1609.

“The goal of the 1619 Project is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.”

The key phrase in their mission statement is “the story we tell ourselves.” There is no crime in using fictional stories in historical settings to convey a particular political or philosophical view ― Mark Twain did it in “Huckleberry Finn” and became America’s greatest writer.

Peter Wood’s “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project” takes a sharp ax to the premise of the 1619 Project that America was founded solely to establish a nation built on the backs of black slaves. Wood destroys their argument with solid verifiable data and facts, as well he should since he is the president of the National Association of Scholars.

There were no slaves on the ships which delivered colonists to Jamestown in 1619. There were no African slaves on the Mayflower when it landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. There were no African slaves in the Dutch colonies of Breukelen, Haarlem and Waal Straat (Brooklyn, Harlem and Wall Street) in New York which were established starting in 1609.

None of the settlers in Virginia, Massachusetts and New York came to the New World specifically to establish a slaveocracy as Hannah-Jones and The New York Times postulate. They came to get away from personal and religious persecution in the Old World and to establish a new life for themselves and their families.

The roughly 25 slaves who did land in 1619 in Jamestown were brought, perhaps inadvertently, by pirates who had pillaged a slave ship in the Caribbean and then were traded for food and provisions. Soon after, six more African slaves were brought to Jamestown, again by pirates, this time from the Spanish slave ship, San Juan Bautista which was headed to

EDITORIAL | STACEY MATTHEWS

There is hope for journalism yet

AS A MEDIA ANALYST, I talk a lot about the sad state of the modern media, specifically on the liberally biased nature of it and how oftentimes it’s pretty evident that the writer did not do their due diligence regarding the subject matter on which they were tasked with writing.

Had America been founded solely as a white man’s slavocracy, none of these African slaves would have been allowed any freedom whatsoever. It wasn’t until almost a half-century later that slavery in the South started to become the wretched institution it was for two centuries in America.

Native Americans had been enslaving conquered tribes for centuries before the Mayflower hit the shore and continued to do so until the mid19th century in America. There was no mention of Native American slavery in the 1619 Project.

America was founded as a dream for equality, justice and fair play from the beginning. The Mayflower Covenant stated those who signed it would “solemnly and mutual covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submissions and obedience.”

Those were the foundational principles of America from the beginning in the three colonies mentioned above. Those were the principles on which the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were debated and finalized. Those were the principles to which the United States of America were returned in 1865 after the Civil War.

There is no need to make up history to tell everyone how horrible slavery was in the American South and still is in many parts of the globe. There is a pressing need to find ways to “combine ourselves together into a civil body politic.” The New York Times and Hannah-Jones can start the 2023 Project and help us find out.

J.K.

Every once in a while, though, a writer surprises me in a good way, which is what happened last week when Huffington Post columnist E.J. Rosetta took to the Twitter machine to talk about a writing assignment she’d been given several months ago and how it caused her to unexpectedly have a change of heart.

The goal of the assignment in question was to dunk on a popular book author regarding her unapologetic opinions on the dangers of allowing men who identify as women into women’s safe spaces as if there were no differences between transgender women and women who were born women.

“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling was to be the focus of Rosetta’s piece, and the stated purpose was to document “20 Transphobic JK Rowling Quotes We’re Done With,” according to Rosetta.

Except after Rosetta got started on her research, she came to realize that the caricature of Rowling painted by the activist left and other critics in no way matched who the real J.K. Rowling actually is.

“After 12 weeks of reading her books, tweets, full essay & finding the context of these ‘quotes,’ I’ve not found a single truly transphobic message,” Rosetta tweeted in a lengthy thread where she explained the conclusions she drew about Rowling based on what she’d learned.

“JK Rowling is not an ‘intolerable transphobe,’” Rosetta noted. “[S] he’s a (talented) woman who could have sat back & been beloved forever, but looked around & paid attention as the intersection of trans rights and women’s rights has had understandable growing pains.

“The abuse JK has endured is beyond forgiveness. Every death threat, r*pe threat & torrent of abuse, she has born w/ grace,” Rosetta further observed, while also calling out any supposed “reporter” who ran with popular leftist knee-jerk narratives about Rowling without doing any actual investigative digging themselves.

“Shame on those who have framed her under the guise of ‘reporting’ when you must know, deep down, you are just chucking out clickbait & stirring up hate,” Rosetta wrote. “Shame on those who followed that propaganda without critical thought.”

Rosetta’s entire thread was a refreshing change of pace from what is frequently seen on news sites, especially those that are upfront about their political leanings (the Huffington Post is a left-wing news and opinion site, and they have reporters who appear regularly at White House press briefings).

Instead of just swallowing an oft-pushed narrative whole without thinking and spouting off something that likely would have generated a lot of clicks for her, Rosetta chose to do the work and boldly shared a conclusion when she was done that went against the grain — and it reflected in what she posted to Twitter.

Rowling, who has been the target of an intense amount of hate and intolerance from so-called “tolerant” types on social media and beyond since she made her feelings on the subject known three years ago, saw Rosetta’s thread and thanked her for it.

“Amid all the madness, this truly made my day,” Rowling said in response.

And for those who crave honesty and forthrightness in journalism even if it comes at the expense of losing “street cred” with some of your audience, it made our day, too.

As the old saying goes, “The truth will set you free.”

North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.

Rowling is not an “intolerable transphobe.”

Quietly quitting wokedom

My new hero quoted Charles Dickens’ appraisal of the type whose “glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of many good minds.”

IMAGINE A FACULTY WORKSHOP that features a new administrator directing university professors to redesign their courses to “address issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” — and to finger colleagues who bear traces of “unconscious bias.” Now imagine certain professors struggling to stay poker-faced when they learn they must also submit a pledge to advance the school’s “anti-racism goals” and to evaluate job applicants on the quality of their DEI statements.

That scene is being played out in universities nationwide, but it’s hard to gauge the percentage of professors who welcome the DEI mandates versus those who simply pad syllabi with wokeisms, craft pledges that are 90% puffery, then do what they’d been hired to do — teach — not do social work. In short, the new mandates are breeding despots on the one hand and imposters on the other. “You are not a liar if you say untruths at knife-point,” went the posting of one such imposter.

Then there are professors who’d rather quit than genuflect before a DEI czar who earns twice what professors make and who aims to replace our national motto E pluribus unum — “out of many, one” — with the motto “out of one nation, many victims.” So said the professor who has cleared me to speak for the DEI imposters until he is free to write his own exposé at the end of second term.

My informant, who, for now, identifies only as Professor X, was among those who sat poker-faced in a workshop as the new DEI director justified her involvement in academics on the grounds that, left alone, university professors would not understand “the psychological processes that impact the ways people interact with each other” — implying that, left alone, professors might band together in a cabal of bigots.

Later that day, Professor X caucused with colleagues who agreed they’d just watched quackery pose as do-goodery but agreed that staging a coup might wreck whole careers. Their only option, it seemed, was to pose as DEI compliant then devise workarounds until the university’s Board of Trustees notices that requiring uniformity of thought in faculty and students is unconstitutional and rescinds its support.

In the meantime, Professor X is gathering

evidence to support his claim that, in addition to violating First Amendment rights, the DEI mandates are fraught with contradictions that have faculty dissenters meeting behind closed doors and student militants trolling the campus for signs of “unconscious bias.”

The dissenters were struck first by the contrast in the czarina’s $300K-plus salary and her mission to have classroom instruction reflect her claim that capitalism is “a major driver of systems of oppression in the United States” and “continues to be the beating heart behind inequity, discrimination and income inequality.” What the dissenters heard instead was that a Sharpie with a degree in Human Resources could make anti-capitalism a highly profitable sideshow in higher education.

Professor X suspects that students who equate anti-capitalism with virtue are the students most likely to see hard work as a frill that’s best left to the capitalists whose profits will be redistributed among progressives who pursue noble causes. Professor X knows that the jackboots would be the first to snarl if he said out loud in class what he’s thinking — that the DEI syndicate can spot oppressors everywhere — except in their own little fiefdom.

But Professor X has also taught students who chafe under the presumption that without a DEI retrofit, they’d be on the lookout for someone to bully. One such student participated in a recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and was among the majority of respondents who admitted they “would feel discomfort publicly disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic or expressing an unpopular opinion to their peers.” Even more striking is what that student told Professor X in private: “As a minority I hate being singled out for special treatment” — by the patrons of DEI.

While students are sharpening their “selfcensoring” skills, soon-to-be former Professor X is quietly making plans to transition into whistle blowing. At the close of our off-campus session, my new hero quoted Charles Dickens’ appraisal of the type whose “glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of many good minds.” My source has a far, far better plan to end the worst of times in our public universities.

Trump ‘jumps the shark’: Now what?

DeSantis went on to lead Florida Republicans to a rout of biblical proportions on a night when most of Trump’s highprofile endorsed candidates failed across the nation.

WHEN ARTHUR “FONZIE” FONZARELLI went to California and had his manhood challenged in the Sept. 20, 1977, season 3 episode of “Happy Days,” the very popular hit sitcom starring Ronnie Howard and Henry Winkler “jumped the shark” and became a negative idiom in modern culture.

In a true dreck of an episode, the Fonz was somehow goaded into water-skiing over an enclosed pool of sharks while wearing his trademark black leather jacket and swim shorts. In retrospect, commentators pointed to this episode as the beginning of the end for the nation’s most popular TV show at the time and coined the phrase “jump the shark,” which is now used to signify the end of any other popular show, coach, team or politician.

Former President Donald Trump “jumped the shark” in two very visible ways recently. On the Saturday before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Trump called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “DeSanctimonious” at a rally, which fully violated Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not talk evil of fellow Republicans.” DeSantis went on to lead Florida Republicans to a rout of biblical proportions on a night when most of Trump’s high-profile endorsed candidates failed across the nation.

Trump demeaned the one Republican politician, DeSantis, who appeals most to the important independent and swing voters across the nation. They were reminded of their hatred of Trump in 2020 when half of the 81 million people who voted for Biden primarily did so to express their disgust with Trump as a person, even though they supported many of his policies. Perhaps many of them did not vote for Republicans in 2022 because of this untimely reminder.

Second, Trump exhibited his tin ear for Republican Party comity by announcing he was running for president right in the middle of a crucial Senate runoff in Georgia where Republicans must win back the seat they lost in 2020 just to stay even in the Senate. If Herschel Walker loses, as many now expect, Trump will be accused of contributing to yet another Senate loss.

Trump has gone from unlikely 2016 winner to erratic and uneven president with some marketfriendly accomplishments — principally the 2017 tax law — to serial political loser in 2020, 2021 (Georgia) and 2022 (midterms).

There are the twin election denier and Jan. 6, 2021 debacles, for which Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, among others, has thrown him under the metaphorical bus.

They say in the Navy, “There’s always some SOB who doesn’t get the word.” Trump proved he hasn’t learned anything from his two years in exile. His presidential announcement was both spectacularly tone-deaf and made at a spectacularly wrong moment in time, just after Trump candidates were shellacked in the 2022 midterms, exposing Trump’s own political weakness.

Party politics tolerates and exploits winners, and

ruthlessly casts off losers. This is what has been happening to Trump over the past few weeks.

The Republican establishment — which has been in uneasy coalition with Trump — is using the midterms and Trump’s announcement to accelerate the moving forward/moving on from Trump.

This sloughing off Trump process has been underway for some time and already has borne significant fruit in Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 victory and the convincing Florida Republican victories of Gov. DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio.

Now, that process accelerates. Why is this a long-term small market positive?

Because the Republican establishment shunning and opposing Trump increases the likelihood of market-friendly success in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections. Having Someone-NotNamed-Donald Trump at the head of the ticket improves the prospects for protection and extension of market-friendly and market-approved policies, including the important 2017 tax law.

The 2022 midterms didn’t improve Biden’s popularity or the viability of progressive Democratic policies.

With another candidate, Republicans have a much better shot of regaining the White House in 2024.

The Republican establishment rejecting Trump points to a 2024 election cycle where fragmentation among Republicans is much less likely to happen.

One prominent potential candidate — DeSantis — makes that easy to see.

But whether it’s DeSantis or someone else, the Republican establishment now is invested in denying Trump another shot at the nomination — and that’s a significant change from 2016, and a positive one for markets.

Terry Haines is the founder of Pangaea Policy, a financial services consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

Regulators must ACT NOW! to pause Medicare marketing rule

MEDICARE’S ANNUAL enrollment period began on Oct. 15. So it’s all but impossible to miss the commercials featuring celebrities pitching Medicare Advantage plans to seniors.

Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath is telling seniors they can get extra Medicare benefits by calling a 1-800 number. Actor Jimmie Walker is advising them to call — NOW! — to check whether they’re eligible for plans that could be “Dyn-O-Mite.” William Shatner is imploring seniors to get the benefits they deserve.

The ads are enticing — and sometimes misleading. In response to an increase in complaints about the commercials and other Medicare marketing strategies, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently issued more stringent requirements for companies advertising on behalf of Advantage and Part D prescription drug plans.

More oversight is sorely needed. But the new CMS marketing rule may end up depriving seniors of access to licensed, Medicare-certified independent agents and brokers who can help them with enrollment. The Department of Health and Human Services must press pause on the new rule.

Persuading seniors to sign up for Medicare Advantage — the privately administered plans that are an alternative to traditional Medicare — and the Part D prescription drug benefit is big business.

Sometimes, seniors don’t realize until after they’ve enrolled that their current doctor isn’t in their new insurance plan’s network, or that the extra “benefits they deserve” aren’t actually available in their region.

Seniors have understandably grown frustrated. CMS received more than 41,000 consumer complaints about misleading Medicare marketing tactics last year — a 165% increase from 2020. That led CMS to finalize a Medicare marketing rule aimed at increasing oversight of the practices of third-party marketing organizations that help sell private Advantage and Medicare Part D plans.

These reforms are all wellintentioned. But part of the rule could swiftly undo any progress in the fight against unscrupulous marketing tactics by bad actors.

The rule expands the definition of third-party marketing organizations to include agents and brokers. So agents and brokers must now record enrollment calls — a huge burden that could strip millions of Medicare beneficiaries of access to a licensed agent or broker.

There’s been little clear guidance from HHS about what actually constitutes an enrollment call. So many agents and brokers, who often spend hours exploring a beneficiary’s unique circumstances and combing through potential plans for the best fit, are preparing to record every conversation they have with their clients.

That requires equipment that can record and store hourslong audio files for years at a time — and do so securely, to comply with federal privacy laws.

That’s cost-prohibitive for many small agencies and brokerages. Further, some seniors don’t want their enrollment calls recorded, given that they touch on extremely personal information.

Seniors who have relied on agents and brokers for decades now face the prospect of having to sign up for Medicare without their expert counsel.

Federal officials can stop that from happening by pausing implementation of the rule — and developing new reforms that protect seniors from bad actors without jeopardizing access to agents and brokers.

Medicare’s annual enrollment period is already here. HHS can ensure seniors have the ability to enroll in plans that best fit their needs and budget. But it has to act NOW!

Letters addressed to the editor may be sent to letters@nsjonline.com or 1201 Edwards Mill Rd., Suite 300, Raleigh, NC 27607. Letters must be signed; include the writer’s phone number, city and state; and be no longer than 300 words. Letters may be edited for style, length or clarity when necessary. Ideas for op-eds should be sent to opinion@nsjonline.com.

Janet Trautwein is CEO of the National Association of Health Underwriters. This article originally appeared in the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

COLUMN | TERRY HAINES

FILE PHOTO

The character of Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli “jumps the shark” the infamous scene from the TV show Happy Days.

NATION & WORLD

Georgia Senate runoff between Warnock, Walker has bitter closing

The Associated Press

WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Ads with the candidates’ ex-wives.

Cries of “liar” flying in both direc tions. Stories of a squalid apart ment building and abortions under pressure. Questioning an opponent’s independence. His in tellect. His mental stability. His religious faith.

The extended Senate campaign in Georgia between the Demo cratic incumbent, Raphael War nock, and his Republican chal lenger, football legend Herschel Walker, has grown increasingly bitter as their Dec. 6 runoff nears. With Democrats already assured a Senate majority, it’s a striking con trast from two years ago, when the state’s twin runoffs were mostly about which party would control the chamber in Washington.

“Herschel Walker ain’t serious,” Warnock told supporters recent ly in central Georgia, saying that Walker “majors in lying” and fum bles the basics of public policy. “But the election is very serious. Don’t get those two things con fused.”

Walker casts Warnock, the senior pastor at Ebenezer Bap tist Church, as a “hypocrite” and servile to President Joe Biden. Underscoring the insult, Walker calls the incumbent “Scooby-Doo,” complete with an impression of the cartoon hound’s gibberish.

The broadsides reflect the can didates’ furious push in the four weeks between the Nov. 8 gener al election and runoff to persuade their core supporters to cast an other ballot. For Walker, it also means drawing more indepen dents and moderates to his cam paign after he underperformed a fellow Republican on the ticket, Gov. Brian Kemp, by 200,000 votes.

Warnock led Walker by 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast in the first round, but the senator

fell short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

In many ways, the shift from his first runoff campaign is ex actly what Warnock wanted: a straightforward choice between two candidates. Two years ago, then-President Donald Trump, fresh off his defeat, and Biden, then president-elect, made mul tiple Georgia trips to illuminate the national stakes of the races between Warnock and Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Repub lican Sen. David Perdue as control of the Senate hung in the balance.

Trump ended up alienating his own supporters and many mod erates with his claims of a rigged 2020 presidential election. Vic tories by Warnock and Ossoff put the Senate at a 50-50 split, with Democrats gaining control by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. Warnock also became Georgia’s first black senator.

This year, with Warnock vying for a full six-year term after win ning the 2021 special election,

Democrats have already guar anteed control of the Senate by flipping a seat in Pennsylvania. A Warnock win would give Dem ocrats an outright majority at 51-49, meaning that the parties would not have to negotiate a pow er-sharing agreement.

Warnock’s preferred emphasis for most of his reelection bid has been his deal-making in Wash ington and the personal values he brings to the job. It took until the campaign’s final stages — only after two women accused Walker, an opponent of abortion rights, of encouraging and paying for their abortions — for the senator to ratchet up his attacks, arguing Walker is “unprepared” and “unfit” for the job.

“My opponent lies about every thing,” Warnock said in a recent campaign stop, ticking off a litany of Walker’s repeated falsehoods and exaggerations. “He said he was a police officer. He’s not. He said he worked for the FBI. He did not. Said he graduated from the University of Georgia. He did not. Said he was valedictorian of

his class. He was not. ... He said he had another business with 800 employees. It has eight.” Walker, alternately, has relished the jousting since he won the GOP nomination in the spring.

“Herschel is a competitor. He’s very comfortable with the mano a mano,” said Scott Paradise, Walk er’s campaign manager, noting the candidate’s athletic prowess as a football running back, kickboxer and Olympic bobsledder.

Indeed, Walker takes his at tacks right to Warnock’s strengths as the pastor of the famous church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Walker has crit icized Warnock over an Atlanta apartment building, owned by a foundation of Warnock’s church, where residents have complained of eviction notices and poor con ditions.

“What he’s doing in this apart ment building at Columbia Towers is not right,” Walker said recently at a suburban Atlanta campaign stop. “You shouldn’t put Jesus’ name on what you’re doing to peo ple, and don’t put Martin Luther King name on it. ... You’re not Je sus, and you’re not Dr. King.”

Asked whether he’s reconsid ered his church’s stewardship of Columbia Towers, Warnock side stepped: “I’ve already answered the question. I’m proud of what my church does to feed and house the hungry and the homeless every single week.”

Walker also accuses Warnock of “getting rich” as a senator, a nod to the pastor’s $7,500-a-month hous ing allowance from the church.

From Walker’s camp, Paradise insisted that Republicans’ best ar gument remains Warnock’s align ment with Democrats on econom ic policy. Still, he acknowledges the campaign’s tone has darkened.

“We’re certainly going to con tinue to aggressively prosecute the case against Warnock,” he said, “and I suspect they’ll do the same.”

Protests over China’s COVID controls spread across country

BEIJING — Protests against China’s pervasive anti-virus con trols that have confined millions of people to their homes spread to Shanghai and other cities af ter complaints they might have worsened the death toll in an apartment fire in the northwest.

Shanghai police used pepper spray against about 300 pro testers, according to a witness. They gathered Saturday night to mourn the deaths of at least 10 people in an apartment fire last week in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region in the northwest.

Videos posted on social me dia that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods.

Witnesses said a protest occurred in Urumqi, but The Associated Press was unable to confirm de tails of other videos.

President Xi Jinping’s gov ernment faces mounting anger at its “zero-COVID” policy that has shut down access to areas throughout China in an attempt to isolate every case at a time when other governments are eas ing controls and trying to live with the virus.

That has kept China’s infec tion rate lower than the United States and other countries. But the ruling Communist Party faces growing complaints about the economic and human cost as businesses close and families are isolated for weeks with limited access to food and medicine.

Some protesters were shown in videos shouting for Xi to step down or the ruling party to give up power.

Party leaders promised last month to make restrictions less disruptive by easing quarantine and other rules but said they were sticking to “zero-COVID.”

Meanwhile, an upsurge in in fections that pushed daily cases above 30,000 for the first time has led local authorities to im

pose restrictions residents com plain exceed what is allowed by the national government.

The fire deaths in Urumqi trig gered an outpouring of angry questions online about wheth er firefighters who needed three hours to extinguish the blaze or victims trying to escape might have been obstructed by locked doors or other controls. Author ities denied that, but the disaster became a focal point for public anger about anti-disease restric tions, ruling party propaganda and censorship.

Internet users posted videos and accounts on Chinese and foreign social media showing protests in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest and Urumqi and Korla in Xinjiang.

A video that said it was shot in Urumqi showed protesters chanting, “Remove the Commu nist Party! Remove Xi Jinping!”

Protests in Xinjiang are espe

cially risky following a security crackdown against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic mi norities that has included mass detentions.

Most protesters in the videos were members of China’s dom inant Han ethnic group. A Uy ghur woman in Urumqi said Uy ghurs were too scared to take to the streets.

“Han Chinese people know they will not be punished if they speak against the lockdown,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name for fear of re taliation. “Uyghurs are different. If we dare say such things, we will be taken to prison or to the camps.”

Posts on Chinese social media were quickly deleted, which Bei jing often does to suppress criti cism it worries might serve as a rallying point for opposition to one-party rule.

People in some parts of Xinji ang have been confined to their

homes since early August. Some complain they lack access to food and medicine and have posted appeals for help online.

In a possible attempt to pla cate the public, authorities on Saturday announced they had achieved “societal zero-COVID” and restrictions in Urumqi and Korla would be relaxed. The gov ernment said taxi, railway, bus and other public services that had been suspended for weeks would resume. State-owned Chi na Southern Airlines announced it would resume flights from Urumqi to four Chinese cities starting Monday.

Social media users greeted news the disease was under con trol with disbelief and sarcasm. “Only China can achieve this speed,” wrote one user on the Sina Weibo social media service.

Anger boiled over earlier after Urumqi city officials appeared to blame the deaths from Thursday night’s fire on the apartment tow er’s residents.

Xi has defended the strategy as an example of the superiority of the Chinese system compared with the United States and other Western countries, which politi cized the use of face masks and had difficulties enacting wide spread lockdowns.

But support for “zero-COVID” has cratered in recent months, as tragedies sparked public anger.

Last week, the government of the central city of Zheng zhou apologized for the death of a 4-month-old girl who was in quarantine. Her father said his efforts to take her to a hospital were delayed after ambulance workers balked at helping them because he tested positive for the virus.

The Uyghur woman in Urumqi said she had been unable to leave her apartment since Aug. 8 and was not even allowed to open her window. On Friday, she and her neighbors defied the order, open ing their windows and shouting in protest.

“No more lockdowns! No more lockdowns!” they screamed, ac cording to the woman.

Taiwan president resigns as party leader after election loss

Taipei, Taiwan

Taiwan President Tsai Ingwen resigned as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party following local election losses on Saturday in which voters chose the opposition Nationalist party in several major races across the selfruled island.

Concerns about threats from rival China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, took a backseat to more local issues in the elections.

The party’s candidate Chen Shih-chung, who lost his battle for mayor of Taipei, only raised the issue of the Chinese Communist Party’s threat a few times before he quickly switched back to local issues.

Tsai offered her resignation on Saturday evening, a tradition after a major loss, in a short speech in which she also thanked supporters.

“I must shoulder all the responsibility,” she said. “Faced with a result like this, there are many areas that we must deeply review.”

While international observers and the ruling party have attempted to link the elections to the longterm existential threat that is Taiwan’s neighbor, some local experts do not think China had a large role to play this time around.

“The international community has raised the stakes too high. They’ve raised a local election to this international level, and Taiwan’s survival,” said Yehlih Wang, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.

Candidates from the Nationalist party won the mayoral seat in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, as well as in Taoyuan, Taichung and New Taipei city.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Biden eases Venezuela sanctions as opposition talks resume

Washington, D.C.

The Biden administration eased some oil sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to support newly restarted negotiations between President Nicolás Maduro’s government and its opposition.

The Treasury Department is allowing Chevron to resume “limited” energy production in Venezuela after years of sanctions that have dramatically curtailed oil and gas profits that have flowed to Maduro’s government. Earlier this year the Treasury Department again allowed the California-based Chevron and other U.S. companies to perform basic upkeep of wells it operates jointly with staterun oil giant PDVSA.

Under the new policy, profits from the sale of energy would be directed to paying down debt owed to Chevron, rather than providing profits to PDVSA.

Talks between the Maduro government and the “Unitary Platform” resumed in Mexico City on Saturday after more than a yearlong pause. It remained to be seen whether they would take a different course from previous rounds of negotiations that have not brought relief to the political stalemate in the country.

A senior U.S. administration official, briefing reporters about the U.S. action under the condition of anonymity, said that easing the sanctions was not connected to the administration’s efforts to boost global energy production in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that the decision was not expected to impact global energy prices.

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Protesters hold up blank papers and chant slogans as they march in protest in Beijing, Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022.

AP PHOTO

This combination of photos shows, Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., left, and Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

ACC, SEC set to begin interleague challenge next season Greensboro

The Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conferences are set to begin an annual interconference men’s and women’s basketball battle next season. The leagues and ESPN announced Monday the creation of the ACC/SEC Challenge for both sports for the 2023 24 season. That marks an end to the ACC/ Big Ten Challenge established by ESPN with the leagues in 1999, while the women’s version followed eight years later. The final edition takes place this week. Every game in the men’s and women’s events will be carried on an ESPN platform.

UNC falls to 18th, Duke to 17th in men’s poll

Indianapolis UNC dropped from No. 1 all the way down 18th in The Associated Press men’s basketball poll released Monday. The Tar Heels (5 2) lost twice at the Phil Knight Legacy tournament last week, losing to Iowa State on Friday and then dropping a four overtime thriller to Alabama on Sunday. Duke (6 2) fell from No. 8 to 17th following their 75 56 loss to Purdue on Sunday. Unbeaten Houston — coached by North Carolina native and UNC Pembroke alumnus Kelvin Sampson — received 45 first place votes to ascend to No. 1 for the first time since its Phi Slama Jama days in 1983.

UNC women up to 6th in women’s poll

Indianapolis UNC jumped two spots in The Associated Press women’s basketball poll released Monday following two wins over ranked opponents. The Tar Heels beat then No. 18 Oregon 85 79 on Friday before rallying from 17 down to knock off No. 5 Iowa State 73 64 on Sunday. NC State moved up one place to No. 12 after posting wins over Vanderbilt and West Virginia. Duke received two votes.

Dwindling marbles: Stakes lowered for UNC, Clemson

Losses by both teams take the luster from the ACC Championship Game

By Shawn Krest North State Journal

MAKE NO MISTAKE, Clem son and UNC will still be playing for all the marbles in Saturday’s ACC Championship Game in Charlotte. It’s just that both teams hoped the number of marbles would be much greater.

The ACC title will still be at stake, of course, as will a berth in the Orange Bowl. Normally, how ever, the winner of the game can hold out hope of a berth in the Col lege Football Playoff. When Clem son is in the game, as it has been seven of the last eight seasons, those CFP hopes are all but a cer tainty — win and the Tigers are in. That’s because in their last six trips to the ACC Championship Game, Clemson has been ranked No. 1, 2 or 3 in the nation.

This year is different, however.

Clemson enters the game with two losses, as many as the Tigers had in the previous six trips combined (against 68 combined wins, as compared to this year’s 10.) UNC enters with three losses. The five combined losses would be enough to disqualify the game’s winner from any playoff scenarios, but the fact that three of them have occurred in the last two weeks fur ther tarnishes the league’s biggest game of the season. It also has both Clemson and Carolina fans, well … losing their marbles.

“I asked the team, ‘Would you have taken 9-3 in August?’” UNC coach Mack Brown said. “I’m going to be proud of this team and not going to beat them up.”

“Most people coach and play this game for a long time and never get the opportunity to be involved in these types of championship games,” Clemson defensive coor dinator Wes Goodwin said, “So they know the importance of that and winning the ACC is one of our goals and that’s the next goal pre sented to us.”

While both teams are saying the right things, there’s no doubt that the Tigers and Tar Heels have a twinge of disappointment as they prepare for a game with just the ACC title on the line. Clemson’s national title hopes took a hit with a loss to Notre Dame to start the month, but the November-ending upset loss to rival South Carolina last weekend dealt the fatal blow to any playoff hopes.

UNC also had just a single loss, also to Notre Dame, when it clinched the ACC Coastal Division three weeks ago. But the Tar Heels haven’t won since, losing back-toback home games to unranked op ponents. Georgia Tech shut down the UNC offense and ended any

hopes of Drake Maye winning a Heisman Trophy this year, and last week’s loss to NC State was salt in the wound for Tar Heels players and fans.

That leaves both head coaches looking for ways to motivate their teams for the title game, even if their horizons for the season have shrunk dramatically since Thanksgiving.

The task is made even more dif ficult due to uncertainty on both sides of the field.

It’s not often that a head coach entering championship week gives his starting quarterback a vote of confidence, but Clemson coach Dabo Swinney delivered one on Sunday after DJ Uiagalelei had an 8-for-29 passing day against South Carolina, managing just 91 yards. His backup is true freshman Cade Klubnik, who has a total of 99 passing yards in eight games this season.

While Swinney said Uiagalelei was still the starter, it seems that Klubnik will be loose and ready in the bullpen.

“Yeah, DJ will start the game,” Swinney said. “That’s where we’ll start at.”

Offensive coordinator Brandon Streeter admitted the team was “still in discussion about how we can utilize Cade” in the game.

Former Panthers coach Rhule hired by Nebraska

By Eric Olson The Associated Press

AFTER SIX STRAIGHT los ing seasons and more than 20 years removed from its 1990s hey day, Nebraska is turning to Matt Rhule to rebuild its football pro gram and make it competitive in the Big Ten Conference.

Rhule signed an eight-year contract to be the Cornhuskers’ next coach and will be introduced Monday at a news conference, the school announced Saturday.

The 47-year-old Rhule quickly turned around downtrodden pro grams at Temple and Baylor be fore leaving for the NFL to coach the Carolina Panthers. The Pan thers fired him in October after he started his third season with four losses in five games.

“It is a tremendous honor to be chosen to lead the Nebraska football program,” Rhule said in a statement. “When you think of great, tradition-rich programs in college football, Nebraska is right at the top of the list. The fan base

The Cornhuskers gave the fired Carolina coach an eight-year contract

MIKE CAUDILL | AP PHOTO

UNC wide receiver Josh Downs (11) will try and help the Tar Heels win their first conference title since 1980 when Carolina and Clemson meet in the ACC Championship Game on Saturday in Charlotte.

JACOB KUPFERMAN | AP PHOTO

The University of Nebraska hired former Panthers coach Matt Rhule as the Cornhuskers’ next coach.

“I’m going to be proud of this team and not going to beat them up.”

Mack Brown, UNC coach

TRENDING

Tiger Woods:

The golfer has withdrawn from his own Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas because of plantar fasciitis in his right foot. Woods says the injury occurred as he was preparing to play in the 20‑man field at Albany Golf Club. He has played only three times this year, all of them in majors. He played four rounds at the Masters, three at the PGA Championship and missed the cut after two rounds of the British Open. Woods still plans to play a made‑for‑TV match and the PNC Championship with his son.

Odell Beckham Jr.: Authorities say the NFL free agent was removed from an aircraft before takeoff at Miami International Airport after failing to respond to requests to buckle his seatbelt and appearing to be unconscious.

Miami‑Dade police said Sunday that officials feared Beckham was ill and that his condition would worsen through a five‑hour flight to Los Angeles. Beckham, 30, is a three‑time Pro Bowl wide receiver who was injured helping the Rams win the Super Bowl last February.

Philip Montgomery:

Tulsa fired the football coach Sunday after eight seasons at the school. The Golden Hurricane finished their season 5‑7 after beating Houston on the road Saturday. It was not enough to keep the school from making a change. Montgomery finished 43‑53 with four bowl berths. He was offensive coordinator at Baylor before taking over at Tulsa in 2015, but the Golden Hurricane’s offense was up and down throughout Montgomery’s tenure.

Beyond the box score

POTENT QUOTABLES

The

32‑year‑old

UNC women’s basketball coach Courtney Banghart after the eighth‑ranked Tar Heels

No. 5 Iowa State on Sunday.

2The number of times the UNC football and men’s basketball team have lost on the same day after the top‑ranked men’s basketball team lost 70‑65 to Iowa State and the football team lost 30‑27 in double overtime to rival NC State. The other time was Nov. 20, 1982, when the basketball team was beaten by St. John’s and the football team lost to Duke.

Shohei Ohtani was voted the majors’ best DH for the second straight season. The Angels’ two‑way slugger won the Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award on Monday, beating out Houston’s Yordan Alvarez as the top player at the position in 2022. He is the first player to win the award in back‑to‑back years since David Ortiz won it five straight times from 2003‑07.

MLB

Mavericks are closing in on a deal with four‑time All‑Star guard Kemba Walker. The

point guard was limited to 80 games the previous two seasons because of knee problems, but Dallas is in need of backcourt help alongside Luka Doncic. Walker was drafted ninth overall by the then‑Bobcats in 2011 and played eight seasons in Charlotte before spending two years in Boston and last season with the Knicks.

NBA

JOHN MINCHILLO | AP PHOTO

Auburn is hiring Liberty coach Hugh Freeze to take over its football program more than five years after his resignation from SEC Western Division rival Mississippi amid both personal and NCAA scandals. Freeze, who went 34‑15 in four seasons at Liberty, replaces Bryan Harsin, who went 9‑12 in less than two seasons with Tigers.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

BRYAN WOOLSTON | AP PHOTO

Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson was reinstated by the NFL on Monday after serving an 11‑game suspension for alleged sexual misconduct. He’ll make his regular season debut for the Browns on Sunday in Houston where he starred for four seasons before off‑field decisions damaged his reputation and led to his trade to Cleveland.

NFL

DAVID RICHARD | AP PHOTO

“They’re not the only ones.”

Jackson State coach Deion Sanders confirming he was offered the Colorado job along with interest from other schools.

“These guys are really becoming a team.”

beat

RICK BOWMER | AP PHOTO

PATRICK LANTRIP | AP PHOTO

ASHLEY LANDIS | AP PHOTO

PRIME NUMBER

AFTER LEADING THE WOLFPACK to a 30-27 double-overtime win over the Tar Heels at Kenan Stadium, NC State quarterback Ben Finley met the media. Coaches and sports information directors held their breaths as he began his remarks.

Finley mentioned State’s success in road games, at the stadium they call “Carter-Finley West,” Finley said, and all the collective breath was released with relief.

Finley’s older brother, Ryan, had gone 2-0 against Carolina in Chapel Hill. But he apparently wasn’t clear on which direction the team bus went when it left Raleigh as he christened Kenan Stadium “Carter-Finley North” after his final win over the Tar Heels.

All of which brings us to my point: There is only one appropriate trophy for the winner of the annual State-Carolina game, and that’s the Bless Your Heart Trophy.

College football is known for its historic rivalries, and most rivalries come with some type of prize awarded to the winner of each year’s game. Duke and UNC play for the Victory Bell, but nationally, some of the trophies have become more famous than the teams that play for them. Paul Bunyan’s Axe goes to the winner of Minnesota versus Wisconsin. Indiana and Purdue play for the Old Oaken Bucket. There’s the Little Brown Jug, the Golden Egg, the Iron Skillet and dozens more.

Each trophy has a backstory that no one knows, at least until the crew announcing the game does its prep prior to kickoff.

State and UNC is one of the best trophyless rivalries around. Over the years, plenty have been suggested, often related (like most other things

in the state) to barbecue or the long-leaf pine. A few have played off the “Governor’s Cup” trophy awarded in many rivalries and suggested naming it after a famous North Carolina politician or UNC system president.

Those ideas are fine, but playing for the Brass Barbecue Tongs or the Jim Hunt Trophy isn’t going to capture the nation’s imagination the way that the Fremont Cannon (an actual cannon given to the winner of Nevada-UNLV) does.

More importantly, they don’t capture the true spirit of the rivalry. When Blue meets Red in Raleigh or Chapel Hill, no one is thinking about pulled pork, pine needles or politicians. The primary thought at game time (aside from “beat those guys”) is: “Did you hear what they said?”

Think about it: This year’s game alone featured the Carter-Finley North by North West clarification, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. Months ago, Drake Maye issued an apology after saying, “Whether you want to admit it or not, growing up in Carolina, you’re gonna be a Carolina fan. Some people may say (NC) State, but really people who go to State just can’t get into Carolina.”

During the game, ESPN relayed comments from Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren, who told the crew, “They don’t like us, and we hate them,” then went on to accuse UNC coaches of badmouthing State in recruiting. And after State’s big win, defensive tackle Cory Durden made a lap of Kenan, waving goodbye to each section of Tar Heels fans while three of his Wolfpack teammates took the team flag and tried to plant it in the artificial turf at midfield.

The double overtime win brought back

memories of the last game to go to overtime — 2018 in Kenan when the older Finley made his infamous “Carter-Finley North” comment. The game ended with players from both sides fighting in the end zone, which then Carolina coach Larry Fedora tried to brush off as “both teams celebrating” the end of the game.

That’s just two years from the rivalry, and it’s a whole lot of “bless your heart.”

So, we need a prize that encapsulates the true nature of State-Carolina and also captures the nation’s attention.

From players to coaches to fans, no one seems to be able to keep from running their mouths when it comes to the rivalry game. The person that tweeted video of Durden’s “goodbye” tour of Kenan was still getting State and Carolina fans sniping at each other in his mentions, four days after the fact.

It is a Southern rivalry at its core, and in the South, there’s really only one way to respond when someone starts running their mouth: “Well, bless your heart.”

Starting next year, the North State Journal proposes that the winning team be awarded a large trophy with a wooden base, holding up a brass replica of a heart. The winning team can paint the base in their school color, and we’ll call it the Bless Your Heart Trophy. It will rival Miami’s turnover chain for ESPN attention, and never has a rivalry prize been more appropriately named.

We’ll even pay to have the trophy minted if the schools agree to play for it.

And, if anyone out there thinks this is a bad idea, well, we have just one response to you. Bless your heart.

By Shawn Krest North State Journal

DURHAM — A few days be fore Duke’s final home game of the football season, the grounds and facilities crew was busy get ting the field ready.

While one group of three men, lugging plenty of equipment, were working to paint part of one end zone dark blue, Sergei headed out to midfield to make the large D logo.

Sergei was responsible for all the yard lines and hash marks, which had been painted on the field the day before. He finished in under four hours. Before he arrived at Duke, it took the threeman team all day to finish the job.

“The hash marks are the tough part,” said Cooper Boyce, a firstyear landscape specialist at Duke. He pointed at the little mark ings that needed to be placed ev ery yard up and down the field on both sides. “The guys have a stencil, and they had to pick it up and move it to the right spot each time.” Keeping them straight and exactly a yard apart required them to go slowly.

Not Sergei, who has GPS satel lites telling him just where to go and when to paint. Sergei is 18 inches tall, is completely covered with dried paint of varying shades and holds four and a half gallons of paint. He came with a price tag of $43,000, plus an ongoing sub scription fee.

Sergei is a GPS field-painting robot who has been putting paint on grass for Duke for the last few years. He was produced by Turf Tank, a Danish company that has changed the way teams prepare fields. Turf Tank’s programmers develop GPS instructions for the robot to follow. A quick scan of the programs available shows that Sergei can paint any number of Duke’s athletic fields — he would be doing the soccer field later in the week. He can also do a variety of logos, including Duke’s goth ic D, their Hellraiser devil’s head logo and the ACC conference logo.

“He also did the big, pink breast cancer ribbon on the lawn in front of the hospital,” Boyce said.

Sergei looks like a small tank and operates like a cross between a Roomba and an old-school jet printer. It rolls around the field, spraying paint from a nozzle lo cated on one side. It can do the straight lines required to make the gridiron of yard lines and can also do the curves required by the capital D and the C’s in the league logo.

It generally paints one line at a time, then keeps going in that di rection for a few feet before mak ing a small loop and adjusting its angle for the next line.

The one minor inconvenience with Sergei is that he doesn’t al ways know when paint is still wet.

“After painting the NCAA logo on the soccer field last week, he accidentally drove through itself a bunch of times,” Boyce said. “We had to go out there with buckets of water and clean it up, blade (of grass) by blade.”

As a result, one of Boyce’s re sponsibilities, in addition to choosing the program from a tab let that controls Sergei, is to follow the robot around with a pair of towels, so he can cover the newly painted lines that Sergei might roll over on his way to the next step in the design.

For the purposes of time, Duke tends to rely on Sergei to do the line drawing, while the humans often handle the larger patches of color. As Sergei moved on from outlining the D at midfield to drawing the ACC logos, a human member of the grounds crew came over to paint the interior of the D blue.

“He can go faster because the outline gives him some leeway,” Boyce explained. Without the out line, it would require three people — one to paint and two to set up wooden barricades on either side to make sure stray paint doesn’t go onto the areas of the field that need to be white or remain green. This method appears to be more like coloring inside the lines.

“Exactly,” Boyce agreed.

Sergei can do large fields of color, like end zones or yard-line numbers. It just takes a bit longer. “It’ll do like a dot matrix,” Boyce explained. “Like an old printer, basically. And it will start in the middle of the logo and work its way out. That’s how we did the pink ribbon.”

Duke was one of Turf Tank’s first collegiate customers.

“This is the original,” Boyce said. “Ours still has ‘demo’ written on a bunch of it.”

The rest of college athletics is catching on, however.

“I know almost all the SEC schools have them,” Boyce said. “Virginia’s got one. (NC) State’s getting one. Clemson has one, I believe. I just saw the other day that the company has sold its 1,000th robot.”

So, while a three-person team lugged an air compressor and wooden barricades through the Duke end zone, Sergei continued its dance at midfield, painting and looping his way through various logos and taking athletic land scaping into the future.

Just make sure to have a couple of towels handy.

Top, Cooper Boyce, a first-year landscape specialist at Duke, fills the school’s Turf Tank robot with paint. Bottom, Sergei, the GPS robot that Duke bought to paint its athletic fields, begins outlining a logo at Wallace Wade Stadium.

The

Blue Devils were one of the first to use the GPS robot

Hornets stuck in neutral as injuries keep piling up

By Jesse Deal North State Journal

CHARLOTTE — Just when the Charlotte Hornets seem to be finally taking flight, gravity keeps bringing them back down to earth.

The Hornets (6-15) recently posted their first back-to-back wins of the season, finally showing signs of life after an injury-filled start to their 2022-23 campaign.

“It’s a great mood booster for sure. We just have to continue to learn,” Kelly Oubre Jr. said after Charlotte’s 110-108 home win over Minnesota on Nov. 25. “Now it’s time for us to put the right step forward, learn from our losses and our mistakes, and learn how to win. The more you win, the more you can continue to just do the same things that you did to win the game before.”

“We’re figuring out how to play,” added P.J. Washington, who had 19 points in a 107-101 home win against Philadelphia. “The game we just played and the game be fore obviously are two things we can look at and grow from and continue to do. We played to our strengths, and if we keep doing that, it’s gonna be hard for teams to beat us.”

Just three days later, the Hor nets were demolished by Boston in a 140-105 road loss in which Jayson Tatum scored 35 points and Marcus Smart had a ca reer-high 15 assists.

The contest was over almost as soon as it began. The Celtics led by as many as 27 points less than 10 minutes into the game and fin ished with 24 3-pointers in what became a runaway of a victory, nearly setting a Hornets franchise record for most points allowed in a regulation game.

As it has been all season, inju ries slowed Charlotte in the loss.

The shorthanded Hornets were without Terry Rozier (illness), LaMelo Ball (ankle), Gordon Hay ward (shoulder), Cody Martin (knee) and Dennis Smith Jr. (an kle) in Boston.

Role players like Kai Jones, Jalen McDaniels and Theo Male don have been pushed into bigger

roles. Jones has proven to be a ca pable rebounder, while McDaniels has shown an ability to score at the rim or with the long ball, notching a team-high (and season-high) 24 points against Boston.

“We’re a team that’s more than capable of consistently out-re bounding guys,” Jones said. “That’s something we have to con tinue to put an emphasis on be cause we have an athletic locker room and we have all the length in the world.”

Charlotte’s is likely to improve once the team starts getting back some of its top players. Rozier

is set to return for the Hornets’ matchup at home against Wash ington on Dec. 2, while Ball and Smith should return later in the month.

Martin may not see the court until January depending on how he recovers from an arthroscopic procedure on his left knee.

Hayward’s injury situation appears to be a bit more compli cated. The 32-year-old, who has played just 104 games in two-plus seasons in Charlotte due to a vari ety of ailments, is out indefinitely with a fractured shoulder blade and will be evaluated on a week-

to-week basis. That same shoul der forced Hayward out for eight games in early November.

Gordon’s wife, Robyn, took to social media recently to ex press her dissatisfaction with the way the Hornets have handled her husband’s injury: “I’m over them not protecting players. Just was talking with a young play er’s mom, and she was saying the same thing.”

Hayward’s shoulder injury had initially been diagnosed as a con tusion, but the official status was later updated to a fractured scap ula.

W hile history has shown that the Hornets are a much better team with Hayward on the court rather than off it, the team will have to make do with what it has for now.

“We know we are missing a lot of players, so it makes it good that, ‘OK, we’ve got guys coming back,’” McDaniels said of his team’s lack of depth. “It’s next man up. We just have to go out there and play hard. We are all good enough to play in the league, good enough with the guys that we’ve got to get a win. We’ve just got to go out there and put in more effort.”

Gardner-Webb gets 1st FCS playoff win; Elon, Davison eliminated

The Runnin’ Bulldogs will play William & Mary in the second round

The Associated Press

RICHMOND, Ky. — Narii Gaither rushed for a career-high 245 yards and two touchdowns, quarterback Bailey Fisher ran for three more and Gardner-Webb made its first FCS playoff appear ance memorable with a 52-41 win over Eastern Kentucky on Satur day night.

The Runnin’ Bulldogs (7-5) led 31-27 at half and took the game over in the third quarter when Fisher hit T.J. Luther for a 12-yard touchdown pass and then had scoring runs of 12 and 16 yards to

give the visitors a 52-27 lead.

“I told our guys in the lock er room this is a special group,” Gardner-Webb coach Tre Lamb said after the game. “Those type of teams don’t come along very often. I could coach another 30 years and not have a group this special.

“Those guys bought in. We gave them something to buy into. I’ve never been around a group that loves each other as much as those kids do. It’s pretty remarkable.”

Eastern Kentucky (7-5) had a chance to mount a comeback as Parker McKinney, a Payton Award finalist, threw his fourth touch down pass early in the fourth quarter but on the next possession was picked off in the end zone. His fifth touchdown pass came with

1:02 to play and Gardner-Webb recovered the onside kick.

The Colonels, who got the in augural ASUN-WAC berth, were making their 22nd playoff appear ance since 1978 but have not won a playoff game since 1994.

The Bulldogs ran for 405 yards as Fisher had 88 on seven keepers and Jayden Brown added 83 yards on 12 carries with a touchdown.

Parker finished 37 of 57 for

a career-high 454 yards. Jaden Smith had nine catches for 127 yards and two touchdowns. Cor nelius McCoy had 155 yards on six receptions with a touchdown.

Now the Runnin’ Bulldogs trav el to fifth-seeded William & Mary next Saturday.

Gardner-Webb and William & Mary had one common opponent this season. The Tribe won at Elon 34-31 on Sept. 25, while the Run nin’ Bulldogs lost 30-24 on the road to the Phoenix.

Elon also reached the postsea son but was knocked out of the FCS playoffs on Saturday after losing 31-6 at No. 11 Furman.

Paladins quarterback Tyler Huff threw for one touchdown and ran for another to lead in the win.

The Phoenix (8-4) gained 315 yards but were 5 for 17 on third down, 1 for 5 on fourth and reached the red zone only once.

Elon kicker Skyler Davis made 51- and 52-yard field goals, mak ing him 7 of 8 on 50-plus-yard attempts this season. He tied the FCS single-season record for 50-plus-yard FGs. ULM’s Jesse Garcia in 1983 and Western Car olina’s Kirk Roach in 1987 were 7 of 12 each.

Davidson (8-4) also lost its first round game, losing 41-0 at No. 14 Richmond.

Reece Udinski threw two touchdown passes and Milan Howard ran for two more to lead the Spiders, who will face sec ond-ranked Sacramento State in the second round.

is second to none, and I consid er it a privilege to have the op portunity to coach in Memorial Stadium on Tom Osborne Field. My family and I are so grateful to become a part of the Husker Family, and we can’t wait to get started.”

Rhule was 11-27 with Caro lina and was fired with about $40 million remaining on the seven-year, guaranteed $62 mil lion contract he signed in 2020. The contract made Rhule the sixth-highest paid coach in the NFL when he signed in 2020, ac cording to Forbes.

“It is a privilege to welcome Coach Matt Rhule, his wife, Ju lie, and their family to Nebras ka,” athletic director Trev Alberts said. “Coach Rhule has created a winning culture throughout his coaching career, and he will provide great leadership for the young men in our football pro gram.

“Matt is detail-oriented, his teams are disciplined and play a physical brand of football. Matt also has the personality and rela

tionship-building

About an hour after Rhule’s hiring was announced, wide re ceiver Trey Palmer announced on Instagram that he would de clare for the NFL Draft. Palmer, who transferred from LSU af ter last season, had three 150yard games this year and set the Huskers’ single-season record with 1,043 yards.

The Huskers are among eight Football Bowl Subdivision pro grams with at least 900 wins, and they have won or shared five national championships. The

last one came in 1997 under Os borne, the school’s longtime Hall of Fame coach.

Five coaches have come and gone since then, most recently the quarterback of that ’97 team, Scott Frost.

Alberts fired Frost on Sept. 11 after the Huskers opened 1-2, with losses to Northwestern in Ireland and to Georgia Southern at home. They were 3-6 under in terim coach Mickey Joseph and finished the season 4-8 following a 24-17 win at Iowa on Friday.

Nebraska was 16-31 in fourplus seasons under Frost, never finishing higher than fifth in the Big Ten West or going to a bowl.

In four seasons at Temple, Rhule coached the Owls to 28 wins. That included 26 from 2014-16. Temple was 10-4 in 2015 and reached the American Athletic Conference’s inaugural championship game. In 2016, Rhule led the Owls to a 10-3 re cord and an AAC championship. The conference title was the first in 49 seasons for the Temple program, and the Owls reached bowl games in consecutive sea sons for the first time in school

history.

Rhule was named Baylor’s coach in December 2016 in the wake of an investigation that found the private Baptist uni versity had not responded ade quately to allegations of sexual assault by players, resulting in the firing of Art Briles.

Rhule’s trajectory was similar at Baylor, where he went from 1-11 in 2017 to 7-6 with a bowl game the next season. In his third and final season, Baylor was ranked in the top 10, played in the Big 12 championship game and finished 11-3 after a Sugar Bowl loss to Georgia.

Rhule’s collegiate success pro vided him the opportunity to take over as the Carolina Pan thers’ head coach in 2020. He guided the Panthers to five wins in each of his first two seasons before this year’s 1-4 start got him fired.

Rhule has ties to the Big Ten. He moved from New York City to State College, Pennsylvania, as a teenager. He played linebacker at Penn State from 1994-97 and be gan his coaching there as a vol unteer assistant.

UNC from page B1

Over at UNC, there’s no doubt that Drake Maye is still the starter. While he’s struggled the last two weeks, the defense is the bigger concern for the Tar Heels. UNC al ready lost three starting defensive linemen for the season at the start of the month, and the Tar Heels’ pass rush has suffered ever since. Now the secondary is getting ravaged by injury. Storm Duck, Cam’Ron Kelly and Tony Grimes all left the NC State game with injuries, and Brown said all three would be evaluated this week.

In their places are a pair of true freshmen in Marcus Allen and Will Hardy, along with sophomore Lejond Cavazos.

“We’re going to count on those guys moving forward to finish out the rest of the year and play a lot of snaps,” said UNC defensive co ordinator Gene Chizik. “I was very proud of them. And the moment was not too big for them.”

The moment should not be too big on Saturday, either, not in a championship game where mar bles seem to be in short supply this year.

skills to build a great staff and excel in recruit ing.”

Charlotte has dropped to 13th in the Eastern Conference standings

“When you think of great, tradition-rich programs in college football, Nebraska is right at the top of the list.”

Matt Rhule, new Nebraska football coach

“I could coach another 30 years and not have a group this special.”

Tre Lamb, Gardner-Webb coach

STEVEN SENNE | AP PHOTO

Center Nick Richards and the Hornets saw their record fall to 6-15 on the season after a 140-105 blowout loss in Boston on Monday.

Shifting demand

This year’s Cyber Mon day also comes amid a wider e-commerce slowdown affect ing online retailers that saw a boom in sales during most of the COVID-19 pandemic. Con sumers who feared leaving their homes and embraced e-com merce during the pandemic are heading back to physical stores in greater numbers this year as normalcy returns.

The National Retail Fed eration said its recent survey showed a 3% uptick in the num ber of Black Friday shoppers planning to go to stores. It ex pects 63.9 million consumers to shop online during Cyber Mon day, compared to 77 million last year.

Amazon saw its retail busi ness thrive during most of the pandemic, but much of the de mand waned as the worst of the pandemic eased. To deal with the change, the company has been scaling back its warehouse expansion plans and is cutting costs by axing some of its proj ects. It’s also following in the steps of other tech companies and implementing mass layoffs in its corporate ranks. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the com pany will continue to cut jobs until early next year.

Shopify, a company which helps businesses set up e-com merce websites and also offers offline software, laid off 10% of its staff this summer.

The company said Monday that its merchants have sur passed $5.1 billion in global sales since the start of Black Friday in New Zealand. And spending per U.S. customer went up $5 com pared to last year, said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein.

Despite the bump, Finkel stein said shoppers were more intentional about their spend ing this year and waiting for discounts before making a pur chase.

Biden calls on Congress to head off potential rail strike

The Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. — President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers would take up legisla tion this week to impose the deal that unions agreed to in Septem ber.

“Let me be clear: a rail shut down would devastate our econ omy,” Biden said in a statement.

“Without freight rail, many U.S. in dustries would shut down.”

In a statement, Pelosi said: “We are reluctant to bypass the stan dard ratification process for the Tentative Agreement — but we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt.”

Pelosi said the House would not change the terms of the September agreement, which would challenge the Senate to approve the House bill without changes.

The September agreement that Biden and Pelosi are calling for is a slight improvement over what the board of arbitrators recommend ed in the summer. The Septem ber agreement added three unpaid days off a year for engineers and conductors to tend to medical ap pointments as long as they sched uled them at least 30 days in ad vance. The railroads also promised in September not to penalize work ers who are hospitalized and to ne

gotiate further with the unions af ter the contract is approved about improving the regular scheduling of days off.

Hundreds of business groups had been urging Congress and the president to step into the dead locked contract talk and prevent a strike.

Both the unions and railroads have been lobbying Congress while contract talks continue. If Con gress acts, it will end talks between the railroads and four rail unions that rejected their deals Biden helped broker before the origi nal strike deadline in September.

Eight other unions have approved their five-year deals with the rail roads and are in the process of get ting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.

If Congress does what Biden suggests and imposes terms simi lar to what was agreed on in Sep tember, that will end the union’s push to add paid sick time. The four unions that have rejected their deals have been pressing for the railroads to add that benefit to help address workers’ quality of life concerns, but the railroads had re fused to consider that.

Biden said that as a “a proud pro-labor president” he was reluc tant to override the views of people who voted against the agreement. “But in this case — where the eco nomic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working peo ple and families — I believe Con gress must use its powers to adopt this deal.”

Biden’s remarks and Pelosi’s statement came after a coalition of more than 400 business groups sent a letter to congressional lead ers Monday urging them to step into the stalled talks because of fears about the devastating poten tial impact of a strike that could force many businesses to shut down if they can’t get the rail de liveries they need. Commuter rail roads and Amtrak would also be affected in a strike because many of them use tracks owned by the freight railroads.

The business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Na tional Association of Manufactur ers and National Retail Federation said even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and the economic pain would start to be felt even before the Dec. 9 strike dead line. They said the railroads would stop hauling hazardous chemicals, fertilizers and perishable goods up to a week beforehand to keep those products from being strand ed somewhere along the tracks.

“A potential rail strike only adds to the headwinds facing the U.S. economy,” the businesses wrote. “A rail stoppage would immediately lead to supply shortages and high er prices. The cessation of Amtrak and commuter rail services would disrupt up to 7 million travelers a day. Many businesses would see their sales disrupted right in the middle of the critical holiday shop ping season.”

Fidelity Charitable: New grants to surpass deposits in 2022

FIDELITY CHARITABLE, the nation’s largest grantmak er, expects 2022 will be the first year since 2018 that the value of grants from its donor advised funds exceeds the value of invest ments going into the funds.

Jacob Pruitt, Fidelity Chari table’s president, told The Asso ciated Press that donations this year are on track to set a record, even before counting gifts from GivingTuesday, which has grown into a major fundraising day for charities since its launch 10 years ago. In 2021, Fidelity Charitable donated more than $10.3 billion in donor-recommended grants to more than 187,000 organiza tions.

“It’s kind of amazing when you think about the generosity,” Pruitt said. “Even in spite of infla tion and all kinds of noise in the marketplace, our donors are tru ly engaging and getting money to the right places.”

Pruitt cautioned that Decem ber generally brings plenty of in vestments into donor advised funds — or DAFs — as people move money around for tax pur poses. However, he also expects strong end-of-the-year donations as well.

“With the situation in Ukraine and all these natural disasters, our donors are ready,” Pruitt said. “That’s what these accounts are designed for. Individuals put money in and they grow. Then, when there’s a scenario where it’s needed, it can flow out in a thoughtful way. And so I think that the platform is doing what it is there to do.”

The strength of Fidelity Chari table grants comes at a time when

donor advised funds are un der fire for what critics call loop holes that allow donors to receive tax benefits immediately, while grants can be delayed indefinite ly. The bipartisan Accelerating Charitable Efforts Act to require funds invested in donor advised funds to be granted to nonprofits within 15 years is under consider ation in Congress.

Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Insti tute for Policy Studies, said the growth of donor advised funds remains troubling because loop holes in their oversight allow bil lions of dollars to be parked in the funds instead of going to commu nities in taxes or directly to char ities.

“It’s great that more money is flowing out,” Collins said. “But we want to know more. We want to

know that it’s reaching charities instead of being shuffled around from DAF to DAF.”

In “ Gilded Giving 2022,” a study Collins co-authored, he found that the popularity of DAFs is speeding a shift in phil anthropic donations from com munity-building to legacy-build ing gifts to universities and museums.

However, Pruitt said donor ad vised funds can help reverse the ongoing drop in the number of individual donors in America. He said Fidelity Charitable removed the $10,000 minimum require ment to open a donor advised fund, making it available to ev eryone.

“It’s simple, effective and it al lowed individuals from all walks of life to have an opportunity to participate in this amazing prod uct,” he said. “What we’re focus

ing on next is expanding the ed ucation and awareness in the marketplace.”

Fidelity Charitable recently began offering NFTs in an effort to reach younger investors. And Pruitt said it is also working on improving its smartphone apps.

“We want to make sure that these tools are where the next generation of investors are,” he said. “We want to continue to make this simple and effective from a digital perspective so peo ple can engage in a comfortable way.”

However, Collins said the issue with the declining number of in dividual donors isn’t due to a lack of technology. It’s due to a lack of money.

“Fewer middle class and lower middle class people are donating and it has nothing to do with tax laws,” he said. “It has to do with economic insecurity. They have less money and less of a cushion for donations.”

Rather than opening more do nor advised funds, Collins sug gests that people simply donate directly to charities in their com munities, much like many non profits on GivingTuesday suggest.

GivingTuesday CEO Asha Cur ran said the day raised $2.7 bil lion in 2021 and offers people many ways to show their gener osity.

“The relatively small act of giv ing something invests a person in their community in ways that have powerful knock on effects,” she said. “Once a person is a giv er and really feels like ‘I have the capacity to make a difference in the world,’ there are many, many wonderful things that happen in terms of their place in their com munity as a result.”

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Freight train cars sit in a Norfolk Southern rail yard on Sept. 14, 2022, in Atlanta.

FIDELITY CHARITABLE VIA AP

In this photo provided by Fidelity Charitable, Fidelity Charitable President Jacob Pruitt is photographed at the company's offices in North Carolina in 2022.

The perfect small car for outdoorsy types

By Jordan Golson North State Journal

SAN DIEGO — When I lived in Colorado, it sometimes seemed like the Subaru Crosstrek was the most popular vehicle in the world (aside from lifted pickup trucks, of course).

It’s easy to see why. At its core, the Crosstrek is a slightly-lift ed Subaru Impreza, a small allwheel-drive hatchback with ter rific fuel economy and seemingly endless practicality. That means the Crosstrek is the same thing, only instead of being a car, it’s now magically a sort of SUV. Whatever. The Crosstrek is a small, all-wheel-drive hatch back with a 152 horsepower 2.0L four-cylinder engine with either a

six-speed manual (!) or a CVT au tomatic, or you can get a slightly more powerful 182 hp 2.5L unit in the higher Sport and Limited trims, albeit with no manual op tion. There’s also a plug-in hybrid version that is a bit pricier and with limited availability.

I know the Subaru purists would be upset if I didn’t tell you that it has a Boxer engine which means nothing to most Crosstrek buyers. A boxer engine has hori zontally mounted cylinders, low ering its center of gravity and making it slightly less mechani cally complex.

I’m going to say something con troversial: for most buyers, hav ing all-wheel-drive doesn’t affect your day-to-day car use. Sure, it’s nice to have if there are oc

casional slippery conditions and you need some help getting go ing. That said, if you live in a part of the country with actual winter, you ought to buy a set of dedicated winter tires designed specifical ly for cold, snowy weather. People vastly overvalue all-wheel-drive, but I get that it’s nice to have.

All that said, the Crosstrek checks every single box. It’s rela tively fuel efficient (30 or 29 mpg on CVT versions of the small er and larger engines, respective ly), uber-practical with its hatch back-slash-crossover design, and a kind of industrial-chic interi or design. The buttons and knobs are big and chunky and easy to use with gloves on. The touch screen supports wired Apple Car Play and Android Auto.

For a car that starts in the mid $20,000 range, the Crosstrek is very well-equipped on the safety front. Subaru’s EyeSight system is standard, offering automatic emergency braking, lane depar ture warning and lane keep assist, and adaptive cruise control. High er trims include blind-spot moni toring, rear-cross traffic alert, and swiveling headlights.

It used to be that the Cross trek was woefully underpowered, though that didn’t seem to stop most buyers as they probably were unaware that it was underpow ered. But the larger engine solves that problem, so if you test drive one and it seems slow, consider the higher-trim version.

I got in the Crosstrek feeling like it was just another hatchback

SUBARU

— and it is, to an extent. But Sub aru is a lifestyle brand, and its buyers readily identify with the mentality behind it. Driving a Subaru, like wearing a vest from North Face or Patagonia, tells the world that you love nature and that your car is all-wheel-drive and made with love (that’s what Subaru’s marketing department would have you believe, at least).

But as much as I make fun of Subaru buyers, I learned long ago that car buyers place enormous emphasis on what their car says about them. Choosing a Crosstrek over competitors like the Toyota Corolla or Mazda3 suggests that you might be a safety-conscious outdoorsy type, probably with a dog or two and a love of vests.

Whether you like the Subie vibe or just want basic transportation with all-wheel-drive, the Subaru Crosstrek continues to be a sol id competitor that will satisfy any compact car buyer.

BEGINNING at a point within the margin of Fairbluff Road; said point being the southernmost corner of Lot 1 of the R.A. Faggart Property as shown on in Map Book 9; Page 3 of the Cabarrus Public Registry; and from said point of beginning.

Along a line within the margin of Fairbluff road running N. 21-34-14 W. 87.07 feet to a point; thence, N. 70-31-41 E. 25 feet to an iron; thence, N. 70-31-41 E. 461.54 feet to an iron; thence, S. 04-20-59 E. 89.90 feet to an iron which is the road corner of Lot 1; thence, S. 70-30-00 W. 434.85 feet to an iron; thence, S. 70-30-00 W. 25.05 feet to an iron within the margin of Fairbluff Road which is the point an place of Beginning. All as according to the survey of David M. Medlin, PLS dated January 16, 2006. And also being described as all of Lot 1 and a part of Lot 2 of the R.A. Faggart Property as shown on Map Book 9, Page 3 of the Cabarrus County Public Registry. Together with improvements located thereon; said property being located at 4801 Fairbluff Road, Concord, North Carolina.

Parcel ID: 5548-35-2945-0000

Commonly known as: 4801 Fairbluff Road, Concord, NC 28025 Being the same property conveyed to Grantor by Deed recorded on April 29, 2013 at Book 10493, Page 344, in the Cabarrus County Recording Office. Trustee may, in the Trustee’s sole discretion, delay the sale for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23.

Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to

for up to one hour as provided in N.C.G.S. §45-21.23. Should the property be purchased by a third party, that party must pay the excise tax, as well as the court costs of Forty-Five Cents ($0.45) per One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) required by N.C.G.S. §7A-308(a)(1).

The property to be offered pursuant to this notice of sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS, WHERE IS.” Neither the Trustee nor the holder of the note secured by the deed of trust/security agreement, or both, being foreclosed, nor the officers, directors, attorneys, employees, agents or authorized representative of either the Trustee or the holder of the note make any representation or warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at or relating to the property being offered for sale, and any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition are expressly disclaimed. Also, this property is being sold subject to all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

all taxes, special assessments, and prior liens or prior encumbrances of record and any recorded releases. Said property is also being sold subject to applicable Federal and State laws.

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy. Additional Notice for Residential Property with Less than 15 rental units, including Single-Family Residential Real Property An order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk

A deposit of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale. If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in its sole discretion, if it believes the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

of superior court of the county in which the property is sold. Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE SERVICES, INC.

SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE c/o Hutchens Law Firm P.O. Box 1028 4317 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311 Phone No: (910) 864-3068 https://sales.hutchenslawfirm.com Firm Case No: 9910 - 40075

pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may after receiving the notice of foreclosure sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days but not more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in this notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE SERVICES, INC. SUBSTITUTE TRUSTEE c/o Hutchens Law Firm P.O. Box 1028 4317 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, North Carolina 28311 Phone No: (910) 864-3068 https://sales.hutchenslawfirm.com Firm Case No: 10326 - 43249

UNMARRIED.

An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold.

Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is

liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination. If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy.

Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 22-10074-FC01

personal checks) of five percent (5%) of the purchase price, or Seven Hundred Fifty Dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, will be required at the time of the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately due and owing. THIRD PARTY PURCHASERS MUST PAY THE EXCISE TAX AND THE RECORDING COSTS FOR THEIR DEED. Said property to be offered pursuant to this Notice of Sale is being offered for sale, transfer and conveyance “AS IS WHERE IS.” There are no representations of warranty relating to the title or any physical, environmental, health or safety conditions existing in, on, at, or relating to the property being offered for sale. This sale is made subject to all prior liens, unpaid taxes, any unpaid land transfer taxes, special assessments, easements, rights of way, deeds of release, and any other encumbrances or exceptions of record. To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are All

Lawful Heirs of Mary L. Bayard. An Order for possession of the property may be issued pursuant to G.S. 45-21.29 in favor of the purchaser and against the party or parties in possession by the clerk of superior court of the county in which the property is sold. Any person who occupies the property pursuant to a rental agreement entered into or renewed on or after October 1, 2007, may, after receiving the notice of sale, terminate the rental agreement by providing written notice of termination to the landlord, to be effective on a date stated in the notice that is at least 10 days, but no more than 90 days, after the sale date contained in the notice of sale, provided that the mortgagor has not cured the default at the time the tenant provides the notice of termination [NCGS § 45-21.16A(b) (2)]. Upon termination of a rental agreement, the tenant is liable for rent due under the rental agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination.

If the trustee is unable to convey title to this property for any reason, the sole remedy of the purchaser is the return

of the deposit. Reasons of such inability to convey include, but are not limited to, the filing of a bankruptcy petition prior to the confirmation of the sale and reinstatement of the loan without the knowledge of the trustee. If the validity of the sale is challenged by any party, the trustee, in their sole discretion, if they believe the challenge to have merit, may request the court to declare the sale to be void and return the deposit. The purchaser will have no further remedy. Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC Substitute Trustee Brock & Scott, PLLC Attorneys for Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC 5431 Oleander Drive Suite 200 Wilmington, NC 28403 PHONE: (910) 392-4988 FAX: (910) 392-8587 File No.: 21-09420-FC01

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WHAT’S HAPPENING

Hospice of Stanly sets date for Festival of Trees

Hospice of Stanly recently announced that its annual holiday fundraiser, the Festival of Trees, will take place throughout the month of December, beginning with a tree lighting ceremony at 4-6 pm on December 5. Volunteers have crafted roughly 1,000 angel ornaments in honor and memory of members of the community. The event is set to take place at the Stanly County Commons and will host over 50 Christmas trees. In addition to the lighting ceremony, Santa and Mrs. Claus will also be present at the Stanly County Commons and will be taking photos with children on December 7 at 10 am for the Stanly County Public Library preschool story time. No reservations are required. Finally, the Hospice of Stanly bereavement team will also hold an ornament workshop for children who have experienced loss this past year. Individuals and businesses may sponsor a tree by calling (704) 983-4216.

DAR recognizes six Stanly County students

The Yadkin River Patriots Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution recently recognized six high school seniors as “DAR Good Citizens” at their meeting on November 18. The meeting, which was held at the Stanly County Family YMCA Pavilion, was attended by parents, guidance counselors, and other school representatives, who gathered around to hear each of the six students read their essays. This year’s Good Citizens were Abigail Wahl (North Stanly High School), Annie Phillips (South Stanly High School), Makayla Eudy (Stanly Early College High School), Sarah VanHorn (Gray Stone Day School), Sheylyn Riddle (Stanly STEM Early College), and Zachary Schrump (Albemarle High School).

Wahl was selected as this year’s winning Good Citizen and received a check for $100 from the local DAR chapter.

‘An Albemarle Downtown Christmas’ event returns for downtown Albemarle

By Jesse Deal North State Journal

ALBEMARLE — Now in its second year back from a brief hia tus, the 29th annual “An Albemar le Downtown Christmas” event is back in action on Friday, Dec. 2, from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Presented by the Albemarle Downtown Development Corpora tion, the night is designed to create opportunities for local businesses and vendors to open their doors to the public.

Unlike last year, the event is not bundled on the same day as the Al bemarle Christmas Parade, which is set for Saturday, Dec. 10, at 4 p.m.

The ADDC and Albemarle City Council had previously opted to combine the two holiday events but have reverted to their standard for mat due to a low turnout in 2021.

At a city council meeting back in February, council members voted

to separate the events. Mayor Pro Tem Martha Sue Hall addressed the issue: “It seems like the senti ment is we’re putting all our eggs in one basket by hosting one big event.”

This year, Albemarle Mayor Ronnie Michael will kick off the night with the annual tree-light ing ceremony in front of City Hall at 5:30 p.m.

Down the street at Courthouse Square Park, lines of people want ing to get their picture taken with Santa Claus can begin to form. Meanwhile, multiple hayrides wrapped up in Christmas lights will circle the downtown area, rid ing by a pair of live ice-carving dis plays set up on the street.

Dining options will be available at Food Truck Corner, located at the parking lot of First and Main Streets. What-a-Burger #13, Hig gins & Son Barbecue, and J&M Food Shack will join other vendors,

along with a station offering bev erages from the Badin Brews tap house.

Local downtown restaurants such as Off the Square, Five Points, Goody Shop Café, and Tiffany’s At The Boardroom will be open with extended business hours during the night.

Additionally, the Stanly Coun ty History Center, Stanly Coun ty Public Library, and Albemarle Music Store will each be open with special Christmas displays and ac tivities for kids.

“We’re really eager to host these events and have visitors come in so we can make them feel welcome,”

Joy Almond, Main Street manag er for the City of Albemarle and Al bemarle Downtown Development Corporation, told SCJ. “They can see all the exciting things and pos itive changes that are happening downtown as they come through and enjoy the festivities.”

High mortgage rates send homebuyers scrambling for relief

MORTGAGE RATES are more than double what they were a year ago, so many homebuyers are look ing for ways to put off some of the pain for a few years.

The trend has driven adjust able-rate mortgages, or ARMs, to the highest usage in over a decade.

A recent snapshot by the Mort gage Bankers Association showed that ARMs accounted for 12.8% of all home loan applications in the week ended Oct. 14. The last time these loans made up a bigger share of all mortgage applications was in the first week of March 2008.

At the start of the year ARMs represented only 3.1% of all mort gage applications. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage then was 3.22%, while last month that rate topped 7% — the highest since 2002.

This week, the average rate for a 30-year mortgage fell to 6.58 %, ac cording to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac. A year ago, it was 3.1%.

Mortgage rates’ swift rise follows a sharp increase in the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which has climbed amid expectations of high er interest rates overall as the Fed

For house hunters still able to afford a home at current elevated mortgage rates, reducing their monthly payments with an adjustable-rate loan for the first few years can help give them financial flexibility.

eral Reserve has hiked its shortterm rate in a bid to crush the highest inflation in decades.

As mortgage rates rise, they can add hundreds of dollars to month ly mortgage payments. That’s a sig nificant hurdle for many would-be homebuyers, resulting in this year’s housing downturn. Last month, sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell for the ninth consecutive month. Annual sales are running at the slowest pre-pandemic pace in more than 10 years.

For house hunters still able to afford a home at current elevat ed mortgage rates, reducing their monthly payments with an adjust

able-rate loan for the first few years can help give them financial flexi bility.

A homebuyer who takes out a typical 5/1 ARM, for example, will have a low, fixed rate for the first five years of the loan. After that, the loan shifts to an adjustable interest rate, which could be higher or low er, until the debt is paid off, or the buyer refinances the loan.

Another approach that’s become popular recently is buying down the interest rate on a fixed-rate 30year loan for the first two or three years.

Buying down the rate on a 30year mortgage can make month ly payments more manageable — something both homebuilders and homeowners are offering to entice buyers as the housing market slows.

Let’s say a borrower takes out a 30-year mortgage with a 6% fixed rate. With what’s known as a 3-2-1 rate buydown, that homebuyer’s in terest rate would be 3% in the first year of the loan, 4% in the second and 5% in the third, saving them potentially thousands of dollars along the way.

The borrower must still qualify for the full monthly payment before the buydown adjustment, however.

“We’re really eager to host these events and have visitors come in so we can make them feel welcome. They can see all the exciting things and positive changes that are happening downtown as they come through and enjoy the festivities.”

Joy Almond, Main Street manager for the City of Albemarle and Albemarle Downtown Development Corporation

FILE PHOTO

Christmas festivities held by the city will begin Dec. 2 in downtown Albemarle.

The Associated Press

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

♦

GRUBBS, DYLAN WESTON (W /M/26), FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE, 11/28/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦ WILLIAMS, REID DAVID (W /M/30), SURRENDER BY SURETY, 11/28/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

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XIONG, XEE NMN (A /F/35), PWIMSD METHAMPHETAMINE, 11/28/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

OXENDINE, KISSY DEWRENE (B /F/44), SURRENDER BY SURETY, 11/25/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

JOHNSON, JEREMIAH NILE (W /M/35), MISDEMEANOR LARCENY, 11/24/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

DAVIS, GARY WAYNE (W /M/38), FAIL REGISTER SEX OFFENDER(F), 11/23/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

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JORDAN, ELIZABETH DANIELLE (W /F/33), CONTEMPT OF COURT, 11/22/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

MOORE, ZANE CURTIS (W /M/27), SURRENDER BY SURETY, 11/22/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

STEELE, PETER ANTHONY (B /M/21), SURRENDER BY SURETY, 11/22/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

TUCKER, GREGORY DAVID (W /M/39), MISDEMEANOR PROBATION VIOL, 11/21/2022, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

“GASLIGHTING” — behavior that’s mind manipulating, gross ly misleading, downright deceit ful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.

Lookups for the word on merri am-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year.

The gaslighting was pervasive.

“It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merri am-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The As sociated Press ahead of Monday’s unveiling.

“It was a word looked up fre quently every single day of the year,” he said.

There were deepfakes and the dark web. There were deep states and fake news. And there was a whole lot of trolling.

Merriam-Webster’s top defini tion for gaslighting is the psycho logical manipulation of a person, usually over an extended period of time, that “causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.”

More broadly, the dictionary defines the word thusly: “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.”

Gaslighting is a heinous tool frequently used by abusers in rela tionships — and by politicians and

other newsmakers. It can happen between romantic partners, with in a broader family unit and among friends. It can be a corporate tac tic, or a way to mislead the public. There’s also “medical gaslighting,” when a health care professional dismisses a patient’s symptoms or illness as “all in your head.”

Despite its relatively recent prominence — including “Gas lighter,” The Chicks’ 2020 album featuring the rousingly angry titu lar single — the word was brought to life more than 80 years ago with “Gas Light,” a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton.

It birthed two film adaptations in the 1940s. One, George Cu kor’s “Gaslight” in 1944, starred Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist and Charles Boyer as Gregory An ton. The two marry after a whirl wind romance and Gregory turns out to be a champion gaslighter. Among other instances, he insists her complaints over the constant dimming of their London town house’s gaslights is a figment of her troubled mind. It wasn’t.

The death of Angela Lansbury in October drove some interest in lookups of the word, Sokolows ki said. She played Nancy Oliver, a young maid hired by Gregory and told not to bother his “highstrung” wife.

The term gaslighting was lat er used by mental health prac titioners to clinically describe a form of prolonged coercive control in abusive relationships.

“There is this implication of an intentional deception,” Sokolowski said. “And once one is aware of that deception, it’s not just a straight forward lie, as in, you know, I didn’t eat the cookies in the cook ie jar. It’s something that has a lit tle bit more devious quality to it. It has possibly an idea of strategy or a long-term plan.”

Merriam-Webster, which logs 100 million pageviews a month on its site, chooses its word of the year based solely on data. Sokolowski and his team weed out evergreen words most commonly looked up to gauge which word re ceived a significant bump over the

year before. They don’t slice and dice why people look up words, which can be anything from quick spelling and definition checks to some sort of attempt at inspiration or mo tivation. Some of the droves who looked up “gaslighting” this year might have wanted to know, sim ply, if it’s one or two words, or whether it’s hyphenated.

“Gaslighting,” Sokolowski said, spent all of 2022 in the top 50 words looked up on merriam-web ster.com to earn top dog word of the year status. Last year’s pick was “vaccine.” Rounding out this year’s Top 10 are:

“Oligarch,” driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Omicron,” the persistent COVID-19 variant and the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet.

“Codify,” as in turning abortion rights into federal law.

“Queen consort,” what King Charles’ wife, Camilla is newly known as.

“Raid,” as in the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-aLago home.

“Sentient,” with lookups brought on by Google canning the engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient.

“Cancel culture,” enough said. “LGBTQIA,” for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, and asexual, aromantic or agender.

“Loamy,” which many Wordle users tried back in August, though the right word that day was “clown.”

The Associated Press

Stanly County Journal

Gas lamps illuminate St. Louis’ Gaslight Square on April 2, 1962. “Gaslighting” — mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of 2022.

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Balance the budget, stop inflation, create jobs

THE NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in the U.S. House will face a major challenge dealing with the Democrat-run White House and U.S. Senate. So, it is vital that Republicans offer a vision of a more successful, prosperous, safer, and freer America.

The first goal is not to find a common ground with left-wing, radical Democrats who reject virtually all our values. They are already tuning their political machine to fight us in 2024.

We

The first goal is to give the American people a sense of hope — and a belief that things can be dramatically better. (The lack of a positive vision led to disappointing Republican Senate campaigns.)

The Commitment to America was a step in the right direction. While it was not driven home as vividly as it could have been, it did give House Republicans enough of a positive message. This helped them carry the popular vote by more than 3 million and gain seats, while most of the Senate Republicans floundered in negativity. (Herschel Walker’s campaign has been mostly positive, but his opponent has been deeply negative and vicious.)

The most powerful visionary statement Republicans could make right now is simple: It is time to balance the budget, stop inflation, and create jobs.

House Republicans can deliver this positive vision of a brighter American future because even in a minority we helped President Ronald Reagan stop inflation and create jobs in 1981. When we became a majority in 1994 with the Contract with America, we went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy. This all happened with the largest capital gains tax cut in history. A key part of our budget-balancing and job-creating program was a systematic reduction in the regulatory burden, which had crippled small business and weakened even the biggest businesses.

The spending, policy, and bureaucratic messes of the current government present enormous opportunities for Republicans to offer a series of bold, popular reforms — and much-needed alternatives to the failed Biden policies that are eroding the economy and weakening America.

Given our experiences with balancing the budget for four consecutive years (the only time in our lifetime) and paying down the federal debt (when I left the Speakership, the debt was scheduled to be paid off by 2009) there are some obvious key principles to follow.

First, reports indicate that at least $600 billion were stolen from various COVID-19 programs. Rooting out and stopping corruption would save a significant amount of money.

Second, restoring the principles of the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act would greatly reduce the cost of welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. People would go to work. Children would be raised from poverty (the largest decline in childhood poverty came after the 1996 act). People would

shift from drawing from public coffers to contributing to them as working taxpayers. Requiring work or study for any federal aid should be extended to everyone except the severely disabled. For most Americans, modern science and technology can turn disabilities into capabilities. Any unemployment compensation should be accompanied with an education requirement. There is no reason to give money to people to do nothing. This change would expand the workforce and reduce dependency.

Third, re-establishing national energy independence would create jobs, generate tax revenue, reduce costs to consumers, and allow us to replace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe. It would lower the cost of energy (and the U.S. government is one of the largest purchasers of energy). This would be a win-win for the balanced budget.

Fourth, simply rejecting all the Biden promises to dictatorships around the world would save billions. The recent offer by the Biden administration to transfer billions in “climate reparations” would be a good example.

Further, aid to Ukraine should be monitored and analyzed. While we should help the Ukrainians bravely fighting for their freedom on the ground, Ukraine’s government has a past reputation for corruption. Remember that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected to fight this corruption.

Fifth, every congressional committee should review the departments over which they have jurisdiction with a results-based rather than process-based model. We spend billions of dollars on programs, which simply do not work. Much of the money we spend on education has failed to improve test scores. The typical Washington solution has been to spend more money on the same programs that are failing.

For example, NASA’s Space Launch System has had one successful launch — after a 20-year, $40 billion total investment. There are private companies that can operate much less expensively, but the NASA-industrial lobbyists complex wants to continue building this absurdly expensive, outdated system. Similarly, the Department of Defense is filled with opportunities to reduce cost.

Every department should be asked to rank the importance of their programs, and Congress should review — eliminating the bottom third of their lists. Further, the Trump administration program of cutting two regulations for each new one created should be written into law and enforced.

Regulatory proposals such as the new Biden climate change regulations for government contractors (which the Washington Times reports could cost $604 billion the first year) are good targets for the principle of prioritizing job creation over regulation.

Balancing the budget, reforming government, and cutting regulations will lead to dramatically lower inflation, and dramatically more jobs. The time to start is now.

COLUMN | DAVID HARSANYI

The GOP’s Hunter Biden probe is legit

AS A TACTICAL CONCERN, the House GOP’s decision to open an investigation into Biden family corruption is questionable. It promises limited political return. It would serve Republicans and the country far better if the House focused on a hyper-politicized Justice Department that targets the political opposition, labels concerned parents “domestic terrorists” and ignores violence aimed at pregnancy centers, for starters.

There is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling.

None of that, however, means there isn’t sufficient circumstantial evidence suggesting President Joe Biden not only lied about knowing his son was favor-trading on the family name with corrupt autocracies but that he was a beneficiary of those business dealings. Indeed, precedent says we Republicans have a duty to “democracy” to investigate. Yet Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post warns: “If Republicans can obliterate the distinction between congressional investigations done in good faith and ones that weaponize the process in bad faith, they win.”

You see, only Democrats can launch investigations in “good faith.”

Pathological partisanship can lead to cosmic shamelessness. And you almost have to admire the chutzpah. These are the very same people who spent years championing one of the most unethical investigations in American history. We now know that Russia “collusion” hysteria was predicated on partisan opposition research and disinformation meant to delegitimize the 2016 election. There was a grand total of zero indictments related to the 2016 election “collusion.” So rickety was the evidence that guardians of our sacred norms never even tried to impeach former President Donald Trump over this alleged sedition. I’ll spare you the slew of blown one-source anonymous “scoops” spread by major media organizations in concert with the FBI and Democratic Party. Sargent highlighted them all.

Let’s remember, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, virtually the entire left-wing media complex regurgitated the risible claims of former intelligence officials -- including known liars James Clapper and John Brennan — that the entire kerfuffle was just Russian “disinformation.” Sargent dismissed the news as a “fake scandal” and worked to discredit the story.

The Hunter story always had far more journalistic substantiation than the histrionic and fallacious Russia-collusion investigations that Sargent and his paper peddled for five years. Post reporters had interviewed the owner of the Delaware computer shop where Hunter had abandoned his computer. They had Hunter’s signature on a receipt. They had on-the-record sources with intimate knowledge of his interactions. They had Tony Bobulinski, one of two former business partners of Hunter Biden who contend that “the big guy” was Joe.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the computer shop owner and Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and former chief technology officer at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command who made campaign contributions to progressives like Ro Khanna, were part of an elaborate fascistic cabal spreading “disinformation.” But now, Congress can put them under oath.

Later, emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunter’s schemes were authenticated by forensic specialists. Yet virtually the entire censorious journalistic establishment, with the help of tech giants, limited the story’s exposure to help their preferred candidate win.

“Democracy,” indeed.

Then there is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling and never personally “profited off” any of his son’s schemes. What did the president think Hunter was doing when he hitched a ride to secure deals with the Chicoms on Air Force Two in 2013? Does Joe not remember that two Obama administration officials raised concerns about Hunter’s relationship with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma? When finally asked about his son, Biden claimed the “vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”

His buddies lied — just like they had during the Russia collusion hysteria. This week, only two years late, CBS News confirmed that the Hunter Biden emails were all genuine — just like everyone knew they were. Now we have authenticated emails showing an executive from Burisma thanking Hunter for facilitating a meeting with the vice president.

If Joe were a Republican, Adam Schiff would not only have opened an investigation, but he would have claimed to be in possession of irrefutable proof that the 2020 election had been bought by the Chinese. Sargent would be churning out one hyperbolic piece after the next. We would all be watching another thermonuclear meltdown.

Of course, nearly every congressional investigation in history is, to one extent or another, undertaken in “bad faith,” and that’s fine. One of the most beneficial roles of political parties is that they will hold the opposition accountable. But Sargent, and other advocates of one-party rule, only see legitimacy in their objectives, which is one of the numerous reasons their claim to be democracy’s defenders is so laughable.

Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books - the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.”

David

went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy.

SIDELINE REPORT

SOCCER

Nearly 20M watch US-England World Cup game

New York

The United States’ 0-0 draw against England in the World Cup drew 19.98 million viewers for Englishand Spanish-language broadcasts. It was the thirdmost watched men’s soccer game on U.S. television behind the 2010 and 2014 finals. The match kicked off at 2 p.m. EST on Friday. It was was seen by 15,377,000 viewers on Fox. That was the most for a U.S. Englishlanguage men’s soccer telecast. The U.S.-England game was viewed by 4.6 million on Telemundo which is a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Shaw steps down as Stanford’s football coach

Stanford, Calif.

David Shaw stepped down as Stanford’s football coach on Monday, ending his 16year run at the school, including the last dozen as the Cardinal’s head coach. Stanford is 14-28 over the last four seasons as the program has struggled to keep up in a rapidly changing college football landscape with players transferring more freely and earning money for name, image, and likeness. AD Bernard Muir said the university remains committed to fielding a topflight football program and is figuring out how it can utilize NIL and the transfer portal to help in that regard without violating Stanford’s principles.

NBA Arbitrator will referee Dr. J’s suit against brand developer Dover, Del.

A Delaware judge has halted a lawsuit filed by basketball legend Julius Erving against a branddevelopment and marketing company. The judge ruled Monday that the dispute must go to arbitration. The lawsuit stems from a 2016 deal in which the Hall of Fame player known as “Dr. J” agreed to sell a majority interest in his trademark and other intellectual property to Authentic Brands Group. Erving alleges that ABG has failed to devote adequate resources to grow the “Dr. J” brand and has focused instead on more profitable brands.

NHL Ex-employee files discrimination complaint vs. Canucks

Vancouver, British Columbia A former member of the Vancouver Canucks’ coaching staff says she was fired because of her sex, mental illness and physical disability. Rachel Doerrie filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after losing her job as video analyst and assistant video coach for the Canucks. She says she told the team that she had a heart condition and post-traumatic stress disorder upon getting hired. Doerrie says the team’s assistant general manager later questioned her mental ability to do her job and treated her differently from the organization’s male employees.

Commanders unveil Sean Taylor memorial 15 years after death

ue,” former Washington quarter back Robert Griffin III tweeted.

By Stephen Whyno The Associated Press

LANDOVER, Md. — The Washington Commanders un veiled a helmet, No. 21 jersey, pants and cleats stood up in mannequin form as a memorial to Sean Taylor on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the late safety’s death.

It was not a statue but rather a glass-enclosed installation on the concourse of FedEx Field, which drew ire on social media for be ing mismatched and falling short of what many hoped and expected it would be.

“Sean Taylor Deserved a Stat

Members of Taylor’s family were on hand for the pregame cer emony, a decade and a half to the day he died at age 24 from a gun shot wound after being shot in the upper thigh by an intruder in his Miami home. A mural honoring Taylor was also revealed.

Following his team’s 19-13 vic tory against Atlanta, coach Ron Rivera opened his news confer ence, “On the 15th anniversary of the passing of Sean Taylor, this one’s for the Taylor family.”

Several Commanders players wore Taylor jerseys to the stadi um and said it was important to pay tribute to the hard-hitting de fender.

“They came up to us earlier in the week and told us that there

Darrick Forest, Commanders safety

was going to be the revealing of the Sean Taylor everything,” safe ty Darrick Forest said. “It’s just about pride. We want to let his leg acy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

Some on social media pointed out the display included a strange mix of a Nike jersey, Reebok pants and Adidas cleats. The use of soc cer cleats instead of football ones

also sparked criticism, but Taylor’s daughter, Jackie, said it was inten tional.

“It was something that was su per special to him and something he chose to do,” she told the lo cal CBS affiliate, WUSA9. “It was beautiful, honestly. They put ev erything that he wore — soccer cleats, little things that were spe cial to him and that he did as a player. That was really special.”

There was only praise from cur rent players for Taylor, who was a two-time Pro Bowl selection in his first three NFL seasons and only got into 57 games before be ing killed.

“It was a big thing just to give him his flowers and do it the right way because he was probably the best safety ever,” safety Kamren Curl said. “Just to be able to do that and be able to be there while they do that was big.”

The team retired Taylor’s num ber last season in what looked to be a hastily put together ceremo ny, announcing it only four days before. Several alumni said they were unable to make it because of the late notice.

Jones, Maddux consider Bonds, Clemens for Hall

positive test under the major league drug program, just over two weeks after getting his 3,000th hit.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Hall of Famers Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris and Ryne Sandberg are among 16 members of the contemporary baseball era committee that will meet Sunday to consider the Cooperstown fate of an eight-man ballot that includes Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro.

Hall of Famers Lee Smith, Frank Thomas and Alan Trammell also are on the panel, which will meet in San Diego ahead of the winter meetings.

They will be joined by former To ronto CEO Paul Beeston, former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs executive Theo Epstein, Anaheim Angels owner Arte Moreno, Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng, Minnesota Twins president Dave St. Peter and Chicago White Sox executive vice president Ken Wil liams.

Three media members/histo rians are on the committee: long time statistical analyst Steve Hirdt of Stats Perform, La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Susan Slusser of the San Fran

cisco Chronicle. Neal and Slusser are past presidents of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Hall Chairman Jane Forbes Clark will be the committee’s non voting chair.

The ballot also includes Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, Fred Mc Griff, Dale Murphy and Curt Schil ling. The committee considers candidates whose careers were pri marily from 1980 on. A candidate needs 75% to be elected and any one who does will be inducted on July 23, along with anyone chosen in the BBWAA vote, announced on Jan. 24.

260 of 394 votes (66%), Clemens 257 (65.2%) and Schilling 231 (58.6%).

Palmeiro was dropped from the BBWAA ballot after receiving 25 votes (4.4%) in his fourth appear ance in 2014, falling below the 5% minimum needed to stay on. His high was 72 votes (12.6%) in 2012.

Bonds denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs and Clemens maintains he never used PEDs. Palmeiro was suspended for 10 days in August 2005 following a

A seven-time NL MVP, Bonds set the career home run record with 762 and the season record with 73 in 2001. A seven-time Cy Young Award winner, Clemens went 354-184 with a 3.12 ERA and 4,672 strikeouts, third behind No lan Ryan (5,714) and Randy John son (4,875). Palmeiro had 3,020 hits and 568 homers.

Schilling fell 16 votes shy with 285 (71.1%) in 2021. Support dropped after hateful remarks he made in retirement toward Mus lims, transgender people, reporters and others.

McGriff got 169 votes (39.8%) in his final year on the BBWAA bal lot in 2019. Murphy was on the BB WAA ballot 15 times and received a high of 116 votes (23.2%) in 2000. Mattingly received a high of 145 votes (28.2%) in the first of 15 ap pearances on the BBWAA bal lot in 2001, and Belle appeared on two BBWAA ballots, receiving 40 votes (7.7%) in 2006 and 19 (3.5%) in 2007.

Players on Major League Base ball’s ineligible list cannot be con sidered, a rule that excludes Pete Rose.

This year’s BBWAA ballot in cludes Carlos Beltrán, John Lackey and Jered Weaver among 14 new comers and Scott Rolen, Todd Hel ton and Billy Wagner among hold overs.

The safety was killed at a shooting in his home in 2007

The 16-member contemporary baseball era committee will consider players tainted by baseball’s steroid scandal

The Associated Press

Bonds, Clemens and Schilling fell short in January in their 10th and final appearances on the BB WAA ballot. Bonds received

AP PHOTO

Steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens (pictured) and Rafael Palmeiro are on the eight-man ballot for the Hall of Fame’s contemporary baseball era committee, which meets Dec. 4 in San Diego.

AP PHOTO

Fans attend the unveiling of the Sean Taylor Memorial before the start of Sunday’s game between the Falcons and Commanders in Landover, Maryland.

“We want to let his legacy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

Wisconsin announced it has hired Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell, bringing the former Ohio State coach back to the Big Ten.

Fickell leaves Cincinnati to take over at Wisconsin

“Luke is one of the top football coaches in the country.”

Chris McIntosh, Wisconsin athletic director

The coach was 57-18 with the Bearcats

The Associated Press

WISCONSIN is bringing Cin cinnati’s Luke Fickell back to the Big Ten.

Athletic director Chris McIn tosh announced Sunday that the Badgers had hired Fickell to take over their football program after his successful run with the Bear cats.

Fickell posted a 57-18 re cord in six seasons at Cincy and helped the Bearcats earn a Col lege Football Playoff berth last year. The former Ohio State de fensive lineman and longtime as sistant went 6-7 as the Buckeyes’ interim coach in 2011 after Jim Tressel’s resignation.

“This is a destination job at a program that I have admired from afar for years,” Fickell said in a statement released by the university. “I am in total align ment with Chris McIntosh’s vi

sion for this program. There is a tremendous foundation here that I can’t wait to build upon.”

Fickell informed the Bearcats players earlier Sunday that he was leaving the school. Cincinna ti named veteran assistant Kerry Coombs interim coach.

Fickell, 49, takes over for in terim coach and former Bad gers defensive back Jim Leon hard, who replaced Paul Chryst on Oct. 2.

Chryst went 67-26 in 7½ sea sons. He was fired one day after the Badgers lost 34-10 at home to an Illinois team led by former Badgers coach Bret Bielema.

“Luke is one of the top foot ball coaches in the country. He is a proven winner, recruiter and developer of players,” McIntosh said in a statement. “Equally as important, he shares our values.

Coach Fickell is focused on giv ing our student-athletes the best opportunities possible and is at tuned to the changing landscape of college athletics.

“I have every confidence that

Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson leaves the field after Sunday’s loss to the Panthers in Charlotte.

Sideline spat latest issue for Russell Wilson in Denver

walking away in a huff.

he will respect and honor the foundation that has been set for our football program over the years while embracing the excit ing opportunities ahead.”

Wisconsin (6-6, 4-5 Big Ten) is awaiting its bowl assignment. A loss in the bowl game would cause the Badgers to finish below .500 for the first time since 2001.

Fickell led Cincinnati to the first CFP berth for any Group of Five school and won several na tional coach of the year awards last season for helping Cincinnati go 13-0 before losing to Alabama in a Cotton Bowl semifinal. That 2021 Cincinnati team produced nine draft picks for the third-highest total of any school, behind only Georgia’s 15 and LSU’s 10. Five Cincinnati players were selected among the top 100 overall picks.

After replacing all that NFL talent, Cincinnati has gone 9-3 this season. The Bearcats didn’t qualify for the American Athletic Conference championship game that takes place Saturday.

Basketball returns for Stanly County’s five high schools

By Jesse Deal North State Journal

WITH THE HIGH SCHOOL basket ball season now underway, here is a look at the varsity boys’ and girls’ teams at Stanly County’s five schools.

West Stanly Colts (Rocky River Conference 2A/3A) 2021-22 Records: 12-11, 7-3 (boys) — 7-19, 4-6 (girls)

Coach Dustin Pflugner has taken over the West boys’ team after the retirement of John Thompson, who coached the team for 12 years. Last year’s squad was runner-up to Monroe in the conference standings but won the conference tournament champion ship over Anson.

The Colts opened the season on Nov. 22 with a 76-72 home loss to South Stanly and will face Albemarle at home on Dec. 2.

On the girls’ side, fifth-year coach Chad Horn is hoping to rebound from a season in which his team lost 11 of its first 12 games, preventing the Colts from making a run for the RRC title.

On Nov. 22, the Colts began their non conference schedule with a 35-33 home loss to Piedmont. The group will host Albemar le (Dec. 2) before traveling to North Stanly (Dec. 5) and Charlotte Latin (Dec. 9).

North Stanly Comets (Yadkin Valley Conference 1A/2A) 2021-22 Records: 19-8, 10-2 (boys) — 203, 10-0 (girls)

Both Comets basketball teams reached the state tournament last season.

For the boys, third-year coach George Walker and his team finished in second place in both the YVC standings and tour nament. The girls, led by second-year coach Regan Allen, went unbeaten in conference play and also won the YVC Tournament.

W ith eight seniors, Walker’s group is in position to excel once again. The Comets started the year with a 71-40 road win at Central Academy and a 70-62 road win at Southwestern Randolph.

Allen’s group, while missing five players from last year, still has a solid core and will look to battle at the top of the YVC again. The Comets posted a 50-24 road win at Central Academy to kick off the season.

South Stanly Rebel Bulls (Yadkin Valley Conference 1A/2A) 2021-22 Records: 5-20, 4-8 (boys)

Sixth-year boys’ coach Sean Whitley — also South’s athletic director — already has a win in the bag with the Bulls’ sea son-opening victory over West. After win ning just five games last season, the Bulls are looking to improve upon the previous campaign.

Junior Drew Gaddy, senior Joseph Mi senheimer and senior Joseph Findlay should all see an increased role for the Bulls, whose season continues with South western Randolph (Dec. 2) and West again (Dec. 8).

Like last year, the Bulls do not have a girls’ varsity team, opting only for a junior varsity squad.

Albemarle Bulldogs (Yadkin Valley Conference 1A/2A) 2021-22 Records: 11-13, 5-7 (boys) — 198, 7-3 (girls)

For instance, it was point ed out this weekend that Carson Wentz has two more TDs pass ing this season than Wilson does and he hasn’t played since getting hurt Oct. 13.

“We’re on the same page — there’s no animosity there at all.”

Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson on his sideline confrontation with teammate Mike Purcell

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Whether or not there’s a fissure in the Denver Broncos’ locker room, there certainly is frustration.

Russell Wilson and Mike Pur cell were quick to dismiss their sideline spat Sunday as an emo tional exchange between compet itive personalities.

“Frustration,’’ Purcell said, was the root of his brief blowup with Wilson during the Broncos’ 23-10 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

Purcell had just been flagged for an unnecessary roughness penalty during a 26-yard field goal by Panthers kicker Eddy Pineiro early in the fourth quar ter.

As he retreated to the sideline, TV cameras captured him shout ing at Wilson, who responded. Purcell spun around and starting shouting in Wilson’s face before

“Mike and I are on the same page,’’ Wilson said. “He came off after they kicked a field goal, he was (ticked) off. He just said, ‘We’ve got, we’ve got to effin’ go,’ and I agree. We’re on the same page — there’s no animosity there at all.

“We’ve got to win,” Wilson said. “... Those guys are out there battling every play, and offense, we’ve got to be able to capitalize. So, yeah, there’s nothing there at all, me and him — there’s noth ing there.’’

Which also aptly describes the Broncos’ beleaguered offense that’s averaging a league-low 14.2 points per game, negating a stin gy defense that’s allowing 17.6 points per game.

Wilson arrived in Denver eight touchdown throws shy of 300 for his career, and it took him three months to reach the milestone, which he finally did Sunday with a 1-yard pass to rookie Brandon Johnson with 3:19 remaining.

The Wilson-led offense is a reli able trending topic on Sundays as the former perennial Pro Bowler sinks to new lows in Denver.

With seven losses in eight games, the Broncos (3-8) now have to win all of their remaining games to avoid a sixth straight losing season.

A seventh consecutive season without a playoff berth is all but a certainty for a team that hasn’t won a game on American soil since Week 3.

Embattled coach Nathan iel Hackett said Monday that he spoke with Purcell and Wilson and “everybody’s good. ... it’s an emotional game.”

Hackett said appreciates the passion that Purcell showed Sun day.

“I mean, you want every one of your football players to want to do anything to win and you want them to hold each other account able. You want them to try to fire each other up,” Hackett said. “I’ve always believed it’s a little dif ferent coming from a coach and then coming from a player.

“I think whenever it comes from a player, those guys, that means a lot to them. So, I appre ciate his passion and understand it. I just don’t want him to get that personal foul in that situation. But besides that, I love when the guys are fired up.”

With six seniors this year, second-year boys’ coach Chauncey Bruton has more with which to work, but his team will have to battle to post the school’s first winning season since the 2018-19 campaign.

Bishop McGuinness hosted Albemar le on Nov. 22, sending the road team back home with a 27-point loss. The Bulldogs faced off with North Rowan on Nov. 29

Just one year removed from a zero-win season, 10th-year coach Eric Davis and the Bulldogs girls made it to the third round of state playoffs last season with a relative ly young lineup that still had room to grow.

The girls’ 2022-23 season began on Nov. 22 with a 70-42 road loss to Bishop Mc Guiness. Looking to rebound past that rough debut, the Bulldogs will face North Rowan, West Stanly and Salisbury next on the schedule.

Gray Stone Day Knights

(Yadkin Valley Conference 1A/2A)

2021-22 Records: 0-19, 0-12 (boys) — 8-12, 4-6 (girls)

Featuring two new coaches, last season was a rebirth for a Gray Stone basketball program. Jaquan Goldston took up coach ing duties for the Knights boys while Britta ny Teller did the same for the Knights girls.

Both coaches are now back for their sec ond season on the job.

The boys are aiming for their first win since Jan. 28, 2020, after back-to-back winless seasons, while the girls are looking to build off a strong second half of last sea son.

The two Knights’ teams opened up their year with home matchups versus Bradford Prep on Nov. 29.

Broncos nose tackle Mike Purcell argued with the quarterback following a personal foul penalty

The Associated Press

Four schools play in the Yadkin Valley Conference, while West Stanly competes in the Rocky River Conference

LAURENCE KESTERSON | AP PHOTO

AP PHOTO

Fentanyl’s scourge plainly visible on streets of Los Angeles

By Brian Melley The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — In an filthy alley behind a Los Angeles dough nut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slum ber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day.

When Brandice Josey, another homeless addict, bent down and blew a puff of fentanyl smoke his way in an act of charity, Smith sat up and slowly opened his lip to in hale the vapor as if it was the cure to his problems.

Smith, wearing a grimy yel low T-shirt that said “Good Vibes Only,” reclined on his backpack and dozed the rest of the after noon on the asphalt, unperturbed by the stench of rotting food and human waste that permeated the air.

For too many people strung out on the drug, the sleep that follows a fentanyl hit is permanent. The highly addictive and potentially lethal drug has become a scourge across America and is taking a toll on the growing number of people living on the streets of Los Ange les.

Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Ange les County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700.

Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer. Use of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that is cheap to produce and is often sold as is or laced in other drugs, has explod ed. Because it’s 50 times more po tent than heroin, even a small dose can be fatal.

It has quickly become the dead liest drug in the nation, accord ing to the Drug Enforcement Ad ministration. Two-thirds of the 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were attributed to synthetic opi oids like fentanyl, the U.S. Cen ters for Disease Control and Pre vention said.

The drug’s toll spreads far be yond the streets.

Jennifer Catano, 27, has the names of two children tattooed on her wrists, but she hasn’t seen them for several years. They live with her mother.

“My mom doesn’t think it’s a

good idea because she thinks it’s gonna hurt the kids because I’m not ready to get rehabilitated,” Catano said.

She has overdosed three times and been through rehab seven or eight times.

“It’s scary to get off of it,” she said. “The withdrawals are real ly bad.”

Catano wandered around a sub way station near MacArthur Park desperate to sell a bottle of Downy fabric softener and a Coleman camping chair she stole from a nearby store.

Drug abuse can be a cause or

symptom of homelessness. Both can also intersect with mental ill ness.

A 2019 report by the Los Ange les Homeless Services Authority found about a quarter of all home less adults in Los Angeles County had mental illnesses and 14% had a substance use disorder. That anal ysis only counted people who had a permanent or long-term severe condition. Taking a broader inter pretation of the same data, the Los Angeles Times found about 51% had mental illnesses and 46% had substance use disorders.

Billions of dollars are being

spent to alleviate homelessness in California but treatment is not al ways funded.

A controversial bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom could im prove that by forcing people suf fering from severe mental illness into treatment. But they need to be diagnosed with a certain disor der such as schizophrenia and ad diction alone doesn’t qualify.

Help is available but it is out paced by the magnitude of misery on the streets.

Rita Richardson, a field su pervisor with LA Door, a city ad diction-prevention program that works with people convicted of misdemeanors, hands out socks, water, condoms, snacks, clean needles and flyers at the same hotspots Monday through Friday. She hopes the consistency of her visits will encourage people to get help.

“Then hopefully the light bulb comes on. It might not happen this year. It might not happen next year. It might take several years,” said Richardson, a former home less addict. “My goal is to take them from the dark to the light.”

Parts of Los Angeles have be come scenes of desperation with men and women sprawled on side walks, curled up on benches and collapsed in squalid alleys. Some huddle up smoking the drug, oth ers inject it.

Armando Rivera, 33, blew out white puffs to attract addicts in the alley where Smith was sleep ing. He needed to sell some dope to buy more. Those without enough money to support their habit, hov ered around him, hoping for a free hit. Rivera showed no mercy.

Catano couldn’t sell the chair, but eventually she sold the fabric softener to a street vendor for $5. It was enough money for anoth er high.

Landmark trial over Arkansas youth gender care ban resumes

The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A psy chiatrist called to the stand by Ar kansas as the state defends its ban on gender-affirming care for chil dren said Monday he was con cerned about the impact the law could have on some transgender youth who would see their treat ments cut off.

Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychi atrist at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio, testified as the nation’s first trial over such a ban continued before a federal judge after a fiveweek break.

Arkansas’ law, which was tem porarily blocked last year, would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treat ment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old. It also would prohibit doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care.

Levine criticized the use of gender-affirming medical treat ment for minors, but under cross examination acknowledged his concerns about the psychological impacts of cutting off such care for some trans youth already re ceiving it. Levine said it could be “shocking and devastating” for some youth receiving the care.

“My concern with the law, the way it was originally written, is it seemed to leave out what you’re talking about,” Levine testified.

Republican lawmakers in Ar kansas enacted the ban last year, overriding a veto by GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Hutchinson,

who leaves office in January, also said that the law went too far by cutting off treatments for children currently receiving such care. Ar kansas was the first state to enact such a ban.

Multiple medical groups, in

cluding the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say the treat ments are safe if properly admin istered. The American Psychiat ric Association has supported the

ruling blocking Arkansas’ ban, saying denying such care to ado lescents who need it could harm their mental health.

But Levine said he recommends psychotherapy over gender-af firming care for the treatment of

gender dysphoria, criticizing the current standard of care as using psychotherapy as “cheerleading” for such treatments.

Levine, however, testified that he wasn’t aware of what protocols are followed by doctors who pro vide such care in Arkansas.

The state has argued that the prohibition is within its author ity to regulate the medical pro fession. People opposed to such treatments for children argue they are too young to make such decisions about their futures.

Levine echoed that argument, saying minor patients “really have very little concept of what their future holds.”

A similar ban has been blocked by a federal judge in Alabama, and other states have taken steps to restrict such care. Florida med ical officials earlier this month ap proved a rule banning gender-af firming care for minors, at the urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A judge in Texas has blocked that state’s efforts to investigate gender-confirming care for mi nors as child abuse. Children’s hospitals around the country have faced harassment and threats of violence for providing gen der-confirming care.

The families of four trans gender youth sued challenging Arkansas’ ban. Last month, a 17-year-old testified that his life has been transformed by the hor mone therapy he’s been receiving and said ending the treatments could force his family to leave the state.

AP PHOTO

A homeless addict holds pieces of fentanyl in Los Angeles, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022.

AP PHOTO, FILE

Dylan Brandt speaks at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Ark.,

July 21, 2021.

obituaries

Betty Cagle Adams

December 13, 1935 - November 25, 2022

Betty Cagle Adams, 86, of Concord, passed away on Friday, November 25, 2022 at Trinity Place in Albemarle surrounded by family.

Betty was born December 13, 1935 in Stanly County to the late Charlie Lester Cagle and Sallie Tom Morris Cagle.

Mrs. Adams is survived by sons: Alfred Frank Chandler, Jr. (Diane) of Charlotte, NC, Doug Chandler (Sheryl) of Charlotte, NC, David Michael Chandler (Donna) of Concord, NC; daughter: Patricia Chandler Jones of New London, NC;

grandchildren: Aja Chandler of Albemarle, NC, Ashley Chandler of Charleston, SC, Brittany Kelley (Justin) of Albemarle, NC, Bethany Chandler Palmgren (Liam) of Carry, NC, Nathan Chandler of Charlotte, NC, Adam Jones of New London, NC; great grandchildren: Jaxson Kelley, Colson Kelley; sister: Helen Hatley of Charlotte; brother: Billy Grant Cagle (Lynn) of Melbourne, FL; sister in law: Beula Cagle of Albemarle, NC, Lavenia Chandler of Albemarle, NC, Delores Chandler of Melbourne, FL; and several nieces and nephews.

Betty was preceded in death by husband Alfred Frank Chandler, Sr., second husband: John Adams; brothers: Clyde Cagle, James Cagle, Marvin Cagle; sister: Beulah Morton, Louise Burleson, Dupree Keel, Dora Lee Morrisette.

John William Lowder

June 20, 1945 - November 25, 2022

John William Lowder, 77, of New London, passed away on Friday, November 25, 2022 at Atrium Cabarrus.

Mr. Lowder was born June 20, 1945 in Stanly County to the late John Ernest Lowder and Eliza Selena Morton Lowder. John was a United States Navy Veteran and a member at Prospect Baptist Church.

John is preceded in death by his wife Debra Hill Lowder. Mr. Lowder is survived by his son John (Caroline) of Goose Creek, SC; daughter Lisa Davis (Robert) of New London, NC; grandchildren: Terry Mauldin (Lisa) of Richfield, NC, Whitney Mauldin of New London, NC, Gage Lowder of Goose Creek, SC; great grandchildren: Elena Mauldin, Mikel Mauldin, Kaden Mauldin, Jameson Mauldin, Addison Davis, Camden Huneycutt, and Connor Holt. He was also preceded in death by brothers: James Lowder and Robert Lowder, John Melvin Lowder; and sisters: Elizabeth Sossamon, Ernestine Parker, Carolyn Solomon.

Betty Mae Melton Lingafelt

March 8, 1933 - November 25, 2022

Betty Mae Melton Lingafelt, 89, of Stanfield passed away on November 25, 2022 in The Greens at Cabarrus.

Born March 8, 1933 in Buncombe County, NC she was the daughter of the late Floyd Elworth Melton and Margaret Nora Dempsey Melton.

Mrs. Lingafelt was preceded in death by her husband Rev. D. O. Lingafelt and a great granddaughter Oakley Smith. She is survived by children Keith Lingafelt, Kathy L. Brinson, and Kenneth Lingafelt, grandchildren Rebecca and Chris Hills, Kristi and Jeff Smith, Charity L. Lingafelt, Chad and Jessica Lingafelt, Kyle and Brittany Lingafelt, Melissa Lingafelt, and MaKenzie Lingafelt, greatgrandchildren Skylar Smith, Delaney Smith, Jackson Hills, Daisy Ross, Olivia Ross, Katie Lingafelt, Clark Lingafelt, Conor Lingfelt, and Hudson Lingafelt, and sisters Thelma M. Morrison and Wanda M. McGee.

Richard Mead Erk

March 4, 1951 - November 25, 2022

Richard Mead Erk, 71, of Albemarle, passed away on Friday, November 25, 2022 at Atrium Stanly. Mr. Erk was born March 4, 1951 in Honesdale, PA to the late Clifford Russell Erk and Jane Elizabeth Sandercock Erk. He was an avid golfer and retired from IAC Corporation in Albemarle. Richard was a member at Congregational Christian Church in Albemarle.

Richard is survived by his wife of 29 years, Debra Mauldin Erk of the home; daughter: Jennifer Bradshaw of Lynchburg, VA; son: Patrick Erk (Jessica) of Lynchburg, VA; grandchildren: Mark Bradshaw, Maggie Bradshaw, Cooper Bradshaw, Carter Bradshaw, Gabriel Erk, Julie Erk, Arabella Erk, Gabriel Logwood; sister: Karen Goodrich (Jim) of Boulder, CO; brotherin-law: Brian Himpele of South Bend, IN; and Richard’s service dog Marley.

He was preceded in death by grandchildren: Marquis Erk and Dante Erk, and sister: Cindy Himpele.

Billy Thomas "Tom" Chrane

May 21, 1948 - November 24, 2022

Billy Thomas “Tom” Chrane passed away on November 24, 2022, at the age of 74.

Tom is predeceased by his father, Dr. Bill T. Chrane, and his mother, Laverne Chrane, of Big Spring, Texas, as well as his brothers, Steve and Charles “Chuck” Chrane.

He is survived by his loving wife, Rita Chrane; two sons, Zane and Derek (Marie) Chrane; grandson, Finley Chrane; and his beloved dog “Cowboy.” His greatest joy was watching his two loving sons mature into young men.

He is lovingly remembered by his sisters, Caren, Sharon, and Cindy, who reside in Texas and Carla, who resides in North Carolina.

Teresa Hatley Brewbaker

March 13, 1953 - November 19, 2022

Teresa Jean Hatley Brewbaker, 69, of Concord passed away on Saturday, November 19, 2022 in the Tucker Hospice House, Kannapolis.

January 2, 1923 - November 17, 2022

Ms. Sarah Cornelia Turner, the daughter of the late Nezzie Wall Turner and Andrew Turner, was born on January 2, 1923 in Stanly County. She departed this earthly life on November 17 at Clear Creek Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Mint Hill, NC.

Shirley Morton Talbert

March 19, 1935 - November 22, 2022

Shirley Morton Talbert, 87, of Albemarle, passed away Tuesday, November 22, 2022 in the Tucker Hospice House.

Lola Hall Burris

June 25, 1927 - November 21, 2022

Lola Austin Hall Burris, 95, of Albemarle, passed away on Monday, November 21, 2022 at Trinity Place in Albemarle, NC. Mrs. Burris was born June 25, 1927 in Rowan County to the late Orin Orestus Austin and Eva Lula Miller Austin.

Wilma

Mrs. Dennis was born August 21,1931 in Stanly County to the late Milas Furman and Lucy Hopkins Mauldin. She was a 1949 graduate of Aquadale High School and a member of Porter Baptist Church.

She was preceded in death by her husband Frank Dennis Sr. a son Frank Dennis Jr. a grandson Dustin Dennis and ten brothers and sisters.

She is survived by one son Rickey Dennis and wife Becky. Three daughters, Debbie Dennis Measmer and husband Jim, Linda Dennis Harkey and husband Gene and Lisa Dennis Darnell and husband Dean and a daughter-in-law Marie Hathcock Dennis all of Albemarle. Nine grandchildren and twelve greatgrandchildren.

Born March 13, 1953 in Stanly County, NC she was the daughter of the late Gene Douglas Hatley and Lillian Harper Hatley Richardson. She was of the Christian Faith and worked for many years as a merchandiser.

She was preceded in death by her husband Irvin Edwin Brewbaker. Mrs. Brewbaker is survived by her son Aaron Chase Brewbaker and wife Laura Feathers Brewbaker of Hickory, Sandra Sossamon of Locust, Ronald Stephen Hatley of Morganton, Micki Triplett of Pilot Mountain, Jill Woodle of Richfield, Dr. Michael Ricardson of Herndon, VA, stepson Brent Brewbaker of Mt. Gilead, stepdaughter Alison Brewbaker of Mebane, and two grandchildren Vayda Jeanne Brewbaker and Ayla Beverly Brewbaker and her beloved grand-niece Molli Sossamon.

Sarah was a member of Bennettsville A.M.E Zion Church. She was a loving, caring mother, sister, friend, and neighbor.

She was preceded in death by her parents, two sons Kevin and Clifford Turner, one granddaughter Daphne Turner and eight siblings John, Willie, Paul, Eloise, James, Mary, Pine and Maria.

She leaves to cherish her many memories to her children Minister JoAnn Ingram of Mt. Gilead, NC Bobby and Thomas of Norwood, NC, thirteen grandchildren, Cornelius, Wayne, Damien, Dorian, Sarah, Amina, Amira, Stephanie, Thomas, Tonya, Curtis, Odell and Trevor, thirty-one great-grandchildren, five great-great-grandchildren, one brother Jasper Turner of Norwood, NC and a host of nieces and nephews including Lisa, Terrance, Alice, Delano, Vanessa, David, Devron and Alvin.

Mrs. Talbert was born March 19, 1935 in Stanly County to the late Theodore Jackson Morton and Noma Elizabeth Smith Morton. She retired as a secretary from E.J. Snyders and Jeffries Southern Processors.

Shirley was a member of Anderson Grove Baptist Church, and loved her relationship with the Lord. She was formerly a church secretary, a GA leader, Sunday School Teacher and a member of the choir.

Shirley was preceded in death by her husband, William Kenneth Talbert. She is survived by a son, Ricky Dale Talbert of Winnabow, NC; three daughters, Dianne Miller (Max) of Concord, NC, Kim TalbertKirk (Richard) of Gastonia, NC and Amy Faulkner of Albemarle, NC; twelve grandchildren, Tera, Ethan, Thomas, Kevin, Ryan, Timothy, Travis, Erin, Tabatha, Hope, Mahalah, and Jarod and fifteen great-grandchildren. Mrs. Talbert was also preceded in death by three brothers, Lewis Morton, Clyde Morton and Frank Morton.

Lola is survived by her daughters: Della Smith (Ray) of Badin, Shirley Starnes (Bill) of Richfield; step daughters: Trudy Jepsen (Norman) of Albemarle, Ann Lowder (Chester) of Norwood; grandchildren: Kristi Medlin (Derrick) of New London, Nikki Huneycutt (Robbie) of Oakboro, Sarah Roberts (Justin) of Richfield, Amanda Jepsen of Japan, Zach Jepsen (Katie) of Mint Hill, Mindy Thomas (Jeff) of Gastonia, Nathan Lowder (Jana) of Norwood, Adam Lowder (Amanda) of Norwood; great grandchildren: Erika Roberts (Jason) of New London, Kara Pless (Damon) of New London, Camren Huneycutt of Oakboro, Kayden Huneycutt of Oakboro, Hayley Myers of Richfield, Mackenzie Myers of Richfield, Bryson Roberts of Richfield, Regina Jepsen of Mint Hill, Katie Thomas of Gastonia, Paige Thomas of Gastonia, Pheobe Thomas of Gastonia, Steven Lowder of Norwood, Emory Lowder of Norwood, Cooper Lowder of Norwood, Mason Lowder of Norwood; great-great grandchildren: Knox Roberts, Nash Roberts, Carson Pless, Remi Pless; sister: Faye Yarbrough of Concord, CA.

Sarah Cornelia Turner

Wilma Dennis August 21, 1931 ~ November 26, 2022

Mauldin Dennis 91 of Albemarle died Saturday Evening, November 26, 2022 at her home.

STATE & NATION

NC Democrats’ parity in Congress delegation may be fleeting

The Associated Press

RALEIGH — Democrats cele brated winning what was billed as North Carolina’s lone toss-up race for the U.S. House this month, as state Sen. Wiley Nickel’s narrow victory over Republican Bo Hines in the 13th Congressional District helped weaken any national GOP midterm wave.

Nickel’s win creates a 7-7 split in the state’s delegation, marking the best showing for state Demo crats after a decade of trailing the GOP in an otherwise closely di vided state. Trial judges drew the latest district boundaries after re districting litigation successful ly blocked maps passed by the Re publican-controlled legislature that could have whittled Demo crats down to four seats.

“We’re a 50-50 state — we should have a 7-to-7 delegation,” Nickel told The Associated Press during a break in his congressional orientation in Washington. “When we have fair maps, we get fair re sults that reflect the choice of the voters.”

But there’s a good chance Nick el’s Raleigh-area district and oth ers will be dramatically altered for the 2024 elections, returning the advantage to Republicans.

A confluence of events opens the

door for General Assembly Repub licans to pass their preferred con gressional map in 2023 and have it used the following year.

“Seven-seven does not reflect the will of the voters in North Car olina,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters the day after the election. “So it should be some thing different. I don’t know what that is. But at the end of the day ...

let’s trust the voters of this state.”

Republicans hold eight of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts through the year’s end. Population growth gave North Carolina a 14th seat with the November election.

GOP legislators vehemently op posed a split opinion by the state Supreme Court last winter that struck down their approved map by declaring the state constitution

prohibited partisan gerrymander ing of boundaries.

State law required the judgedrawn map be used only for this year’s races. Republicans will con tinue to have majorities in the state House and Senate next year com fortable enough to pass their fa vored map. Redistricting plans are not subject to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp.

Most importantly, Republicans will have a 5-2 majority on the Su preme Court come January with victories by Trey Allen and Rich ard Dietz for seats currently held by Democrats.

The current 4-3 Democratic majority ruled that congressional and legislative maps approved by the General Assembly in Novem ber 2021 unlawfully gave Repub licans outsized favoritism com pared with Democrats. The three Republican justices who dissented wrote that the constitution doesn’t expressly bar or limit partisan ad vantage in mapmaking.

The arrival of two more GOP justices makes it more likely — but not assured — that the court would uphold a future congressio nal map by the legislature while re jecting last year’s landmark ruling that defined illegal partisan gerry mandering.

Senate leader Phil Berger said he expected the state would now move away from what he called the “judicial gerrymander” to “what would be, I think, a different draw ing of the congressional maps.”

Plans approved by the legisla ture but never implemented would have positioned Republicans to

win 10 of the state’s 14 congressio nal seats.

Michael Bitzer, a political sci ence professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, said Nickel would be a likely target for Republi can lawmakers to place in a more GOP-friendly district.

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jack son, who won the newly created 14th District seat covering por tions of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, and 6th District Dem ocratic Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro, who was elected to her second term, are also vulnera ble, Bitzer said.

It’s possible the state Supreme Court shift could be moot. Litiga tion involving the congressional map is before the U.S. Supreme Court and could result in state courts losing the ability to judge laws involving federal elections, including seat boundaries. Oral arguments are scheduled for next month in the case, in which law yers for Berger and Moore argue the U.S. Constitution delegates “the Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections solely to state legislatures.

An analysis by Bitzer of federal statewide contests in North Caro lina since 2008 show Republican candidates winning nearly 51% of the cumulative votes compared with 47% for Democrats. But the idea that a political party should be assured of seats aligned with their percentage support at the ballot box over time was shunned by au thors of the state Supreme Court’s prevailing and dissenting opinions last February.

By Michelle L. Price The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Democrats cel ebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 cam paign that could prove more chal lenging.

The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.

Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increas ingly hostile to Democrats, includ ing Montana, Ohio and West Vir ginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly con tested states that were at the cen ter of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Ne vada. And while Democrats car ried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.

But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party out performed expectations.

For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelec tion campaign, that means stay ing focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the in frastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.

“We know that races are al ways close,” Rosen said in an in

terview. “We never take anything for granted.”

Perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking re election will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Ari zona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and con nect with a broader, more moder ate range of voters during the gen eral election.

In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to at tract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who

was awarded a Purple Heart af ter being severely wounded in Af ghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong chal lenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cor tez Masto.

Also in the southwest, Arizo na Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist

Democrat, will be up for reelec tion. Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Demo cratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.

Sinema is among a trio of mod erate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incum bents in 2024.

The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.

Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week af ter winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.

Republicans see Tester, a threeterm senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosen dale.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won re election in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republi cans, including in this year’s Sen ate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.

One potential Republican chal lenger whose name has been float ed in Pennsylvania is former hedge

fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican pri mary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expect ed to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.

Gallagher brushed off a que ry about whether he was consid ering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years.

“Any talk of the next election, es pecially since we just had an elec tion, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.

A number of high-profile Re publican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.

On the Democratic side, a num ber of the party’s former presi dential candidates will face vot ers. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klo buchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.

Vermont independent Sen. Ber nie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Con gress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.

In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.

“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Reyes’ longtime political con sultant Alan Crooks said.

Democrats kept the Senate this year, but 2024 may be harder

AP PHOTO

Rep.-elect Wiley Nickel, D-N.C., speaks with reporters after newlyelected members of the House of Representatives attended an orientation program, in Washington, D.C.

AP PHOTO

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., center, welcomes Senator-elect Peter Welch, D-Vt., left, and Senator-elect John Fetterman, D-Pa., whose victories helped give Democrats the majority in the next Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

“We know that races are always close. We never take anything for granted.”

Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen

Randolph record

Furniture company cuts employees with no notice

City of Asheboro conducts annual water treatment switch

Last month, the City of Asheboro sent out a notice that the water treatment plants would be switching to free chlorine as the primary disinfection treatment in November. If you have noticed a slight chlorine smell recently, there is no cause for alarm. The city officially began this process of treatment on Tuesday, November 1. According to the City of Asheboro, this change is made once a year, and it is “necessary to ensure optimum water quality throughout the distribution water mains.”

Officials also mentioned that this slight increase in chlorine taste and smell would be temporary. Customers who use city drinking water for certain special purposes, including kidney dialysis, may need to make adjustments because the chlorine disinfection process will change some characteristics of the water. Anyone with questions or concerns can contact the Water Treatment Plant Manager by calling (336) 626-1215.

Sheriff’s office seizes 230 pounds of marijuana

Two men from California were arrested last week after deputies with the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office stopped their tractor-trailer on I-85. During the traffic stop, a K-9 alerted officers, and the vehicle was searched. According to a press release from the sheriff’s office, deputies found and seized approximately 230 pounds of marijuana.

Da Hu and Hailiang Hu were both placed under arrest and transported to the Randolph County Jail, where the magistrate found probable cause to charge both with two felony counts of trafficking marijuana. Both individuals received a $200,000 secured bond.

Randolph Record

WINSTON-SALEM — Unit ed Furniture Industries termi nated all its employees last week, just days before Thanksgiving, in a move that drew a considerable backlash in the Triad.

Workers based in Winston-Sa lem were among those impacted.

The Mississippi-based compa ny sent an email overnight just two days before Thanksgiving notify ing staffers that it was terminat ing all employees due to “unfore seen business circumstances” and telling them not to report for their shifts.

The immediate termination ap plies to all employees with the ex ception of “over-the-road drivers that are out on delivery,” the memo said. “Your layoff from the Com

pany is expected to be permanent, and all benefits will be terminated immediately without provision of COBRA.”

That left laid-off employees

without health insurance, accord ing to reports.

During the summer, United Furniture Industries announced it was ending production at its plants

in Winston-Salem and High Point. As a result, 271 people lost jobs, ac cording to WARN Act notices filed in July with the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

According to last week’s memo, over-the-road drivers that were out on delivery would be paid for the balance of last week.

“Whether or not you have com pleted your delivery, please im mediately return equipment, in ventory, and delivery documents for those deliveries that have been completed to one of the following locations: Winston-Salem, NC, Ve rona, MS, or Victorville, CA loca tion. To be clear, do not complete any additional deliveries,” a memo stated.

The mass layoffs at the furni ture company joined a growing list of terminations across industries in recent weeks.

UFI makes promotional to midpriced upholstered furniture in the U.S. under its brand and the Lane Home Furnishings brand, which it acquired in November 2017 from Heritage Home Group. The manu facturer also imports wooden bed room and dining furniture.

Board hears request to name Trinity High School Gymnasium after current coach

By Ryan Henkel Randolph Record

ASHEBORO — The Randolph County Schools Board of Educa tion met Monday, November 21, where they were given an update on SRO contracts, school improve ment plans, and a potential calen dar plan for future school years.

The board was given an update on the school system’s new SRO contracts.

“It’s been in the works for a while to add some SRO presence at the elementary schools,” said Su perintendent Stephen Gainey. “We wanted to make sure we could get the officers trained and recruited, and that was handled by the Sher iff’s Department. Just the need to have some presence there. Right now, we have 13 SROs between our middle and high schools, and they are all assigned to an elementary school. So these will be additional support. There will be four officers

divided between the 17 elementary schools. One officer will have five, and the other three [schools] will have four apiece and just provide additional support as we can and build additional relationships be tween children and officers. These officers, these elementary schools will be their sole roles.”

The contract will pay a sum to tal of $119,007 which includes the cost of salaries, benefits, training, and supplies.

The board also heard a nam ing request for the Trinity High School Gymnasium.

“The Randolph County Schools System has been approached about naming the Trinity High School gymnasium after Tim Kel ly,” said Executive Director of Op erations Dale Brinkley. “Tim Kel ly is the current boy’s basketball head coach at Trinity High School and has served in this role for 34 seasons. Since starting his ca reer in 1989-90 as Trinity High School’s head boys basketball coach, Coach Kelly’s teams have won various conference, sectional, and state-level championships. He also has received various coaching awards and has served as a role model and mentor. The request is

to name it Tim Kelly Gymnasium.”

Since Kelly is technically cur rently classified as a volunteer and is no longer an employee, there would be no conflict with the naming rights should the board approve the request at their next meeting.

The board was also given an up date on a grant that was received by one of the district’s elementary schools.

“Tabernacle Elementary School received the North Carolina Out door Heritage Advisory Go Out side Grant in the amount of $1,800,” said Assistant Superin tendent of Curriculum and In struction Cathy Waddell. “The grant was received on Septem ber 28, and it will go towards the funding for 5th-grade students to attend Camp Caraway for outdoor science activities.”

The board then approved the first reading of the 2024-25 school calendar.

“The Calendar Committee met and developed a draft of the 20242025 school calendar,” Brinkley said. “The calendar includes 180 student days, 14 teacher work

FILE PHOTO

Days before Thanksgiving, United Furniture Industries terminated all employees of the company.

Asheboro police patrol vehicles targeted in vandalism

Several patrol vehicles which belong to the Asheboro Police Department were vandalized with spray paint over the weekend. Police say that the patrol vehicles in the lot were spare vehicles and that the Criminal Investigations Division is currently investigating the case. At this time, no information on a suspect(s) or a motive has been released.

PHOTO COURTESY APD

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Balance the budget, stop inflation, create jobs

THE NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in the U.S. House will face a major challenge dealing with the Democrat-run White House and U.S. Senate. So, it is vital that Republicans offer a vision of a more successful, prosperous, safer, and freer America.

The first goal is not to find a common ground with left-wing, radical Democrats who reject virtually all our values. They are already tuning their political machine to fight us in 2024.

The first goal is to give the American people a sense of hope — and a belief that things can be dramatically better. (The lack of a positive vision led to disappointing Republican Senate campaigns.)

The Commitment to America was a step in the right direction. While it was not driven home as vividly as it could have been, it did give House Republicans enough of a positive message. This helped them carry the popular vote by more than 3 million and gain seats, while most of the Senate Republicans floundered in negativity. (Herschel Walker’s campaign has been mostly positive, but his opponent has been deeply negative and vicious.)

The most powerful visionary statement Republicans could make right now is simple: It is time to balance the budget, stop inflation, and create jobs.

House Republicans can deliver this positive vision of a brighter American future because even in a minority we helped President Ronald Reagan stop inflation and create jobs in 1981. When we became a majority in 1994 with the Contract with America, we went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy. This all happened with the largest capital gains tax cut in history. A key part of our budget-balancing and job-creating program was a systematic reduction in the regulatory burden, which had crippled small business and weakened even the biggest businesses.

The spending, policy, and bureaucratic messes of the current government present enormous opportunities for Republicans to offer a series of bold, popular reforms — and much-needed alternatives to the failed Biden policies that are eroding the economy and weakening America.

Given our experiences with balancing the budget for four consecutive years (the only time in our lifetime) and paying down the federal debt (when I left the Speakership, the debt was scheduled to be paid off by 2009) there are some obvious key principles to follow.

First, reports indicate that at least $600 billion were stolen from various COVID-19 programs. Rooting out and stopping corruption would save a significant amount of money.

Second, restoring the principles of the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act would greatly reduce the cost of welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. People would go to work. Children would be raised from poverty (the largest decline in childhood poverty came after the 1996 act).

People would shift from drawing from public coffers to contributing to them as working taxpayers. Requiring work or study for any federal aid should be extended to everyone except the severely disabled. For most Americans, modern science and technology can turn disabilities into capabilities. Any unemployment compensation should be accompanied with an education requirement. There is no reason to give money to people to do nothing. This change would expand the workforce and reduce dependency.

Third, re-establishing national energy independence would create jobs, generate tax revenue, reduce costs to consumers, and allow us to replace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe. It would lower the cost of energy (and the U.S. government is one of the largest purchasers of energy). This would be a win-win for the balanced budget.

Fourth, simply rejecting all the Biden promises to dictatorships around the world would save billions. The recent offer by the Biden administration to transfer billions in “climate reparations” would be a good example.

Further, aid to Ukraine should be monitored and analyzed. While we should help the Ukrainians bravely fighting for their freedom on the ground, Ukraine’s government has a past reputation for corruption. Remember that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected to fight this corruption.

Fifth, every congressional committee should review the departments over which they have jurisdiction with a results-based rather than process-based model. We spend billions of dollars on programs, which simply do not work. Much of the money we spend on education has failed to improve test scores. The typical Washington solution has been to spend more money on the same programs that are failing.

For example, NASA’s Space Launch System has had one successful launch — after a 20-year, $40 billion total investment. There are private companies that can operate much less expensively, but the NASA-industrial lobbyists complex wants to continue building this absurdly expensive, outdated system. Similarly, the Department of Defense is filled with opportunities to reduce cost.

Every department should be asked to rank the importance of their programs, and Congress should review — eliminating the bottom third of their lists. Further, the Trump administration program of cutting two regulations for each new one created should be written into law and enforced.

Regulatory proposals such as the new Biden climate change regulations for government contractors (which the Washington Times reports could cost $604 billion the first year) are good targets for the principle of prioritizing job creation over regulation.

Balancing the budget, reforming government, and cutting regulations will lead to dramatically lower inflation, and dramatically more jobs. The time to start is now.

COLUMN | DAVID HARSANYI

The GOP’s Hunter Biden probe is legit

AS A TACTICAL CONCERN, the House GOP’s decision to open an investigation into Biden family corruption is questionable. It promises limited political return. It would serve Republicans and the country far better if the House focused on a hyper-politicized Justice Department that targets the political opposition, labels concerned parents “domestic terrorists” and ignores violence aimed at pregnancy centers, for starters.

There is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling.

None of that, however, means there isn’t sufficient circumstantial evidence suggesting President Joe Biden not only lied about knowing his son was favor-trading on the family name with corrupt autocracies but that he was a beneficiary of those business dealings. Indeed, precedent says we Republicans have a duty to “democracy” to investigate. Yet Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post warns: “If Republicans can obliterate the distinction between congressional investigations done in good faith and ones that weaponize the process in bad faith, they win.”

You see, only Democrats can launch investigations in “good faith.”

Pathological partisanship can lead to cosmic shamelessness. And you almost have to admire the chutzpah. These are the very same people who spent years championing one of the most unethical investigations in American history. We now know that Russia “collusion” hysteria was predicated on partisan opposition research and disinformation meant to delegitimize the 2016 election. There was a grand total of zero indictments related to the 2016 election “collusion.” So rickety was the evidence that guardians of our sacred norms never even tried to impeach former President Donald Trump over this alleged sedition. I’ll spare you the slew of blown one-source anonymous “scoops” spread by major media organizations in concert with the FBI and Democratic Party. Sargent highlighted them all.

Let’s remember, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, virtually the entire left-wing media complex regurgitated the risible claims of former intelligence officials -- including known liars James Clapper and John Brennan — that the entire kerfuffle was just Russian “disinformation.” Sargent dismissed the news as a “fake scandal” and worked to discredit the story.

The Hunter story always had far more journalistic substantiation than the histrionic and fallacious Russia-collusion investigations that Sargent and his paper peddled for five years. Post reporters had interviewed the owner of the Delaware computer shop where Hunter had abandoned his computer. They had Hunter’s signature on a receipt. They had on-the-record sources with intimate knowledge of his interactions. They had Tony Bobulinski, one of two former business partners of Hunter Biden who contend that “the big guy” was Joe.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the computer shop owner and Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and former chief technology officer at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command who made campaign contributions to progressives like Ro Khanna, were part of an elaborate fascistic cabal spreading “disinformation.” But now, Congress can put them under oath.

Later, emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunter’s schemes were authenticated by forensic specialists. Yet virtually the entire censorious journalistic establishment, with the help of tech giants, limited the story’s exposure to help their preferred candidate win.

“Democracy,” indeed.

Then there is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling and never personally “profited off” any of his son’s schemes. What did the president think Hunter was doing when he hitched a ride to secure deals with the Chicoms on Air Force Two in 2013? Does Joe not remember that two Obama administration officials raised concerns about Hunter’s relationship with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma? When finally asked about his son, Biden claimed the “vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”

His buddies lied — just like they had during the Russia collusion hysteria. This week, only two years late, CBS News confirmed that the Hunter Biden emails were all genuine — just like everyone knew they were. Now we have authenticated emails showing an executive from Burisma thanking Hunter for facilitating a meeting with the vice president.

If Joe were a Republican, Adam Schiff would not only have opened an investigation, but he would have claimed to be in possession of irrefutable proof that the 2020 election had been bought by the Chinese. Sargent would be churning out one hyperbolic piece after the next. We would all be watching another thermonuclear meltdown.

Of course, nearly every congressional investigation in history is, to one extent or another, undertaken in “bad faith,” and that’s fine. One of the most beneficial roles of political parties is that they will hold the opposition accountable. But Sargent, and other advocates of one-party rule, only see legitimacy in their objectives, which is one of the numerous reasons their claim to be democracy’s defenders is so laughable.

Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books - the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.”

David

We went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy.

SIDELINE REPORT

SOCCER

Nearly 20M watch US-England World Cup game

New York

The United States’ 0-0 draw against England in the World Cup drew 19.98 million viewers for Englishand Spanish-language broadcasts. It was the thirdmost watched men’s soccer game on U.S. television behind the 2010 and 2014 finals. The match kicked off at 2 p.m. EST on Friday. It was was seen by 15,377,000 viewers on Fox. That was the most for a U.S. Englishlanguage men’s soccer telecast. The U.S.-England game was viewed by 4.6 million on Telemundo which is a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Shaw

steps down as Stanford’s football coach

Stanford, Calif.

David Shaw stepped down as Stanford’s football coach on Monday, ending his 16year run at the school, including the last dozen as the Cardinal’s head coach. Stanford is 14-28 over the last four seasons as the program has struggled to keep up in a rapidly changing college football landscape with players transferring more freely and earning money for name, image, and likeness. AD Bernard Muir said the university remains committed to fielding a topflight football program and is figuring out how it can utilize NIL and the transfer portal to help in that regard without violating Stanford’s principles.

NBA Arbitrator will referee Dr. J’s suit against brand developer Dover, Del.

A Delaware judge has halted a lawsuit filed by basketball legend Julius Erving against a branddevelopment and marketing company. The judge ruled Monday that the dispute must go to arbitration. The lawsuit stems from a 2016 deal in which the Hall of Fame player known as “Dr. J” agreed to sell a majority interest in his trademark and other intellectual property to Authentic Brands Group. Erving alleges that ABG has failed to devote adequate resources to grow the “Dr. J” brand and has focused instead on more profitable brands.

NHL

Commanders unveil Sean Taylor memorial 15 years after death

ue,” former Washington quarter back Robert Griffin III tweeted.

By Stephen Whyno The Associated Press

LANDOVER, Md. — The Washington Commanders un veiled a helmet, No. 21 jersey, pants and cleats stood up in mannequin form as a memorial to Sean Taylor on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the late safety’s death.

It was not a statue but rather a glass-enclosed installation on the concourse of FedEx Field, which drew ire on social media for be ing mismatched and falling short of what many hoped and expected it would be.

“Sean Taylor Deserved a Stat

Members of Taylor’s family were on hand for the pregame cer emony, a decade and a half to the day he died at age 24 from a gun shot wound after being shot in the upper thigh by an intruder in his Miami home. A mural honoring Taylor was also revealed.

Following his team’s 19-13 vic tory against Atlanta, coach Ron Rivera opened his news confer ence, “On the 15th anniversary of the passing of Sean Taylor, this one’s for the Taylor family.”

Several Commanders players wore Taylor jerseys to the stadi um and said it was important to pay tribute to the hard-hitting de fender.

“They came up to us earlier in the week and told us that there

was going to be the revealing of the Sean Taylor everything,” safe ty Darrick Forest said. “It’s just about pride. We want to let his leg acy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

Some on social media pointed out the display included a strange mix of a Nike jersey, Reebok pants and Adidas cleats. The use of soc cer cleats instead of football ones

also sparked criticism, but Taylor’s daughter, Jackie, said it was inten tional.

“It was something that was su per special to him and something he chose to do,” she told the lo cal CBS affiliate, WUSA9. “It was beautiful, honestly. They put ev erything that he wore — soccer cleats, little things that were spe cial to him and that he did as a player. That was really special.”

There was only praise from cur rent players for Taylor, who was a two-time Pro Bowl selection in his first three NFL seasons and only got into 57 games before be ing killed.

“It was a big thing just to give him his flowers and do it the right way because he was probably the best safety ever,” safety Kamren Curl said. “Just to be able to do that and be able to be there while they do that was big.”

The team retired Taylor’s num ber last season in what looked to be a hastily put together ceremo ny, announcing it only four days before. Several alumni said they were unable to make it because of the late notice.

Jones, Maddux consider Bonds, Clemens for Hall

positive test under the major league drug program, just over two weeks after getting his 3,000th hit.

A seven-time NL MVP, Bonds set the career home run record with 762 and the season record with 73 in 2001. A seven-time Cy Young Award winner, Clemens went 354-184 with a 3.12 ERA and 4,672 strikeouts, third behind No lan Ryan (5,714) and Randy John son (4,875). Palmeiro had 3,020 hits and 568 homers.

Ex-employee

files discrimination complaint vs. Canucks

Vancouver, British Columbia

A former member of the Vancouver Canucks’ coaching staff says she was fired because of her sex, mental illness and physical disability. Rachel Doerrie filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after losing her job as video analyst and assistant video coach for the Canucks. She says she told the team that she had a heart condition and post-traumatic stress disorder upon getting hired. Doerrie says the team’s assistant general manager later questioned her mental ability to do her job and treated her differently from the organization’s male employees.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Hall of Famers Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris and Ryne Sandberg are among 16 members of the contemporary baseball era committee that will meet Sunday to consider the Cooperstown fate of an eight-man ballot that includes Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro.

Hall of Famers Lee Smith, Frank Thomas and Alan Trammell also are on the panel, which will meet in San Diego ahead of the winter meetings.

They will be joined by former To ronto CEO Paul Beeston, former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs executive Theo Epstein, Anaheim Angels owner Arte Moreno, Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng, Minnesota Twins president Dave St. Peter and Chicago White Sox executive vice president Ken Wil liams.

Three media members/histo rians are on the committee: long time statistical analyst Steve Hirdt of Stats Perform, La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Susan Slusser of the San Fran

cisco Chronicle. Neal and Slusser are past presidents of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Hall Chairman Jane Forbes Clark will be the committee’s non voting chair.

The ballot also includes Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, Fred Mc Griff, Dale Murphy and Curt Schil ling. The committee considers candidates whose careers were pri marily from 1980 on. A candidate needs 75% to be elected and any one who does will be inducted on July 23, along with anyone chosen in the BBWAA vote, announced on Jan. 24.

received 260 of 394 votes (66%), Clemens 257 (65.2%) and Schilling 231 (58.6%).

Palmeiro was dropped from the BBWAA ballot after receiving 25 votes (4.4%) in his fourth appear ance in 2014, falling below the 5% minimum needed to stay on. His high was 72 votes (12.6%) in 2012.

Bonds denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs and Clemens maintains he never used PEDs. Palmeiro was suspended for 10 days in August 2005 following a

Schilling fell 16 votes shy with 285 (71.1%) in 2021. Support dropped after hateful remarks he made in retirement toward Mus lims, transgender people, reporters and others.

McGriff got 169 votes (39.8%) in his final year on the BBWAA bal lot in 2019. Murphy was on the BB WAA ballot 15 times and received a high of 116 votes (23.2%) in 2000. Mattingly received a high of 145 votes (28.2%) in the first of 15 ap pearances on the BBWAA bal lot in 2001, and Belle appeared on two BBWAA ballots, receiving 40 votes (7.7%) in 2006 and 19 (3.5%) in 2007.

Players on Major League Base ball’s ineligible list cannot be con sidered, a rule that excludes Pete Rose.

This year’s BBWAA ballot in cludes Carlos Beltrán, John Lackey and Jered Weaver among 14 new comers and Scott Rolen, Todd Hel ton and Billy Wagner among hold overs.

The safety was killed at a shooting in his home in 2007

The 16-member contemporary baseball era committee will consider players tainted by baseball’s steroid scandal

The Associated Press

Bonds, Clemens and Schilling fell short in January in their 10th and final appearances on the BB WAA ballot. Bonds

AP PHOTO

Steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens (pictured) and Rafael Palmeiro are on the eight-man ballot for the Hall of Fame’s contemporary baseball era committee, which meets Dec. 4 in San Diego.

AP PHOTO

Fans attend the unveiling of the Sean Taylor Memorial before the start of Sunday’s game between the Falcons and Commanders in

“We want to let his legacy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

Darrick Forest, Commanders safety

Trinity’s Payne starts strong; Wrestlers compete in tourneys

TRINITY — Dominic Payne, junior guard of Trinity, has been off to a sizzling start in boys’ bas ketball.

Payne scored 37 points in a 6766 overtime victory last week at Oak Grove.

He was back at it the next night with 25 points in a 71-28 trounc ing of visiting East Davidson. Teammate Dylan Hodges added 21 points in that game.

Meanwhile, Asheboro’s boys’ basketball team won a notable matchup based on last season’s area conference champions.

The Blue Comets won 65-35 at Providence Grove. Last season, Asheboro was the Mid-Piedmont Conference Tournament champi on, while Providence Grove was the Piedmont Athletic Conference regular-season champion.

Asheboro is off to a 3-0 start,

and within its next four games, it was slated for rematches with each of those teams (Southwest ern Randolph, Providence Grove, Randleman) that it has already defeated.

Wrestling

At Asheboro, there were two individual champions from Ran dolph County in the Asheboro Cold Turkey Invitational on Sat urday at Asheboro Recreation Center.

Diego Gutierrez of Asheboro defeated Eastern Randolph’s Adrian Lopez in the 126-pound fi nal.

Southwestern Randolph’s Luke White won at 138 pounds by de feating Ragsdale’s Jaxson Davis in the title bout.

Second places went to Ashe boro’s Xavier Santos (120 pounds), Samuel Salinas (132), Christian

Diaz (160) and Michael Brady (182), Southwestern Randolph’s Mason Leonard (145) and Tristin Richardson (152), and Providence Grove’s Nathan Hutcherson (195) and Colton Wood (285).

Northern Guilford was the team champion with 170 points in the 10-team event. Ragsdale was the runner-up with 151½, and Asheboro placed third with 135. Also, Providence Grove was sev enth with 56, and Eastern Ran dolph placed eighth with 50.

At the West Rowan Invita tional, Trinity was the team run ner-up behind the host school last Wednesday among ten teams en tered.

Levi Dennis (126), Gavin Hardister (182), and Joey Smith (220) were individual champi ons for Trinity. Teammates Edgar Vasquez (106), Brayden Hall (113), Spencer May (120), and Charles Schaefer (145) were runners-up.

Eastern Randolph, football

Thomas, a senior, had a solid final football season for the Wildcats, who had the longest postseason run among teams from Randolph County.

Eastern Randolph finished with an 11-2 record. For the second year in a row, the team was undefeated in the Piedmont Athletic Conference.

Thomas was a receiver for the Wildcats, who averaged 36 points per game.

He also has been a member of the school’s boys’ basketball program.

RACING

Caraway moves holiday event to late January

Randolph Record

SOPHIA — The 36th edition of Caraway Speedway’s Thanks giving Classic has been post poned for about two months.

PREP FOOTBALL

Eastern Randolph fades in Class 1-A loss

Randolph Record

RAMSEUR — Eastern Ran dolph’s football season came to a close with Friday night’s 35-17 loss to visiting Mount Airy in the Class 1-A regional semifinals.

The Granite Bears scored the game’s final 21 points – all in the fourth quarter – to win.

“We had four plays that killed us,” Eastern Alamance coach Bur ton Cates said. “We just didn’t make the plays.”

Eastern Randolph (11-2) had an 11-game winning streak end in

dropping the fourth-round game. It was just the second loss in the last 14 home games.

“We played the first half pret ty well,” Cates said. “We talked all week, ‘let’s get them to the third quarter and have it close.’ And we did that.”

For the second year in a row, the Wildcats held the No. 1 seed in the West Region and lost a home game. In 2021, that defeat came in the third round.

Still, it’s the most wins in an Eastern Randolph season since the 2006 team won the Class 3-A

state championship with a 15-1 re cord.

Tyler Mason scored three touchdowns for fourth-seeded Mount Airy (13-1). Teammate Ca leb Reid gained 141 yards on the ground.

Davonte Brooks scored on a pairing of rushing plays for East ern Randolph. Yane Jaimes kicked a 23-yard field goal.

Quarterback Stratton Barwick of Eastern Randolph was 6-for-17 for 89 passing yards.

The Wildcats had late-season injuries that created problems. Ladaryan Spinks, an offensive and defensive lineman, missed the last game because of the concus sion protocol.

“Injuries at the wrong time, and we couldn’t respond from it,” Cates said.

Mount Airy will meet Draughn in this week’s regional final.

Sunday’s version of the event was called off because of expect ed rainy weather.

So, Russell Hackett’s Orig inal Thanksgiving Classic has been moved to Jan. 29. After noon races will be scheduled for UCARs, Mini Stocks, Street Stocks, Late Models, Challeng ers, Bootleggers, and Enduros.

“We are dealing with a special event with this race,” track own er Darren Hackett said. “Russell Hackett’s Thanksgiving Classic has been a staple of the Caraway

Speedway schedule for 35 years, and we don’t want to break the season-ending tradition of giv ing the racers who support us throughout the regular season one last chance to race. With that said, we have decided to make that ‘last chance’ the ‘first chance’ for 2023. With so many tracks starting early, we decid ed to join the crowd and give our teams a chance to race early in the year.”

The speedway’s annual rules meetings and open practice al ready on the schedule remained as scheduled Saturday.

January kicks off with a “336 Meets” event Jan. 7. The Cara way Speedway awards banquet is set for Jan. 14 at the track.

Labonte Foundation surprises youth with bikes

WINSTON-SALEM —

The Bobby Labonte Foundation, founded by NASCAR Champion and Hall of Fame race car driv er Bobby Labonte, teamed up with Herbalife Nutrition to build and donate 60 youth bikes at the YWCA of Winston-Salem re cently as part of the foundation’s annual charitable efforts.

The surprise giveaway, which benefited children enrolled at the YWCA’s Best Choice Learn ing Center, also included helmets and bike safety lessons provided by Brenner Children’s Hospital.

The Bobby Labonte Founda tion and Herbalife also surprised center representatives with two oversized checks for $10,000 each. The Best Choice Learn ing Center focuses on education and income equality, providing K-8 academic enrichment and need-based scholarships along with nutrition education, healthy snacks, and hot meals.

“My foundation works in part nership with the local community and community organizations to empower parents, families, and children to build a strong founda tion for their futures. Encourag ing kids to live a healthy lifestyle is one way to do that,” Bobby La bonte said. “We are so grateful for partners like Herbalife who help make our efforts possible. They

were excited to pitch in to sup port the Best Choice Learning Center too, which is an invalu able resource for so many fami lies in our community.”

The bikes were built by em ployees at Herbalife’s Win ston-Salem facility the day before with guidance from bike me chanics at Paul’s Cycling and Fit ness.

Before the children received their bikes, Labonte and his wife, Kristin, a former national cham pion cyclist, encouraged them to stay healthy by being active and to always wear helmets when rid ing. Hayluri Beckles, Pediatric Trauma Prevention Coordinator at Brenner Children’s Hospital and Safe Kids Northwest Pied mont Coordinator, showed them how to ride their bikes safely be fore the children were fitted with new helmets of their own.

“Today has been an awesome day for the Best Choice Learn ing Center,” said Marilyn Odom, vice president of youth services at YWCA of Winston-Salem. “We are so appreciative of the Bobby Labonte Foundation and Herb alife’s donations of bikes and hel mets, plus the $20,000 financial gift. These funds will enable us to continue to help children, while the bikes will help them stay ac tive. We’ve also learned the im portance of bike safety, and we are so happy about all of it.”

Randolph Record

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Randolph Record

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Eastern Randolph quarterback Stratton Barwick takes a hit from Mount Airy’s Deric Dandy during Friday night’s Class 1-A game in the state playoffs.

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Southwestern Randolph’s Kenzie Martin shoots over Asheboro’s Kaylen Nance earlier this season.

DJ Thomas of Eastern Randolph was a key member of the PAC championship team.

Fentanyl’s scourge plainly visible on streets of Los Angeles

By Brian Melley The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — In an filthy alley behind a Los Angeles dough nut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slum ber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day.

When Brandice Josey, another homeless addict, bent down and blew a puff of fentanyl smoke his way in an act of charity, Smith sat up and slowly opened his lip to in hale the vapor as if it was the cure to his problems.

Smith, wearing a grimy yel low T-shirt that said “Good Vibes Only,” reclined on his backpack and dozed the rest of the after noon on the asphalt, unperturbed by the stench of rotting food and human waste that permeated the air.

For too many people strung out on the drug, the sleep that follows a fentanyl hit is permanent. The highly addictive and potentially lethal drug has become a scourge across America and is taking a toll on the growing number of people living on the streets of Los Ange les.

Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Ange les County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than

700.

Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer. Use of fentanyl, a power ful synthetic opioid that is cheap to produce and is often sold as is or laced in other drugs, has ex ploded. Because it’s 50 times more potent than heroin, even a small dose can be fatal.

It has quickly become the dead liest drug in the nation, accord ing to the Drug Enforcement Ad ministration. Two-thirds of the 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were attributed to synthetic opi

oids like fentanyl, the U.S. Cen ters for Disease Control and Pre vention said.

The drug’s toll spreads far be yond the streets.

Jennifer Catano, 27, has the names of two children tattooed on her wrists, but she hasn’t seen them for several years. They live with her mother.

“My mom doesn’t think it’s a good idea because she thinks it’s gonna hurt the kids because I’m not ready to get rehabilitated,” Catano said.

She has overdosed three times

and been through rehab seven or eight times.

“It’s scary to get off of it,” she said. “The withdrawals are real ly bad.”

Catano wandered around a subway station near MacArthur Park desperate to sell a bottle of Downy fabric softener and a Cole man camping chair she stole from a nearby store.

Drug abuse can be a cause or symptom of homelessness. Both can also intersect with mental ill ness.

A 2019 report by the Los An geles Homeless Services Author ity found about a quarter of all homeless adults in Los Angeles County had mental illnesses and 14% had a substance use disor der. That analysis only counted people who had a permanent or long-term severe condition. Tak ing a broader interpretation of the same data, the Los Angeles Times found about 51% had mental ill nesses and 46% had substance use disorders.

Billions of dollars are being spent to alleviate homelessness in California but treatment is not al ways funded.

A controversial bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom could im prove that by forcing people suf fering from severe mental illness into treatment. But they need to be diagnosed with a certain disor der such as schizophrenia and ad diction alone doesn’t qualify.

Help is available but it is out

paced by the magnitude of misery on the streets.

Rita Richardson, a field super visor with LA Door, a city addic tion-prevention program that works with people convicted of misdemeanors, hands out socks, water, condoms, snacks, clean needles and flyers at the same hotspots Monday through Friday. She hopes the consistency of her visits will encourage people to get help.

“Then hopefully the light bulb comes on. It might not happen this year. It might not happen next year. It might take sever al years,” said Richardson, a for mer homeless addict. “My goal is to take them from the dark to the light.”

Parts of Los Angeles have be come scenes of desperation with men and women sprawled on side walks, curled up on benches and collapsed in squalid alleys. Some huddle up smoking the drug, oth ers inject it.

Armando Rivera, 33, blew out white puffs to attract addicts in the alley where Smith was sleep ing. He needed to sell some dope to buy more. Those without enough money to support their habit, hovered around him, hop ing for a free hit. Rivera showed no mercy.

Catano couldn’t sell the chair, but eventually she sold the fabric softener to a street vendor for $5. It was enough money for anoth er high.

Landmark trial over Arkansas youth gender care ban resumes

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A psy chiatrist called to the stand by Ar kansas as the state defends its ban on gender-affirming care for chil dren said Monday he was con cerned about the impact the law could have on some transgender youth who would see their treat ments cut off.

Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychia trist at Case Western Reserve Uni versity School of Medicine in Ohio, testified as the nation’s first trial over such a ban continued before a federal judge after a five-week break.

Arkansas’ law, which was tem porarily blocked last year, would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treat ment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old. It also would prohibit doctors from refer ring patients elsewhere for such care.

Levine criticized the use of gen der-affirming medical treatment for minors, but under cross exam ination acknowledged his concerns about the psychological impacts of cutting off such care for some trans youth already receiving it. Levine said it could be “shocking and dev astating” for some youth receiving the care.

“My concern with the law, the way it was originally written, is it seemed to leave out what you’re talking about,” Levine testified.

Republican lawmakers in Ar

such a ban.

Multiple medical groups, in cluding the American Medical As sociation and the American Acad emy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say the treatments are safe if properly administered. The American Psychiatric Association

has supported the ruling block ing Arkansas’ ban, saying denying such care to adolescents who need it could harm their mental health.

But Levine said he recommends psychotherapy over gender-affirm ing care for the treatment of gender dysphoria, criticizing the current

standard of care as using psycho therapy as “cheerleading” for such treatments.

Levine, however, testified that he wasn’t aware of what protocols are followed by doctors who pro vide such care in Arkansas.

The state has argued that the prohibition is within its authori ty to regulate the medical profes sion. People opposed to such treat ments for children argue they are too young to make such decisions about their futures.

Levine echoed that argument, saying minor patients “really have very little concept of what their fu ture holds.”

A similar ban has been blocked by a federal judge in Alabama, and other states have taken steps to re strict such care. Florida medical of ficials earlier this month approved a rule banning gender-affirming care for minors, at the urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A judge in Texas has blocked that state’s efforts to investigate gender-confirming care for mi nors as child abuse. Children’s hospitals around the country have faced harassment and threats of violence for providing gen der-confirming care.

The families of four transgender youth sued challenging Arkansas’ ban. Last month, a 17-year-old tes tified that his life has been trans formed by the hormone therapy he’s been receiving and said ending the treatments could force his fam ily to leave the state.

The Associated Press

kansas enacted the ban last year, overriding a veto by GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Hutchinson, who leaves office in January, also said that the law went too far by cutting off treatments for children currently receiving such care. Ar kansas was the first state to enact

AP PHOTO

A homeless addict holds pieces of fentanyl in Los Angeles, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022.

AP PHOTO, FILE

Dylan Brandt speaks at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Ark., July 21, 2021.

obituaries

Mary Frances Smith

May 23, 1937 — November 27, 2022

Mrs. Mary “Frances” Smith of Rock Hill, SC passed away Sunday morning, November 27th. at her daughters home. Over the years she had worked at various places to include Stedman’s in Asheboro as well as Tega Ca Country Club in South Carolina. She loved to garden, raising flowers and vegetables which she later would can. Mrs. Smith was a very proud mother of her children and taught her family to love the Lord and pray often.

Mrs. Smith is survived by her children, Ricky Hunt (Doris) of York SC, Pamela Sulier (Donald) of Rock Hill SC and Sandra Rowe of Rock Hill SC.

Grandchildren , Amber McIntosh (Jim), Ricky Hunt II , Lisa Daughtery (Michael) , Matthew Carter (Ashley) , Anthony Carter (Rachel) , Ashley Jones and Dustin Jones (Megan). Eighteen great grandchildren and five great-great grandchildren. One brother Jerry Singleton.

Fred W. Lineberry

June 26, 1944 — November 26, 2022

Mr. Fred Worth Lineberry of Asheboro passed away unexpectedly Saturday, November 26th, 2022. He was the son of Delphia and Juanita Lineberry previously of Grays Chapel. He will be remembered for his many gifts and the pride he had in being a master brick mason and a master woodcraftsman for over 60 years. He was also an avid bicycle rider and as a twenty year member of the Grays Chapel Lions Club, he and his wife, Brenda, were instrumental in organizing the annual Tour de Lions bike ride.

Fred is survived by his loving wife, Brenda of the home, brother Tony Lineberry and wife Michelle of Cary, sister Wilma Stalker and husband Richard of Franklinville, sisters-in-laws, Delete Routh of Asheboro, Mary Lineberry of Franklinville, brother-inlaw Max Smith of Pittsboro and grandchildren Logan and Worth Lineberry. He is also survived by several nieces and nephews.

Mr. Lineberry was predeceased by his parents Delphia and Juanita Lineberry, brothers William (Billy) and Odell Lineberry and sister Betty Lineberry Smith.

Janice Stewart Melton

March 5, 1936 — November 26, 2022

Mrs. Janice Mae Stewart Melton of Asheboro passed away Sunday November 26th at the Brookdale House in Asheboro. Mrs. Melton , a devoted wife of 68 years as well as devoted to her family. She enjoyed her work at Sears for over 30 years as well as her hobby of quilting.

Mrs. Melton is survived by her husband, Bobby F. Melton of the home, 2 sons Terry F. Melton of Bracey Virginia and Gerald G Melton of Colfax. She is also survived by 3 grandchildren and 1 brother Ardie Wayne Stewart of Kernesville.

Michael Gene Holt

January 15, 1945 — November 26, 2022

Mr. Michael Gene Holt of Asheboro passed away unexpectedly Saturday, November 26th, 2022. He was fondly remembered for many of his past time hobbies to include golf, woodworking, Duke Basketball, yard work, his church family to include Pastor Garry, and church AOS trips, and cute waitresses at his favorite breakfast places. He was a proud, wonderful dad who loved his granddaughters. He was married for 54 years to the love of his life Nellie Moffitt Holt.

Michael is survived by his wife, Nellie of the home, 1 daughter Wendy (Rodney) Wright of McLeansville, 2 grandchildren Bayley Wright and Maddy Wright, 1 brother Jerry Holt (Judy) of Rougemont, half brother Keith Poindexter. Michael was also survived by his dog, Jake. He was preceded in death by his parents, 1 half-sister and 1 halfbrother.

Craig Thomas Allard

June 10, 1955 — November 25, 2022

Craig Thomas Allard, 67 of Asheboro passed away peacefully at the Randolph Hospice House on November 25, 2022 in the presence of his loving wife, Nina. Originally from St. Albans, Vermont, he was the son of the late Francis “Frank” John Allard and Marie Trombly Crowley.

Craig is survived by his wife of 42 years, Malinda “Nina” Allard; his daughter Suzanne Allard Cash (husband D.R.) of Asheboro; his son Derek Thomas Allard of Durham; his twin brother Christopher Allard (wife Valerie) of Osteen, Florida; his sister Karen Crowley of Durham, New Hampshire; and his grandchildren Dock and Millie Cash.

April 5, 1940 — November 24, 2022

Barbara Ann Vuncannon Winslow, age 82, of Asheboro passed away Thursday, November 24, 2022 at her home.

Mrs. Winslow was born in Randolph County on April 5, 1940 to George and Vessie Voncannon. She was a 1958 graduate of Asheboro High School and a graduate of Asheboro Commercial College.

Mrs. Winslow was a member of Oakhurst Baptist Church where she served at pianist for over 65 years and was also the former secretary for 19 years. She was a member of the American Business Womens Association, the Red Hat Society, and a member of Beta Sigma Phi Sorority. Mrs. Winslow was formerly employed with First Peoples/First American Bank and retired from Moses Cone Hospital in the Human Resources department.

In addition to her parents, Mrs. Winslow was preceded in death by her brothers, George Vuncannon, Tony Vuncannon; sisters, Irma Thomas, Lousie Allred and her twin, Betty Hartman.

Mrs. Winslow is survived by her husband William Claude Winslow; daughter, Kim Hoffman and husband Bobby of Asheboro and granddaughter, Whitney Hoffman of Asheboro.

Martha Uzina Morris

January 10, 1926 — November 22, 2022

Martha Uzina Morris, age 96, of Asheboro passed away on Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at the Randolph Hospice House.

Mrs. Morris was born in Denton, NC on January 10, 1926 to Bunie and Eunie Henderson Morris and was a graduate of Denton High School. Uzina was formerly employed with G.E. and Bossong Hosiery and worked for 26 years at AcmeMcCrary, retiring in 1991. She was a member of Balfour Baptist Church where she participated in the WMU and loved watching the children in the nursery. In addition to her parents, Uzina was preceded in death by her husband, Charles Wesley Morris, grandson, Jason Aaron Morris, 2 brothers, and 1 sister. Uzina loved canning vegetables and cooking and was known for her pound cakes and pies. She enjoyed reading and sewing.

She is survived by her son, Wesley Morris of Asheboro; daughter, Beverly McDonald of Randleman; grandchildren, James Wesley Morris, Jr., Joshua McDonald (Danyel), and Jeremy McDonald; great grandchildren, Alexis Morris and Aleah Morris, and Autumn McDonald and Axton McDonald and Regina Mueller; and 1 great great grandchild.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Balfour Baptist Church, 1642 N. Fayetteville St., Asheboro, NC 27203 or Hospice of Randolph, 416 Vision Dr., Asheboro, NC 27203.

June 4, 1932 — November 23, 2022

Clarence Monroe Seabolt, age 90, of Asheboro passed away on Wednesday, November 23, 2022 at Clapp's Convalescent Nursing Home.

Mr. Seabolt was born in Randolph County on June 4, 1932 to John Randolph and Bertha Whitley Seabolt. Clarence served his country in the U.S. Army during the Korean Conflict. He was the retired owner/operator of Seabolt Construction and attended Neighbors Grove Wesleyan Church. In addition to his parents, Clarence was preceded in death by his siblings, Louise, Mildred, Doris, Hazel, Clyde, John, and Howard. Clarence loved his family unconditionally. He was a loving husband, father, grandpa, papaw, great grandpa or peepaw, and brother.

The family would like to extend a heartfelt appreciation to the staff of Clapp's Convalescent Nursing Home for their compassion and concern during Clarence's tenancy there.

He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Edith Allred Seabolt; son, Keith Seabolt (Donna) of Asheboro; daughter, Lisa Chilton (Larry) of Ramseur; grandchildren, Brynn Seabolt Barker (Andrew) of Apex, Matt Seabolt (Emily) of Asheboro, and Luke Wilson (McKenzie) of Denton; great grandchildren, Kendall Shea Seabolt, Claire Morgan Seabolt, Rylan Shea Barker, Elijah "Eli" Young Wilson, Levi Chase Barker, and Baby Girl Wilson (on the way); and brother, Reid Seabolt (Peggy) of Asheboro.

Dr. Steve Michael Walsh, age 76, of Asheboro passed away on Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Dr. Walsh was born in Winston-Salem, NC on May 30, 1946 to Maurice and Sina Kilby Walsh. He served his country in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam Era, 1972-1974, at the Naval Training Center in Orlando, FL. Dr. Walsh practiced dentistry in Asheboro for 42 years and was a member of the North Carolina Dental Society. He was a member of First United Methodist Church in Asheboro. He was Past President of the Asheboro/Randolph YMCA, a Mason, and a member of the Kiwanis Club of Asheboro. Steve was very community minded and was very active in his children's activities. He was a former Boy Scout Leader and was a coach for the Asheboro Parks & Recreation Department, coaching both boys' and girls' teams.

He is survived by his wife, Jane Buckland Walsh; children, Braden Walsh of Durham, Cameron Walsh (Shanna) of Raleigh, and Brynn Walsh of Raleigh; grandchildren, Reagan Walsh of Jensen Beach, FL, Maddox Bean of Raleigh, and Grayson Bean of Raleigh; and a multitude of cousins who were like his brothers and sisters.

Memorials may be made to SECU Family House, 1970 Baldwin Lane, Winston-Salem, NC 27103.

Betty Dyer

December 14, 1930 — November 22, 2022

Betty Lou Shepherd Dyer, age 91, of Asheboro passed away Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at Clapp’s Nursing Home.

Mrs. Dyer was born December 14, 1930 in Albemarle to William and Pauline Shepherd. She was a member of Balfour Baptist Church and was retired from Asheboro Hosiery.

Mrs. Dyer was a volunteer at Randolph Hospital and completed 40,000 hours of service during her 40 years there. April Thornton of Randolph Hospital calculated that Mrs. Dyer donated close to $1 million into service hours. Her enthusiasm to serve the Randolph Hospital community started when her mother was in a bad car wreck as she watched the staff and volunteers assist patients. She sought out to join Randolph Hospital as a volunteer and helped many people over the years. She stood firm that there is always something that could be done or a way to help out as a volunteer, and through the years, Randolph Hospital became her second home.

In addition to her parents, Mrs. Dyer was preceded in death by her husband Ray T. Dyer, daughters, Paula Dyer Morris, Diane Dyer Watson and infant son, Craig Dean Dyer.

Mrs. Dyer is survived by her grandson, Justin Peele and fiancé Chad Robinette of Asheboro; niece, Kathy Haywood of Star.

The family request memorials be made to Balfour Baptist Church, 1642 N. Fayetteville St., Asheboro, NC 27203.

Barbara Ann Winslow

Clarence Monroe Seabolt

Steve Michael Walsh

May 30, 1946 — November 22, 2022

STATE & NATION

NC Democrats’ parity in Congress delegation may be fleeting

The Associated Press

RALEIGH — Democrats cele brated winning what was billed as North Carolina’s lone toss-up race for the U.S. House this month, as state Sen. Wiley Nickel’s narrow victory over Republican Bo Hines in the 13th Congressional District helped weaken any national GOP midterm wave.

Nickel’s win creates a 7-7 split in the state’s delegation, marking the best showing for state Demo crats after a decade of trailing the GOP in an otherwise closely di vided state. Trial judges drew the latest district boundaries after re districting litigation successful ly blocked maps passed by the Re publican-controlled legislature that could have whittled Demo crats down to four seats.

“We’re a 50-50 state — we should have a 7-to-7 delegation,” Nickel told The Associated Press during a break in his congressional orientation in Washington. “When we have fair maps, we get fair re sults that reflect the choice of the voters.”

But there’s a good chance Nick el’s Raleigh-area district and oth ers will be dramatically altered for the 2024 elections, returning the advantage to Republicans.

A confluence of events opens the

door for General Assembly Repub licans to pass their preferred con gressional map in 2023 and have it used the following year.

“Seven-seven does not reflect the will of the voters in North Car olina,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters the day after the election. “So it should be some thing different. I don’t know what that is. But at the end of the day ...

let’s trust the voters of this state.”

Republicans hold eight of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts through the year’s end. Population growth gave North Carolina a 14th seat with the November election.

GOP legislators vehemently op posed a split opinion by the state Supreme Court last winter that struck down their approved map by declaring the state constitution

prohibited partisan gerrymander ing of boundaries.

State law required the judgedrawn map be used only for this year’s races. Republicans will con tinue to have majorities in the state House and Senate next year com fortable enough to pass their fa vored map. Redistricting plans are not subject to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp.

Most importantly, Republicans will have a 5-2 majority on the Su preme Court come January with victories by Trey Allen and Rich ard Dietz for seats currently held by Democrats.

The current 4-3 Democratic majority ruled that congressional and legislative maps approved by the General Assembly in Novem ber 2021 unlawfully gave Repub licans outsized favoritism com pared with Democrats. The three Republican justices who dissented wrote that the constitution doesn’t expressly bar or limit partisan ad vantage in mapmaking.

The arrival of two more GOP justices makes it more likely — but not assured — that the court would uphold a future congressio nal map by the legislature while re jecting last year’s landmark ruling that defined illegal partisan gerry mandering.

Senate leader Phil Berger said he expected the state would now move away from what he called the “judicial gerrymander” to “what would be, I think, a different draw ing of the congressional maps.”

Plans approved by the legisla ture but never implemented would have positioned Republicans to

win 10 of the state’s 14 congressio nal seats.

Michael Bitzer, a political sci ence professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, said Nickel would be a likely target for Republi can lawmakers to place in a more GOP-friendly district.

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jack son, who won the newly created 14th District seat covering por tions of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, and 6th District Dem ocratic Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro, who was elected to her second term, are also vulnera ble, Bitzer said.

It’s possible the state Supreme Court shift could be moot. Litiga tion involving the congressional map is before the U.S. Supreme Court and could result in state courts losing the ability to judge laws involving federal elections, including seat boundaries. Oral arguments are scheduled for next month in the case, in which law yers for Berger and Moore argue the U.S. Constitution delegates “the Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections solely to state legislatures.

An analysis by Bitzer of federal statewide contests in North Caro lina since 2008 show Republican candidates winning nearly 51% of the cumulative votes compared with 47% for Democrats. But the idea that a political party should be assured of seats aligned with their percentage support at the ballot box over time was shunned by au thors of the state Supreme Court’s prevailing and dissenting opinions last February.

By Michelle L. Price The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Democrats cel ebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 cam paign that could prove more chal lenging.

The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.

Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increas ingly hostile to Democrats, includ ing Montana, Ohio and West Vir ginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly con tested states that were at the cen ter of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Ne vada. And while Democrats car ried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.

But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party out performed expectations.

For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelec tion campaign, that means stay ing focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the in frastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.

“We know that races are al ways close,” Rosen said in an in

terview. “We never take anything for granted.”

Perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking re election will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Ari zona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and con nect with a broader, more moder ate range of voters during the gen eral election.

In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to at tract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who

was awarded a Purple Heart af ter being severely wounded in Af ghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong chal lenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cor tez Masto.

Also in the southwest, Arizo na Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist

Democrat, will be up for reelec tion. Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Demo cratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.

Sinema is among a trio of mod erate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incum bents in 2024.

The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.

Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week af ter winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.

Republicans see Tester, a threeterm senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosen dale.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won re election in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republi cans, including in this year’s Sen ate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.

One potential Republican chal lenger whose name has been float ed in Pennsylvania is former hedge

fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican pri mary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expect ed to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.

Gallagher brushed off a que ry about whether he was consid ering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years.

“Any talk of the next election, es pecially since we just had an elec tion, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.

A number of high-profile Re publican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.

On the Democratic side, a num ber of the party’s former presi dential candidates will face vot ers. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klo buchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.

Vermont independent Sen. Ber nie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Con gress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.

In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.

“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Reyes’ longtime political con sultant Alan Crooks said.

Democrats kept the Senate this year, but 2024 may be harder

AP PHOTO

Rep.-elect Wiley Nickel, D-N.C., speaks with reporters after newlyelected members of the House of Representatives attended an orientation program, in Washington, D.C.

AP PHOTO

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., center, welcomes Senator-elect Peter Welch, D-Vt., left, and Senator-elect John Fetterman, D-Pa., whose victories helped give Democrats the majority in the next Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

“We know that races are always close. We never take anything for granted.”

Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen

Bucks vs. Tigers

HOKE COUNTY

WHAT’S HAPPENING

On Tuesday, November 22, deputies for the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office reported that they had arrested a man who has been accused of sexually assaulting a juvenile across three North Carolina counties. The arrest of Alfonza McDougald came after officers were contacted by the Moore County Child Advocacy Center on October 13 regarding a juvenile offense. Hoke deputies said that a juvenile informed them that McDougald had sexually assaulted them in Moore County, Hoke County, and Scotland County over the course of the past few years. McDougald was in the Moore County Detention Center when he was served notice of the Hoke County arrest warrant. He was charged and given a $75,000 secured bond. This investigation is still ongoing. If anyone has any information regarding McDougald’s case, please contact Lt. Sullivan at (910) 875-5111.

Hoke Sheriff’s Office opens investigation following home shooting

The Hoke County Sheriff’s Office is currently investigating a shooting at a residence that took place last Friday. According to a recent report, deputies responded to the 300 block of Phillipi Church road after receiving calls about a man with a firearm. After surveying the residence, deputies found that the home had been shot at. Six adults were at home at the time of the shooting, but no injuries were reported. The investigation is ongoing at this time. If you or anyone else has any information regarding this case, please contact Detective McBryde at (910) 875-5111.

Hometown Christmas event to take place in Downtown Raeford

Event

By Ryan Henkel The Associated Press

RAEFORD — The Rae ford-Hoke Chamber of Commerce will be hosting the annual Home town Christmas event Friday, De cember 2, on Main Street in Rae ford.

The event will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and will include hayrides, vendors, tours of the Ra eford-Hoke Museum, and will even have special guests such as Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the Grinch.

“We’ll close down all of Main Street, from Prospect Ave all the way down to Central Ave,” said Executive Director Liz McNeill. “We’ll also close off down past the museum because we will do hay rides that start across from Mc Laughlin [Elementary]. They’ll go all the way down to the muse

um and back and drop off people down there so they can tour the museum. Usually, Santa is down there, but this year, Santa is go ing to be across the street from the chamber in Freedom Park. We’re going to have a big blow-up house for him to sit in so the kids can go there and drop off letters and talk to Santa and all that good stuff.”

It will be the second straight year that Hometown Christmas will take place since it had to be canceled in 2020 due to the pan demic, but it’s an event that goes back several years prior to that.

“It’s nice because the businesses downtown, they like to stay open, and now that we have downtown here, it’s another place to stop in and eat and just gather with peo ple,” McNeill said.

The event will also have events for kids, carolers, performances from some of the schools on the library stage, and even a martial arts demonstration, according to McNeill.

“I’ve also talked with the [Ra eford United] Methodist Church about having some Christmas mu

sic playing over their speakers so that at least there’s some music going on all the way down Main Street,” McNeill said. “They’ve done it in the past and are looking into doing it again for us this year. That’ll be nice to have something in the background getting every body in the Christmas spirit.”

In terms of food, McNeill men tioned that there would be at least one food truck at the event, but

Vehicle chase in Raeford ends in crash, two arrested

hended by officers.

they will also be encouraging peo ple to drop by some of the Down town restaurants such as The Grill, Cheap Shots on Main, Wangz Bar and Grill, and Edinborough Fam ily Restaurant.

There will also be more than 28 vendors, which will surpass last year’s total.

However, vendors are not able to sell any products so as not to take away any customers from the busi nesses in Downtown Raeford. In stead, vendors can distribute busi ness cards, samples, or other free products.

“It’s just a way for them to get their business out there, so peo ple know that they are around town,” McNeill said. “Wheth er it’s in Raeford or Hoke Coun ty. I also have a few coming from Fayetteville. It’s nice that we have people from out-of-town who do want to come and try and break into the Raeford area.”

If you’re in the area, Friday looks to be a great day to make it out to Raeford to enjoy some good cheer and soak in plenty of that Christ mas spirit.

RAEFORD — Two Cumberland County men were arrested in Rae ford last Tuesday following a vehicle chase with deputies from the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office.

According to a report from the sheriff’s office, the chase began shortly following a joint operation involving the Hoke County Vio lent Crimes Task Force, Special Operations Unit, and Criminal Interdiction Team near the Way side Road area.

Deputies spotted a suspicious ve hicle driving through the Wedge field community and attempted to pull the vehicle over.

The driver of the vehicle attempt ed to flee the deputies by turning down Wayside Road and driving at speeds up to 80 mph, according to the sheriff’s office.

The driver lost control at some point around the 1100 Block of Way side Road when they swerved and struck a utility pole, bringing an end to the car chase. The two occu pants emerged from the vehicle and attempted to flee on foot but were eventually chased down and appre

Nizhan Davis, 18, of Fayette ville, and Javien Russel, 19, of Hope Mills, were both arrested. Officers said that they also found a firearm and narcotics at the scene.

Russel has been charged with fleeing/eluding arrest with a mo tor vehicle, reckless driving and en dangering the public, and resist ing a public officer. He has taken to the Hoke County Detention Center, where he was held on a $25,000 se cured bond. Davis was charged with resisting a public officer and posses sion of marijuana. He was given a secured bond of $2,500.

The Hoke County Sheriff’s Of fice reported that no serious inju ries were sustained in the collusion by the occupants of the vehicle or members of the public. The crash did, however, knock out power in the area for a couple of hours.

to include vendors, hayrides and even an appearance from Santa Claus

Man charged with sexual assaulting a minor across three counties

“This year, Santa is going to be across the street from the chamber in Freedom Park. We’re going to have a big blow-up house for him to sit in so the kids can go there and drop off letters and talk to Santa and all that good stuff.”

Liz McNeill, executive director

The Hoke County Sheriff’s Office reported that no serious injuries were sustained in the collusion by the occupants of the vehicle or members of the public. The crash did, however, knock out power in the area for a couple of hours.

The Hoke County Bucks hosted the South View Tigers on Monday night at MacDonald Gymnasium. In the first game, the Lady Bucks fell to South View, 52-31. They now hold a 1-2 record in this still-early season. Unfortunately, the boys’ team also lost to the Tigers, 67-54. The boys are now 0-3 on the season. The next game for both teams will take place at home on December 6 against Seventy-First. In the photos above, Bucks head coach Quame’ Patterson, left, goes over a play with one of the Bucks players during the 67-54 loss against South View. Janiya Hoffler, right, hits one of two free-throws late in the game in the Lady Bucks 52-31 loss vs South View.

HAL NUNN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

North State Journal

♦ Young, Maris (B/M/53), Firearm by Felon, 11/28/2022, Hoke County Sheriff’s Office

♦ Russell, Jaivan Carl (B/M/19), Flee/Elude Arrest w/ Motor Vehicle, 11/23/2022, Hoke County Sheriff’s Office

♦ Pate, Jessica Edith (W/F/44), B&E Felony, 11/22/2022, Hoke County Sheriff’s Office

♦ Baldwin, Curtis Lee (B/M/53), Larceny Misdemeanor, 11/21/2022, Hoke

County Sheriff’s Office

♦ Scurlock, Da’Michael Edward (B/M/32), Possess Marijuana up to 1 1/2oz, Larceny Felony, 11/21/2022, Hoke

♦

County Sheriff’s Office

Mote, Robin Michelle (W/F/53), Simple Possess Schedule III CS, 11/21/2022, Hoke County Sheriff’s Office

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Balance the budget, stop inflation, create jobs

THE NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in the U.S. House will face a major challenge dealing with the Democrat-run White House and U.S. Senate. So, it is vital that Republicans offer a vision of a more successful, prosperous, safer, and freer America.

The first goal is not to find a common ground with left-wing, radical Democrats who reject virtually all our values. They are already tuning their political machine to fight us in 2024.

We

The first goal is to give the American people a sense of hope — and a belief that things can be dramatically better. (The lack of a positive vision led to disappointing Republican Senate campaigns.)

The Commitment to America was a step in the right direction. While it was not driven home as vividly as it could have been, it did give House Republicans enough of a positive message. This helped them carry the popular vote by more than 3 million and gain seats, while most of the Senate Republicans floundered in negativity. (Herschel Walker’s campaign has been mostly positive, but his opponent has been deeply negative and vicious.)

The most powerful visionary statement Republicans could make right now is simple: It is time to balance the budget, stop inflation, and create jobs.

House Republicans can deliver this positive vision of a brighter American future because even in a minority we helped President Ronald Reagan stop inflation and create jobs in 1981. When we became a majority in 1994 with the Contract with America, we went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy. This all happened with the largest capital gains tax cut in history. A key part of our budget-balancing and job-creating program was a systematic reduction in the regulatory burden, which had crippled small business and weakened even the biggest businesses.

The spending, policy, and bureaucratic messes of the current government present enormous opportunities for Republicans to offer a series of bold, popular reforms — and much-needed alternatives to the failed Biden policies that are eroding the economy and weakening America.

Given our experiences with balancing the budget for four consecutive years (the only time in our lifetime) and paying down the federal debt (when I left the Speakership, the debt was scheduled to be paid off by 2009) there are some obvious key principles to follow.

First, reports indicate that at least $600 billion were stolen from various COVID-19 programs. Rooting out and stopping corruption would save a significant amount of money.

Second, restoring the principles of the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act would greatly reduce the cost of welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. People would go to work. Children would be raised from poverty (the largest decline in childhood poverty came after the 1996 act).

COLUMN | DAVID HARSANYI

People would shift from drawing from public coffers to contributing to them as working taxpayers. Requiring work or study for any federal aid should be extended to everyone except the severely disabled. For most Americans, modern science and technology can turn disabilities into capabilities. Any unemployment compensation should be accompanied with an education requirement. There is no reason to give money to people to do nothing. This change would expand the workforce and reduce dependency.

Third, re-establishing national energy independence would create jobs, generate tax revenue, reduce costs to consumers, and allow us to replace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe. It would lower the cost of energy (and the U.S. government is one of the largest purchasers of energy). This would be a win-win for the balanced budget.

Fourth, simply rejecting all the Biden promises to dictatorships around the world would save billions. The recent offer by the Biden administration to transfer billions in “climate reparations” would be a good example.

Further, aid to Ukraine should be monitored and analyzed. While we should help the Ukrainians bravely fighting for their freedom on the ground, Ukraine’s government has a past reputation for corruption. Remember that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected to fight this corruption.

Fifth, every congressional committee should review the departments over which they have jurisdiction with a results-based rather than process-based model. We spend billions of dollars on programs, which simply do not work. Much of the money we spend on education has failed to improve test scores. The typical Washington solution has been to spend more money on the same programs that are failing.

For example, NASA’s Space Launch System has had one successful launch — after a 20-year, $40 billion total investment. There are private companies that can operate much less expensively, but the NASA-industrial lobbyists complex wants to continue building this absurdly expensive, outdated system. Similarly, the Department of Defense is filled with opportunities to reduce cost.

Every department should be asked to rank the importance of their programs, and Congress should review — eliminating the bottom third of their lists. Further, the Trump administration program of cutting two regulations for each new one created should be written into law and enforced.

Regulatory proposals such as the new Biden climate change regulations for government contractors (which the Washington Times reports could cost $604 billion the first year) are good targets for the principle of prioritizing job creation over regulation.

Balancing the budget, reforming government, and cutting regulations will lead to dramatically lower inflation, and dramatically more jobs. The time to start is now.

The GOP’s Hunter Biden probe is legit

AS A TACTICAL CONCERN, the House GOP’s decision to open an investigation into Biden family corruption is questionable. It promises limited political return. It would serve Republicans and the country far better if the House focused on a hyper-politicized Justice Department that targets the political opposition, labels concerned parents “domestic terrorists” and ignores violence aimed at pregnancy centers, for starters.

There is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling.

None of that, however, means there isn’t sufficient circumstantial evidence suggesting President Joe Biden not only lied about knowing his son was favor-trading on the family name with corrupt autocracies but that he was a beneficiary of those business dealings. Indeed, precedent says we Republicans have a duty to “democracy” to investigate. Yet Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post warns: “If Republicans can obliterate the distinction between congressional investigations done in good faith and ones that weaponize the process in bad faith, they win.”

You see, only Democrats can launch investigations in “good faith.”

Pathological partisanship can lead to cosmic shamelessness. And you almost have to admire the chutzpah. These are the very same people who spent years championing one of the most unethical investigations in American history. We now know that Russia “collusion” hysteria was predicated on partisan opposition research and disinformation meant to delegitimize the 2016 election. There was a grand total of zero indictments related to the 2016 election “collusion.” So rickety was the evidence that guardians of our sacred norms never even tried to impeach former President Donald Trump over this alleged sedition. I’ll spare you the slew of blown one-source anonymous “scoops” spread by major media organizations in concert with the FBI and Democratic Party. Sargent highlighted them all.

Let’s remember, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, virtually the entire left-wing media complex regurgitated the risible claims of former intelligence officials -- including known liars James Clapper and John Brennan — that the entire kerfuffle was just Russian “disinformation.” Sargent dismissed the news as a “fake scandal” and worked to discredit the story.

The Hunter story always had far more journalistic substantiation than the histrionic and fallacious Russia-collusion investigations that Sargent and his paper peddled for five years. Post reporters had interviewed the owner of the Delaware computer shop where Hunter had abandoned his computer. They had Hunter’s signature on a receipt. They had on-the-record sources with intimate knowledge of his interactions. They had Tony Bobulinski, one of two former business partners of Hunter Biden who contend that “the big guy” was Joe.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the computer shop owner and Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and former chief technology officer at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command who made campaign contributions to progressives like Ro Khanna, were part of an elaborate fascistic cabal spreading “disinformation.” But now, Congress can put them under oath.

Later, emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunter’s schemes were authenticated by forensic specialists. Yet virtually the entire censorious journalistic establishment, with the help of tech giants, limited the story’s exposure to help their preferred candidate win.

“Democracy,” indeed.

Then there is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling and never personally “profited off” any of his son’s schemes. What did the president think Hunter was doing when he hitched a ride to secure deals with the Chicoms on Air Force Two in 2013? Does Joe not remember that two Obama administration officials raised concerns about Hunter’s relationship with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma? When finally asked about his son, Biden claimed the “vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”

His buddies lied — just like they had during the Russia collusion hysteria. This week, only two years late, CBS News confirmed that the Hunter Biden emails were all genuine — just like everyone knew they were. Now we have authenticated emails showing an executive from Burisma thanking Hunter for facilitating a meeting with the vice president.

If Joe were a Republican, Adam Schiff would not only have opened an investigation, but he would have claimed to be in possession of irrefutable proof that the 2020 election had been bought by the Chinese. Sargent would be churning out one hyperbolic piece after the next. We would all be watching another thermonuclear meltdown.

Of course, nearly every congressional investigation in history is, to one extent or another, undertaken in “bad faith,” and that’s fine. One of the most beneficial roles of political parties is that they will hold the opposition accountable. But Sargent, and other advocates of one-party rule, only see legitimacy in their objectives, which is one of the numerous reasons their claim to be democracy’s defenders is so laughable.

Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books - the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.”

David

went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy.

SPORTS SIDELINE REPORT

SOCCER

Nearly 20M watch US-England World Cup game

New York

The United States’ 0-0 draw against England in the World Cup drew 19.98 million viewers for Englishand Spanish-language broadcasts. It was the thirdmost watched men’s soccer game on U.S. television behind the 2010 and 2014 finals. The match kicked off at 2 p.m. EST on Friday. It was was seen by 15,377,000 viewers on Fox. That was the most for a U.S. Englishlanguage men’s soccer telecast. The U.S.-England game was viewed by 4.6 million on Telemundo which is a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Stanford, Calif.

David Shaw stepped down as Stanford’s football coach on Monday, ending his 16year run at the school, including the last dozen as the Cardinal’s head coach. Stanford is 14-28 over the last four seasons as the program has struggled to keep up in a rapidly changing college football landscape with players transferring more freely and earning money for name, image, and likeness. AD Bernard Muir said the university remains committed to fielding a topflight football program and is figuring out how it can utilize NIL and the transfer portal to help in that regard without violating Stanford’s principles.

By Stephen Whyno The Associated Press

LANDOVER, Md. — The Washington Commanders un veiled a helmet, No. 21 jersey, pants and cleats stood up in mannequin form as a memorial to Sean Taylor on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the late safety’s death.

It was not a statue but rather a glass-enclosed installation on the concourse of FedEx Field, which drew ire on social media for be ing mismatched and falling short of what many hoped and expected it would be.

“Sean Taylor Deserved a Stat ue,” former Washington quarter back Robert Griffin III tweeted.

Members of Taylor’s family were on hand for the pregame ceremo ny, a decade and a half to the day he died at age 24 from a gunshot wound after being shot in the up per thigh by an intruder in his Mi ami home. A mural honoring Tay lor was also revealed.

Following his team’s 19-13 vic tory against Atlanta, coach Ron Rivera opened his news confer ence, “On the 15th anniversary of the passing of Sean Taylor, this one’s for the Taylor family.”

Several Commanders players wore Taylor jerseys to the stadi um and said it was important to pay tribute to the hard-hitting de fender.

“They came up to us earlier in the week and told us that there

was going to be the revealing of the Sean Taylor everything,” safety Darrick Forest said. “It’s just about pride. We want to let his legacy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

Some on social media pointed

out the display included a strange mix of a Nike jersey, Reebok pants and Adidas cleats. The use of soc cer cleats instead of football ones also sparked criticism, but Taylor’s daughter, Jackie, said it was inten tional.

“It was something that was su per special to him and something he chose to do,” she told the lo cal CBS affiliate, WUSA9. “It was beautiful, honestly. They put ev erything that he wore — soccer cleats, little things that were spe cial to him and that he did as a player. That was really special.”

There was only praise from cur rent players for Taylor, who was a two-time Pro Bowl selection in his first three NFL seasons and only got into 57 games before be ing killed.

“It was a big thing just to give him his flowers and do it the right way because he was probably the best safety ever,” safety Kamren Curl said. “Just to be able to do that and be able to be there while they do that was big.”

The team retired Taylor’s num ber last season in what looked to be a hastily put together ceremony, announcing it only four days be fore. Several alumni said they were unable to make it because of the late notice.

pended for 10 days in August 2005 following a positive test under the major league drug program, just over two weeks after getting his 3,000th hit.

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Hall of Famers Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris and Ryne Sandberg are among 16 members of the contemporary baseball era committee that will meet Sun day to consider the Cooperstown fate of an eight-man ballot that in cludes Barry Bonds, Roger Clem ens and Rafael Palmeiro.

A Delaware judge has halted a lawsuit filed by basketball legend Julius Erving against a branddevelopment and marketing company. The judge ruled Monday that the dispute must go to arbitration.

The lawsuit stems from a 2016 deal in which the Hall of Fame player known as “Dr. J” agreed to sell a majority interest in his trademark and other intellectual property to Authentic Brands Group.

Erving alleges that ABG has failed to devote adequate resources to grow the “Dr. J” brand and has focused instead on more profitable brands.

Hall of Famers Lee Smith, Frank Thomas and Alan Tram mell also are on the panel, which will meet in San Diego ahead of the winter meetings.

They will be joined by former Toronto CEO Paul Beeston, former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs executive Theo Epstein, Anaheim Angels owner Arte Moreno, Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng, Minnesota Twins president Dave St. Peter and Chicago White Sox executive vice president Ken Wil liams.

Three media members/histo rians are on the committee: long time statistical analyst Steve Hirdt of Stats Perform, La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Susan Slusser of the San Fran cisco Chronicle. Neal and Slusser are past presidents of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Hall Chairman Jane Forbes Clark will be the committee’s non voting chair.

The ballot also includes Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, Fred Mc Griff, Dale Murphy and Curt Schil ling. The committee considers candidates whose careers were pri marily from 1980 on. A candidate needs 75% to be elected and any one who does will be inducted on July 23, along with anyone chosen in the BBWAA vote, announced on Jan. 24.

Bonds, Clemens and Schilling

fell short in January in their 10th and final appearances on the BB WAA ballot. Bonds received 260 of 394 votes (66%), Clemens 257 (65.2%) and Schilling 231 (58.6%).

Palmeiro was dropped from the BBWAA ballot after receiving 25 votes (4.4%) in his fourth appear ance in 2014, falling below the 5% minimum needed to stay on. His high was 72 votes (12.6%) in 2012.

Bonds denied knowingly us ing performance-enhancing drugs and Clemens maintains he nev er used PEDs. Palmeiro was sus

A seven-time NL MVP, Bonds set the career home run record with 762 and the season record with 73 in 2001. A seven-time Cy Young Award winner, Clemens went 354-184 with a 3.12 ERA and 4,672 strikeouts, third behind No lan Ryan (5,714) and Randy John son (4,875). Palmeiro had 3,020 hits and 568 homers.

Schilling fell 16 votes shy with 285 (71.1%) in 2021. Support dropped after hateful remarks he made in retirement toward Mus lims, transgender people, reporters and others.

McGriff got 169 votes (39.8%) in his final year on the BBWAA bal lot in 2019. Murphy was on the BB WAA ballot 15 times and received a high of 116 votes (23.2%) in 2000. Mattingly received a high of 145 votes (28.2%) in the first of 15 ap pearances on the BBWAA bal lot in 2001, and Belle appeared on two BBWAA ballots, receiving 40 votes (7.7%) in 2006 and 19 (3.5%) in 2007.

Players on Major League Base ball’s ineligible list cannot be con sidered, a rule that excludes Pete Rose.

This year’s BBWAA ballot in cludes Carlos Beltrán, John Lackey and Jered Weaver among 14 new comers and Scott Rolen, Todd Hel ton and Billy Wagner among hold overs.

The 16-member contemporary baseball era committee will consider players tainted by baseball’s steroid scandal

The Associated Press

Shaw steps down as Stanford’s football coach

NBA Arbitrator will referee Dr. J’s suit against brand developer Dover, Del.

The safety was killed at a shooting in his home in 2007

AP PHOTO

Fans attend the unveiling of the Sean Taylor Memorial before the start of Sunday’s game between the Falcons and Commanders in Landover, Maryland.

AP PHOTO

Steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens (pictured) and Rafael Palmeiro are on the eight-man ballot for the Hall of Fame’s contemporary baseball era committee, which meets Dec. 4 in San Diego.

“We want to let his legacy

so we went out there and did our thing.”

Darrick Forest, Commanders safety

Fickell leaves Cincinnati to take over at Wisconsin

student-athletes the best oppor tunities possible and is attuned to the changing landscape of college athletics.

WISCONSIN is bringing Cin cinnati’s Luke Fickell back to the Big Ten.

Athletic director Chris McIn tosh announced Sunday that the Badgers had hired Fickell to take over their football program after his successful run with the Bear cats.

Fickell posted a 57-18 record in six seasons at Cincy and helped the Bearcats earn a College Football Playoff berth last year. The former Ohio State defensive lineman and longtime assistant went 6-7 as the Buckeyes’ interim coach in 2011 after Jim Tressel’s resignation.

“This is a destination job at a program that I have admired from afar for years,” Fickell said in a statement released by the univer sity. “I am in total alignment with Chris McIntosh’s vision for this program. There is a tremendous foundation here that I can’t wait to build upon.”

Fickell informed the Bearcats players earlier Sunday that he was leaving the school.

ball

Sideline spat latest issue for Russell Wilson in Denver

loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

Purcell had just been flagged for an unnecessary roughness penalty during a 26-yard field goal by Pan thers kicker Eddy Pineiro early in the fourth quarter.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Whether or not there’s a fissure in the Denver Broncos’ locker room, there certainly is frustration.

Russell Wilson and Mike Pur cell were quick to dismiss their sideline spat Sunday as an emo tional exchange between compet itive personalities.

“Frustration,’’ Purcell said, was the root of his brief blowup with Wilson during the Broncos’ 23-10

As he retreated to the sideline, TV cameras captured him shout ing at Wilson, who responded. Purcell spun around and starting shouting in Wilson’s face before walking away in a huff.

“Mike and I are on the same page,’’ Wilson said. “He came off after they kicked a field goal, he was (ticked) off. He just said, ‘We’ve got, we’ve got to effin’ go,’ and I agree. We’re on the same page — there’s no animosity there at all.

“We’ve got to win,” Wilson said. “... Those guys are out there bat tling every play, and offense, we’ve got to be able to capitalize. So, yeah, there’s nothing there at all, me and him — there’s nothing there.’’

Which also aptly describes the Broncos’ beleaguered offense that’s averaging a league-low 14.2 points per game, negating a stingy de fense that’s allowing 17.6 points per game.

Wilson arrived in Denver eight touchdown throws shy of 300 for his career, and it took him three months to reach the milestone, which he finally did Sunday with a 1-yard pass to rookie Brandon Johnson with 3:19 remaining.

The Wilson-led offense is a reli able trending topic on Sundays as the former perennial Pro Bowler sinks to new lows in Denver.

For instance, it was pointed out this weekend that Carson Wentz has two more TDs passing this sea son than Wilson does and he hasn’t played since getting hurt Oct. 13.

With seven losses in eight games, the Broncos (3-8) now have to win all of their remaining games to avoid a sixth straight losing sea son.

A seventh consecutive season without a playoff berth is all but a certainty for a team that hasn’t won a game on American soil since Week 3.

“I have every confidence that he will respect and honor the founda tion that has been set for our foot ball program over the years while embracing the exciting opportuni ties ahead.”

Wisconsin (6-6, 4-5 Big Ten) is awaiting its bowl assignment. A loss in the bowl game would cause the Badgers to finish below .500 for the first time since 2001.

Fickell led Cincinnati to the first CFP berth for any Group of Five school and won several national coach of the year awards last sea son for helping Cincinnati go 13-0 before losing to Alabama in a Cot ton Bowl semifinal.

That 2021 Cincinnati team produced nine draft picks for the third-highest total of any school, behind only Georgia’s 15 and LSU’s 10. Five Cincinnati players were selected among the top 100 overall picks.

After replacing all that NFL tal ent, Cincinnati has gone 9-3 this season. The Bearcats didn’t quali fy for the American Athletic Con ference championship game that takes place Saturday.

iel Hackett said Monday that he spoke with Purcell and Wilson and “everybody’s good. ... it’s an emo tional game.” Hackett said appreciates the passion that Purcell showed Sun day.

“I mean, you want every one of your football players to want to do anything to win and you want them to hold each other account able. You want them to try to fire each other up,” Hackett said. “I’ve always believed it’s a little differ ent coming from a coach and then coming from a player.

“I think whenever it comes from a player, those guys, that means a lot to them. So, I appreciate his passion and understand it. I just don’t want him to get that person al foul in that situation. But be sides that, I love when the guys are fired up.”

The Associated Press

Cincinna

ti named veteran assistant Kerry Coombs interim coach.

Fickell, 49, takes over for inter im coach and former Badgers de fensive back Jim Leonhard, who replaced Paul Chryst on Oct. 2.

Chryst went 67-26 in 7½ sea sons. He was fired one day after the Badgers lost 34-10 at home to an Illinois team led by former Bad gers coach Bret Bielema. “Luke is one of the top foot

coaches in the country. He is a proven winner, recruiter and de veloper of players,” McIntosh said in a statement. “Equally as import ant, he shares our values. Coach Fickell is focused on giving our

AP PHOTO

Wisconsin announced it has hired Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell, bringing the former Ohio State coach back to the Big Ten.

Broncos nose tackle Mike Purcell argued with the quarterback following a personal foul penalty

The Associated Press

Embattled coach Nathan

AP PHOTO

Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson leaves the field after Sunday’s loss to the Panthers in Charlotte.

Fentanyl’s scourge plainly visible on streets of Los Angeles

By Brian Melley The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — In an filthy alley behind a Los Angeles dough nut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slum ber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day.

When Brandice Josey, anoth er homeless addict, bent down and blew a puff of fentanyl smoke his way in an act of charity, Smith sat up and slowly opened his lip to in hale the vapor as if it was the cure to his problems.

Smith, wearing a grimy yel low T-shirt that said “Good Vibes Only,” reclined on his backpack and dozed the rest of the afternoon on the asphalt, unperturbed by the stench of rotting food and human waste that permeated the air.

For too many people strung out on the drug, the sleep that follows a fentanyl hit is permanent. The highly addictive and potentially lethal drug has become a scourge across America and is taking a toll on the growing number of people living on the streets of Los Angeles.

Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Ange les County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700.

Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer. Use of fentanyl, a power ful synthetic opioid that is cheap to produce and is often sold as is or laced in other drugs, has exploded.

Because it’s 50 times more potent than heroin, even a small dose can be fatal.

It has quickly become the dead liest drug in the nation, according to the Drug Enforcement Adminis tration. Two-thirds of the 107,000 overdose deaths in 2021 were at tributed to synthetic opioids like fentanyl, the U.S. Centers for Dis ease Control and Prevention said.

The drug’s toll spreads far be yond the streets.

Jennifer Catano, 27, has the names of two children tattooed on her wrists, but she hasn’t seen them for several years. They live with her mother.

“My mom doesn’t think it’s a

good idea because she thinks it’s gonna hurt the kids because I’m not ready to get rehabilitated,” Cat ano said.

She has overdosed three times and been through rehab seven or eight times.

“It’s scary to get off of it,” she said. “The withdrawals are real ly bad.”

Catano wandered around a subway station near MacArthur Park desperate to sell a bottle of Downy fabric softener and a Cole man camping chair she stole from a nearby store.

Drug abuse can be a cause or symptom of homelessness. Both can also intersect with mental

illness.

A 2019 report by the Los Ange les Homeless Services Authority found about a quarter of all home less adults in Los Angeles County had mental illnesses and 14% had a substance use disorder. That anal ysis only counted people who had a permanent or long-term severe condition. Taking a broader inter pretation of the same data, the Los Angeles Times found about 51% had mental illnesses and 46% had substance use disorders.

Billions of dollars are being spent to alleviate homelessness in California but treatment is not al ways funded.

A controversial bill signed by

Gov. Gavin Newsom could im prove that by forcing people suffer ing from severe mental illness into treatment. But they need to be di agnosed with a certain disorder such as schizophrenia and addic tion alone doesn’t qualify.

Help is available but it is out paced by the magnitude of misery on the streets.

Rita Richardson, a field su pervisor with LA Door, a city ad diction-prevention program that works with people convicted of misdemeanors, hands out socks, water, condoms, snacks, clean nee dles and flyers at the same hotspots Monday through Friday. She hopes the consistency of her visits will en courage people to get help.

“Then hopefully the light bulb comes on. It might not happen this year. It might not happen next year. It might take several years,” said Richardson, a former homeless ad dict. “My goal is to take them from the dark to the light.”

Parts of Los Angeles have be come scenes of desperation with men and women sprawled on side walks, curled up on benches and collapsed in squalid alleys. Some huddle up smoking the drug, oth ers inject it.

Armando Rivera, 33, blew out white puffs to attract addicts in the alley where Smith was sleeping. He needed to sell some dope to buy more. Those without enough mon ey to support their habit, hovered around him, hoping for a free hit. Rivera showed no mercy.

Catano couldn’t sell the chair, but eventually she sold the fabric softener to a street vendor for $5.

It was enough money for anoth er high.

Landmark trial over Arkansas youth gender care ban resumes

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A psy chiatrist called to the stand by Ar kansas as the state defends its ban on gender-affirming care for chil dren said Monday he was con cerned about the impact the law could have on some transgender youth who would see their treat ments cut off.

Dr. Stephen Levine, a psychia trist at Case Western Reserve Uni versity School of Medicine in Ohio, testified as the nation’s first trial over such a ban continued before a federal judge after a five-week break.

Arkansas’ law, which was tem porarily blocked last year, would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treat ment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old. It also would prohibit doctors from refer ring patients elsewhere for such care.

Levine criticized the use of gen der-affirming medical treatment for minors, but under cross exam ination acknowledged his concerns about the psychological impacts of cutting off such care for some trans youth already receiving it. Levine said it could be “shocking and dev astating” for some youth receiving the care.

“My concern with the law, the way it was originally written, is it seemed to leave out what you’re talking about,” Levine testified.

Republican lawmakers in Ar

kansas enacted the ban last year, overriding a veto by GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson. Hutchinson, who leaves office in January, also said that the law went too far by cutting off treatments for children currently receiving such care. Ar kansas was the first state to enact

such a ban.

Multiple medical groups, in cluding the American Medical As sociation and the American Acad emy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say the treatments are safe if properly administered. The American Psychiatric Association

has supported the ruling block ing Arkansas’ ban, saying denying such care to adolescents who need it could harm their mental health. But Levine said he recommends psychotherapy over gender-affirm ing care for the treatment of gender dysphoria, criticizing the current

standard of care as using psycho therapy as “cheerleading” for such treatments.

Levine, however, testified that he wasn’t aware of what protocols are followed by doctors who pro vide such care in Arkansas.

The state has argued that the prohibition is within its authori ty to regulate the medical profes sion. People opposed to such treat ments for children argue they are too young to make such decisions about their futures.

Levine echoed that argument, saying minor patients “really have very little concept of what their fu ture holds.”

A similar ban has been blocked by a federal judge in Alabama, and other states have taken steps to re strict such care. Florida medical of ficials earlier this month approved a rule banning gender-affirming care for minors, at the urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

A judge in Texas has blocked that state’s efforts to investigate gender-confirming care for mi nors as child abuse. Children’s hospitals around the country have faced harassment and threats of violence for providing gen der-confirming care.

The families of four transgender youth sued challenging Arkansas’ ban. Last month, a 17-year-old tes tified that his life has been trans formed by the hormone therapy he’s been receiving and said ending the treatments could force his fam ily to leave the state.

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

A homeless addict holds pieces of fentanyl in Los Angeles, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022.

AP PHOTO, FILE

Dylan Brandt speaks at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Ark., July 21, 2021.

Stanley Kaye Matthews

August 29, 1943 ~ November 24, 2022

Mr. Stanley Kaye Matthews, formerly of Raeford passed away on November 24, 2022, at SECU Hospice House in Smithfield North Carolina.

Stanley was born on August 29, 1943, in Cumberland County NC to the late Willie A. Matthews and Annie Hinson Matthews.

He was preceded in death by two brothers, Edward Matthews and Garland Matthews; and a sister Eileen.

He is survived by his daughter, Tammy Matthews Craven, and her husband Jerry Craven; a son Timmy Matthews; one brother, Sam Matthews; four grandchildren, and two greatgrandchildren.

Sennie McPhatter

April 17, 1944 ~ November 24, 2022

Ms. Sennie McPhatter age, 78 went home to rest with her heavenly father on November 24, 2022.

Left to cherish her memory is : her husband, Raymond A. McPhatter, Jr.; three sons: Daryl, Duane and Donovan (Marquite) McPhatter ; one daughter, Devona McPhatterGraham(Dedrick); one brother John L. Brown (Vanessa): one aunt Dorothy Singletary, one very special daughter -in-love: Adrienne McPhatter.

She was preceded in death by her parents Thomas A. and Lula J. Brown; two brothers Thomas O. and Michael W. Brown, and one sister, Mary Hightstower.

Richard Thomas Odom

June 12, 1946 ~ November 23, 2022

Mr. Richard Thomas Odom Sr. went to be with his Lord and Savior on November 23, 2022, at Autumn Care of Raeford, surrounded by his family.

Richard was born on June 12, 1946, in Robeson County, NC to the late Willie Fern Odom and Myrtle Walters Odom.

He was preceded in death by his daughter Angela Denise Jernigan.

He was a member of the Living Faith Ministries Church in Raeford. Richard was the owner and operator of Odom’s Roofing before he retired.

Richard is survived by his wife of 55 years, Barbara Hendrix Odom; two sons, Richard Thomas Odom Jr. (Robynn) of Aberdeen, NC, and Bobby Odom (Amber) of Raeford, NC; three grandsons, Richard Odom III, Daniel Odom, Aiden Odom; six granddaughters, Heather Odom, Taylor Brisson, Lacie Edwards, Cayla Odom, Terri Jernigan, Alexius Odom; and three greatgrandchildren; three brothers, Danny Odom, of VA, Larry (Tarzan) Odom of Fayetteville, Steve Odom of Fayetteville; two sisters, Joyce Tatum of Parkton, and Carolyn Odom of Autryville.

Nikita Lashon McNeill

November 14, 1984 ~ November 21, 2022

Ms. Nikita Lashon McNeill age, 38 went home to be with her heavenly father on November 21, 2022. She was preceded in death by her sister Natasha McNeill, parents Dorothy and Jimmy Lee McNeill.

Nikita leaves to cherish her loving memories her one and only son Jayceon McKoy, special nieces and nephews: Tanasia Melvin and Mariah McNeill, KeAndre Melvin, DeAndre Melvin, Jeremiah Melvin. Great nephew Nykell McNeill. Whom was like her own.

One Brother: AnthonyJones of Raeford; Special Aunty Linda Owens of Raeford. Two special people Erica Hamilton Melton(Missy) and Sade Ray along with a host of other family and friends. She will be extremely missed.

Ida McLean

November 3, 1945 ~ November 24, 2022

Ms. Ida McLean age, 77 transitioned from earth to glory on November 24, 2022.

She leaves to cherish her loving memories her children: Karen Annette McLean, Sonjo Renee McLean-Shaw; parents, Roy Lee and Rosa Arlean Murchison; sisters: Beatrice Fowler, Aljoyce Campbell, Lucille McLean, Brenda Smith, Priscilla Leak; brother, Rodger Murchison; son in law, Thomas Shaw Jr., grandaughter, Thomara Shaw along with a host of other family and friends. Ida will be greatly missed.

Evelyn Douglas

January 15, 1962 ~ November 25, 2022

Ms. Evelyn Douglas age, 60 transitioned from earth to glory on November 25, 2022.

She leaves to cherish her loving memories her children: Linda Boatwright, Patricia Douglas, Mack Douglas, Annie Graham; parents: Charlie and Adlenne Douglas; sisters: Eunice McLean, Verlinda Graham, Almarie Smith; thirteen grandchildren, four great grandchildren along with a host of other family and friends. Evelyn will be greatly missed.

Celebrate the life of your loved ones. Submit obituaries and death notices to be published in NSJ at obits@northstatejournal.com

STATE & NATION

NC Democrats’ parity in Congress delegation may be fleeting

The Associated Press

RALEIGH — Democrats cele brated winning what was billed as North Carolina’s lone toss-up race for the U.S. House this month, as state Sen. Wiley Nickel’s narrow victory over Republican Bo Hines in the 13th Congressional District helped weaken any national GOP midterm wave.

Nickel’s win creates a 7-7 split in the state’s delegation, marking the best showing for state Demo crats after a decade of trailing the GOP in an otherwise closely divid ed state. Trial judges drew the lat est district boundaries after re districting litigation successfully blocked maps passed by the Re publican-controlled legislature that could have whittled Demo crats down to four seats.

“We’re a 50-50 state — we should have a 7-to-7 delegation,” Nickel told The Associated Press during a break in his congressional orien tation in Washington. “When we have fair maps, we get fair results that reflect the choice of the voters.”

But there’s a good chance Nick el’s Raleigh-area district and others will be dramatically altered for the 2024 elections, returning the ad vantage to Republicans.

A confluence of events opens the

door for General Assembly Repub licans to pass their preferred con gressional map in 2023 and have it used the following year.

“Seven-seven does not reflect the will of the voters in North Car olina,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters the day after the election. “So it should be something different. I don’t know what that is. But at the end of the day ... let’s

trust the voters of this state.”

Republicans hold eight of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts through the year’s end. Population growth gave North Carolina a 14th seat with the November election.

GOP legislators vehemently op posed a split opinion by the state Supreme Court last winter that struck down their approved map by declaring the state constitution

prohibited partisan gerrymander ing of boundaries.

State law required the judgedrawn map be used only for this year’s races. Republicans will con tinue to have majorities in the state House and Senate next year com fortable enough to pass their fa vored map. Redistricting plans are not subject to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp.

Most importantly, Republicans will have a 5-2 majority on the Su preme Court come January with victories by Trey Allen and Rich ard Dietz for seats currently held by Democrats.

The current 4-3 Democratic ma jority ruled that congressional and legislative maps approved by the General Assembly in November 2021 unlawfully gave Republicans outsized favoritism compared with Democrats. The three Republican justices who dissented wrote that the constitution doesn’t expressly bar or limit partisan advantage in mapmaking.

The arrival of two more GOP justices makes it more likely — but not assured — that the court would uphold a future congressional map by the legislature while rejecting last year’s landmark ruling that de fined illegal partisan gerrymander ing.

Senate leader Phil Berger said he expected the state would now move away from what he called the “judi cial gerrymander” to “what would be, I think, a different drawing of the congressional maps.”

Plans approved by the legisla ture but never implemented would have positioned Republicans to

win 10 of the state’s 14 congressio nal seats.

Michael Bitzer, a political sci ence professor at Catawba Col lege in Salisbury, said Nickel would be a likely target for Republi can lawmakers to place in a more GOP-friendly district.

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jack son, who won the newly creat ed 14th District seat covering por tions of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, and 6th District Dem ocratic Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro, who was elected to her second term, are also vulnerable, Bitzer said.

It’s possible the state Supreme Court shift could be moot. Litiga tion involving the congressional map is before the U.S. Supreme Court and could result in state courts losing the ability to judge laws involving federal elections, in cluding seat boundaries. Oral ar guments are scheduled for next month in the case, in which law yers for Berger and Moore argue the U.S. Constitution delegates “the Times, Places and Manner” of con gressional elections solely to state legislatures.

An analysis by Bitzer of federal statewide contests in North Caro lina since 2008 show Republican candidates winning nearly 51% of the cumulative votes compared with 47% for Democrats. But the idea that a political party should be assured of seats aligned with their percentage support at the ballot box over time was shunned by au thors of the state Supreme Court’s prevailing and dissenting opinions last February.

By Michelle L. Price The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Democrats cel ebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 cam paign that could prove more chal lenging.

The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.

Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increas ingly hostile to Democrats, includ ing Montana, Ohio and West Vir ginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly con tested states that were at the cen ter of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Ne vada. And while Democrats car ried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.

But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party out performed expectations.

For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelec tion campaign, that means stay ing focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the in frastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.

“We know that races are al ways close,” Rosen said in an in

terview. “We never take anything for granted.”

Perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking re election will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Ari zona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and con nect with a broader, more moder ate range of voters during the gen eral election.

In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to at tract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who

was awarded a Purple Heart af ter being severely wounded in Af ghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong chal lenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cor tez Masto.

Also in the southwest, Arizo na Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist

Democrat, will be up for reelec tion. Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Demo cratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.

Sinema is among a trio of mod erate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incum bents in 2024.

The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.

Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week af ter winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.

Republicans see Tester, a threeterm senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosen dale.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won re election in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republi cans, including in this year’s Sen ate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.

One potential Republican chal lenger whose name has been float ed in Pennsylvania is former hedge

fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican pri mary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expect ed to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.

Gallagher brushed off a que ry about whether he was consid ering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years.

“Any talk of the next election, es pecially since we just had an elec tion, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.

A number of high-profile Re publican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.

On the Democratic side, a num ber of the party’s former presi dential candidates will face vot ers. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klo buchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.

Vermont independent Sen. Ber nie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Con gress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.

In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.

“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Reyes’ longtime political con sultant Alan Crooks said.

Democrats kept the Senate this year, but 2024 may be harder

AP PHOTO

Rep.-elect Wiley Nickel, D-N.C., speaks with reporters after newlyelected members of the House of Representatives attended an orientation program, in Washington, D.C.

AP PHOTO

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., center, welcomes Senator-elect Peter Welch, D-Vt., left, and Senator-elect John Fetterman, D-Pa., whose victories helped give Democrats the majority in the next Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

“We know that races are always close. We never take anything for granted.”

Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen

WHAT’S HAPPENING

City of Kannapolis receives national honors

The City of Kannapolis has been recognized with two national SAVVY Awards for its communications and marketing initiatives, by 3CMA, the nation’s top professional group for government communication and marketing professionals. The Savvy Awards recognize outstanding local government achievements in communications, publicsector marketing and citizengovernment relationships, and salute skilled and effective city, county, agency or district professionals who have creatively planned and carried out successful innovations in communications and marketing. Kannapolis won two Awards of Excellence, competing with cities across the nation with populations of 85,000 and under. The city’s Downtown Parking Initiative won in the category of Communications or Marketing Plans and the City’s Economic Development Video won in the category of Promotional Video. The Downtown Parking Initiative was honored for the plan implemented to share information regarding the new VIDA Parking Deck.

The Economic Development video was created to demonstrate Kannapolis’ business-friendly climate, unique amenities, desirable location and skilled workforce. The video featured Gordon Food Service and why they chose to locate in Kannapolis. The video is being used in a nationwide campaign to attract businesses of all sizes to Kannapolis.

KANNAPOLISNC.GOV

National studies tout living in Winston-Salem

City finishes high in rankings of potential retirement locations and affordable cities

THE WINSTON-SALEM area has been recognized as an outstanding place to live by a pair of recent studies.

U.S. News & World Report released its rankings of the 150 largest metropolitan areas in the country based on how well they meet Americans’ retire ment needs and expectations. Top criteria include the happi ness of local residents, hous ing affordability, tax rates and

health care quality.

To determine the list, U.S. News surveyed people possibly nearing retirement age (45-59) and those of retirement age (60 or older) for guidance on what matters most to them. They cal culated a score based on six in dices: Housing Affordability, Happiness, Desirability, Retir ee Taxes, Job Market and Health Care Quality.

The happiness index counts for 22% of an area’s score and takes into account crime rates, air qual ity and overall well-being.

Housing affordability is worth 24% and uses census data on me dian home cost and median rent.

Health care quality accounts for 16% and measures availabil ity of quality non-children’s hos

pitals in a 50, 100 and 250 mile radius.

Retiree taxes is 16% and com bines sales tax and income tax in the area.

Desirability index is worth 13% and is based on people over age 45’s interest level in retiring in that area, based on survey in formation.

The job market index accounts for 9% and is based on unem ployment rate and average salary.

Winston-Salem ranked No. 36 on the list of best places to re tire, just behind Jacksonville, FL and just ahead of Portland, ME. It has an overall score of 7.0 and scored a 7.8 on housing afford ability, 5.7 on health care. It also scored just a 4.7 on desirability.

Asheville was the highest rated

Luther King Jr. Drive and Brook stown Avenue.

Liberty Street, between Mar tin Luther King Jr. Drive and Brookstown Avenue.

Construction on Main and Liberty will begin once First and Second are completely convert ed.

retirement location in the state, at 24, and Raleigh-Durham was No. 29.

Winston-Salem did better on the retiree rankings than the overall U.S. News & World Re port’s Best Places to Live, which was released earlier this year. The area finished 20 places low er, at No. 56, in that study and two places lower, at No. 5, in the state.

It was the second study to come out this month that tout ed Winston-Salem as a place to live. Based on 2020 census data, The Business Journals found that Winston-Salem was the second most affordable of the 100 largest U.S. metro areas. It was the most affordable in the state, two spots above Greensboro.

Changes should improve traffic patterns in business areas

Twin

City Herald

TRAFFIC WILL BE flowing differently through downtown Winston-Salem, as the city has begun converting several oneway streets to two-way traffic.

The first area to see the new traffic flow was First Street and a portion of Second Street, which were opened to two-way traffic the evening of Nov 29. The new traffic configuration converted the portion of First Street from Peters Creek Parkway to Spruce Street, and the portion of Second Street from Peters Creek Park way to Broad Street.

A mong the changes imple mented on Tuesday night were switching several signal lights over to two-way configuration. The contractor made the chang es to lights at the intersections of First and Broad, Second and Broad, and First/Second/Peters Creek Parkway. Once the signals were changed over and operat ing under the new configuration, all traffic control devices, such as cones and barricades, were re

moved to open the roads to full traffic. November 30 is the first day that traffic will operate in its new configuration.

The Chamber of Commerce/ Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership Business 40 Task Force recommended the two-way conversion to slow traffic speeds, promote pedestrian use, improve connectivity of the downtown street network and enhance the overall downtown business envi ronment. A study by an indepen dent traffic engineering firm con cluded that these changes were feasible after looking at both:

The effect that the new exit and entrance ramp configura tions for the Salem Parkway (for merly Business 40) will have on downtown traffic; and

The anticipated volume of traffic in 2040.

More areas of downtown will undergo a similar conversion from one-way to two-way traffic, including a larger area of Second Street—it still needs pavement marking, signs and signal work to be completed, and a date for full conversion of Second has not been announced.

Remaining streets to be con verted are: Main Street, between Martin

First Street will remain pre dominately a westbound route, and Second Street will remain predominantly an eastbound route. Likewise Liberty Street will remain primarily a south bound route, and Main a north bound route, which is consistent with their current usage. Howev er, two-way traffic will improve circulation patterns and make it easier for downtown visitors to get to their destinations.

Among the work that must be completed before each section of road can be opened to two-way traffic are:

Corner curb extensions (“bulbouts”) at select intersections to shorten pedestrian crossing dis tances, improve pedestrian visi bility to vehicles and provide pro tected on-street parking zones.

New lane markings & traffic lights.

Resurfacing the streets.

Modifications of on-street parking in select locations.

Realignment of Old Salem Road at Brookstown Avenue.

Current traffic patterns will remain in place during construc tion work. Lane closures may be required at times to place new traffic signals and build corner extensions.

Twin City Herald

Downtown Winston-Salem begins converting one-way streets to two-way

AP PHOTO

Welcome back Kendall

Denver Broncos wide receiver Kendall Hinton runs during the second half of an NFL football game between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022, in Charlotte. Hinton, a former Wake Forest quarterback and wide receiver, was playing his first game in North Carolina as a pro and his first in the state since November 23, 2019, when he had 189 receiving yards in his final home game against Duke.

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DEATH NOTICES

♦ Conrad Richard Clark, 90, of Winston-Salem died November 23, 2022.

♦ Emma “Boots” Louise Cole, 89, died November 27, 2022.

♦ Gladys Vogler Hockaday, 96, died November 23, 2022.

♦ John S. Meroney, 85, of Kernersville, died November 25, 2022.

♦ Maxine Ballard Sellers, 98, of Kernersville, died November 26, 2022.

♦ Betty Johnson Thompson, 95, of Winston-Salem, died November 24, 2022.

Balance the budget, stop inflation, create jobs

THE NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in the U.S. House will face a major challenge dealing with the Democrat-run White House and U.S. Senate. So, it is vital that Republicans offer a vision of a more successful, prosperous, safer, and freer America.

The first goal is not to find a common ground with left-wing, radical Democrats who reject virtually all our values. They are already tuning their political machine to fight us in 2024.

The first goal is to give the American people a sense of hope — and a belief that things can be dramatically better. (The lack of a positive vision led to disappointing Republican Senate campaigns.)

The Commitment to America was a step in the right direction. While it was not driven home as vividly as it could have been, it did give House Republicans enough of a positive message. This helped them carry the popular vote by more than 3 million and gain seats, while most of the Senate Republicans floundered in negativity. (Herschel Walker’s campaign has been mostly positive, but his opponent has been deeply negative and vicious.)

The most powerful visionary statement Republicans could make right now is simple: It is time to balance the budget, stop inflation, and create jobs.

House Republicans can deliver this positive vision of a brighter American future because even in a minority we helped President Ronald Reagan stop inflation and create jobs in 1981. When we became a majority in 1994 with the Contract with America, we went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy. This all happened with the largest capital gains tax cut in history. A key part of our budget-balancing and job-creating program was a systematic reduction in the regulatory burden, which had crippled small business and weakened even the biggest businesses.

The spending, policy, and bureaucratic messes of the current government present enormous opportunities for Republicans to offer a series of bold, popular reforms — and much-needed alternatives to the failed Biden policies that are eroding the economy and weakening America.

Given our experiences with balancing the budget for four consecutive years (the only time in our lifetime) and paying down the federal debt (when I left the Speakership, the debt was scheduled to be paid off by 2009) there are some obvious key principles to follow.

First, reports indicate that at least $600 billion were stolen from various COVID-19 programs. Rooting out and stopping corruption would save a significant amount of money.

Second, restoring the principles of the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act would greatly reduce the cost of welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. People would go to work. Children would be raised from poverty (the largest decline in childhood poverty came after the

1996 act). People would shift from drawing from public coffers to contributing to them as working taxpayers. Requiring work or study for any federal aid should be extended to everyone except the severely disabled. For most Americans, modern science and technology can turn disabilities into capabilities. Any unemployment compensation should be accompanied with an education requirement. There is no reason to give money to people to do nothing. This change would expand the workforce and reduce dependency.

Third, re-establishing national energy independence would create jobs, generate tax revenue, reduce costs to consumers, and allow us to replace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe. It would lower the cost of energy (and the U.S. government is one of the largest purchasers of energy). This would be a win-win for the balanced budget.

Fourth, simply rejecting all the Biden promises to dictatorships around the world would save billions. The recent offer by the Biden administration to transfer billions in “climate reparations” would be a good example.

Further, aid to Ukraine should be monitored and analyzed. While we should help the Ukrainians bravely fighting for their freedom on the ground, Ukraine’s government has a past reputation for corruption. Remember that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected to fight this corruption.

Fifth, every congressional committee should review the departments over which they have jurisdiction with a results-based rather than process-based model. We spend billions of dollars on programs, which simply do not work. Much of the money we spend on education has failed to improve test scores. The typical Washington solution has been to spend more money on the same programs that are failing.

For example, NASA’s Space Launch System has had one successful launch — after a 20-year, $40 billion total investment. There are private companies that can operate much less expensively, but the NASA-industrial lobbyists complex wants to continue building this absurdly expensive, outdated system.

Similarly, the Department of Defense is filled with opportunities to reduce cost.

Every department should be asked to rank the importance of their programs, and Congress should review — eliminating the bottom third of their lists. Further, the Trump administration program of cutting two regulations for each new one created should be written into law and enforced.

Regulatory proposals such as the new Biden climate change regulations for government contractors (which the Washington Times reports could cost $604 billion the first year) are good targets for the principle of prioritizing job creation over regulation.

Balancing the budget, reforming government, and cutting regulations will lead to dramatically lower inflation, and dramatically more jobs. The time to start is now.

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

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CLEMMONSVILLE RD on 11/28/2022

ADKINS, KATIE MARIE was arrested on a charge of DRUGS-POSS SCHED II at 8001 NORTH POINT BV on 11/27/2022

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BELCHER, GIANNI ARMANDO was arrested on a charge of ADWOTHER WEAPON at 2900 BLK NEW WALKERTOWN on 11/27/2022

BERROA, PAOLA was arrested on a charge of DRUGS-POSS CONTROLLED SUBSTANCEMETHAMPHETAMINE>LESS THAN 1 at 500 HOLLY AV/N SPRUCE ST on 11/26/2022

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BROWN, JERRY JUAN was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT-SIMPLE at 625 W SIXTH ST on 11/26/2022

BUCHANAN, JOHN TYLER was arrested on a charge of CONCEALING MDSE at 201 N CHURCH ST on 11/26/2022

♦ Butler, Wesley Damon (M/45) Arrest on chrg of Assault On Female (M), at 135 Summerside Ct, Winston-salem, NC, on 11/27/2022 22:57.

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CARTER, COLTON SEBASTIAN was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 401 TOWNLEY ST on 11/27/2022

♦ DIXON, CHARRELL LEMARK was arrested on a charge of CCW at 500 HOLLY AV/N SPRUCE ST on 11/26/2022

♦ ERICKSON, WILLIAM COOPER was arrested on a charge of COMMUNICATE THREATS at 960 E

♦ Franklin, Travonte Darryl (M/24) Arrest on chrg of 1) Weap-poss By Felon (F), 2) Fail To Appear/compl (F), 3) Probation Violation (F), and 4) Probation Violation (F), at 822 Woodcote Dr, Winston-salem, NC, on 11/22/2022 11:31.

♦ GADDY, BRYANT ANTHONYDEWAINE was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 201 N CHURCH ST on 11/27/2022

♦ GRAY, ROBERT JAMMAR was arrested on a charge of VAND-REAL PROPERTY at 499 E NORTHWEST BV/IVY AV on 11/27/2022

♦ Griffin, Adam Kaleb (M/30) Arrest on chrg of Aid And Abet Larceny ($1,000 Or Less), M (M), at 1700 Pecan Manor Ln/styers Ferry Rd, Lewisville, NC, on 11/24/2022 03:20.

♦ Hayesmurphy, Charissa Hope (F/46) Arrest on chrg of Resisting Arrest (M), at 5635 Yadkinville Rd, Pfafftown, NC, on 11/26/2022 16:55.

♦ Hernandez, Jorge (M/33) Arrest on chrg of Assault On Female (M), at 605 Briar Creek Manor, Lewisville, NC, on 11/27/2022 19:41.

♦ HILL, BUD JUNIOR was arrested on a charge of FINANCIAL IDENTITY FRAUD at 230 BARLOW CR on 11/28/2022

♦ Hodge, Charles Edward (M/37) Arrest on chrg of Vand-personal Prop (M), at 201 N Church St, Winston-

salem, NC, on 11/22/2022 11:30.

♦ Hunter, Dasean Aaron (M/25) Arrest on chrg of 1) Vand-personal Prop (M), 2) P/w/i/s/d Cocaine (F), 3) Maintain Vehicle (F), 4) Drug Paraphernalia (M), 5) Resisting Arrest (M), 6) Speeding To Elude Arrest (F), 7) Speeding - Exceeding Posted Limit By 15 Mph Or More On Hwy (M), 8) Ndl - Suspended / Revoked (M), 9) Obstructed Tag (M), and 10) Stop Sign Violation (M), at 1799 Thurmond St/w Twentieth St, Winston-salem, NC, on 11/22/2022 15:05.

♦ Jackson, Brandon Jawaun (M/32) Arrest on chrg of 1) Abductionchildren (F), 2) Vio. Protective Order By Courts Another State/ Indian Tribe (M), 3) Abduction-children (F), 4) Vio. Protective Order By Courts Another State/ Indian Tribe (M), and 5) Fail To Appear/compl (M), at 1065 Brookhill Park Dr, Rural Hall, NC, on 11/25/2022 12:54.

♦ King, Toneka Ann (F/35) Arrest on chrg of 1) Maintain Vehicle (F), 2) Drugs School Property (F), 3) Drugs-poss Controlled Substancemethamphetamine>less Than 1 (M), 4) Drug Trafficking (F), 5) Drugs-misd Poss (M), 6) Drug Paraphernalia (M), and 7) Drug Paraphernalia (M), at 201 N Church Street, Winston Salem, NC, on 11/22/2022 13:45.

♦ Kirby, Angela Pinnix (F/57) Arrest on chrg of 1) Felony Habitual Larceny (F) and 2) Larceny/misdemeanor (M), at 3960 Old Lexington Rd, Winstonsalem, NC, on 11/27/2022 17:40.

♦ LASTER, BRAYDEN G was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 4780 BALSOM RD on 11/27/2022

♦ MACUIXTLE, ISIDRO TEMOXTLE was arrested on a charge of RESISTING ARREST at 201 N CHURCH ST on 11/27/2022

♦ MCBRIDE, RODNEY WAYNE was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 150 WILLOW OAK DR on 11/26/2022

♦ MCCOY, DARON OCTAVIUS was arrested on a charge of IMPAIRED DRIVING DWI at 2498 UNIVERSITY PW on 11/26/2022

♦ MCDOWELL, ANDRE GERODE was arrested on a charge of COMMUNICATE THREATS at 368 E HANES MILL RD on 11/28/2022

♦ Mcgee, Everette Deuran (M/59) Arrest on chrg of Larceny-felony (F), at 201 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 11/24/2022 07:19.

♦ Mcgee, Everette Deuran (M/59) Arrest on chrg of Assault-simple (M), at 3411 Walkertown Landing Dr, Walkertown, NC, on 11/24/2022 02:37.

♦ Mcgee, Nancy Lynn (F/57) Arrest on chrg of Assault-simple (M), at 3411 Walkertown Landing Dr, Walkertown, NC, on 11/24/2022 02:37.

♦ Mcneill, Paul Jason (M/49) Arrest on chrg of 1) Fraud-obt Property (F) and 2) Aid And Abet Larceny ($1,000 Or Less) (M), at 4032 Mecum Rd,

Walkertown, NC, on 11/26/2022 20:59.

♦ MILLER, CHARLES WESLEY was arrested on a charge of POSS COCAINE FEL at 2999 EBERT RD on 11/27/2022

♦ Moore, Amya (F/21) Arrest on chrg of 1) Ofa/fta-f-larceny By Employee (M) and 2) Order For Arrest (M), at 604 W Twenty-third St, Winston-salem, NC, on 11/22/2022 19:26.

♦ PINKNEY, YOLANDA KAREN was arrested on a charge of RESISTING ARREST at 5719 UNIVERSITY PW on 11/26/2022

♦ Ramirez, Andrew William (M/19) Arrest on chrg of 1) Serious Injury By Vehicle (F), 2) Vand-real Property (M), and 3) Reckless Driving (M), at 406 W Bodenhamer St, Kernersville, NC, on 11/28/2022 10:06

♦ Richards, Angel Marie (F/41) Arrest on chrg of 1) Breaking/larc-felony (F), 2) 1st Degree Trespass (M), and 3) Resisting Arrest (M), at 710 Sea Horse Cr, Rural Hall, NC, on 11/27/2022 22:14.

♦ Rinto, Cameron Mcaul (M/23) Arrest on chrg of 1) Aslt On Offcr/misdmr (M), 2) Drunk / Disruptive (M), and 3) Resisting Arrest (M), at 2468 Market Center Dr, Clemmons, NC, on 11/27/2022 21:43.

♦ Rodriguez, Maria Ortiz (F/18) Arrest on chrg of Fugitive (F), at 100 Flynnwood Dr, Kernersville, NC, on 11/27/2022 04:59.

“Join the conversation”

We went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy.

SIDELINE REPORT

SOCCER

Nearly 20M watch US-England World Cup game

New York

The United States’ 0-0 draw against England in the World Cup drew 19.98 million viewers for Englishand Spanish-language broadcasts. It was the thirdmost watched men’s soccer game on U.S. television behind the 2010 and 2014 finals. The match kicked off at 2 p.m. EST on Friday. It was was seen by 15,377,000 viewers on Fox. That was the most for a U.S. Englishlanguage men’s soccer telecast. The U.S.-England game was viewed by 4.6 million on Telemundo which is a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Shaw steps down as Stanford’s football coach

Stanford, Calif. David Shaw stepped down as Stanford’s football coach on Monday, ending his 16year run at the school, including the last dozen as the Cardinal’s head coach. Stanford is 14-28 over the last four seasons as the program has struggled to keep up in a rapidly changing college football landscape with players transferring more freely and earning money for name, image, and likeness. AD Bernard Muir said the university remains committed to fielding a topflight football program and is figuring out how it can utilize NIL and the transfer portal to help in that regard without violating Stanford’s principles.

NBA Arbitrator will referee Dr. J’s suit against brand developer

Dover, Del.

A Delaware judge has halted a lawsuit filed by basketball legend Julius Erving against a branddevelopment and marketing company. The judge ruled Monday that the dispute must go to arbitration. The lawsuit stems from a 2016 deal in which the Hall of Fame player known as “Dr. J” agreed to sell a majority interest in his trademark and other intellectual property to Authentic Brands Group. Erving alleges that ABG has failed to devote adequate resources to grow the “Dr. J” brand and has focused instead on more profitable brands.

NHL Ex-employee files discrimination complaint vs. Canucks

Vancouver, British Columbia

A former member of the Vancouver Canucks’ coaching staff says she was fired because of her sex, mental illness and physical disability. Rachel Doerrie filed a complaint with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after losing her job as video analyst and assistant video coach for the Canucks. She says she told the team that she had a heart condition and post-traumatic stress disorder upon getting hired. Doerrie says the team’s assistant general manager later questioned her mental ability to do her job and treated her differently from the organization’s male employees.

Commanders unveil Sean Taylor memorial 15 years after death

ue,” former Washington quarter back Robert Griffin III tweeted.

By Stephen Whyno The Associated Press

LANDOVER, Md. — The Washington Commanders un veiled a helmet, No. 21 jersey, pants and cleats stood up in mannequin form as a memorial to Sean Taylor on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the late safety’s death.

It was not a statue but rather a glass-enclosed installation on the concourse of FedEx Field, which drew ire on social media for be ing mismatched and falling short of what many hoped and expected it would be.

“Sean Taylor Deserved a Stat

Members of Taylor’s family were on hand for the pregame cer emony, a decade and a half to the day he died at age 24 from a gun shot wound after being shot in the upper thigh by an intruder in his Miami home. A mural honoring Taylor was also revealed.

Following his team’s 19-13 vic tory against Atlanta, coach Ron Rivera opened his news confer ence, “On the 15th anniversary of the passing of Sean Taylor, this one’s for the Taylor family.”

Several Commanders players wore Taylor jerseys to the stadi um and said it was important to pay tribute to the hard-hitting de fender.

“They came up to us earlier in the week and told us that there

Darrick Forest, Commanders safety

was going to be the revealing of the Sean Taylor everything,” safe ty Darrick Forest said. “It’s just about pride. We want to let his leg acy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

Some on social media pointed out the display included a strange mix of a Nike jersey, Reebok pants and Adidas cleats. The use of soc cer cleats instead of football ones

also sparked criticism, but Taylor’s daughter, Jackie, said it was inten tional.

“It was something that was su per special to him and something he chose to do,” she told the lo cal CBS affiliate, WUSA9. “It was beautiful, honestly. They put ev erything that he wore — soccer cleats, little things that were spe cial to him and that he did as a player. That was really special.”

There was only praise from cur rent players for Taylor, who was a two-time Pro Bowl selection in his first three NFL seasons and only got into 57 games before be ing killed.

“It was a big thing just to give him his flowers and do it the right way because he was probably the best safety ever,” safety Kamren Curl said. “Just to be able to do that and be able to be there while they do that was big.”

The team retired Taylor’s num ber last season in what looked to be a hastily put together ceremo ny, announcing it only four days before. Several alumni said they were unable to make it because of the late notice.

Jones, Maddux consider Bonds, Clemens for Hall

positive test under the major league drug program, just over two weeks after getting his 3,000th hit.

The Associated Press

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Hall of Famers Chipper Jones, Greg Maddux, Jack Morris and Ryne Sandberg are among 16 members of the contemporary baseball era committee that will meet Sunday to consider the Cooperstown fate of an eight-man ballot that includes Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro.

Hall of Famers Lee Smith, Frank Thomas and Alan Trammell also are on the panel, which will meet in San Diego ahead of the winter meetings.

They will be joined by former To ronto CEO Paul Beeston, former Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs executive Theo Epstein, Anaheim Angels owner Arte Moreno, Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng, Minnesota Twins president Dave St. Peter and Chicago White Sox executive vice president Ken Wil liams.

Three media members/histo rians are on the committee: long time statistical analyst Steve Hirdt of Stats Perform, La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Susan Slusser of the San Fran

cisco Chronicle. Neal and Slusser are past presidents of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

Hall Chairman Jane Forbes Clark will be the committee’s non voting chair.

The ballot also includes Albert Belle, Don Mattingly, Fred Mc Griff, Dale Murphy and Curt Schil ling. The committee considers candidates whose careers were pri marily from 1980 on. A candidate needs 75% to be elected and any one who does will be inducted on July 23, along with anyone chosen in the BBWAA vote, announced on Jan. 24.

Bonds, Clemens and Schilling fell short in January in their 10th and final appearances on the BB WAA ballot. Bonds received 260 of 394 votes (66%), Clemens 257 (65.2%) and Schilling 231 (58.6%).

Palmeiro was dropped from the BBWAA ballot after receiving 25 votes (4.4%) in his fourth appear ance in 2014, falling below the 5% minimum needed to stay on. His high was 72 votes (12.6%) in 2012.

Bonds denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs and Clemens maintains he never used PEDs. Palmeiro was suspended for 10 days in August 2005 following a

A seven-time NL MVP, Bonds set the career home run record with 762 and the season record with 73 in 2001. A seven-time Cy Young Award winner, Clemens went 354-184 with a 3.12 ERA and 4,672 strikeouts, third behind No lan Ryan (5,714) and Randy John son (4,875). Palmeiro had 3,020 hits and 568 homers.

Schilling fell 16 votes shy with 285 (71.1%) in 2021. Support dropped after hateful remarks he made in retirement toward Mus lims, transgender people, reporters and others.

McGriff got 169 votes (39.8%) in his final year on the BBWAA bal lot in 2019. Murphy was on the BB WAA ballot 15 times and received a high of 116 votes (23.2%) in 2000. Mattingly received a high of 145 votes (28.2%) in the first of 15 ap pearances on the BBWAA bal lot in 2001, and Belle appeared on two BBWAA ballots, receiving 40 votes (7.7%) in 2006 and 19 (3.5%) in 2007.

Players on Major League Base ball’s ineligible list cannot be con sidered, a rule that excludes Pete Rose.

This year’s BBWAA ballot in cludes Carlos Beltrán, John Lackey and Jered Weaver among 14 new comers and Scott Rolen, Todd Hel ton and Billy Wagner among hold overs.

The safety was killed at a shooting in his home in 2007

The 16-member contemporary baseball era committee will consider players tainted by baseball’s steroid scandal

AP PHOTO

Steroids-tainted stars Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens (pictured) and Rafael Palmeiro are on the eight-man ballot for the Hall of Fame’s contemporary baseball era committee, which meets Dec. 4 in San Diego.

AP PHOTO

Fans attend the unveiling of the Sean Taylor Memorial before the start of Sunday’s game between the Falcons and Commanders in Landover, Maryland.

“We want to let his legacy live, so we went out there and did our thing.”

STATE & NATION

NC Democrats’ parity in Congress delegation may be fleeting

The Associated Press

RALEIGH — Democrats cele brated winning what was billed as North Carolina’s lone toss-up race for the U.S. House this month, as state Sen. Wiley Nickel’s narrow victory over Republican Bo Hines in the 13th Congressional District helped weaken any national GOP midterm wave.

Nickel’s win creates a 7-7 split in the state’s delegation, marking the best showing for state Demo crats after a decade of trailing the GOP in an otherwise closely di vided state. Trial judges drew the latest district boundaries after re districting litigation successful ly blocked maps passed by the Re publican-controlled legislature that could have whittled Demo crats down to four seats.

“We’re a 50-50 state — we should have a 7-to-7 delegation,” Nickel told The Associated Press during a break in his congressional orientation in Washington. “When we have fair maps, we get fair re sults that reflect the choice of the voters.”

But there’s a good chance Nick el’s Raleigh-area district and oth ers will be dramatically altered for the 2024 elections, returning the advantage to Republicans.

A confluence of events opens the

door for General Assembly Repub licans to pass their preferred con gressional map in 2023 and have it used the following year.

“Seven-seven does not reflect the will of the voters in North Car olina,” House Speaker Tim Moore told reporters the day after the election. “So it should be some thing different. I don’t know what that is. But at the end of the day ...

let’s trust the voters of this state.”

Republicans hold eight of the state’s 13 U.S. House districts through the year’s end. Population growth gave North Carolina a 14th seat with the November election.

GOP legislators vehemently op posed a split opinion by the state Supreme Court last winter that struck down their approved map by declaring the state constitution

prohibited partisan gerrymander ing of boundaries.

State law required the judgedrawn map be used only for this year’s races. Republicans will con tinue to have majorities in the state House and Senate next year com fortable enough to pass their fa vored map. Redistricting plans are not subject to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp.

Most importantly, Republicans will have a 5-2 majority on the Su preme Court come January with victories by Trey Allen and Rich ard Dietz for seats currently held by Democrats.

The current 4-3 Democratic majority ruled that congressional and legislative maps approved by the General Assembly in Novem ber 2021 unlawfully gave Repub licans outsized favoritism com pared with Democrats. The three Republican justices who dissented wrote that the constitution doesn’t expressly bar or limit partisan ad vantage in mapmaking.

The arrival of two more GOP justices makes it more likely — but not assured — that the court would uphold a future congressio nal map by the legislature while re jecting last year’s landmark ruling that defined illegal partisan gerry mandering.

Senate leader Phil Berger said he expected the state would now move away from what he called the “judicial gerrymander” to “what would be, I think, a different draw ing of the congressional maps.”

Plans approved by the legisla ture but never implemented would have positioned Republicans to

win 10 of the state’s 14 congressio nal seats.

Michael Bitzer, a political sci ence professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, said Nickel would be a likely target for Republi can lawmakers to place in a more GOP-friendly district.

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jack son, who won the newly created 14th District seat covering por tions of Mecklenburg and Gaston counties, and 6th District Dem ocratic Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro, who was elected to her second term, are also vulnera ble, Bitzer said.

It’s possible the state Supreme Court shift could be moot. Litiga tion involving the congressional map is before the U.S. Supreme Court and could result in state courts losing the ability to judge laws involving federal elections, including seat boundaries. Oral arguments are scheduled for next month in the case, in which law yers for Berger and Moore argue the U.S. Constitution delegates “the Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections solely to state legislatures.

An analysis by Bitzer of federal statewide contests in North Caro lina since 2008 show Republican candidates winning nearly 51% of the cumulative votes compared with 47% for Democrats. But the idea that a political party should be assured of seats aligned with their percentage support at the ballot box over time was shunned by au thors of the state Supreme Court’s prevailing and dissenting opinions last February.

By Michelle L. Price The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Democrats cel ebrating a successful effort to keep control of the U.S. Senate this year will soon confront a 2024 cam paign that could prove more chal lenging.

The party enters the next cycle defending 23 seats, including two held by independents who caucus with Democrats. That’s compared with just 10 seats that Republicans hope to keep in their column.

Adding to the potential hurdles is that some 2024 contests are in states that have become increas ingly hostile to Democrats, includ ing Montana, Ohio and West Vir ginia. Other Democratic-held seats are in some of the same hotly con tested states that were at the cen ter of this year’s midterms, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona and Ne vada. And while Democrats car ried each of those races, they did so at great cost and with sometimes narrow margins. In Nevada, for instance, Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto won by less than 1 percentage point, or about 9,000 votes.

But Democrats who are on the ballot in 2024 know that they could face fierce headwinds and are studying the results of this year’s election, when the party out performed expectations.

For Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat facing her first reelec tion campaign, that means stay ing focused on kitchen table issues and touting legislation like the in frastructure law and gun violence legislation signed by President Joe Biden.

“We know that races are al ways close,” Rosen said in an in

terview. “We never take anything for granted.”

Perhaps the biggest question for Senate Democrats seeking re election will be who Republicans nominate as their opponents. The GOP lost several Senate elections this year, including those in Ari zona, Pennsylvania and Nevada, after Trump-backed candidates struggled to raise money and con nect with a broader, more moder ate range of voters during the gen eral election.

In Nevada, the Republican field to challenge Rosen has not begun to shape up but is expected to at tract several contenders. One name receiving attention is Sam Brown, a former U.S. Army captain who

was awarded a Purple Heart af ter being severely wounded in Af ghanistan. Brown ran for Senate this year and put up a strong chal lenge in the Republican primary before losing to Adam Laxalt, who lost in the general election to Cor tez Masto.

Also in the southwest, Arizo na Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist

Democrat, will be up for reelec tion. Sinema is likely to first face a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Demo cratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities like a minimum wage increase or Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to run for reelection.

Sinema is among a trio of mod erate Senate Democrats who have sometimes used their leverage in an evenly divided chamber to block or blunt some of Biden’s plans and nominees. They will also be among the party’s most vulnerable incum bents in 2024.

The other two senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, will be running as Democrats in states that Trump handily carried in 2020.

Manchin has already drawn a GOP challenger in U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, who declared a week af ter winning reelection that he was setting his sights on higher office. Manchin has not yet said whether he’ll run for reelection.

Republicans see Tester, a threeterm senator, as vulnerable, and the opportunity to run for the seat could draw a fierce primary contest between former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Rep. Matt Rosen dale.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey has not said whether he intends to run for a fourth term. Casey easily won re election in 2018, but Pennsylvania has been competitive for Republi cans, including in this year’s Sen ate race won by Democrat John Fetterman.

One potential Republican chal lenger whose name has been float ed in Pennsylvania is former hedge

fund CEO David McCormick, who narrowly lost the Republican pri mary in this year’s race to celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is widely expect ed to seek a third term but has not officially announced. There are no official Republican candidates, but U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher has been talked about as a possibility.

Gallagher brushed off a que ry about whether he was consid ering challenging Baldwin, saying in a statement that he was focused on tackling issues like inflation and the border over the next two years.

“Any talk of the next election, es pecially since we just had an elec tion, distracts from the serious work we need to do,” he said.

A number of high-profile Re publican senators will also be up for reelection in 2024, including Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.

On the Democratic side, a num ber of the party’s former presi dential candidates will face vot ers. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klo buchar and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all said they plan to seek another term.

Vermont independent Sen. Ber nie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats and is one of the most influential progressives in Con gress, has not said if he intends to run for reelection.

In Utah, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will face his first Senate reelection bid — if he chooses to run. Romney has faced backlash from his own party for being the only Republican who voted twice to remove Trump from office after his two impeachments by the House.

“He’s certainly set up to run, but it does not mean he’s considering it,” Reyes’ longtime political con sultant Alan Crooks said.

Democrats kept the Senate this year, but 2024 may be harder

AP PHOTO

Rep.-elect Wiley Nickel, D-N.C., speaks with reporters after newlyelected members of the House of Representatives attended an orientation program, in Washington, D.C.

AP PHOTO

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., center, welcomes Senator-elect Peter Welch, D-Vt., left, and Senator-elect John Fetterman, D-Pa., whose victories helped give Democrats the majority in the next Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

“We know that races are always close. We never take anything for granted.”

Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen

MOORE COUNTY

North Moore varsity football defeated

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Eagle Springs man arrested in connection to several fires

Last week the Moore County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of a man from Eagle Springs, who is accused of setting fire to several buildings, including a church. Shane Deante Jones, 24, has been charged with five counts of felony burning of buildings, six counts of felony breaking and entering, one count of felony setting fire to brush or woodlands, one count of damaging crops or trees, and one count of injury to property in Moore County. At this time, it is still not known if additional charges will be filed against Jones. According to investigators, they discovered evidence in his possession connecting him to break-ins at a Truist Bank in Seven Lakes and fires set at Candor United Methodist Church. Jones was taken to the Moore County Detention Center, where he was held under a $145,000 secured bond. His first court appearance is set for December 15.

Body found in homeless camp in Aberdeen

The body of a homeless man was found in a wooded area near the Walmart in Aberdeen this past Saturday, according to a report from local police. Shaun Bradley Dixon, 23, had apparently been living at the homeless camp in the woods before his body was discovered by a fellow camper. Capt. Brian Chavis of the Aberdeen Police Department has said the cause of Dixon’s death is still unknown. Investigators are hoping to learn more about the cause of Dixon’s death after an autopsy has been conducted. Dixon’s death is the second police investigation to take place this year regarding the death of a homeless person in Moore County. In June, the body of Dalvin Harris was found at an intersection in Southern Pines after he had been struck by a vehicle.

Aberdeen Town Board approves change to UDO for Wholesale businesses in certain districts

in the LI district.

By Ryan Henkel North State Journal

ABERDEEN — The Aberdeen Town Board met Monday, where they approved a change to the UDO and sold property to the De partment of Transportation.

The board held a public hearing for a proposed text amendment to the UDO Principal Use Table to designate “Wholesale, Major” and “Wholesale, Minor” Use Types as a Permitted By-Right within the Light Industrial District, with ad ditional Use Standards.

“The proposed amendment from SiteOne Landscape Supply is asking to add Wholesale, Major

and Wholesale, Minor Use Types to the LI District and amend the Use Classification of those to al low the sale of toxic chemicals or substances, pesticides or fertiliz ers,” said Planner Danielle Orl off. “They are also wanting to add enhanced protections for any res idential zoned areas by increasing landscape buffers from an average width of 45ft to 55 ft, minimum width from 35ft to 50ft, and to increase the minimum setbacks from 40ft to 55ft in the LI zoning district.”

According to the UDO, Whole sale, Major use type can be de scribed as a wholesale use located in a building of more than 10,000 square feet of gross floor area or one that includes outdoor stor age. In addition, it cannot sell tox ic chemicals or substances, pes ticides, or fertilizers. Wholesale,

Minor use types can be described as a wholesale use located in a building of 10,000 square feet or gross floor area or less that does not include outdoor storage, nor does it sell toxic chemicals or sub stances, pesticides, or fertilizers.

Also, Light Industrial District, as currently described in UDO, does not allow wholesale major or mi nor use types.

The amendment, according to the applicant, Area Business Man ager Brent Sanders, was just so that they could relocate their busi ness, which was upended due to the NCDOT road widening proj ect, to a potential site located in a LI district.

The amendment came with full staff approval because they viewed it as a reasonable request and one that was perhaps an oversight to not include Wholesale businesses

However, the board did have concerns about future issues in re lation to residential areas. Even though the applicant’s property is not near residential properties, the amendment is tricky because it would be a broader change. There were also concerns regarding the proposed toxic chemicals or sub stances, pesticides, or fertilizers, as well as their potential impacts on surrounding areas.

“To get this to work, we need to make sure that the people are go ing to be protected while [Sanders] gets what he’s looking for tonight,” said Mayor Robert Farrell. “This is a balancing act between industri al and residential, and sometimes it gets real tough to make it work, but we’ve got to make it work.”

Southern Pines council grants zoning exemption for existing mural

Knollwood Tract Phase 2 PDP approved by council

By Ryan Henkel North State Journal

SOUTHERN PINES — The Southern Pines Town Council met Tuesday, November 15, where they granted a zoning exemption for an existing mural and clarified sec tions of its UDO.

The first action that the council took was to approve a zoning ex emption for public art at 1012 N. May St.

“The mural in tonight’s re quest is titled ‘Ode to the Pines,’” said Director of the Arts Coun cil of Moore County Chris Dunn. “It depicts two scenes in South ern Pines. One is the downtown train depot, and the other one is a fox hunting scene. It was creat ed by the Pinecrest High School art club, which is open to any stu dent interested in art. The art club began painting this mural prior to the pandemic, and it was com pleted two years later this past Au gust.”

The initial problem, according to Planning Director B.J. Grieve, stems from the definition of a sign in the UDO, which ends up in

cluding murals.

“In our Unified Development Ordinance, a sign is defined very broadly as ‘any device, depiction, lettering, or symbol that is suffi ciently visible to persons not locat ed on the lot, where it is located to either attract the attention of such persons or communicate informa tion to them,’” Grieve said.

The UDO is worded in this way in order to eliminate that is sue of subjectivity between what is art and what is an advertisement, but specifically includes a provi sion for granting a zoning exemp tion by referring designs to the Arts Council of Moore County, a private, non-profit, to work along the lines of their mural program to help satisfy standards of non-ad vertising and appropriateness.

“The mural property own er contacted the Arts Council of Moore County, and they’ve decid ed to submit to sponsor this mural because of the history.”

The council also approved text amendments to the UDO in order to clarify build height constraints and grant exemptions to existing structures for post-development runoff rate requirements.

The council then held a qua si-judicial hearing to review the planned development plan for the

“The mural property owner contacted the Arts Council of Moore County, and they’ve decided to submit to sponsor this mural because of the history.”

Knollwood Tract Phase 2 project.

“This is a multi-family devel opment portion that’s part of the Knollwood Tract CDP that was approved in 2012 and then amend ed in 2017,” said Principal Planner Pam Graham. “That CDP called for a total acreage of 558.04. A wide range of allowable uses came about as some of the amendments in 2017. There’s a very broad range of uses that were approved by the CDP. Also, the total open space of 100.11 acres, with 55.8 of those be ing usable open space acreage.”

“Specific components of the CDP approval included four types of project-edge standards: inter connective circulation for vehic ular and non-vehicular travel, a prohibition of new wells with in the development, appropriate measurements to mitigate noise and lighting impacts to be includ

ed with each PDP application sub mittal, and the property is zoned Planned Development.”

Following the hearing, the council approved the PDP.

The council then approved two architectural reviews, with the first being for the LKC Building at 390 W. Pennsylvania Ave.

“This was the Spectrum build

Town Board approves sale of property to NCDOT for road widening project

The North Moore Mustangs’ varsity football team lost Friday’s home playoff game against Rosewood (Goldsboro) by a score of 27-7. This game was part of the 2022 NCHSAA Football Championships - 1A Tournament. The Mustangs finished their regular season with a 13-1 overall record and were undefeated in their conference.

DAVID SINCLAIR | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

♦ BENNETT, SHAWN CHRISTO PHER, 52, W, M, 11/24/2022, Aber deen PD, Fail to Report Accident

♦ WATLINGTON, LINDA FAYE, 43, B, F, 11/23/2022, Out of County Agen cy, Felony Larceny (x4), Possess Stolen Goods/Prop (x4)

♦ HAMMOND, OSCAR LORENZO, 35, B, M, 11/23/2022, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, PWISD Cocaine, Felony Possession of Cocaine, PWIMSD Marijuana, Maintn Veh/ Dwell/Place CS, Simple Possess Schedule VI CS, Possess Drug Paraphernalia, Possess Marijuana Paraphernalia, Possession of Fire arm by Felon (x3)

♦

GILLESPIE, BRIAN MARCUS, 30, B, M, 11/23/2022, Moore County

Sheriff’s Office, Communicating Threats (x2), Harassing Phone Call, Domestic Criminal Trespass, Assault by Pointing a Gun

♦

PARKS, AARON LLOYD, 30, W, M, 11/22/2022, Moore County Sher iff’s Office, Assault on a Female, Interfere Emergency Communica tions, Possess Drug Paraphernalia, Assault and Battery

♦

LANNING, MICHAEL CORTEZ, 53, W, M, 11/22/2022, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, Fict/Alt Title/Reg Card/Tag, Expired/No Inspection, Identity Theft

♦ KERSHAW, CRAIG LAVONTE, 38, B, M, 11/22/2022, Moore County

Sheriff’s Office, Simple Possess Schedule VI CS, Possess Marijuana Paraphernalia, Possess Heroin, Possess Drug Paraphernalia (x2), Possess Methamphetamine, Pos sess Marijuana up to 1/2 oz, Assault on a Female

Following the hearing, the board approved the text amend ment with the condition that ‘non-airborne toxic chemicals of a standard agricultural or land scaping use shall be required for indoor storage in sealed contain ers.’

According to the board, this condition will work to prevent a secondary party from attempting to abuse the newly allowed regu lations and keep the types of toxic materials potentially introduced into the district very limited.

The board then approved an of fer from the NCDOT to purchase town property near Highway 211 in relation to the Road Widening Project on Highway 211.

After negotiating a better deal, the town managed to land on a price of $34,000 for 0.489 acres of land at the corner of Highway 211 and Glasgow Street, as well as 0.287 acres of land for a perma nent utility easement and 0.026 acres for a temporary construc tion easement. In total, 0.802 acres of town property.

The Aberdeen Town Board will next meet January 23.

ing on Pennsylvania Avenue, and this is the improvement to the Spectrum building,” said May or Carol Haney. “It will now be a two-story headquarters for LKC.”

The second architectural re view was for the Morganton Park North Apartments.

“If you recall, there were three standards that I was recom mending be complied with be fore this was approved,” Graham said. “One of those is projec tions of at least five feet at least once every 50 feet along the side. They have made adjustments on all of the floors of the buildings now to meet this requirement, so there is no deviation to approve. The second one, which had to do

with the dimensions of balco nies, was that we had some bal conies that did not meet the sixfoot depth. And they made some adjustments, and now they all do now meet the six-foot, and they all exceed the 10-foot in length requirement.”

The council also approved an ordinance to amend the FY 2223 budget for the W. New Hamp shire Tree Replacement Project.

“This is on the appearance commission proposed project for the replacement of those trees on New Hampshire Avenue and also in the parking lot there by The Jefferson and Neville’s,” said Town Manager Reagan Parsons.

There was also a second matching ordinance to amend the FY 22-23 Budget for the E. New Hampshire Tree Replace

ment Right-of-Way Project.

“This is a smaller project on the opposite side of the tracks,” Parsons said. “This is the area that’s in front of what was one of the original fire stations here in Southern Pines, where a number of years back, the town had gone in and removed what was origi nally a drive to that fire station. Later, the sidewalk went through there, and we had a problem with people parking in the old drive and blocking the sidewalk. With out this project, we’ll simply con tinue to go back and weed eat once a year, but it was really just to clean up what got left behind when there was an effort to clear up the drive.”

The Southern Pines Town Council will next meet Decem ber 13.

Here’s a quick look at what’s coming up in Moore County:

Dec. 1

Trivia Thursday at the Brewery

6pm

Come out for Trivia at the Southern Pines Brewery! Enjoy fun and prizes each Thursday. Southern Pines Brewing Company is located at 565 Air Tool Dr., Southern Pines, NC.

Highlanders Farm: Drive Thru Christmas Lights

6pm – 9pm

Come out for the second annual Highlander’s Farm Drive Thru Christmas Lights Show! Take a winding tour around the farm fields, which are located at 5748 NC Hwy 22 in Carthage!

Aberdeen Tree Lighting 6:15pm – 8:15pm

Come out to celebrate the Lighting of the Aberdeen Christmas tree and the arrival of Santa! There will be special performance and light refreshments! This event will take place at the Union Station Railroad Museum, which is located at 100 E. Main Street.

Dec. 2

Moore County Toys for Tots 2022 12pm

The Moore County Toys for Tots donation stations are open from now until Dec. 16! Please consider donating new, unwrapped toys which will be distributed as Christmas gifts to less fortunate children in our community.

Village Christmas Tree Lighting 5pm – 7:30pm

Come out to the James W. Tufts Memorial Park for the annual Village of Pinehurst Christmas Tree Lighting! Enjoy the music, holiday cheer, and a visit with Santa! James W. Tufts Memorial Park is located at 1 Village Green Road.

This is a balancing act between industrial and residential, and sometimes it gets real tough to make it work.”

Mayor

Robert Farrell

SOUTHERN PINES from page 1

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Balance the budget, stop inflation, create jobs

THE NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY in the U.S. House will face a major challenge dealing with the Democrat-run White House and U.S. Senate. So, it is vital that Republicans offer a vision of a more successful, prosperous, safer, and freer America.

The first goal is not to find a common ground with left-wing, radical Democrats who reject virtually all our values. They are already tuning their political machine to fight us in 2024.

We

The first goal is to give the American people a sense of hope — and a belief that things can be dramatically better. (The lack of a positive vision led to disappointing Republican Senate campaigns.)

The Commitment to America was a step in the right direction. While it was not driven home as vividly as it could have been, it did give House Republicans enough of a positive message. This helped them carry the popular vote by more than 3 million and gain seats, while most of the Senate Republicans floundered in negativity. (Herschel Walker’s campaign has been mostly positive, but his opponent has been deeply negative and vicious.)

The most powerful visionary statement Republicans could make right now is simple: It is time to balance the budget, stop inflation, and create jobs.

House Republicans can deliver this positive vision of a brighter American future because even in a minority we helped President Ronald Reagan stop inflation and create jobs in 1981. When we became a majority in 1994 with the Contract with America, we went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy. This all happened with the largest capital gains tax cut in history. A key part of our budget-balancing and job-creating program was a systematic reduction in the regulatory burden, which had crippled small business and weakened even the biggest businesses.

The spending, policy, and bureaucratic messes of the current government present enormous opportunities for Republicans to offer a series of bold, popular reforms — and much-needed alternatives to the failed Biden policies that are eroding the economy and weakening America.

Given our experiences with balancing the budget for four consecutive years (the only time in our lifetime) and paying down the federal debt (when I left the Speakership, the debt was scheduled to be paid off by 2009) there are some obvious key principles to follow.

First, reports indicate that at least $600 billion were stolen from various COVID-19 programs. Rooting out and stopping corruption would save a significant amount of money.

Second, restoring the principles of the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act would greatly reduce the cost of welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. People would go to work. Children would be raised from poverty (the largest decline in childhood poverty came after the 1996 act).

COLUMN | DAVID HARSANYI

People would shift from drawing from public coffers to contributing to them as working taxpayers. Requiring work or study for any federal aid should be extended to everyone except the severely disabled. For most Americans, modern science and technology can turn disabilities into capabilities. Any unemployment compensation should be accompanied with an education requirement. There is no reason to give money to people to do nothing. This change would expand the workforce and reduce dependency.

Third, re-establishing national energy independence would create jobs, generate tax revenue, reduce costs to consumers, and allow us to replace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe. It would lower the cost of energy (and the U.S. government is one of the largest purchasers of energy). This would be a win-win for the balanced budget.

Fourth, simply rejecting all the Biden promises to dictatorships around the world would save billions. The recent offer by the Biden administration to transfer billions in “climate reparations” would be a good example.

Further, aid to Ukraine should be monitored and analyzed. While we should help the Ukrainians bravely fighting for their freedom on the ground, Ukraine’s government has a past reputation for corruption. Remember that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected to fight this corruption.

Fifth, every congressional committee should review the departments over which they have jurisdiction with a results-based rather than process-based model. We spend billions of dollars on programs, which simply do not work. Much of the money we spend on education has failed to improve test scores. The typical Washington solution has been to spend more money on the same programs that are failing.

For example, NASA’s Space Launch System has had one successful launch — after a 20-year, $40 billion total investment. There are private companies that can operate much less expensively, but the NASA-industrial lobbyists complex wants to continue building this absurdly expensive, outdated system. Similarly, the Department of Defense is filled with opportunities to reduce cost.

Every department should be asked to rank the importance of their programs, and Congress should review — eliminating the bottom third of their lists. Further, the Trump administration program of cutting two regulations for each new one created should be written into law and enforced.

Regulatory proposals such as the new Biden climate change regulations for government contractors (which the Washington Times reports could cost $604 billion the first year) are good targets for the principle of prioritizing job creation over regulation.

Balancing the budget, reforming government, and cutting regulations will lead to dramatically lower inflation, and dramatically more jobs. The time to start is now.

The GOP’s Hunter Biden probe is legit

AS A TACTICAL CONCERN, the House GOP’s decision to open an investigation into Biden family corruption is questionable. It promises limited political return. It would serve Republicans and the country far better if the House focused on a hyper-politicized Justice Department that targets the political opposition, labels concerned parents “domestic terrorists” and ignores violence aimed at pregnancy centers, for starters.

There is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling.

None of that, however, means there isn’t sufficient circumstantial evidence suggesting President Joe Biden not only lied about knowing his son was favor-trading on the family name with corrupt autocracies but that he was a beneficiary of those business dealings. Indeed, precedent says we Republicans have a duty to “democracy” to investigate. Yet Greg Sargent over at The Washington Post warns: “If Republicans can obliterate the distinction between congressional investigations done in good faith and ones that weaponize the process in bad faith, they win.”

You see, only Democrats can launch investigations in “good faith.”

Pathological partisanship can lead to cosmic shamelessness. And you almost have to admire the chutzpah. These are the very same people who spent years championing one of the most unethical investigations in American history. We now know that Russia “collusion” hysteria was predicated on partisan opposition research and disinformation meant to delegitimize the 2016 election. There was a grand total of zero indictments related to the 2016 election “collusion.” So rickety was the evidence that guardians of our sacred norms never even tried to impeach former President Donald Trump over this alleged sedition. I’ll spare you the slew of blown one-source anonymous “scoops” spread by major media organizations in concert with the FBI and Democratic Party. Sargent highlighted them all.

Let’s remember, when the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, virtually the entire left-wing media complex regurgitated the risible claims of former intelligence officials -- including known liars James Clapper and John Brennan — that the entire kerfuffle was just Russian “disinformation.” Sargent dismissed the news as a “fake scandal” and worked to discredit the story.

The Hunter story always had far more journalistic substantiation than the histrionic and fallacious Russia-collusion investigations that Sargent and his paper peddled for five years. Post reporters had interviewed the owner of the Delaware computer shop where Hunter had abandoned his computer. They had Hunter’s signature on a receipt. They had on-the-record sources with intimate knowledge of his interactions. They had Tony Bobulinski, one of two former business partners of Hunter Biden who contend that “the big guy” was Joe.

Now, it’s certainly possible that the computer shop owner and Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and former chief technology officer at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command who made campaign contributions to progressives like Ro Khanna, were part of an elaborate fascistic cabal spreading “disinformation.” But now, Congress can put them under oath.

Later, emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunter’s schemes were authenticated by forensic specialists. Yet virtually the entire censorious journalistic establishment, with the help of tech giants, limited the story’s exposure to help their preferred candidate win.

“Democracy,” indeed.

Then there is the issue of the president claiming he knew nothing about Hunter’s leveraging of the family name for influence peddling and never personally “profited off” any of his son’s schemes. What did the president think Hunter was doing when he hitched a ride to secure deals with the Chicoms on Air Force Two in 2013? Does Joe not remember that two Obama administration officials raised concerns about Hunter’s relationship with the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma? When finally asked about his son, Biden claimed the “vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”

His buddies lied — just like they had during the Russia collusion hysteria. This week, only two years late, CBS News confirmed that the Hunter Biden emails were all genuine — just like everyone knew they were. Now we have authenticated emails showing an executive from Burisma thanking Hunter for facilitating a meeting with the vice president.

If Joe were a Republican, Adam Schiff would not only have opened an investigation, but he would have claimed to be in possession of irrefutable proof that the 2020 election had been bought by the Chinese. Sargent would be churning out one hyperbolic piece after the next. We would all be watching another thermonuclear meltdown.

Of course, nearly every congressional investigation in history is, to one extent or another, undertaken in “bad faith,” and that’s fine. One of the most beneficial roles of political parties is that they will hold the opposition accountable. But Sargent, and other advocates of one-party rule, only see legitimacy in their objectives, which is one of the numerous reasons their claim to be democracy’s defenders is so laughable.

Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books - the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.”

David

went on to balance the budget for four years, pay down the federal debt, curb inflation, move millions from welfare to work, and create a strong economy.

Dwight Anthony "Tony" Gilley

April 22, 1957 - November 24, 2022

Dwight Anthony “Tony” Gilley, age 65, went to be with the Lord, November 24, 2022, in Winston Salem, NC.

Tony was born in San Antonio on April 22, 1957, to the late John Gilley and Billie White Gilley.

Tony was a 1975 graduate of Bluefield High School in Bluefield, West Virginia and attended Bluefield State School of Business. Tony moved several times but called North Carolina home and lived in Pinehurst for the last 30 years.

Tony is survived by his wife and childhood sweetheart, Kimberly Peraldo Gilley. Also surviving are brothers Tab (Cardean) and Todd (Petra) of Virginia, sister-in-law Lisa P. Jackson (Roy), several nieces, a nephew, and several great nieces and nephews. Also surviving his golfing, fishing, and poker groups that he considered brothers.

Spencer Flack Roberts

May 1, 1942 - November 22, 2022

Spencer Flack Roberts, 80 of Southern Pines, passed away on November 22, 2022 at Peak Resources in Carthage.

Born on May 1, 1942 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania to the late Edgar J. and Doris Roberts. At the age of 12, his family moved to Binghamton, New York where he was very active in school sports to include track and football.

He was a graduate of Bucknell University. After graduation he joined the Marine Corp. He proudly served as a medivac pilot with the marines deploying to Vietnam for over 13 months.

Spencer met and later married, Rita Goodwin when they were both working in marketing while living in Pittsburgh, PA.

Spencer’s brother, Edgar passed the day after his death on November 23, 2022.

He is survived by his loving wife of 35 years, Rita Roberts; three children, Spencer Roberts (Rianna), Susan Roberts Degen (John) and Michael Roberts (Anjelica); brother, Bill Roberts (Marti), sister-in-law, Carol Roberts; also survived by six grandchildren; Hannah, Madison, M.J., Liam, Chloe and Ford.

Clifford (Cliff) Seawell Sharpe, Jr.

May 21, 1986 - November 21, 2022

Clifford (Cliff) Seawell Sharpe Jr., 36, son of Rear Admiral Clifford S. Sharpe and Brenda B. Sharpe has been released from his decade’s long battle with mental health.

Cliff earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, graduating with highest honors.

Cliff will be remembered for his quick wit, his amazing dog scratches and his sweet disposition.

In addition to his parents, he is survived by his two sisters, Erin Lekavich and her husband, Greg, and Kelsey Gonzalez and her husband, Kario. He was uncle to Greg Lekavich Jr., with whom he enjoyed playing Legos and Nerf guns; and Akalia Gonzalez. He leaves behind many loving aunts, uncles and cousins. Cliff was predeceased by his paternal grandparents, John Allen (Jack) Sharpe Jr. and Helen Seawell Sharpe and his maternal grandparents, Rollache Erastus Bagley Jr., Naomi Bagley Hofler and Willard Jobie Hofler.

Richard Earl Ellison

June 24, 1953 - November 21, 2022

Richard Earl Ellison, 69, passed away on the 21st of November, after a valiant fight with cancer surrounded by his loving wife and children.

Rich was born in Detroit, Michigan to Ruth and James Ellison. After graduating high school, Rich joined the Army serving as a Computer Communication Specialist.

He honorably retired after 21 years as Chief Warrant Offer II (CW2).

Rich is preceded in death by his parents, James and Ruth Ellison. He is survived by the love of his life, wife, Katrina; daughter, Kristina and husband Scott (Abby and Max); son, Nicholas and wife Marie (Bailey and Autumn); son, Benjamin and wife Kristin (Aidan and Grayson); twin brother, William and sister, Cheri.

Jeanne Catherine Spencer

March 4, 1926 - November 21, 2022

Jeanne Catherine Spencer, 96 of Southern Pines, passed away peacefully on November 21, 2022 with her daughter by her side at Penick Village in Southern Pines. Jeanne was born on March 4, 1926, on a dairy farm in Burlington, Wisconsin to the late Louis M. and Myrtle Schaefer. She graduated from St. Mary’s High School with high honors and worked as a stenographer for the Burlington Brass Works until she married her husband, James Spencer of Racine, Wisconsin. Jeanne raised her five children in Racine. She was devoted to creating a loving environment for her children and encouraged them to be their best selves. “Live your dreams, reach for the moon,” she said.

In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her husband, James Murray Spencer; one son, Roy A. Spencer; sister, Ruth Hegeman; and two brothers, Gerald Schaefer and James Schaefer.

She is survived by four children, Michael Spencer, Mary Logan, Catherine Rosenberg and Sanda Howland; one brother, Paul Schaefer; and by nine grandchildren.

Shirley Irene Ammons Furr

May 20, 1937 - November 19, 2022

Shirley Irene Ammons Furr, 85, of Aberdeen, NC passed away on Saturday, November 19, 2022 at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst.

She was born May 20, 1937 in Bennettsville, SC to the late Glennie and Eva McDaniel Ammons.

Irene is predeceased by her husband of 56 years, William Reid Furr; infant son, William Lee Furr; sons, Carl Wayne Furr and Michael Stanley Furr.

She is survived by her daughter, Theresa Furr Ring (Lester); son- Jeffrey Reid Furr; daughter-in-law - Martha DeBerry Furr; 3 grandchildren, 9 great-grandchildren; special nieces - Rosa Ammons Jester and Judy Ammons Burgess; special nephew Anthony Furr; special friend, Helen Warwick; dear family friend, Rick Jennings; her beloved cat "Doody." She is also survived by numerous other nieces, nephews, friends and other relatives. Also, she was "Mama" to so many more who were not her biological children, all she loved dearly.

Donna Pryce

July 8, 1952 ~ November 23, 2022

Donna Pryce of Rockingham passed away on Thursday, November 17, 2022, at the age of 70.

Donna was born in Richmond on July 8, 1952. to the late Douglas and Ruby Coble Andrews. Donna was a humble sweet lady who enjoyed going out to eat with her friends. She was a member of Mount Calvary Rock of Ages Church. She loved going to singings around the area and spending time with her dog, Oreo. She was a teacher at Sandhills Children's Center. Along with her parents, she is preceded in death by her husband, Vernon Pryce, Sr. She leaves behind her church family; her special friend, Tina Snipes, and her spouse, Chris, Necole Sweat and her husband, Tim, and Jerry McDonald, and her dog, Oreo.

Teresa Faye Jackson

October 4, 1956 - November 18, 2022

Teresa Faye Jackson, 66, of Aberdeen, NC passed away on Friday, November 18, 2022 at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital in Pinehurst.

Teresa was born in Moore County on October, 4, 1956. Teresa’s favorite pastime was walking the beach and looking for sea shells.

In addition to her mother she was preceded in death by 2 siblings.

She is survived by her daughter Emily Ann Jackson; son William A. Jackson Jr., (Beth); 9 grandchildren, Mariah Oxendine, Hannah Oxendine, Lizzy Oxendine, Savannah Whisenand, Corbin Whisenand, Brooks Jackson, Brody Jackson, Brelynn Jackson and Braxton Allred; 3 great-grandchildren, Jackson Wiggins, Elijah Jackson, and Grayson Wiggins; 5 siblings; and her beloved little Dachshund named Hot Dog.

Matthew "Matt" Ryan Hintz

Upon completing college, he was commissioned in the U.S. Army and proudly served his country rising to the rank of Major before retiring with 21 years of active service. While stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, Matt met the Love of his life, his wife Melissa. Matt enjoyed being outdoors, competitive shooting, and taking his children on outings. Most of all though, Matt loved his wife and their three children.

Matt gave selflessly to the county he loved as he put much energy toward educational reform. He also cared about this nation and his fellow veterans.

Matt leaves behind his wife, Melissa; his children, Ethan, Dylan, and Samantha; his father, Larry Hintz; his mother Kathleen, and her husband, Joe; his brother, Joe Hintz, and his wife, Jennifer; his sister, Jenelle Feltz and her husband, Tyler.

November 23, 2022

Matthew "Matt" Ryan Hintz passed away on Wednesday, November 23, 2022, at the age of 46. Matt was born in Wisconsin to Larry Hintz and Kathleen Hertz Pavelski.