North State Journal Vol. 7, Issue 48

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — As of Dec. 28, 2022, N.C. State Highway Trust Fund loans of over $1 billion were repaid two years early by the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT), according to State Treasurer Dale Folwell.

Established by the General Assembly in 1989, the HTF is a revenue source that was to be maintained for highway projects.

Folwell praised the repayment as a “turnaround” from the NCDOT’s fiscal mismanagement issues.

“The early repayment of the loans to the Highway Trust Fund is a tribute to the leadership of Secretary Boyette and the professionalism of his staff,” Treasurer Folwell said. “The turnaround from the previous administration is quite welcome. They listened and collaborated with the staff here at DST and have made remarkable progress.”

Part of the overspending happened between May 2018 and April 2019 when the NCDOT drained $1.1 billion from the HFT in through what was described as “short-term loans” to the Highway Fund.

The Department of State Treasurer, the Department of Transportation and the Office of State Budget and Management drafted a Memorandum

of Agreement (MOA) in 2020 to address how the NCDOT would repay the HFT loans. The MOA stipulated the loans were to be repaid in four years.

When the MOA was signed, the loans were expected to be repaid within four years but the NCDOT made a full repayment on Dec. 28, 2022.

Over the past four years, the NCDOT has had a series of money issues including overspending its budget, furloughs, and state audits turning up fiscal mismanagement and improper salary adjustments.

An audit conducted on NCDOT during Fiscal Year 2019 re -

By Matt Mercer North State Journal

RALEIGH — When the General Assembly returns Wednesday for the traditional long session, the work of legislative committees will begin in earnest.

Committees are where the bulk of the day-to-day work is done.

The House and Senate have upwards of a dozen committees both standing, which are permanent, and nonstanding, which are stood up to address certain issues, such as the ongoing work of the hurri-

cane recovery subcommittee.

The primary responsibility of the legislature each year is to pass a state budget. This is done first through the Appropriations Committee in each chamber. This year, the House will write the first draft of the state’s budget.

The senior chairmen of the House Appropriations Committee are the same three as last session: Republican Reps. Dean Arp of Union County, Donny Lambeth of Forsyth County and Jason Saine of Lincoln County.

Their counterparts in the Sen-

ate will be Ralph Hise of Mitchell County, Brent Jackson of Sampson County and Michael Lee of New Hanover County. Lee joins Hise and Jackson for the first time as a “big chair” in the budget-writing process.

How floor debates are structured, the processes in which both chambers use to debate and which bill are even heard by the full body are decided by the powerful rules committees in each chamber.

Both House and Senate Rules

vealed the agency had overspent its budget by over $742 million.

That year, the NCDOT had a $5 billion budget but was found to have spent $6.8 billion.

In July 2020, Folwell took issue with NCDOT’s leadership and called for the replacement of the NCDOT’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Operating Officer (COO). At that time, the CFO was Evan Rodewald and COO was Bobby Lewis.

The NCDOT also made headlines last fall when the department took a $327,949 loss on nine former circus railcars it had originally purchased for $383,000 in 2017.

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — Nine months after an arson attempt at a Lincolnton pregnancy center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the identification, arrest and conviction of the suspect.

A Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Crisis Pregnancy Center of Lincoln County on June 25, 2022, at around 2:20 a.m.

The suspect was captured on surveillance video throwing a lit Molotov cocktail at the center before running toward the nearby intersection of Country Club Road and Hollow Road.

The video shows the Molotov hitting the building and fire ensuing. Additionally, a 911 call was received by the Lincolnton Fire Department about a fire in the 100 block of Doctors Park.

Video clips of the suspect are available to view under the news release on the Charlotte FBI field office’s website.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY KICKS OFF 2023 LONG SESSION

Phil Berger President Pro Tempore

Jim Perry Majority Whip

Tom McInnis Majority Whip

Ralph Hise Deputy President Pro Tempore

Paul Newton Majority Leader

Tim Moore Speaker

Brendan Jones Deputy Majority Leader

Jon Hardister Majority Whip

Sarah Stevens President Pro Tempore

John Bell Majority Leader

PHOTO VIA NCDOT

building.

Republicans

Norman W. Sanderson District 1

Jim Perry District 2

Bobby Hanig District 3

E.S. “Buck” Newton District 4

Michael A. Lazzara District 6

Michael V. Lee District 7

Bill Rabon District 8

Brent Jackson District 9

Benton G. Sawrey District 10

Lisa S. Barnes District 11

Jim Burgin District 12

Tom McInnis District 21

Danny Earl Britt, Jr. District 24

Amy S. Galey District 25

Phil Berger District 26

David W. Craven, Jr. District 29

1 Corinthians 13:5-7

Love does not suspect unkindness, in kind deeds. Love does not imagine an enemy, in every friend. Love does not fear insincerity, in sincere expressions of love. Love does not question one’s motives, nor discount their acts.

But love overlooks mistakes and hides human faults. It tries to think of others always at their best, not at their worst. It considers the best possibilities in people, what they may become through divine love and grace — and not merely what they now are. It is wonderful how seeing through love’s eyes changes the whole view of earthly life, transforming it. If the heart is filled with fear, risk, suspicion, distrust, and doubts — the world grows very ugly. But love sees hope, opportunity, brightness, and beauty everywhere.

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.

NC SENATE NC HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Steve Jarvis District 30

Joyce Krawiec District 31

Carl Ford District 33

Paul Newton District 34

Todd Johnson District 35

Eddie Settle District 36

Vickie Sawyer District 37

Brad Overcash District 43

W. Ted Alexander District 44

Dean Proctor District 45

Warren Daniel District 46

Ralph Hise District 47

Timothy D. Moffitt District 48

Kevin Corbin District 50

Democrats

Kandie D. Smith District 5

Lisa Grafstein District 13

Dan Blue District 14

Jay J. Chaudhuri District 15

Gale Adcock District 16

Sydney Batch District 17

Mary Wills Bode District 18

Val Applewhite District 19

Natalie S. Murdock District 20

Mike Woodard District 22

Graig Meyer District 23

Michael Garrett District 27

Gladys A. Robinson District 28

Paul A. Lowe, Jr. District 32

Mujtaba A. Mohammed District 38

DeAndrea Salvador District 39

Joyce Waddell District 40

Natasha R. Marcus District 41

Rachel Hunt District 42

Julie Mayfield District 49

Republicans

Edward C. Goodwin District 1

Steve Tyson District 3

Jimmy Dixon District 4

Bill Ward District 5

Joseph Pike District 6

Matthew Winslow District 7

Timothy Reeder District 9

John R. Bell, IV District 10

Chris Humphrey District 12

Celeste C. Cairns District 13

George G. Cleveland District 14

Phil Shepard District 15

Carson Smith District 16

Frank Iler District 17

Charles W. Miller District 19

Ted Davis, Jr. District 20

William D. Brisson District 22

Ken Fontenot District 24

Allen Chesser District 25

Donna McDowell White District 26

Larry C. Strickland District 28

Frank Sossamon District 32

Erin Pare District 37

Diane Wheatley District 43

Brenden H. Jones District 46

Jarrod Lowery District 47

John Sauls District 51

Ben T. Moss, Jr. District 52

Howard Penny, Jr. District 53

Mark Brody District 55

Jon Hardister District 59

John Faircloth District 62

Stephen M. Ross District 63

Dennis Riddell District 64

A. Reece Pyrtle, Jr. District 65

Wayne Sasser District 67

David Willis District 68

Dean Arp District 69

Brian Biggs District 70

Jeff Zenger District 74

Donny Lambeth District 75

Harry Warren District 76

Julia C. Howard District 77

Neal Jackson District 78

Keith Kidwell District 79

Sam Watford District 80

Larry W. Potts District 81

Kristin Baker District 82

Kevin Crutchfield District 83

Jeffrey C. McNeely District 84

Dudley Greene District 85

Hugh Blackwell District 86

Destin Hall District 87

Mitchell S. Setzer District 89

Sarah Stevens District 90

Kyle Hall District 91

Ray Pickett District 93

Jeffrey Elmore District 94

Grey Mills District 95

Jay Adams District 96

Jason Saine District 97

John R. Bradford, III District 98

John A. Torbett District 108

Donnie Loftis District 109

Kelly E. Hastings District 110

Tim Moore District 111

Jake Johnson District 113

Jennifer Balkcom District 117

Mark Pless District 118

Mike Clampitt District 119

Karl E. Gillespie District 120

Democrats Gloristine Brown District 8

Allison A. Dahle District 11

Deb Butler District 18

Ya Liu District 21

Shelly Willingham District 23

Michael H. Wray District 27

Vernetta Alston District 29

Marcia Morey District 30

Zack Hawkins District 31

Rosa U. Gill District 33

Tim Longest District 34

Terence Everitt District 35

Julie von Haefen District 36

Abe Jones District 38

James Roberson District 39

Joe John District 40

Maria Cervania District 41

Marvin W. Lucas District 42

Charles Smith District 44

Frances Jackson District 45

Garland E. Pierce District 48

Cynthia Ball District 49

Renee A. Price District 50

Robert T. Reives, II District 54

Allen Buansi District 56

Ashton Wheeler Clemmons District 57

Amos L. Quick, III District 58

Cecil Brockman District 60

Pricey Harrison District 61

Sarah Crawford District 66

Kanika Brown District 71

Amber M. Baker District 72

Diamond Staton-Williams District 73

Mary Belk District 88

Terry M. Brown Jr. District 92

Nasif Majeed District 99

John Autry District 100

Carolyn G. Logan District 101

Becky Carney District 102

Laura Budd District 103

Brandon Lofton District 104

Wesley Harris District 105

Carla D. Cunningham District 106

Kelly M. Alexander, Jr. District 107

Tricia Ann Cotham District 112

Eric Ager District 114

Lindsey Prather District 115

Caleb Rudow District 116

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Niagra” (1857) is a painting by Frederic Edwin Church which is part of the Corcoran Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

“Love . . . thinks no evil, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Local Government Commission approves financial requests for Asheville, Chapel Hill, Cornelius

Chapel Hill’s bond will go towards the majority of the cost for public safety radios and related equipment. The balance will be paid through other available revenues.

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — At its Jan. 10 meeting, the N.C. Local Government Commission (LGC) approved financial requests made by Asheville, Chapel Hill, and the town of Cornelius.

The LGC is the statutory body that examines town finances, debt and borrowing ability for over 1,100 local government units. If the need arises, the LGC as the authority to assume control of a local governing unit’s finances. The LGC is chaired by State Treasurer Dale Folwell and staffed by the Department of State Treasurer.

The city of Asheville was given approval to issue $26 million in general obligation bonds which will pay off the short-term bonds issued under the city’s draw-bond program for parks and recreation and transportation projects.

A draw bond gives an issuer the ability to use proceeds from the bond sale over time and to pay interest only on portions of the principal of the funds that are being drawn down.

According to a press release by Folwell’s office, Asheville’s drawbond program was “nearing its ceiling for borrowing.”

A request from the town of Chapel Hill for a “two-thirds general obligation bond” totaling $1.98 million was given the green light by the LGC. Twothirds bonds do not require voter approval like general obligation bonds do.

The LGC also approved a $2 million installment purchase allowing the town to avoid a single lump sum purchase for ballfield lighting and public safety vehicles for the town of Cornelius located in Mecklenburg County.

According to Folwell’s office, the town of Cornelius’ request has three components: $725,555 for replacing lighting with an LED system at Bailey Park; $795,924 for a fire truck; and half a million for police vehicles.

Cornelius’ population has grown from an estimated 14,000 in 2000 to just over 31,500 in 2020. The town has active construction bids and the debt service will come from the General Fund with no anticipated tax increase.

Updates were also received on the local government units that had been under financial control of the LGC but have since been resolved. Those units include East Laurinburg in Scotland County and Pikeville in Wayne County.

LGC control over Pikeville ended on Dec. 6, 2022, after the town successfully addressed its debt issues.

“Pikeville showed exceptional resiliency and resolve, working in full cooperation with our staff to find out what’s right, get it right, and keep it right,” Folwell said in Dec. 2022. “We have provided town leaders with the skills, tools and information they need to excel, and we have every expectation that is what will happen going forward.”

The LGC relinquished control

over East Laurinburg on June 30, 2022, which involved the dissolution of the town’s charter – the first-ever charter dissolution conducted by the LGC.

“Although the dissolution of a town’s charter cannot be viewed as a “success”, work leading up to the dissolution of the charter of East Laurinburg provided for some positive outcomes,” the LGC financial control updates report reads.

Listed among the “success” factors for East Laurinburg were street repairs noted by the LGC that were completed prior to the dissolution of the town’s charter and a “valuable” partnership with Scotland County officials who worked alongside the LGC on the town’s charter dissolution.

Towns and government units still under LGC financial control include Eureka, Cliffside Sanitary District, Kingstown, Robersonville, and Spring Lake.

The Town of Spring Lake has had numerous controversies in the last year, such as the sentencing of the town’s former manager last December to two consecutive 24-month prison terms for embezzling over half a million from the town between 2016 and 2021.

Biden pick Zients as his next chief of staff

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Joe Biden is expected to name Jeff Zients, who ran the administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the start of Biden’s term, as his next chief of staff.

Biden’s current top aide, Ron Klain, is preparing to leave the job.

damental question that could determine Biden’s political future: Will a Zients-led executive branch pursue the unpopular misconduct of people like Jeffrey Zients?” Hauser said. “It would be against Zients’ character to pursue corporate lawbreaking, but it is also the only way Biden can retain the mantle of populist against the likes of (Florida Gov. Ron) DeSantis and Trump.”

Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), contact their local FBI office or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov. You may remain anonymous.

“Today’s announcement reflects the FBI’s commitment to vigorously pursue investigations into crimes against pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations, and reproductive health clinics across the country,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “We will continue to work closely with our national, state, and local law enforcement partners to hold responsible anyone who uses extremist views to justify their criminal actions.”

The FBI is offering similar rewards in eight other such attacks on crisis pregnancy centers that took place across the country in California, Colorado, Tennessee, New York, Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington state. Three of the nine total cases in which the FBI is offering a reward took place in Oregon.

In the press statements about the rewards, the FBI says they can investigate the incidents as “potential acts of domestic violent extremism, Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) violations, or violent crime matters, depending on the facts of each case.”

“This attempted arson took place over 200 days ago — but the FBI only announced a reward

late last week. What took them so long? Unfortunately, it’s clear that attacks on pregnancy centers are not even close to a top priority for the FBI,” Republican Rep. Dan Bishop (NC-08) said in a statement to North State Journal.

“Here in DC, every NC Democrat voted against a resolution to condemn these attacks, and it’s disappointing that the NC Democrat House delegation did the same.”

Last summer, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and then-Rep. Ted Budd sent a letter to North Carolina Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein asking him to protect crisis pregnancy centers in the state and investigate the attack on the Asheville clinic allegedly perpetrated by the group “Jane’s Revenge.” In their July 29 letter, the lawmakers asked Stein to use the FACE Act to protect Crisis Pregnancy Centers in North Carolina.

The request to Stein was made after 20 members of the U.S. House sent a letter in June to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland reminding him of his responsibility to defend Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Stein’s response to Tillis and Budd acknowledged receipt of their letter but did not stipulate he would investigate the attack, yet stated, “As our state’s Attorney General, my top priority is to protect the people of North Carolina.” Stein’s letter went on to tell lawmakers if anyone is “engaging in violence,” they should “notify law enforcement.”

Budd told North State Journal

that Stein’s office “can and should” be doing more to investigate and protect crisis pregnancy centers.

North State Journal reached out several times to Stein’s office for comment about the FBI’s reward offer but received no response.

Nationally, Democrats have refused to condemn the attacks suffered by a long list of crisis pregnancy centers last year, including recently voting down a measure publicly denouncing such attacks.

House Resolution 3 (H.R. 3) was brought to the floor as the 118th Congress began business. The vote was 222 to 208 in favor, with all but three Democratic members voting “nay.”

The “nay” votes included all seven Democratic members of North Carolina’s House congressional delegation which include Reps. Don Davis (NC-01), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Valerie Foushee (NC-04), Kathy Manning (NC-06), Alma Adams (NC12), George “Wiley” Nickel (NC13) and Jeff Jackson (NC-14).

The change at the highest levels of senior staff comes as Biden passes his two-year mark in office and pivots to a defensive stance against a House Republican majority hungry to investigate his administration’s actions and his family. The White House remains mired in controversy over discoveries of classified documents at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at his former institute in Washington, with the latest tranche of found records disclosed Saturday evening.

The president’s main sphere of advisers, in addition to Zients, on politics and legislation will continue to include presidential counselor Steve Ricchetti, senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell, and Jen O’Malley Dillon and Bruce Reed, who are deputy chiefs of staff.

Klain will remain in Biden’s political orbit, according to a person familiar with his plans — not unlike the role played by Cedric Richmond, who was the president’s first director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and now is a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee.

The outgoing chief of staff was also known to be friendly with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But some liberal critics of Zients swiftly went on the attack against the appointment even before it was official, highlighting in particular his private-sector ties.

Jeff Hauser, the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive group that advocates for liberal appointees in government, said Sunday that the selection of Zients as the top White House aide did not jibe with Biden’s “Scranton Joe” political image.

“Unfortunately, Zients is a veteran of private equity, rapacious health care providers, and Big Tech, which sets up a fun-

“Ron Klain has been an open ear and even-handed engager of actors across the Democratic Party,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Whomever the next Chief of Staff is, that will be the continued hope and expectation. There will likely be an early relationship and trust building stage.”

Zients, vice chairman of Biden’s transition operation after his November 2020 election, brings significant managerial expertise in government and the private sector. He was the director of the National Economic Council during the Obama administration and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The longtime management consultant developed a Mr. Fix It reputation, tapped to lead the Obama administration’s effort to repair HealthCare.gov after the bungled initial rollout of the site in fall 2013. Zients served as top executive at the Advisory Board Co., a Washington consulting firm.

Former President Barack Obama also enlisted Zients in 2009 to eliminate the backlog in applicants for the Cash for Clunkers program, which offered rebates to drivers who swapped old cars for fuel-efficient vehicles. Zients later took on a similar challenge to smooth sign-ups for an updated version of the GI Bill.

Another coming perk for White House aides: Zients, who was an initial investor in Call Your Mother, a bagel shop in Washington, had a penchant for hosting “Bagel Wednesdays” for staff. (Zients divested his shares before joining the White House in 2021).

Zients and his deputy on the White House’s pandemic response team, Natalie Quillian, left the Biden administration last April before returning quietly in the fall of 2022.

Updates given on towns and units under LGC financial control

The Associated Press

“We have provided town leaders with the skills, tools and information they need to excel, and we have every expectation that is what will happen going forward.”

State Treasurer Dale Folwell

“This attempted arson took place over 200 days ago — but the FBI only announced a reward late last week. What took them so long?”

Rep. Dan Bishop (NC-08)

AP PHOTO, FILE

White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients removes a face mask as he prepares to speak at a press briefing at the White House, April 13, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

Murphy to Manteo Jones & Blount

Lawmakers seek new court hearings on voter ID, redistricting

RALEIGH — North Carolina Republican legislative leaders announced Friday that they’re asking the state’s highest court to reconsider decisions on redistricting and voter identification.

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore noted in a news release that GOP lawyers are asking justices to revisit decisions made under a previous Democratic majority. Republican jurists regained a majority of seats on the state Supreme Court in the 2022 elections.

In a new legal filing, lawyers for the Republican lawmakers argued the court’s decision in a redistricting case known as Harper v. Hall wrongfully infringed on state lawmakers’ ability to determine boundaries of legislative and

congressional districts.

The Supreme Court, under its previous makeup, ruled in December that state Senate boundaries already once redrawn by Republican legislators were tainted by partisan bias and must be redrawn. It also upheld a congressional map drawn by trial judges but opposed by Republicans.

A separate filing by the Republicans argues the proper legal standard was not applied in a decision upheld by the state Supreme Court regarding voter ID. The state Supreme Court ruled in December that a 2018 law requiring photo identification to vote in North Carolina remains invalidated, upholding the lower court decision that found that the law violated voters’ constitutional rights and was designed to help the GOP.

WEST PIEDMONT EAST

Two children killed in house fire

Rutherford County

Fire officials say two children have died in a house fire in Rutherford County. Forest City Fire Chief Ferrell Hamrick said the fire was in Bostic, just outside Forest City, at a home in the 100 block of Bostic-Sunshine Highway. He said the children who died were both believed to be under 4 years old. No other injuries were reported. No other information was immediately available. Calls to the Bostic Volunteer Fire Department and Rutherford County fire marshal’s office were not immediately returned.

Shooting suspect uses emergency exit to flee police

Polk County Polk County police were searching for a suspect in a shooting incident. A victim called police from their car, saying that they were being pursued by a car that was shooting at them. Police stopped the car in the parking lot of a Food Lion in Columbus, but the passenger, Dylan Isaiah Thomas, ran from the car and entered the store. Police officers pursued, but Thomas was able to escape through an emergency exit in the back of the store. Warrants for Thomas’ arrest have been issued.

AP

in which

crashed into a lake. An SUV went off Thunderbird Mountain Road early in the morning, down an embankment and plunged into Lake Santeetlah. The driver, Katie Queen, 26, and one passenger, Israel Cervantez, 20, were able to get out of the vehicle and to safety, but Moreno-Romero was trapped in the vehicle and drowned.

FOX CAROLINA

Man arrested after car chase ends in fiery crash

Caldwell County Caldwell County Sheriff’s officers arrested Joshua Eugene McClure, 38, of Hudson last week after a car chase ended with a vehicle fire. McClure was charged with felony larceny of a motor vehicle, possession of a stolen vehicle and fleeing to elude arrest. He was also cited for hit-and-run with property damage. Police were able to slow McClure’s vehicle with stop sticks that blew out two of his tires and he continued to flee on rims, but the friction led to an engine fire which ended the chase in Morganton.

Emergency food allotments ending next month

Cabarrus County

In April 2020, Cabarrus County began providing emergency supplemental benefits, giving recipients a second payment each month for Food and Nutrition Services. The allotments were added during the pandemic to help residents cope with the stay-at-home order and any increased financial pressures from the COVID outbreak. The benefits are set to be discontinued on Feb. 28, with the minimum reduction in benefits expected to be $95 per month with more substantial decreases possible.

Person dies in custody after Raleigh police use stun gun

Wake County

A person died after Raleigh police officers used a stun gun to apprehend the individual.

Officers were patrolling in Southeast Raleigh when they came across a suspicious vehicle and decided to make an arrest. Police Chief Estella Patterson said that the individual became unresponsive after being tased and handcuffed, and officers used “life-saving measures.” The person later died in the hospital. The State Bureau of Investigation is investigating the matter, as is customary in cases where officers use force or a person dies in police custody.

3 active-duty Marines charged in Jan. 6 Capitol riot

Onslow County

Three active-duty Marines were charged in the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Micah Coomer, Joshua Abate and Dodge Dale Hellonen were arrested on misdemeanor charges after fellow Marines helped investigators identify them in footage among the mob on Jan. 6, 2021. A Marine Corps spokesman said it is aware of the allegations and “is fully cooperating with appropriate authorities.”

6 counties locked out of online records after cyberattack

Greene County

WBTV

House fire leaves one person injured

Franklin County

A fire last week injured one person and damaged a home in Centerville. The fire broke out at about midnight last Sunday.

Three people were in the house at the time.

Two were able to flee the home, but their conditions were unknown. A third person suffered from second- and third-degree burns and was airlifted to the UNC Burn Center for treatment. A half dozen fire departments responded to the fire, which took several hours to get under control.

Court OKs dismissing UNC student suit seeking virus refunds

Orange County

An appeals court agrees that a trial judge was correct to dismiss a lawsuit filed by University of North Carolina students seeking refunds when in-person instruction got canceled in spring 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The plaintiffs were students and a parent seeking prorated reimbursements when campuses were shuttered and instruction transferred online.

AP

Dozens of people charged in the riot have military backgrounds, but these three are among only a handful on active duty. Hellonen, of Michigan, is stationed at Camp Lejeune.

A cyberattack last month left six North Carolina counties locked out of their online records systems. Greene, Nash, Halifax, Edgecombe, Pamlico and Jones counties were all impacted by the Christmas Day attack. Some counties were able to continue operation, just suffering a slowdown, while others, including Greene, were unable to issue marriage licenses or provide other services. The ransomware attack was against Cott Systems, a data company that works with counties around the country.

Whatley receives Trump endorsement for RNC co-chair

WRAL

17 pets killed in house fire

County

Jones

AP

Coast Guard rescues tugboat crew off coast of Maryland Pasquotank County

“In addition

including the victory

Sen.

WRAL

The Court of Appeals ruled a 2020 law giving public and private colleges immunity from pandemic-related legal claims for tuition and fees applied to this lawsuit. The appeals court in October allowed a similar lawsuit addressing fall 2020 fees to go forward.

A house fire destroyed a home on Plantation Home outside of Trenton last week. No one was home at the time, but several pets were killed in the blaze. James Hall, who lived in the home, is now staying in a camper parked on the property. He is accompanied by the three dogs and one cat that survived the fire. However, nine dogs and eight cats were killed in the fire. Hall was at work when the fire began.

The Coast Guard says seven people were rescued offshore in Ocean City, Maryland. A crew member on the tug Legacy notified the Coast Guard that a 1,000-foot towing line became entangled and snapped while towing a 290-foot barge from New Jersey to Guyana. An MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station Atlantic City, New Jersey, and an MH-60 Jayhawk crew from Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, hoisted the seven people from the Legacy. They were transported to Ocean City Municipal Airport. There were no reported injuries. AP

At the winter meeting of the 168-member committee this week in Dana Point, California, the race that has galvanized the most attention has been for chairman. Three-term chair Ronna McDaniel is seeking a fourth term in the role. She is being challenged by Harmeet Dhillon, a California attorney who grew up in Smithfield.

The RNC is the formal governing body of the Republican Party in the United States and is responsible for supporting party nominees, organizing the

Budd, he has helped turn North Carolina, with my help, of course, red. Mike is MAGA all the way! He has been with me and real Republicans all the way, has helped America First candidates get elected, and will be a great Co-Chair of the RNC,” Trump said in a statement announcing the endorsement.

Whatley’s tenure with the NCGOP has produced prodigious success in most state elections. Since taking over in 2019 Whatley oversaw Trump’s win in 2020 in the state, two U.S. Senate victories in 2020 and 2022, recapturing a supermajority in the state Senate and, perhaps most crucially, flipping control of the N.C. Supreme Court from 6-1 Democrats to 5-2 Republicans.

AP

WITN

Man killed when car crashes into lake

Graham County

Jose Alfredo Moreno-Romero, 23, of Robbinsville was killed when a car

he was a passenger

WHKY

The Associated Press

By Matt Mercer North State Journal

RALEIGH — North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley received an endorsement on Jan. 22 from former President Donald Trump to become the co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Republican National Convention and supporting state parties.

to leading North Carolina to tremendous success in the recent election,

by

Ted

Michael Whatley speaks at the N.C. Republican Party headquarters in Raleigh.

FILE PHOTO

Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

EDITORIAL | FRANK HILL

I wish socialism worked — but it doesn’t

I GREW UP in the 1960s and crazy early 1970s. Somehow it got into my young head that becoming an antitrust lawyer or one of consumer advocate Ralph Nader’s Raiders might be a fun way to make a living breaking up such corporate giants for the rest of my life. I am pretty sure it came from a very persuasive high school economics teacher who absolutely loathed ITT and Textron among others.

Every time I read a book such as “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman, I felt like I was shedding old skin and replacing it with new.

I had a chance to go on a summer internship at Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado, after my sophomore year at Carolina. For the first time in my life, I could see thousands of people working in a great environment and providing for their families with good salaries and company-provided benefits.

Being able to buy a case of fresh, cold Coors beer, unavailable at the time east of the Mississippi, for $6 wasn’t too bad either.

I could almost physically feel the scales fall off my eyes daily for the next several years. Every time I read a book such as “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman or “Confessions” by Augustine, I felt like I was shedding old skin and replacing it with new. With each successive revelation, I became more convinced I had been lied to over the years and what I had been taught about the following tenets of liberalism just was not true.

I wish everyone on Earth was nice and virtuous as liberals believe. But they aren’t. G.K. Chesterton said that original sin was the only part of Christian theology that could be proved ― and he is right. Just take a look around you in the news and daily life.

I wish socialism worked. But it doesn’t. It dulls the human capacity for self-initiative and risk-taking. Why would anyone in their right mind work their tails off if everyone else was going to share in their ultimate success equally whether they did anything to contribute to that success or not?

I wish every problem could be solved by government. But it can’t. Government is not the incubator of all wealth and ideas in America ― you are. Everything in America starts and ends with the individual, not with some elected official or agency in Washington or any state capital.

I wish everything was free. But it isn’t. Even when the cost is not obvious, excessive government spending leads to inflation, slower economic growth and higher regulation compliance which wind up hurting everyone, rich and poor alike, in the long run.

EDITORIAL | STACEY MATTHEWS

The power of appreciation

SOMETIMES YOU FORGET how much showing appreciation to someone can do for their day.

I was recently reminded of this during a trip to a local Wendy’s fastfood restaurant, where we had to wait in the drive-thru for a little longer than we normally do.

We’d had a few problems with that one on a couple of visits prior, and I mentioned to Mom that if it happened again, we’d stop going to that one even though it was the most convenient.

I wish we were all conceived as a mass of indeterminate cells as my sister who ran abortion clinics told me. But we aren’t. There isn’t a person alive today who was not conceived by the miracle of one human male sperm joining with one human female egg and combining two different human DNA and chromosome strands to become a two-celled zygote before embarking on its miraculous journey to humanhood. The science on that score is indisputable.

I wish there was no anger in this world. But there is. Anger is part of the human condition, whether it is original sin or genetic hard-wiring for selfpreservation as believed by Darwinist apostles. The questions are how to deal with it appropriately before someone gets hurt or punish it so it does not happen again.

I wish we could lead modern lives without carbon fuel. But we can’t. Biomass (5%); hydroelectric (3%); wind (3%) and solar (1%) account for our clean energy production today. Eighty-eight percent of our energy use is carbon-based or nuclear ― we would all freeze to death in the winter, overheat in the summer and ride bicycles to work if we had to depend solely on renewable energy today.

Conservative Republican philosophy sees life as it is and tries to deal with it practically while leaving each citizen the freedom to do what they want to do with their lives. Liberal progressive Democrats think utopian life is achievable here on earth and want to use every conceivable tool of coercive government power to force everyone to follow their orders on everything from use of language to the type of light bulbs they can buy. The difference is pretty clear. So is the choice.

“You didn’t merely show up today. You came in, did your job, and did it well.”

So, we got to the speaker and gave the Wendy’s employee our order. She was patient and repeated everything back to us to make sure she got the order right (we customized our burgers a bit) and then told us to drive up to the window.

There was a car ahead of us and it took several minutes before it was our turn. I had my window down and heard her talking to the customer and making sure he got everything he needed.

When it was our turn, she did the same with us, and even went the extra mile and gave us some things we didn’t ask for, like extra butter and sour cream.

I casually commented to her that it looked like she was working hard, and she remarked to me that they were shorthanded and that she was trying to do the best she could to cover for a co-worker who wasn’t there.

I smiled and told her she was a good egg and that we appreciated her extra effort, that in this day and age, it seemed like fast-food restaurants and drug stores and the like were always short of help for whatever reason, with fewer showing up for work on any given day.

“But you didn’t merely show up today,” I pointed out as Mom was finishing double-checking the order. “You came in, did your job, and did it well.”

“We appreciate you,” Mom also added from the passenger seat.

The woman’s smile got bigger after she took a deep breath, and it looked to me like it made an impact.

She thanked us and we left, and as we drove back home, I thought back to how things had been for my family over the last year or so. 2022 was up and down for us, with the latter part of it being mostly down. It seemed like we couldn’t catch a break.

But as the year drew to a close, and as this one has gotten underway, both Mom and I have heard — from family, friends, colleagues and those in the medical profession — words of appreciation, all of which I also thought of that same afternoon.

Appreciation and respect for everything she’s going through related to her colon cancer fight. Appreciation and respect for me in my role as her primary caregiver and what that entails.

Those moments made me feel good and made Mom’s face light up as well.

Genuine displays of appreciation mean something to people.

In the hustle and bustle of the day, this is something that we often lose sight of. We go through the motions in our daily transactions and oftentimes don’t think about the person on the other end of the transaction.

A kind word to someone, like telling them they’re doing an awesome job and thanking them for it, has the potential to make a trying day worth it.

It sounds cliche to say, but the world would be a better place in my opinion if we all took time out of our day each day to say “thank you for what you do.”

Such simple random acts of kindness really do go a long way.

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.

Neal

The heartbeat bill

WHEN I WAS in early pregnancy with my first daughter, I rented a fetal heart monitor, but not because anything was wrong. I just wanted reassurance my baby was alive. To hear my unborn daughter’s galloping, vibrant heartbeat in those very early weeks was to hear the sound of life.

In North Carolina, we have a historic opportunity to protect most unborn children starting at 6 weeks, when the human heart starts to beat.

Currently in North Carolina, it is legal to abort unborn children up to 20 weeks. In this fifth month of development, the unborn baby responds to sound, can taste and sleeps in cycles. After the Dobbs decision, most other legislatures in states contiguous to North Carolina have recognized the humanity of these children by enacting strong protections from abortionists’ tools. South Carolina and Georgia have enacted heartbeat laws (although South Carolina’s law was overturned by an activist liberal court), and Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky legislatures have passed laws prohibiting abortion from conception. Meanwhile, all the other states to our west and south have limited abortion at similar points during pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood in North Carolina is building its business luring women from across state lines to profit from the death and heartbreak resulting from abortion. Our state has seen a 37% increase in abortions since Dobbs, and we’ve only just begun. By 2024, the abortion industry here will likely double or triple if action is not taken in 2023. This session, North Carolina lawmakers should take a stand for the civil rights issue of our time and stop our state from continuing to be a destination of death.

Wary legislators concerned about political implications should take note that in the 2022 election, prolife candidates had tremendous success at the polls. Nationally, all 12 pro-life governors won their elections

and, in many states, including our own, pro-life majorities were expanded. When truth of the pro-life message is articulated well and is contrasted against the Democrat party’s extreme position of unlimited abortion up until the point of birth, voters choose the side of life. In North Carolina, 66% of people believe abortion ends a human life, and nearly 58% hold human life begins between conception and a heartbeat.

When the General Assembly considers a gestational limit on abortion, it should not be an arbitrary number for political expediency. Rather it should be based on facts: The current 20-week limit only saves one-half of one percent of unborn lives, a 15-week bill would save just 7%.

A 13-week bill would only save 13% of babies — in other words, 87% would continue to be killed.

A six-week heartbeat bill, which is supported by 55% of Americans according to a 2022 nationwide poll, would save 86% of the unborn babies who are currently being aborted in North Carolina. While NC Values Coalition believes life begins at conception and should be protected at that point, a six-week protection with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother, along with increased support for mothers, is a reasonable compromise.

With a supermajority in the NC Senate, a working supermajority in the House, and a state Supreme Court which will uphold the law, it’s time to vote on meaningful pro-life legislation. The impact of doing nothing, or not enough, will encourage the abortion industry in North Carolina to thrive, will cost thousands of innocent lives, and leave many women with despair and regret. This is our moment to establish in North Carolina that everyone is valuable no matter how small, and that life is a human right.

Laura Macklem is the press and political director of NC Values Coalition.

GOP debt ceiling strategy for 2023

ONCE AGAIN, the media is frenzied over this year’s debt ceiling debate — and is insisting that any Republican opposition to raising the debt ceiling is pure recalcitrance. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans should emphasize a few key points to win the support of the American people despite the bias of the media.

There are some key principles all Republicans can advocate to show problem-solving leadership while they win the debt ceiling debate.

Republicans are for a responsible debt ceiling increase — and oppose an irresponsible debt ceiling increase. Passing another debt ceiling increase with no modifications to the current unsustainable spending and projected deficits would clearly be an example of an irresponsible debt ceiling increase.

The Congressional Budget Office projects current spending would add $15.74 billion to the deficit from now to 2032. So, it’s clear the current spending model that Democrats have created is totally irresponsible. As CBO has warned since last decade, “the current trajectory of federal borrowing is unsustainable and could lead to slower economic growth in the long-run as debt rises as a percentage of GDP.”

It is not unreasonable to demand rational cuts to spending. Even the Democrats know that in a nearly $6 trillion budget there are many items that can be cut without serious difficulties. The Joe Biden position of no negotiation is an insult to every American who believes the time for confrontation is over. We owe it to our children and our country’s future to find a way to work together.

Overwhelmingly, Americans believe government is too large and wasteful — and spending can be cut. Gallup found in 2014 that Americans on average think the federal government wastes 51 cents of every dollar. Further, as our America’s New Majority Project found

COLUMN | MARY ZAHRAN

in a January 2022 survey, by 58% to 26%, Americans say cutting wasteful spending and corruption would be enough to balance the federal budget. A follow-up survey found that 67% to 29% of Americans think limiting federal spending will reduce inflation.

We also found that 70% of Americans think we should have a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget. (This includes 67% of Democrats, 70% of Independents, 74% of Republicans, 66% of black voters, and 62% of Latino voters.) It doesn’t get much more popular than this.

And finally, a Scott Rasmussen National Survey found that 45% of Americans think we should only raise the debt ceiling if there are cuts to spending; 24% say we should raise the debt limit with no cuts; and 16% say it shouldn’t be raised at all.

Importantly, warning people of bad economic impacts if the debt ceiling is not increased has nearly no impact on their opinions.

It’s clear that most Americans would be with a Republican House and Senate that demanded rational cuts to spending in exchange for the debt limit increase. Biden and the Democrats are simply testing whether they can push around the new Republican House majority.

There is little support for the Biden-Democrat argument that it is impossible to cut anything and there is no waste or corruption in Washington. Their base is approximately 20% to 25%. Our base is 60% to 70% — if we can convince those opposed to any debt ceiling increase that a big enough step toward a balanced budget is a win.

Republicans should offer example after example of indefensible waste in government and insist that President Biden negotiates in good faith.

There is a common-sense middle ground that would move us toward lower deficits and ultimately a balanced budget — but Biden’s got to be willing to go there.

The careless world of Joe Biden

“CARELESS: TAKING INSUFFICIENT CARE; NEGLIGENT. Marked by or resulting from lack of forethought or thoroughness. Showing a lack of consideration” ― The American Heritage Dictionary

The recent discovery that President Joe Biden stored classified documents in several unauthorized locations, including the garage of his private residence, should not surprise anyone. Biden has been a public figure for almost 50 years, and in that time, he has come to embody the definition of a careless man — both in his words and deeds.

Some people may think I should use the word “dishonest” to describe Biden. While he has told countless lies to Americans, his behavior suggests that another character trait is at work. For much of his adult life, there has been a sense of haste and clumsiness in both his spoken and written words. He has been caught plagiarizing published articles and political speeches on many occasions and has done so in a manner that suggests he has never thought his plagiarism could be easily discovered by others.

This lack of foresight about his dishonesty forced Biden to withdraw from the 1988 presidential race after numerous reports of his plagiarism while in law school and on the campaign trail made it impossible for him to continue. Upon leaving, he issued a statement that left no doubt about his carelessness in making important decisions: “My intent was not to deceive anyone. … For if it were, I would not have been so blatant.” I can only imagine how his supporters must have felt after hearing this bizarre declaration.

Fast forward to 2023, and we see the same carelessness and lack of foresight previously on display. The difference now is that Biden is the president of the United States, not a senator vying for the position. Biden’s policies have a profound effect not only on this country but also on the world, and the idea that he makes decisions of such significance in a hurried or indifferent manner is frightening to contemplate.

Perhaps the best example of the haste with which Biden makes important decisions occurred in 2019 when he was a presidential candidate. He had been a staunch supporter of the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of federal funds to pay for abortions. In just a couple of days, he reversed a position he had held for almost 40 years for religious reasons because of pressure from other candidates and groups opposed to the amendment. How much deliberation could he, or anyone, have given to this issue in such a short time?

How much thought did Biden give to shutting down the XL Pipeline just hours after his inauguration? How much thought did he give to opening the southern border and letting millions of unvetted migrants into the country? How much thought did he give to our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan or to the consequences of that withdrawal for the Afghan people or our standing on the global stage? How much thought has he given to the economic hardships his policies have created for the American people?

How much thought has he ever given to any decision?

Why should we now be surprised to discover that Biden has had classified documents, some of them top secret, in various unauthorized locations for several years? Why would the same man who decided to leave military equipment worth billions of dollars for the Taliban to use suddenly think that storing classified papers in his garage was a bad idea? Both incidents signify a disturbing lack of forethought by Biden. Does he ever stop to consider the long-term consequences of his decisions?

It is frightening to think that Biden, the leader of the free world, probably devotes more time to selecting a flavor of ice cream than he does to matters of national security. But in all fairness to him, he did have the foresight to make sure the door of the garage where some of these documents were stored was always locked. We have his word on it.

Mary Zahran is a writer who lives in Fayetteville.

It’s official: Trump’s tax cuts paid for themselves

HOW MANY TIMES have you heard President Joe Biden or Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) berate the Trump tax cuts as “a giveaway to the rich”?

Biden and congressional Democrats now want to let expire major planks of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, former President Donald Trump’s signature domestic achievement, particularly the incentives for American businesses to invest more here at home.

We now have incontrovertible evidence that after five years since they took effect, the Trump tax rate cuts of 2017 raised revenues over this time period. For full disclosure, I should note that I worked with fellow economists Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer and Kevin Hassett together on that plan, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

The latest Congressional Budget Office report released earlier this month calculated that the federal government collected $4.9 trillion of federal revenue last year. This was up — ready for this? — almost $1.5 trillion since 2017, the year before the tax cuts became law.

In other words, revenues were up 40% in five years. The evidence through the first three years of the tax cut finds that the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% rose as well. So much for this being a tax giveaway for the rich.

I compared these numbers with the estimates of what the Trump tax cuts were expected to “cost.” Instead of an expected $1 trillion revenue “loss,” the tax receipts over this period were almost precisely what they would have been if we didn’t cut taxes at all. And remember, that estimate in 2017 never anticipated the two-year hit to the economy from COVID-19 lockdowns — which depleted the Treasury.

In other words, there was a giant Laffer Curve effect from Trump’s tax cut. We got higher growth and higher tax payments with lower tax rates.

This shouldn’t be a giant surprise. The same thing happened when Democratic President John F. Kennedy cut tax rates in the 1960s and when Republican President Ronald Reagan cut tax rates in the 1980s. Lower rates and more revenues.

None of this seems to matter to the White House or congressional Democrats. They want to monomaniacally repeal a tax cut that worked. This would be like firing a coach who wins every game.

One of the most important and successful features of the Trump tax plan was reducing the tax rate on American businesses from 35% — the highest in the world — to 25% while closing special interest loopholes. This brought businesses and jobs back to these shores and helped fuel the Trump economic boom.

An obvious question is, why are we running a $1.4 trillion deficit if we have an all-time high in tax payments?

Because under Biden, federal spending has exploded to more than $6 trillion. Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a problem of runaway spending. It’s almost as if Congress is pleading for help: Stop us before we spend again.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. His latest book is “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government is Devouring our Economy.”

BE IN TOUCH

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.

COLUMN | NEWT GINGRICH

NATION & WORLD

Democrats: Joe Biden should be ‘embarrassed’ by classified docs case

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senior Democrats, dismayed by a steady stream of startling disclosures, expressed criticism of how President Joe Biden handled classified material after leaving office as vice president and disappointment that the White House has not been more forthcoming with the public.

Lawmakers who might have anticipated questions focusing on the debt limit or Ukraine aid when they were booked last week for the Sunday news shows found themselves quizzed about the latest development over the weekend in the document drama that has put Biden’s presidency on the defensive: During a search Friday of Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, the FBI found additional documents with classified markings and took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president’s lawyer said Saturday.

Biden should be “embarrassed by the situation,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, adding that the president had ceded the moral high ground on an issue that has already entangled former President Donald Trump. Special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland are investigating both cases.

“Well, of course. Let’s be honest about it. When that information is found, it diminishes the stature of any person who is in possession of it because it’s not supposed to happen. ... The elected official bears ultimate responsibility,” Durbin said.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Biden “should have a lot of regrets. ... You just might as well say, ‘Listen, it’s irresponsible.’” The president told reporters on Thursday that he had “no regrets” over how and when the public learned about the documents and that there was “no there there.”

Despite their criticism, Biden’s fellow Democrats defended what

they said was his cooperation with the Justice Department as the search for additional classified material unfolds. They contrasted it with Trump’s resistance to efforts to recover hundreds of documents after he left office.

“It is outrageous that either occurred,” Durbin said.

Biden voluntarily allowed the FBI into his home on Friday, but the lack of a warrant did not dim the extraordinary nature of the search. It compounded the embarrassment to Biden that started in earlier in January with the disclosure that the president’s lawyers had found a “small number” of classified records at a former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington shortly before the Nov. 8 elections.

The White House has disclosed that Biden’s team found classified documents and official records on three other occasions in recent months — in follow-up searches on Dec. 20 in the garage of his Wilmington home, and on Jan. 11 and 12 in his home library.

The discoveries have become a political liability as Biden prepares to kick off his 2024 reelection bid, and they undercut his efforts to portray an image of propriety to the American public after the tumultuous presidency of his predecessor, Trump.

Manchin excoriated both men for their handling of sensitive security documents. “It’s just hard to believe that in the United States of America, we have a former president and a current president that

are basically in the same situation,” he said. “How does this happen?”

At the same time, Democrats worried that Biden’s travails have created an opening for newly empowered House Republicans.

“We have to worry, since this new group that has taken over control of the House of Representatives has promised us endless investigations, confrontations, impeachments and chaos, what is going to happen,” Durbin said.

The new chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said he took Biden “at his word when the first set of documents were found. ... But now this is gone from just simply being irresponsible to downright scary.”

Hungary won’t veto EU arms funding to Ukraine, official says Budapest, Hungary

Hungary’s foreign minister said Monday that while his government isn’t in favor of the European Union sending funding for weapons to Ukraine, it won’t block a planned tranche of $543 million in assistance to Kyiv to use in the war with Russia.

Speaking at a news briefing on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Peter Szijjarto dismissed as “lies” media reports that emerged last week that Hungary planned to veto the funds earmarked for Ukraine under the bloc’s European Peace Facility.

Hungary opposes the delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine — something Szijjarto said could “lead to the prolongation or potential escalation” of the war — but the government won’t veto the aid package, he said.

“We don’t consider weapons shipments, nor the hundreds of millions of euros Europe has spent to finance them, a good idea. But we won’t block the decision,” he said.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Investigation into Beirut’s massive 2020 port blast resumes

Beirut

The judge investigating Beirut’s massive 2020 port blast resumed work Monday after a nearly 13-month halt, ordering the release of some detainees and announcing plans to charge others, including two top generals.

Judge Tarek Bitar’s work had been blocked since December 2021 pending a Court of Cassation ruling after three former Cabinet ministers filed legal challenges against him. The court is the highest in the land.

COMMITTEES from page A1

Committee chairmen return to their posts this session: Rep. Destin Hall of Caldwell County and Sen. Bill Rabon of Brunswick County.

One development that caught the attention of many following the legislature are three Democrats who received chair slots.

Democratic Rep. Tricia Cotham of Mecklenburg County will be one of three chairs of the House K-12 Education Committee, joining two Republicans: Hugh Blackwell of Caldwell County and John Torbett of Gaston County. Cotham served in the House for nearly 10 years through 2016 before launching a successful campaign to return to the chamber.

A former teacher, Cotham served with both Democratic and Republican leadership during her initial stint in Raleigh.

Two other Democrats, Reps. Shelly Willingham of Edgecombe County and Michael Wray of Northampton County, will also help lead committees. Willingham is one of three chairmen on the Alcoholic Beverage Control Committee and Wray is one of the four senior chairs of the House Finance Committee.

One other notable committee chair this year is the return of Alamance County Rep. Stephen Ross, who was defeated in 2020 after serving for eight years. The Republican reclaimed the seat last November and will be one of two House Commerce Committee chairs.

In the Senate, the returning Buck Newton is a co-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee along with Sen. Warren Daniel of Burke County.

After the departure of Sen. Deanna Ballard from the chamber, he Senate Education Committee is now led by Lee and Alamance County Sen. Amy Galey.

After attaining a supermajority in the midterm elections, Senate Republicans will lead all of the chamber’s committees this session.

STIP Project No. HL-0025

MATTHEWS - The N.C. Department of Transportation is hosting a public meeting in coordination with the Town of Matthews to discuss the proposal to extend Greylock Ridge Road from East John Street to Tank Town Road in the Town of Matthews.

The project also proposes a 10-foot multi-use path along the south side of the Greylock Ridge Road Extension and a 5-foot sidewalk along the north side. The purpose of this project is to improve safety for motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists along the corridor.

The information will be presented at the meeting allowing for one-on-one discussions with engineers. No formal presentation will be provided.

The meeting will be held Jan. 26 at Matthews Town Hall 232 Matthews Station Street The public is invited to attend at any time between 5 - 7 p.m

People may submit comments by phone or email at the address shown below by Feb. 13, 2023

By Mail: Terry Burleson NCDOT Highway Division 10 Phone: 704-983-4400 Email: ext-twburleson@ncdot.gov 716 West Main Street Albemarle, N.C. 28001

NCDOT will provide auxiliary aids and services under the Americans with Disabilities Act for disabled people who wish to participate in this meeting. Anyone requiring special services should contact Tony Gallagher, Environmental Analysis Unit, at 1598 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, N.C. 27699-1598, 919-707-6069 or magallagher@ncdot.gov as early as possible so arrangements can be made.

Those who do not speak English, or have a limited ability to read, speak or understand English, may receive interpretive services upon request prior by calling 1-800-4816494.

Aquellas personas no hablan inglés, o tienen limitaciones para leer, hablar o entender inglés, podrían recibir servicios de interpretación si los solicitan llamando al 1-800-481-6494.

The Aug. 4, 2020, disaster happened when hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, a material used in fertilizers, detonated at Beirut’s port killing more than 200, injuring over 6,000 and damaging large parts of Beirut. The explosion is considered one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

It later emerged that the ammonium nitrate had been shipped to Lebanon in 2013 and stored improperly at a port warehouse ever since. Senior political and security officials knew of its presence but did nothing.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Nevada governor to expand on top priorities in key speech

Carson City, Nev.

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo is set in his State of the State address to expand on plans for increased school choice and a potential raise for Nevada state employees, weeks after taking office on a pledge to work with the Democraticrun Legislature.

The speech will offer more clarity on how he plans to fulfill promises made on the campaign trail and in early remarks, including vows to diversify Nevada’s casino and tourism-dependent economy and make unprecedented investments in education.

Lombardo, the former Clark County sheriff, also has talked about walking back criminal justice reforms passed under Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak that he has called soft on crime.

Lombardo defeated Sisolak in November, becoming the only Republican challenger to defeat a Democratic incumbent in a governor’s race in 2022. Democrats hold the majority in the Senate and a supermajority in the Assembly.

AP PHOTO

President Joe Biden talks with reporters after speaking in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Jan 20, 2023.

NCDOT IN COORDINATION WITH THE TOWN OF MATTHEWS TO HOLD A PUBLIC MEETING REGARDING THE PROPOSAL TO EXTEND GREYLOCK RIDGE ROAD FROM EAST JOHN STREET TO TANK TOWN ROAD IN THE TOWN OF MATHEWS

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

ECU will get 1st look at widened Michigan Stadium tunnel

Ann Arbor, Michigan Michigan Stadiums tunnel will be a little wider next season.

The school confirmed Monday that it will remove a portable section of seats from the front of the tunnel to give players, coaches and staff members more room to enter and exit the football field. Previously, fans were close enough to touch coaches and players as one did last season with Michigan State’s Mel Tucker. That was well before the postgame altercation between Spartans and Wolverines players that led to suspensions and criminal charges. East Carolina will be the first team to visit the Wolverines with the changed tunnel when the Pirates open their season at the Big House on Sept. 2.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

No Texas teams, 3 from NC in latest AP women’s poll

Indianapolis For the first time in the 47-year history of The Associated Press women’s basketball poll no team from Texas is in the Top 25. The Texas Longhorns fell out of Monday’s poll, ending a 835-week run that had at least one team from the Lone Star state in the rankings. Unbeaten South Carolina was atop the poll for 31st consecutive weeks.

UNC (14 -5, 5-3 ACC) moved up two spots to No. 15 after handing rival Duke its first ACC loss on Thursday and then beating Georgia Tech on Sunday. The Blue Devils (17-2 7-1 ACC) dropped three spots to No. 16, having rebounded from their loss to the Tar Heels to beat Syracuse on Sunday. NC State (15-5, 5- 4 ACC), beat both Miami and Louisville but stayed at No. 20 in this week’s poll.

Panthers coaching search expands as interviews continue

regarding coaching searches — not exactly the running start the team was hoping to get as it begins its rebuild.

Home sweet home: Why are host teams winning more than ever?

Teams in the ACC and across the state are better at home — and worse away — than in recent memory

By Shawn Krest North State Journal

On Monday night, Duke’s attempt at a buzzer-beater to tie the score in Blacksburg resulted in a turnover, and the Blue Devils lost to Virginia Tech on the road. That’s not a shocking result. Duke is just 4-6 away from Cameron Indoor Stadium this season, although the Blue Devils are a perfect 10-0 at home.

home for a .744 winning percentage. On the road and in neutral site games, they are 86-125, or .408. Both results are more polarized than last year when home teams in North Carolina went 193-75 (.720) while going 131-185 (.415) everywhere else.

Only two teams in the state have losing records at home. Elon is 2-6 (0-12 everywhere else), and Campbell is 4-5 (4-7 elsewhere).

Home teams in the entire ACC have a .758 winning percentage, 89 points higher than last year and the highest in seven seasons. In ACC conference games, home teams are winning at a .636 clip, 83 points higher than last season.

By Shawn Krest North State Journal

A FUNNY THING happened to the Panthers as they tried to establish some stability in the organization. Good old chaos returned to town.

When the Panthers’ offseason began earlier this month, the team’s most pressing piece of business was finding a coach. It was expected to be a quick, efficient selection, with interim coach Steve Wilks a strong candidate to retain the job permanently. The team planned to talk to a handful of other candidates and come to a decision. The initial list of interviews was about a half-dozen names long.

152-89

It hasn’t all been the Panthers’ fault. None of the five NFL teams to part ways with their coaches have made a new hire yet, and the Colts, Broncos, Texans and Cardinals are all, like Carolina, still running through the interview process. Part of the reason for the slowdown has been the NFL playoffs. Many of the top candidates, including Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen, Buffalo OC Ken Dorsey and Giants OC Mike Kafka, were all still busy with their current teams heading into last weekend’s games.

Of course, there are always hot coordinators preparing for playoff games when teams are looking to hire coaches. And the Panthers had plenty of available candidates on their initial list, including Wilks,

Meanwhile, back in Durham, Maryland-Eastern Shore came back from 16 points down in the second half to beat NC Central on a last-second shot. That was a shocking result. The Eagles were a perfect 9-0 at home heading into the game, although they were 1-8 away from Durham.

The two games underscore a trend in college basketball this season. Not in recent memory has it been easier to root root root for the home team, because the home-court advantage is at a peak.

Number of North Carolina’s 19 Division I teams with a winning record at home this season

In North Carolina alone, there are three teams unbeaten at home: In addition to Duke, UNC is 10-0 at the Dean Dome this year, and UNC Asheville is 8-0 at home. Central’s loss on Monday knocked them from the ranks of the unbeaten on the home floor, and Wake Forest’s loss to Virginia last week was the first home loss for the Deacs.

Those five teams combined are 47-2 at home. And, while good teams can be expected to win at home, the same five teams are a combined 20-31 everywhere else.

A few weeks later, the team has talked to nine known candidates and also run afoul of NFL rules

All told, the state’s 19 Division I teams are a combined 131-45 at

17What are the reasons for the sudden surge by home teams? There are several different candidates.

Scheduling

Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes was shocked that his Demon Deacons didn’t get an NCAA bid last season despite going 25-10 and 13-7 in the conference. The reason? The schedule. Wake went 18-2 at home, feasting on beatable opponents, rather than playing a host of games against higher-rated opposition.

“We did upgrade our nonconference schedule,” he said. “Strategically, last year, we didn’t have a tough nonconference schedule because we had nine new players coming out of COVID. But visiting in the spring with the experts, there’s a lot of emphasis on November. You can agree with that or not. For me, personally, I think it’s more important to win on the road in the ACC than win in a casino or a ballroom in November.”

Forbes is apparently in the minority, however, and Wake added several power conference foes to the schedule, including LSU,

New candidates, opt-outs and NFL rules violations have complicated the process

JACOB KUPFERMAN | AP PHOTO

Duke has always had a home-court advantage thanks to the Cameron Crazies, but guard Tyrese Proctor and the Blue Devils are unbeaten in Durham this year and part of a larger trend of host teams winning more frequently.

Panthers coaching candidate Sean Payton’s career record, all in 15 seasons with the Saints

MATT SLOCUM | AP PHOTO

Eagles offensive coordinator Shane Steichen is a top candidate to be the next coach of the Carolina Panthers.

TRENDING

Rui Hachimura:

The Lakers acquired the former lottery pick from the Wizards in exchange for Kendrick Nunn and a package of second‑round draft picks. Hachimura appeared in 30 games for the Wizards this season, all off the bench, averaging 13.0 points on 49% shooting. He was the No. 9 pick in the 2019 draft out of Gonzaga. Both Washington and Los Angeles are contending for a play‑in spot in their respective conferences.

J. Richard Steadman:

The orthopedic surgeon who founded the renowned Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colorado, where many of the world’s elite athletes have gone for career‑saving treatment, has died at age 85. Steadman was a leading expert in the repair and rehabilitation of knee injuries, performing procedures on Alex Rodriguez, Greg Norman, Mario Lemieux, Ronaldo, Martina Navratilova, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, John Elway and Bruce Smith.

Damar Hamlin:

The Bills safety made his first public appearance Sunday since going into cardiac arrest three weeks ago during a game. He waved to fans from a suite at the Bills’ Highmark Stadium during their AFC divisional playoff loss to the Bengals. The stadium erupted when an image of the recovering Hamlin filled the massive end zone screens and fans turned toward the glass‑enclosed suite and cheered. The 24‑year‑old safety had not been seen in public since the incident on Cincinnati on Jan. 2.

Beyond the box score

NASCAR

POTENT QUOTABLES

Former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski on Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, who is leaving the Irish after 23 seasons. The Blue Devils reached six Final Fours during Brey’s six years as an assistant.

Former Wake Forest player Dearica Hamby accusing the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces of discrimination after she alleges they traded her because she is pregnant.

PRIME NUMBER

12‑1

Record for the 49ers since they acquired running back Christian McCaffrey from the Panthers in October.

San Francisco lost its first game with McCaffrey on Oct. 23 and has since won 12 straight to reach the NFC Championship Game.

NHL

The Hurricanes will again be without Max Pacioretty, likely for the rest of the season, after the forward tore his Achilles tendon for the second time in five months. In just his fifth game back since returning from the initial tear, Pacioretty was reinjured on a noncontact play in the final moments of Carolina’s 5‑2 win over the Wild last Thursday.

Matt Kenseth, Kirk Shelmerdine and Hershel McGriff, pictured left to right, were inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday in Charlotte. Kenseth, the 2003 Cup Series champion, won the Daytona 500 twice in his career. The 95‑year‑old McGriff competed for 68 years, winning the K&N Pro Series West title in 1986 at age 58. Schelmerdine was crew chief and front tire change for four of Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s seven Cup Series championships.

NELL REDMOND | AP PHOTO

Shannon Sharpe, the Hall of Fame player and Fox Sports personality, apologized after getting into a heated courtside conversation with Grizzlies players Ja Morant and Dillon Brooks and Morant’s father during Friday’s game against the Lakers. Sharpe issued the apology Monday during the “Undisputed” show with Skip Bayless.

NBA

ASHLEY LANDIS | AP PHOTO

Luke Shepardson, a lifeguard, beat out reigning champion John John Florence on Sunday at The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational with a nearly perfect score. The surfing contest held on Oahu goes forward only when the surf is consistently large enough during the big‑wave season from mid‑December through mid‑March.

SURFING

JAMM AQUINO | HONOLULU STAR‑ADVERTISER VIA AP

“This cannot now be used against me.”

“I called him my Final Four coach.”

MICHAEL CATERINA | AP PHOTO

JOHN LOCHER | AP PHOTO

KARL B. DEBLAKER | AP PHOTO

Carolina fans forget who the building was named after

ACCORDING to legend, early in Dean Smith’s tenure as UNC head coach, the Carolina student section stood and waved their arms in an effort to distract an opposing player from shooting a free throw. Smith stepped out onto the court and demanded that the students stop.

“We don’t do that here,” he said.

Smith also was known to take to the microphone to admonish fans when he felt that their taunts of opposing players crossed the line, famously scolding the home crowd during a 1982 game with Virginia after they cursed while yelling at 7-foot-4 Ralph Sampson.

Decades later, in a 2017 home game, Duke’s Harry Giles went to the free-throw line. A highly sought-after recruit and a prime target of UNC’s the year before, Giles had suffered a serious knee injury that cost him his senior year in high school and impacted his play during his one year with the Blue Devils.

Giles would miss 11 of Duke’s games that year and average 3.9 points per game. As he went to the line at the building named for Dean Smith, UNC fans began chanting, “overrated.”

Roy Williams, a Smith protégé, leapt off the bench and angrily addressed the students.

“Stop that s---!” he shouted.

“We don’t need to do that,” Williams said after the game, although his motives may not have been entirely pure. “Every time you yell ‘overrated,’ the other team scores the next basket. They yelled ‘overrated,’ he made the dadgum free throw. We’re intelligent. We go to North Carolina. Don’t piss off the other team by being stupid.”

Much has changed in the Smith Center over the years. When Dean Smith was coaching, he famously refused to let any advertising signs be posted in the building. The first signs appeared four years after his retirement. Now, fans root for the Tar Heels to score 100 points so they can get a deal on Bojangles biscuits and cheer for opponents to miss free throws to take home free Pringles chips.

He was also opposed to alcohol ads on broadcasts of college games, yet the Smith Center began selling beer and wine in 2019.

It’s safe to say that Smith would not be happy to visit the arena that bears his name. He would doubtlessly carp about the ads and the alcohol. A longtime proponent of paying players, he would doubtlessly not be happy with the way the NIL rights and transfer portal have corrupted that idea.

And he likely would have something to say to the fans.

Before Saturday’s game against NC State, the emcee who leads the crowd in cheers prior to the game and during timeouts began hyping up the Smith Center faithful. As he spoke, NC State’s players took the court for the pregame layup line. The Carolina fans responded, predictably, with boos.

“Come on,” the emcee said, imploring the crowd to boo louder. “You can do better than that.”

It was a brief, relatively innocent moment, one that can be seen at virtually any arena around the country — pro, college or even high school. The difference was the location. This was at UNC, home of The Carolina Way — Smith’s view of the program as one of honor, loyalty and integrity. It is a belief that continues to the present day among the UNC faithful and rankles the nerves of fans of other schools as holier than thou.

Simply put, like the waving to distract free-throw shooters, like chants of

“overrated,” like promotions tied to rooting for the other team to fail, it’s not The Carolina Way. We don’t do that here.

Midway through the game, State’s Terquavion Smith went up for a layup and was clubbed to the ground by UNC’s Leaky Black. It was a hard play, a violent result, but not a dirty play. State coach Kevin Keatts said as much after the game and again two days later after reviewing film. Smith went down hard and medical staffs from both teams rushed to his aid. His arm was placed in a protective cast, his neck in a brace. He was lifted on a backboard and taken off the court on a stretcher.

The referees consulted the replay and ruled the play a flagrant two foul, meaning Black was ejected. And the fans at the Dean E. Smith Center erupted with boos. As Smith was being loaded onto an ambulance and taken to a local hospital for evaluation of his neck and arm injuries, the Carolina fans booed. As the replay was shown on the video board, the fans booed. As another player took Smith’s free throws, because he was unable to, the fans booed.

Were they booing Smith or taunting his injury? No, certainly not. They were booing what they viewed as an unfair call in a game in which UNC would go on to shoot its highest number of free throws in 18 years, in a game in which the Tar Heels would shoot 27 more free throws than their opponent, the Carolina fans were booing a call that they thought wasn’t fair.

Is it the end of the world? Certainly not. It’s just a reminder that things change, and they don’t usually go back. That’s even true when you’re traveling along The Carolina Way. We do that here now.

Deacons, Wolfpack prepare for key ACC showdown

down on the court. Black was ejected from the game.

Smith seems to have avoided any major injury after an official statement from the team confirmed his status.

By Ryan Henkel North State Journal

THE NEXT BIG intrastate ACC matchup is just around the corner, with NC State set to travel to Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Saturday for a game with conference and NCAA Tournament implications.

While the Wolfpack (15-5, 5-4 in the ACC ahead of their home matchup against Notre Dame on Tuesday) and Wake Forest (14-6, 6-3 in the ACC before Wednesday’s game at Pitt) both play a conference game before the Saturday showdown, the Tobacco Road meeting will be key for both teams.

With the middle of the ACC standings tightly packed, every potential Quad 1/Quad 2 win can boost a team’s resume, a reality the Deacons are all too familiar with given their NCAA snub a year ago.

Both teams have had big contributions from their transfer portal additions.

“It just gives you some guys that are ready to play,” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said of the portal. “Not that freshmen aren’t ready, it just might take them a little bit longer just based on the level of competition that we’re playing in the nonconference and ACC. You try to get the best players that you can get, and you don’t settle. The portal gives you a chance to get a little bit older, and

older is pretty good when you’re playing in a league like this.”

While DJ Burns and Jarkel Joiner have allowed NC State to spread the floor a bit more and diversify their scoring, Wake is getting a huge boost from Florida transfer Tyree Appleby, who leads the Deacons in scoring.

“We wouldn’t be where we are today without Ty Appleby,” Forbes said. “He’s a tremendous player and one of the best players in the ACC and in the country.”

The similarities don’t stop there, as each team enters the week coming off a tough loss.

NC State came up short at UNC, and a big reason was foul trouble. Coach Kevin Keatts’ aggressive defensive style leads to plenty of points off turnovers, but the fouls have become an issue. The Tar Heels outscored the Wolfpack at the free-throw line 36-12, so a key moving forward for NC State will be limiting the number of fouls the team is committing.

“I thought throughout the game we did some good stuff,” Keatts said. “I thought defensively we were very stingy. If you take away the amount of free throws that they made versus what we did,

we made six more field goals, we actually made one more 3. I know they scored 81 points, but from a field goal percentage (perspective), we played a really good defensive game.”

The Wolfpack also hope that star guard Terquavion Smith will be able to make it back for the game after he was stretchered off the court due to an injury against the Tar Heels on Saturday night.

In the second half in Chapel Hill, Smith went up for a basket and took a hard foul from UNC forward Leaky Black, causing the ACC’s leading scorer to crash

“Due to the report of neck pain, medical procedure required the use of a backboard and stretcher to move [Smith],” the statement said. “Smith was taken to UNC Medical Center and all X-rays taken Saturday night were negative. He was released from the hospital and returned to Raleigh. Smith’s playing status is day-today.”

If his status is truly day-to-day, that’s the best possible news for a team that still has NCAA Tournament aspirations.

Wake will be looking to avenge the loss of their perfect home record, which was tarnished by the ACC’s top-ranked team, No. 7 Virginia.

“Defensively, we weren’t very good in the first half,” Forbes said. “But I thought in the second half we were really good. We only gave up two two-point field goals to Virginia in the second half, and both of those were dunks. So if you told me we were only going to give up two two-point field goals in the second half to Virginia, I would have thought we won.”

While the Deacons outpaced the Cavaliers in the second half, the biggest issue for Wake was the success of Virginia from beyond the arc. UNA shot 44.1% for the game, so Wake Forest will need to slow the Wolfpack’s dynamic backcourt — if Smith plays —to avoid a repeat of last Saturday’s loss.

Jim Caldwell, Frank Reich and Detroit’s Ben Johnson.

Johnson has since his name from coaching consideration, announcing he would remain with the Lions. He had reportedly been the Panthers’ top choice and the favorite to win the job at Covers. com. The Panthers found another current offensive coordinator to replace him as head coaching candidate, however, bringing in Dallas’ Kellen Moore for an interview this week.

Perhaps as a result of the ongoing lawsuit against the league filed by former Miami coach Brian Flores, the NFL appears to be encouraging teams to take greater care in the hiring process, which may also be contributing to the slow pace of the searches. The league has add-

ed some rules that have slowed the process, including a ban on interviewing candidates currently employed by another team until after the wild card games, meaning that most searches only started in earnest last week.

It also required that all “decision-makers” undergo mandatory inclusivity in hiring training before starting the search. That’s where the Panthers hit a roadblock. Last week, a report surfaced that Nicole Tepper, the team’s chief administrative officer and wife of owner David, did not complete the training.

The team denied the report, issuing a statement that she “had been trained,” and it’s not clear what, if any, punishment the team faces if the charges are verified.

The Carolina coaching search also was delayed briefly last week when Charlotte FC player Anton

Walkes died in a boating accident. The MLS club is also owned by Tepper, and the organization took time to mourn Walkes and plan a way to honor his life.

The Panthers’ search — as well as the searches of the other four teams filling coaching vacancies — also had an intriguing wild card thrown into the game when former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton emerged as a possible candidate. The winningest coach in Saints history and a Super Bowl champion, Payton stepped down before this season. Any team that hired him would have to first provide compensation to the Saints, who still have Payton under contract. The coach said on a national radio show that he expected “the compensation would include a mid-to-late first-round pick … it could be a future one.”

The Panthers have reportedly already met with Payton, who, like all the other initial candidates other than Wilks, comes from the offensive side of the ball. However, the team now appears to be considering other defensive-minded coaches as well, a sign that perhaps Wilks is fading as a candidate. The team spoke to Broncos defensive coordinator Ejiro Evero, and they got permission to speak to 49ers coordinator DeMeco Ryans. That interview was never scheduled, however, due to logistical issues, although the two sides could reportedly circle back later in the process. The team was also rebuffed by Patriots linebacker coach Jerod Mayo.

Payton has expressed a preference to go to a team out west, preferably one with a strong quarterback, so the Panthers appear to

be a long shot to land him, all of which leaves things wide open in the Carolina front office.

Steichen appears to be the current consensus choice as the frontrunner for the job. He’s also interviewed with the Colts and Texans for their jobs. The team is reportedly going to hold a second round of interviews with the finalists for the job and will need to find time in Steichen’s schedule to make that happen.

Earlier this month, as the team embarked on the process, we wrote that the coaching decision was “far too important to get wrong. Again.” As the small gathering of a few candidates has grown to a farflung, multiround search, the urgency of getting it right continues to be high, even as the confidence that it will happen may be starting to dim.

It’s safe to say that Smith would not be happy to visit the arena that bears his name.

Both teams are looking to emerge from the middle of the conference standings

CHUCK BURTON | AP PHOTO

Coach Steve Forbes and the Demon Deacons will host a key ACC game when NC State comes to Winston-Salem on Saturday.

CHRIS SEWARD | AP PHOTO

The Smith Center crowd’s reaction to forward Leaky Black’s ejection following a hard foul that sent NC State guard Terquavion Smith to the hospital is just the latest example of how things have changed in Chapel Hill since the arena’s namesake retired from coaching.

Hornets prepared to be sellers at the trade deadline

By Jesse Deal North State Journal

CHARLOTTE — Sitting near the bottom of the Eastern Conference with a 12-35 record, the Charlotte Hornets are on track to finish the season with one of the NBA’s worst records.

Circumstances have become dire — the Hornets would need two wins for every loss throughout the rest of the schedule just to have a slim chance at receiving the last spot for a play-in game.

Add in LaMelo Ball’s third ankle injury of the season (paired with a lingering wrist injury), Charlotte has likely transitioned from playoff dreaming to positioning itself for the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes in the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery.

Per NBA reporter Marc Stein, the Hornets are expected to “prioritize lottery position” and become sellers ahead of the Feb. 9 trade deadline, with league rumors circulating that the team is prepared to take trade calls for veterans such as Gordon Hayward, Terry Rozier and Kelly Oubre Jr.

While offloading current talent isn’t a requirement for a Charlotte team that has a 14% chance to get the No. 1 pick and a 52.1% shot at a top-four selection (per Tankathon), Hornets general manager Mitch Kupchak and team owner Michael Jordan might be leaning toward a roster rebuild and overhaul.

Of the three Hornets potentially on the trading block, Rozier and Oubre are both more likely to be traded.

With $31.5 million owed to Hayward in 2023-24, it could prove difficult to move the injury-prone forward who has appeared in just 21 games this season and averaged only 13.7 points per game — his lowest scoring rate since 2011-12.

Hayward has generally been a positive for Charlotte when he is actually on the court, but his durability has continued to be an issue dating back to an opening night injury with the Boston Celtics in 2017.

Rozier would be the best player available, although his contract — initially a four-year, $96.3 million deal — has at least two more

guaranteed seasons and could be too steep for some teams. The 28-year-old guard has averaged 21 points, 5.3 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game this season, providing valuable minutes but also struggling with 3-point shot accuracy and on defense.

A playoff-bound team looking to add depth with a sharp-shooter off the bench could do much worse than targeting Oubre, who has posted a career-high 20.2 points per game this season. The former University of Kansas star is currently out of the lineup with a torn ligament in his left hand that required surgery in early Jan-

uary, making it uncertain if he’ll get back on the court by the trade deadline.

With an expiring $12.6 million contract, Oubre might be precisely what an NBA contender is looking for to shore up its roster. His hand injury does complicate the situation, but the strength of his early-season success could make his contract a worthwhile gamble.

PJ Washington and Mason Plumlee are two other Hornets that have their names floated in trade speculation.

Because of the felony domestic violence charge that Miles Bridges faces, Charlotte has been rumored

to be more interested in re-signing Washington now than they were previously. The 24-year-old is set to reach restricted free agency in the offseason, but the Hornets have plenty of salary cap room to match any offer sheet he receives.

Meanwhile, Plumlee has been quietly playing some of the best basketball of his career leading up to the trade deadline, giving the Hornets a shot to sell high to a team that needs center depth.

Backup center Mark Williams recently produced a career-high 17 points, six rebounds and five blocked shots in a 122-117 road victory over Houston, finishing

Charlotte FC’s Anton Walkes dies in Florida boat crash

The 25-year-old was involved in an accident off the coast of Miami

MIAMI — Charlotte FC defender Anton Walkes has died from injuries he sustained in a boat crash off the coast of Miami, authorities said last Thursday.

Walkes, who was 25, was found unconscious and taken to a hospital after the crash between two boats the day before near the Miami Marine Stadium basin, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Walkes was a passenger in one of the boats that crashed, the state agency said.

It was unclear whether anyone else was injured. The agency’s investigation is ongoing.

Walkes, a defender, was entering his second season with Charlotte FC. The team had arrived in Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 9 for its first

HOST from page B1

Georgia, Wisconsin and Rutgers.

Only one of those games was in Winston-Salem, however.

Because home teams tend to get dinged in the NCAA selection committee’s Quad system, many top teams opt to face off in neutral site games rather than scheduling home-and-home series, as they used to, so both teams can get the benefit of a boost in their opponent’s quad rating. However, that means the home schedule is dotted with small conference teams and expected blowouts, or, in the case of UNC, dark arenas. The Tar Heels opened with three mid-majors at home, then went 20 days and five games before playing at home again. The Heels had another 22-day home game drought in their schedule later in the season.

Home teams are pushing their toughest games off campus, which

leg of preseason training and had a friendly scheduled with St. Louis on Saturday. That match was canceled.

helps boost their home record.

Officiating

College basketball officiating has been, to put it nicely, inconsistent so far this season. And studies have shown that the home crowd has an impact on officiating decisions. With vocal capacity crowds at Cameron Indoor, the Dean Dome and a newly reinvigorated Joel Coliseum, it’s no surprise that Duke, UNC and Wake have gotten the benefit of the doubt at home.

It’s worked this year. At home, those three teams have scored an average of 17.9 points from the free-throw line to opponents’ 9.8.

Wake, Carolina and Duke still have an advantage from the line on the road and neutral sites, but it is much eroded — They score 13.3 points per game from the line to opponents’ 12.6.

Those three teams have gotten 23.1 free throw attempts on average in home games to opponents’ 13.7. On the road and at neutral sites, it’s 18.6 attempts to 17.6.

It should come as no surprise that the fouls called also have the same split, with Duke, Carolina and Wake getting whistled for fouls 15.4 ties per game at home to opponents’ 19.8. While away from home, the calls are 17.4 to 17.9.

Duke coach Jon Scheyer has praised the fans at Cameron Indoor Stadium after multiple home games this season.

“What an amazing place to play basketball games,” he said after a recent home win over Miami. “Cameron is one of a kind. I think it showed today.”

There are plenty of teams around the country that have special places where they play their home games, and it’s showing this season more than ever.

“He was a tremendous son, father, partner and teammate whose joyous approach to life touched everyone he met,” Tepper said in a club statement.

Walkes joined Charlotte for the club’s debut MLS season in 2022. He played in 23 matches with 21 starts and had five shots on goal this past season.

“Anton made those around him better people in all areas of life and represented Charlotte FC to the highest standard both on and off the pitch,” Tepper said.

Fans began laying flowers outside of the east gate of Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium last Thursday. A vigil was held there in the early evening, and the team had a celebration of Walkes’ life Tuesday afternoon at Bank of America Stadium.

Walkes began his career with English Premier League club Tottenham and also played for Portsmouth before signing with Atlanta

8 of 10 from the field in less than 19 minutes of work off the bench. With the Charlotte rookie beginning to display the talent that made him the 15th overall pick out of Duke, the Hornets’ front office will need to gauge how valuable Plumlee will be to the team’s future.

One thing is for certain — the first half of the 2022-23 season was a trainwreck for reintroduced coach Steve Clifford and his team. The looming trade deadline gives the Hornets a chance to reappraise multiple player contracts that will affect the team’s trajectory in years to come.

United in the MLS, where he spent three seasons.

The MLS released a statement saying “there are no words to describe the sorrow of everyone in Major League Soccer today.”

“Anton was a talented and dedicated player who was loved by his teammates and fans,” the statement said.

In 2016, a boat crash off Miami Beach killed Major League Baseball player Jose Fernandez, a star pitcher for the Miami Marlins. Fernandez and two other people died when their 32-foot vessel slammed into a jetty, according to authorities.

Charlotte FC teammate Jaylin Lindsey said he was “heartbroken” to learn of Walkes’ death.

“Fly high my brother, you’re the best teammate I could’ve asked for,” Lindsey posted on Twitter. “Love you man.”

Tottenham Hotspur also tweeted: “We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of former player, Anton Walkes. The thoughts of everyone at the Club are with his family and friends at this incredibly sad time.”

Charlotte FC owner David Tepper said all at the club were “devastated by the tragic passing of Anton Walkes.”

Charlotte’s starting lineup could look much different after Feb. 9

RANDALL BENTON | AP PHOTO

Hornets forward Kelly Oubre Jr.’s career season and reasonable contract make him a prime candidate to be targeted by contenders ahead of the NBA trade deadline.

MICHAEL WOODS | AP PHOTO

Drew Pember and UNC Asheville are just 7-6 on the road, including a loss at Arkansas, but the Bulldogs are a perfect 8-0 at Kimmel Arena.

NELL REDMOND | AP PHOTO

An image of Charlotte FC’s Anton Walkes is shown on Bank of America Stadium following his death from injuries sustained in a boat crash off the coast of Miami last week.

an eleventh-hour agreement with Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell and some Democrats tasking a “Super Committee” to recommend further federal reductions ensured there would be no debt default.

Spooked by the political crisis in Washington, the credit markets downgraded the nation’s credit ranking for the first time, upping the costs of future borrowing.

The Biden White House appears to have drawn the conclusion that it’s not worth negotiating with new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who won a slim GOP majority in last November’s midterm elections and who may — or may not — be able to deliver the votes on any debt ceiling deal.

“Look, lowering the deficit has always been a top priority,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday at the White House.

She said Biden, a Democrat, has “always said he is happy to talk to anyone who wants to deal with that in a responsible way.”

“But preventing the default,” she said, “is a separate matter.”

Biden is scheduled to meet Tuesday with Democratic congressional leaders at the White House and is planning to invite McCarthy in the future.

McCarthy has been trying to push Biden to the table. “I think it’s arrogance to say, ‘Oh, we’re not going to negotiate anything,’” the speaker told the AP recently at the Capitol.

McCarthy has already shown how hard it will be to lead his majority -- it took 15 ballots just to make him the House speaker in the face of resistance from right-flank Republicans.

To win over the holdouts, McCarthy promised his detractors he would fight to bring federal spending back to fiscal 2022 levels — an 8% reduction, or 17% if defense military spending is spared.

In pushing McCarthy to drive a hard bargain in debt talks, House Republicans may be taking a lesson from the tea party era that one way to force their leadership’s hand is to threaten his ouster if he caves.

During his campaign to become speaker, McCarthy also agreed to the hard-right demand to reinstate a House rule that allows a single lawmaker to file a “motion to vacate the chair,” essentially a House vote to oust the speaker.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., all but dared McCarthy on Monday to put the GOP’s proposed spending reductions on the table. “If Republicans are talking about draconian cuts, they have an obligation to show Americans what those cuts are, and let the public react,” he said.

But it’s not clear if the proposed fiscal 2022 spending cuts, or any, would win over McCarthy’s hard-right flank to raise the debt ceiling.

One major difference compared to 2011 is that “Republicans have not coalesced” around a unified position, said Rohit Kumar, who was an aide to McConnell during that showdown.

“At this point, I think it’s unclear what could get 218 Republican votes in conjunction with a debt limit increase, even just as an opening bid,” said Kumar, now an executive with the tax services firm PwC, referring to the tally of votes typically needed to pass House legislation.

Google axes 12,000 jobs as layoffs spread across tech sector

LONDON — Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who also leads its parent company Alphabet, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog.

It is the company’s biggest-ever round of layoffs and adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

He said the layoffs reflect a “rigorous review” carried out by Google of its operations.

The jobs being eliminated “cut across Alphabet, product areas,

functions, levels and regions,” Pichai said. He said he was “deeply sorry” for the layoffs.

Regulatory filings illustrate how Google’s workforce swelled during the pandemic, ballooning to nearly 187,000 people by late last year from 119,000 at the end of 2019.

Pichai said that Google, founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, was “bound to go through difficult economic cycles.”

“These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” he wrote. He called out the company’s investments in artificial intelligence as an area of opportunity.

There will be job cuts in the U.S. and in other unspecified countries, according to Pichai’s letter.

Tech companies that “not long ago were the darlings of the stock market” have been forced to freeze hiring and cut jobs in preparation for an economic downturn, said a note from Victoria Scholar, an analyst with U.K.-based Interactive Investor.

“Digital spending is suffering, and ad revenues are falling with it,” she wrote.

Just this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts, or nearly 5% of its workforce. Amazon

said this month it is cutting 18,000 jobs, although that’s a fraction of its 1.5 million strong workforce, while business software maker Salesforce is laying off about 8,000 employees, or 10% of the total.

Last fall Facebook parent Meta announced it would shed 11,000 positions, or 13% of its workers.

Elon Musk slashed jobs at Twitter after after he acquired the social media company last fall.

Those job cuts are hitting smaller players as well. U.K.-based cybersecurity firm Sophos laid off 450 employees, or 10% of its global workforce. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase cut 20% of its workforce, about 950 jobs, in its second round of layoffs in less than a year.

Employment in the U.S. has

been resilient despite signs of a slowing economy, and there were another 223,000 jobs added in December. Yet the tech sector grew exceptionally fast over the last several years due to increased demand as employees began to work remotely.

CEOs of a number of companies have taken blame for growing too fast, yet those same companies, even after the latest round of job cuts, remain much larger than they were before the economic boom from the pandemic began.

“I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Pichai wrote.

While the tech layoffs are “shocking numbers,” their effect on tech industry employment is “nowhere near as bad as what it seems,” said John Blevins, an adjunct professor at Cornell University’s business school.

“These workers who were laid off will readily get new jobs,” most likely at smaller tech companies, Blevins said. “They’re coming with high credentials from these big firms. That knowledge will be transferred and will actually work to everyone’s benefit.”

In their layoff announcements, both Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the importance of capitalizing on their advances in artificial intelligence technology, reflecting renewed competition between the tech giants sparked by Microsoft’s growing partnership with the San Francisco startup OpenAI.

Shares of Alphabet Inc., based in Mountain View, California, rose more than 4% last week.

Virginia, Amazon announce $35 billion data center plan

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Amazon Web Services plans to invest $35 billion in new data centers in Virginia under a deal with the state, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday.

Millions of dollars in incentives to close the deal still require legislative approval, but General Assembly leaders in both parties expressed support in a news release issued by Youngkin’s office.

Still, data centers have become a politically volatile topic, particularly in northern Virginia, where the structures are increasingly common and where neighbors are voicing noise and environmental concerns.

Data centers house the computer servers and hardware required to support modern internet use, and demand continues to increase. But the data centers require high-powered fans and extensive cooling capacity that can generate noise. They also consume huge amounts of electricity that can require construction of high-voltage transmission lines to support them.

Bills proposed in the legislature this year would increase regulate where centers could be located.

The governor’s office said the locations of the data centers, to be built by 2040, will be determined at a later date. But tech companies prefer northern Virginia because it is close to the historical backbone of the internet, and proximity to those connection points provides nanoseconds of advantage that are of importance to tech companies that rely on the servers to support financial transactions, gaming technology and other time-sensitive applications.

Bill Wright, a Prince William County resident who opposed a

massive data center expansion recently approved by the county’s Board of Supervisors over considerable community opposition, said Friday’s announcement shows that “the influence of big tech money has become intoxicating to our politicians.”

He said that he does not object to data centers in and of themselves and hopes that the state will place them in areas that don’t harm the environment, and in rural areas where jobs are needed. But he expressed skepticism that the state is willing to stand up to tech companies that want the centers in northern Virginia.

“Northern Virginia is being overwhelmed by these things,” Wright said. “We may as well start calling ourselves the Commonwealth of Amazon.”

Suzanne Clark, a spokeswoman the the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, said Amazon Web Services is exploring several site locations “in collaboration with the Commonwealth” but did

not specify any sites.

Northern Virginia has been a tech hub since the formation of the internet, and now hosts more data centers than the next five largest U.S. markets combined, according to the Northern Virginia Technology Council. They have also proven to be a cash cow for local governments that embrace them — data centers now provide for more than 30 percent of the general fund budget of Loudoun County, a suburb of the nation’s capital with more than 400,000 residents.

Another data center opponent, Elena Schlossberg with the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, expressed dismay that Youngkin felt emboldened to announce a data center deal in a year when state and local officials are all on the election ballot in Virginia — and as community concern over data centers is growing.

“That is just mind-boggling that he does not see that communities are uniting” in opposition to data centers, she said.

In a tweet, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said $35 billion represents the largest capital investment in Virginia history. In terms of jobs, the governor’s office said it is expected to generate more than 1,000 jobs across the state. That pales in comparison to the 25,000 jobs associated with Amazon’s decision in 2018 to build a second headquarters in Arlington County.

The deal calls for Amazon to receive incentives from a new Mega Data Center Incentive Program, as well as a grant of up to $140 million for workforce development site improvements and other costs. Both will require legislative approval.

The exact amount of the grant under the incentive program will depend on how many jobs are created, according to the enabling legislation under consideration by the General Assembly. It will also include temporary exemptions from a sales and use tax levied on data centers in Virginia.

State Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, is sponsoring legislation that would restrict the placement of data centers near natural or historic resources. Petersen said Virginia risks being overwhelmed by data centers if protections aren’t put in place.

“In my opinion, the data centers are short-term financial gains with long-term environmental consequences. Industrial buildings with no actual workers are not the economy of the future,” he said. “In fact, they may well be obsolete in a decade. Meanwhile, we are losing valuable farmland and historic sites.”

An Amazon Web Services spokesman declined to comment on the record over how many data centers are planned and Amazon’s preferences for where to locate them.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai

The Associated Press

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO, FILE

The logo of Google is displayed on a carpet at the entrance hall of Google France in Paris.

AP PHOTO,

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin delivers his State of the Commonwealth address to a joint session of the Virginia legislature in the House chamber in Richmond, Va., Jan. 11, 2023.

Jaguar F-Pace SVR

The Hot Hatch, All Grown Up

By Jordan Golson North State Journal

SAN DIEGO — I love a good hot hatch. The combination of practicality and zoom zoom performance is a winner for me.

As much fun as my Mazda3 hatchback was in my twenties, at some point, you have to grow up and buy something a little more adult. And, once you reach a certain age, you might find yourself wanting a luxury SUV of some kind.

But what if, despite being a “responsible adult,” you still have that hot hatch itch? That’s why the performance SUV exists, and nearly every luxury manufacturer offers one. One of my favorites is this week’s test car, the Jaguar F-Pace SVR.

The F-Pace is a somewhat dull luxury SUV… Until you put a supercharged 5-liter V8 making 550 hp under the hood. Mix in some bonkers styling cues, including 22inch wheels, aerodynamic front and rear bumpers, side skirts, and an upgraded chassis tuned for performance (including enormous 15inch disc brakes), when suddenly you’ve hot hatchified the F-Pace into a raucous family hauler.

It’ll win you a good number of red light drag races — or at least put a smile on your face thanks to the glorious SVR active exhaust, complete with a button that makes the exhaust louder that should permanently be set to “ON.”

To be sure, the sport-tuned suspension is not exactly comfortable on rough, pothole-strewn roads. But if you’re the type to drop more than $90,000 on a 500+ horsepower luxury SUV, do you care? No, you do not. If you want plush comfort, stay far away from the letters SVR.

Mercedes Benz, Audi, BMW, and even Volvo make fancy performance versions of all their SUVs. But the Jag feels a bit different. More memorable, even if I can’t quite tell you why. The quad exhaust pipes are borrowed from the terrific F-Type sports car (as is the engine), and perhaps this SUV is best described as a four-door version of that sports car.

If the F-Type is a midlife-crisis car, the F-Pace SVR is an I’vecome-to-terms-with-my-mortality-but-I’m-still-young-at-heart car. It’s the SUV you buy when you pine for a gloriously pointless sports coupe but still want to be able to go grocery shopping and fit luggage and four humans inside.

And the inside is lovely, as is the case with most vehicles from Jaguar Land Rover. Jag has fallen by the wayside a bit as JLR has focused on revamping the Land Rover lineup with great vehicles like the new Defender, Range Rover, and Range Rover Sport — but the F-Pace has reaped many of the benefits.

A beautiful 11-inch touchscreen running JLR’s Pivi Pro infotainment system dominates the dash, including support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto (and it’s one of the best-looking screens when you’re using CarPlay, I should add). I like the big knurled chrome knobs for adjusting the temperature, but I don’t love that you need to press them in and turn them to adjust the heated and ventilated seats.

It’s a confounding control scheme, and it’s far too easy to assume the car doesn’t have heated seats than to notice the tiny little seat indicators on the controls.

Seat heaters should be prominent and easy to find, not buried away. That said, I can find fault with nearly any vehicle’s interior controls, so this is far from a dealbreaker.

Perhaps the best thing about the Jaguar F-Pace SVR is that it simply isn’t ubiquitous, which is nice since SUVs from BMW and Mercedes can be found all over any well-to-do town. Though Jaguar (correctly) has a questionable reputation for quality, it’s not likely that many buyers of this one will keep it for 150,000 miles, so they won’t particularly care.

The SVR, short for Special Vehicle Rating, does what you would hope: start with a staid luxury SUV and injects it with excitement, oomph, a glorious exhaust note, and more than a small amount of hot hatchery.

Who could say no to that?

property being located at 1047 Hearth Lane Southwest, Concord, North Carolina.

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 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

PHOTOS COURTESY JAGUAR

pen & paper pursuits

sudoku solutions

from January 18, 2023

22 SP 1861

NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE SALE

NORTH CAROLINA, WAKE COUNTY

Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed by Wendy T. Dyer to Angela M. Burton, Trustee(s), which was dated October 24, 2016 and recorded on October 24, 2016 in Book 16577 at Page 2594, Wake County Registry, North Carolina. Default having been made of the note thereby secured by the said Deed of Trust and the undersigned, Trustee Services of Carolina, LLC, having been substituted as Trustee in said Deed of Trust, and the holder of the note evidencing said default having directed that the Deed of Trust be foreclosed, the undersigned Substitute Trustee will offer for sale at the courthouse door of the county courthouse where the property is located, or the usual and customary location at the county courthouse for conducting the sale on February 8, 2023 at 10:00 AM, and will sell to the highest bidder for cash the following described property situated

in the above-referenced deed of trust and because of default in payment of the secured debt and failure to perform the agreements contained therein and, pursuant to demand of the holder of the secured debt, the undersigned will expose for sale at public auction at the usual place of sale at the Wake County courthouse at 11:00AM on February 1, 2023, the following described real estate and any improvements situated thereon, in Wake County, North Carolina, and being more particularly described in that certain Deed of Trust executed Wilma O. Zipf and Donald Joseph Zipf, Jr., dated October 6, 1995 to secure the original principal amount of $119,920.00, and recorded in Book 6704 at Page 51 of the Wake County Public Registry. The terms of the said Deed of Trust may be modified by other instruments appearing in the public record. Additional identifying information regarding the collateral property is below and is believed to be accurate, but no representation or warranty is intended. Address of property: 1 129

in Wake County, North Carolina, to wit:

Being that property in the County of Wake, State of North Carolina, comprising a portion of the condominium known as 1300 ST. MARY’S, a Condominium, said condominium having been established by that certain Declaration of Condominium for 1300 St. Mary’s Condominium, dated August 23, 2016, and recorded in Book 16503, Page 1278, Wake County, North Carolina Registry, on August 23, 2016, (hereinafter the “Declaration”) and being more particularly described as follows:

BEING KNOWN AND DESIGNATED AS Unit 406 of 1300 ST. MARY’S, a condominium, as shown on plats and plans of 1300 ST. MARY’S, a Condominium, recorded in Condominium File No. 2016, Pages 146 through 156, Wake County Registry.

This conveyance is subject to the Declaration, as may be amended.

Together with the undivided interest in the Common Elements allocated to said Unit by the Declaration as amended from time to time and all rights and easements appurtenant to

Woodbrook Way, Garner, NC 27529 Tax Parcel ID: 0134424 Present Record Owners: The Estate of Wilma O. Zipf The record owner(s) of the property, according to the records of the Register of Deeds, is/are The Estate of Wilma O. Zipf. 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 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 offered for sale. Any and all responsibilities or liabilities arising out of or in any way relating to any such condition expressly are disclaimed. This sale is subject to all prior liens and

said Unit as specifically enumerated in the Declaration and any amendments thereto.

Subject to all the terms, provisions, conditions, obligations, limitations, restrictions and easements binding upon the Units and Unit Owners as more particularly set forth in the Declaration and any amendment thereto. Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record. Said property is commonly known as 1300 St Mary’s St, Unit 406, Raleigh, NC 27605.

A Certified Check ONLY (no 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

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 Steven A. Hite and wife, Naomi Hite.

encumbrances and unpaid taxes and assessments including any transfer tax associated with the foreclosure. A deposit of five percent (5%) of the amount of the bid or seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), whichever is greater, is required from the highest bidder and must be tendered in the form of certified funds at the time of the sale. Cash will not be accepted. This sale will be held open ten days for upset bids as required by law. After the expiration of the upset period, all remaining amounts are IMMEDIATELY DUE AND OWING. Failure to remit funds in a timely manner will result in a Declaration of Default and any deposit will be frozen pending the outcome of any re-sale. If the sale is set aside for any reason, the Purchaser at the sale shall be entitled only to a return of the deposit paid. The Purchaser shall have no further recourse against the Mortgagor, the Mortgagee, the Substitute Trustee or the attorney of any of the foregoing.

SPECIAL NOTICE FOR LEASEHOLD TENANTS residing at the property: be advised that an Order

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 WENDY T. DYER, 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

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.

for Possession of the property may be issued in favor of the purchaser. Also, if your lease began or was renewed on or after October 1, 2007, be advised that you may terminate the rental agreement upon 10 days written notice to the landlord. You may be liable for rent due under the agreement prorated to the effective date of the termination. The date of this Notice is December 20, 2022.

Jason K. Purser, NCSB# 28031 Andrew Lawrence Vining, NCSB# 48677 Morgan R. Lewis, NCSB# 57732

Attorney for LLG Trustee, LLC, Substitute Trustee LOGS Legal Group LLP 10130 Perimeter Parkway, Suite 400 Charlotte, NC 28216 (704) 333-8107 | (704) 333-8156 Fax | www.LOGS. com 19-107715

[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.: 22-14336-FC01

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.

the sale. Following the expiration of the statutory upset bid period, all the remaining amounts are immediately

NORTH CAROLINA, WAKE COUNTY

Under and by virtue of a Power of Sale contained in that certain Deed of Trust executed

FOLLOWS: BEING ALL OF LOT 37 IN HUNTDELL SUBDIVISION, PHASE II-C, AS SHOWN ON THAT MAP RECORDED IN BOOK OF MAPS 1998, PAGE 473, WAKE COUNTY REGISTRY.

Commonly known as 1484 Huntdell Main Drive Wendell, NC 27591.

However, by showing this address no additional coverage is provided.

Save and except any releases, deeds of release or prior conveyances of record.

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

Said property is commonly known as 1484 Huntdell Main Drive, Wendell, NC 27591.

A certified check only (no 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.

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

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.: 19-11972-FC01 18 SP 2047

To the best of the knowledge and belief of the undersigned, the current owner(s) of the property is/are Fatima T. Harris.

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 O ctober 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.: 12-05637-FC03

WHAT’S HAPPENING

10th annual Carolina

Coyote Classic returns to Stanly County

The 10th annual Carolina Coyote Classic is returning to Stanly County this February 1719. This yearly contest is one of the nation’s biggest coyote hunting events, and this year, over $10,000 cash and prizes will be awarded. The Carolina Coyote Classic is made up of two separate events: the Coyote Derby and the Fat Dog Contest. The Coyote Derby is a competition to see who can kill the most coyotes during the weekend. The Fat Dog Contest, however, is to see who can kill the biggest coyote in the tournament. When this event was launched in 2013, it was only open to hunters in the Carolinas. The Coyote Classic is now open to hunters from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Each team must follow the state laws in the state they are hunting, and they must take and submit photos of each harvest as soon as they take place. The weigh-in is set to take place at the American Legion Post 76 in Albemarle on Sunday, February 19, between 9 am and noon. For more details, please visit https://704outdoors. tv/carolina-coyote-classic/.

Starnes to be named Stanly Chamber’s Citizen of the Year

When the Stanly County Chamber of Commerce holds its next meeting in February, Gene Starnes will officially be named the 2022 Citizen of the Year. Starnes, who was informed by the 2019 Citizen of the Year, Peter Ascuitto, this past Wednesday, will be the 25th recipient of this honor. Ascuitto wrote on Facebook, “As with the tradition, since the last recipient (2019 –Covid halted the 2020 and 2021 Programs), I got to do the honors of giving the good news to Gene.”

Starnes is perhaps best known for having owned and operated his family business, Starnes Jewelers, since 1976. Last spring, Starnes retired and was presented with the key to the city of Albemarle. Following his retirement, Chris Bramlett (Starnes’ brotherin-law) took over operations and changed the store name to Starnes Bramlett Jewelers. Congratulations, Gene Starnes!

State lawmakers propose power grid protections after attacks

RALEIGH — When gunshots at two electrical substations cut power to thousands of central North Carolina homes for several days in early December, Republican state Rep. Ben Moss watched his vibrant district full of family farms, small businesses and sprawling golf courses become “a ghost town.”

After the latest attack last week on a substation in Randolph County, northeast of Charlotte, Moss is urging fellow lawmakers to prioritize new legislation that would secure the state’s critical infrastructure when the legislative session begins in earnest this week. He’s among the first state legislators to propose power grid protections this year amid a surge in attacks on U.S. substations, primarily in the Carolinas and Pacific Northwest.

The recent attacks in Moore County, North Carolina, and others in Washington, Oregon, South

Carolina and Nevada, have underscored the vulnerability of the nation’s far-flung electrical grid, which security experts have long warned could be a target for domestic extremists.

Lawmakers in at least two affected states — North Carolina and South Carolina — have begun proposing remedies.

“I don’t want to see anybody else go through what Moore (County) did,” said Moss, a 2024 candidate for state labor commissioner whose district saw a peak of more than 45,000 customers lose power. “When the power goes out, you don’t have heat, don’t have food, can’t get fuel or some medications, the people are unsafe.”

Moss is drafting legislation, obtained in its preliminary form by The Associated Press, that would require utilities to provide 24hour security at substations, which transform high-voltage electricity into the lower voltages that power

communities. Security provisions would vary across sites, some of which are already gated with nearby cameras while others are more exposed.

He considers the bill “a conversation opener” between lawmakers, utilities and security experts to help the General Assembly identify cost-effective defenses that wouldn’t drive up consumer prices.

His call for increased surveillance comes as questions linger about the Moore County shootings.

The FBI is still seeking information and no arrests have been made.

Federal regulators in December ordered a review of physical security standards across the nation’s vast electricity transmission network following the attacks in North Carolina. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which oversees the nation’s bulk power system, has until early April to submit a report and recommend possible improve-

Stanly county commissioners pass resolution for DOT project in Oakboro

By Jesse Deal Stanly County Journal

ALBEMARLE — In a unanimous vote, the Stanly County Board of Commissioners recently passed support for the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s plan to renovate the intersection of N.C. Highway 205 and Big Lick/Liberty Hill Church Road in Oakboro.

With a target date set for this upcoming spring, the NCDOT is slated to change the intersection — currently a two-way stop — into a four-way stop before transitioning it into a future roundabout in late 2025 or early 2026, according to Travis Preslar from the NCDOT District 10 office in Albemarle.

Preslar gave a presentation at the commissioners’ Jan. 17 meeting, highlighting his department’s goal to confront congestion issues and accidents at the intersection by revising the traffic pattern.

Because there are no left turn lanes on N.C. 205, traffic turning left queues up traffic behind it while side streets must wait for

gaps in mainline traffic; there have been 15 crashes at that location — including seven angles, three left-turn, and one headon crash — between the dates of Nov. 1, 2015, and Oct. 31, 2020.

Prior to the board’s vote of approval, the town of Oakboro had supported both phases of this project via resolution.

Commissioner Bill Lawhon asked Preslar if the NCDOT had engaged in discussions with the property owners who will be affected by the changes.

“I’m not aware of any specific discussions yet,” Preslar replied. “We do engage in various levels of public involvement when we do just about any project. We know that the gas station (Oakboro Express, located at 1533 N. Main St.) has some future work they want to do. And we’re in coordination with them to some extent, and we’ll continue that as well as approach other property owners in the project limits.”

Lawhon inquired again about the NCDOT’s role in the project, noting that the department had not always presented resolu-

tions to the board before taking actions — a four-way stop was controversially installed at N.C. Hwy. 73 and Millingport Road in June 2022.

“If this is the level of involvement you guys would like, then we would really like to provide that,” Preslar said. “We want to involve everybody we can in our projects. Our projects are not secrets. We want people to provide input. We want people to support our projects because we’re here to deliver safety and efficiency improvements in our transportation system, and we can’t do that without everybody involved.”

Commissioner Brandon King followed up with his view that the NCDOT didn’t seek enough local support before enacting the intersection change in Millingport and then “tried to throw it back on the commissioners to a certain degree.”

Commissioner Peter Asciutto, a member of the Rocky River Rural Planning Organization board, disagreed with King’s

ments.

Manny Cancel, a NERC senior vice president and the CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said the situation demands more communication and collaboration between the different levels of government, industry leaders and law enforcement.

“The frequency has increased, the targeting has increased,” Cancel said. “What we’ve seen are patterns of clusters ... or assets that are in proximity to each other being repeatedly targeted.”

Utilities in South Carolina — where gunshots were fired near a Duke Energy facility but caused no damage days after the North Carolina shootings — are asking lawmakers to increase penalties for intentionally destroying electrical infrastructure or other utility property.

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Workers set up an automated display warning drivers on NC211 of the power outage in the area and how to approach the upcoming intersections in Southern Pines, Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. The North Carolina lawmaker who represents a county where gunfire at electrical substations cut power to thousands in December is pushing legislation to increase power grid security when the legislative session begins in earnest next week.

The Associated Press

The Walt Disney Co. is making several changes at its domestic theme parks, including some easier reservations, in order to improve the public perception of its business.

Among the changes: it will cease charging for overnight self-parking at its Walt Disney World resorts; Walt Disney World annual passholders will be able to visit the theme parks after 2 p.m. without needing a park reservation (except on Saturdays and Sundays at Magic Kingdom) and individuals buying its Genie+ service will receive digital downloads of their ride photos taken in the park on the day of their purchase for no additional charge.

Like many companies, Disney struggled during the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its theme parks were shut down for some time, with the closures caus-

ing delays in the construction of various projects. Concurrently, former CEO Bob Chapek received a lot of criticism for increased prices and other moves that the company made, including the end of the Magical Express bus service from the airport in Orlando, Florida to Walt Disney World resorts, the implementation of the Genie planning and ride reservation system and its theme park reservation system.

Disney theme park loyalists have not shied away from their criticism of the moves that have occurred over the past two years, with some even bemoaning on social media that “the magic is gone.”

One big recent change is the return of Bob Iger to the Burbank, California-based company. Iger replaced Chapek as CEO in November and just a few weeks later was seen visiting the Disneyland and California Adventure

theme parks in Anaheim, California with Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products.

Disney is now making known that it is listening to its visitors. On Tuesday the company made a flurry of announcements that were largely met with great fanfare by theme park goers.

Disney had started charging for overnight self-parking at its resorts at Disney World in 2018.

It went back to offering complimentary overnight parking as of Tuesday evening. Disney resort guests continue to receive complimentary standard parking at Disney World theme parks.

“This is a Disney difference many of you have asked us to bring back, and we’re happy to reintroduce it to make your vacation a little easier and more affordable,” the company said in a statement on its Disney Parks blog.

The company did not give spe -

cific dates for the annual passholder or Genie+ changes, only to say that they will start in the next few months.

“Please know we will keep listening to you and adapting as we focus on making the guest experience even better for more people who visit us,” the company said.

Disney also made some other announcements that theme park goers have been anxiously waiting for, including the return of its “Happily Ever After” nighttime show at Magic Kingdom on April 3 and an official opening date of April 4 for its TRON Lightcycle/ Run roller coaster at the same park.

Changes are also afoot at Disneyland. They include allowing people who buy a Magic Key pass or a Park Hopper ticket the ability to switch between its Disneyland and California Adventure parks two hours earlier, at 11 a.m. Pacific Time, beginning on Feb. 4. It’s also adding more dates for people to buy its $104 one-day, one-park tickets and giving complimentary digital photo downloads for any PhotoPass available ride for all ticketed park guests on the Disneyland app starting Feb. 4, for the length of its Disney100 celebration.

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

♦

HATHCOCK, WHITNEY NICHOLE (W /F/33), BREAKING OR ENTERING (M), 1/23/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦ CARVER, AMANDA LEIGH (W /F/39), HABITUAL LARCENY, 1/22/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

♦

LANEY, FREDERICK EUGEN (B /M/43), FELONY LARCENY, 01/20/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

AKERS, CATHERYN CHRISTEENA (W /F/32), RESISTING PUBLIC OFFICER, 01/19/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

MAGNESS, MARCUS KEVIN (B /M/19), INJURY TO PERSONAL PROPERTY, 01/18/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

♦

OAKLEY, CALEB NATHANIEL (W /M/33), MISDEMEANOR LARCENY, 01/18/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

THOMAS, JAZMYNE LURIA (B /F/29), ASSAULT ON GOVT OFFICIAL/EMPLY, 01/18/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

♦

♦

ALMOND, LAURA ELIZABETH (W /F/42), CRUELTY TO ANIMALS (M), 01/17/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

BIVENS, TIMOTHY RAYNARD (B /M/61), FELONY PROBATION VIOLATION, 01/17/2023, Stanly County Sheriff’s Office

A state Senate proposal would set a sliding scale based on how much damage is done — if it costs more than $25,000 to fix equipment and cover losses, the perpetrator could face up to 20 years in prison, double the current 10-year maximum.

A maximum 25-year penalty would apply if anyone died or their health was endangered by a resulting outage.

Dominion Energy South Carolina President Keller Kissam said the state saw at least 12 incidents of people intentionally damaging equipment last year.

“You want to demoralize people, you put them in the dark,” he said.

Some state senators worried that the law could be used against hunters who accidentally damage utility equipment. Kissam agreed but said sometimes that damage isn’t an accident, as hunters use equipment to set their gun sights or as target practice. A subcommittee plans to review the bill further in a few weeks.

Another South Carolina bill seeks stiffer penalties for destruction caused specifically by a gun or explosive.

Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the U.S. Department of

Homeland Security, said that although harsher penalties for equipment sabotage may be a deterrent, state legislatures can best support utilities by freeing up funds for additional security measures.

“Specifically, ensuring monies for perimeter security, cameras and alarms,” said Harrell, who now oversees security for an energy company that services multiple states.

Construction of all new security features would cost about $2.5 million per site, he said. But many substations already have fencing, which reduces the cost significantly. About $800,000 can outfit a single substation with pan-tilt-zoom cameras, intrusion detection and an access control system.

The Pacific Northwest has become a hotspot for these physical attacks, with Washington and Oregon utilities reporting at least 15 incidents in 2022, including 10 in the last two months of the year.

Attackers hit four Washington substations on Christmas Day, forcing entry, setting fire to equipment and temporarily cutting power to thousands of customers.

Michael Furze, director of the Washington State Energy Office, said that although no legislation specifically addressing substation security has been introduced,

broader bipartisan discussions are underway about grid resilience.

Washington is already revamping its electrical infrastructure under the Clean Energy Transformation Act, which commits the state to an electricity supply free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Physical and cybersecurity updates are in the works as the electrical grid undergoes significant changes to meet new standards, Furze said.

“’Security by design’ is a core component of these systems,” he said.

In neighboring Oregon, the state’s Public Utility Commission is working with regulated utilities to increase vigilance and explore possible security updates, after gunfire attacks damaged two substations southeast of Portland in late November. Spokesperson Kandi Young said the commission monitors proposed legislation and is not aware of any related bills introduced this session.

And in Nevada, where a man set fire to a solar power unit this month, a search of the 138 bill draft requests with pre-filed text found none that would explicitly address electrical infrastructure security. But with more than two weeks until the biennial session begins, most legislative proposals have yet to be formally introduced.

opinion, stating that the NCDOT has taken local input into consideration both currently and in the past.

“I don’t think a roundabout was originally planned,” Ascuitto said of the new project in Oakboro. “It might have been just a four-way stop, but now they’re adding a roundabout, so they take feedback. I think a lot of it has to do with the new trucks and traffic coming through with what’s going on. Charlotte Pipe coming out there is going to have an impact on the traffic patterns out there…. The NCDOT does listen to people, so I don’t want them to be thrown out of the bus because I’ve seen them make adjustments when they get feedback from people.”

Despite questions and concerns, the resolution was passed unanimously by the board following the presentation.

The Stanly County Board of Commissioners will hold its next meeting on Feb. 6 in the Gene McIntyre Room at Stanly Commons.

Neal

Stanly

AP PHOTO

People visit Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, on April 18, 2022.

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Universal educational vouchers is not a winning policy

Don’t believe the press releases from universal school voucher enthusiasts ― it wasn’t a winning message in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona this past election.

10% of students are not in governmentfunded K-12 institutions in the United States.

The GOP should abandon expanding taxpayer-funded school choice and focus on empowering parents, not expanding the reach of more government. The GOP will be making a big mistake if they decide to enact universal taxpayer-funded school choice policies, which will increase dependency on the government and normalize welfare for all.

Exit polls show that three main groups vote for Democrats ― single women, people with advanced degrees, and welfare recipients. Those who vote Republican are men, married women, and those without advanced degrees.

Marxism is the economic theory where central government controls all funding. You can’t defeat Marxism being taught in the public school system by expanding the Marxist financing mechanism.

The policy of expanding government-funded vouchers will take the “men and married women” category of voters and move them into the “welfare” category. Corey DeAngelis, who is a spokesperson for enacting universal school choice, cites food stamps as a good policy comparison because of its transferability.

Who do those on food stamps generally vote for? Democrats.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona ran on universal school vouchers, and the results were disastrous ― losing state representative seats, governorship, and senate seats. School choice itself is an idea worth supporting but expanding the welfare state to do so is not a winning strategy.

Many proponents of universal taxpayer-

CARTOON BY RUTH LOPEZ

funded school choice call Arizona the gold standard for their bill signed by the Republican governor. If winning elections is something you’d like to do, then clearly, it is gold for democrats, who flipped the governorship. It is still early, but some early results showed that less than 1% of Arizona students left the public school system last year while tens of thousands of previously privately funded students went back to public schools.

“What about the kids? We need to help the kids?” Yes, but universal school choice does not help them. You are not helping the kids when you are creating policy that promotes dependency on the government and increases government control on their lives. If you are embracing government collecting taxes and then using those taxes to pay for private education, you aren’t getting kids out of the public system, you are putting more of them into it because they are being funded by public dollars.

Roughly 10% of students are not in government-funded K-12 institutions in the United States. Imagine if universal school choice is enacted and the number of students who are free of government dependency drops to less than 1%. As adults, they will vote for progressive ideas like Universal Basic Income, singlepayer health care, and a host of other welfare programs because they will be inured to the idea that the government provides funds for their use, not the private sector.

Good governance requires oversight. Oversight requires money and power. As a taxpayer and a conservative, we should demand oversight of how our taxes are being spent. These vouchers literally open the door to your home to more government. You might say that the government wouldn’t do that, but it already does in states such as Alaska, Michigan, and California with more limited vouchers. The laws may be initially passed with limited or no controls, but that will quickly change because good governance demands it.

The good news is we already have true school choice in North Carolina. We don’t need taxpayers to pay for every student and for every school option. You can homeschool or send your kids to a private school or a government institution. Conservatives should promote policies that lower true costs for families, help them keep more of their money in their own pocket, and encourage private and direct private investment in education locally. That is a winning message, not just today but for our future. The kids are depending on you. They are worth it.

Robert Bortins is CEO of Classical Conversations in Southern Pines

Racial reparations solve nothing

The federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States.

THIS WEEK, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad — as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”

This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure to be cured with social engineering.

This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.

Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco’s reparations committee — simply cutting checks — has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President

Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you

have been completely fair.”

To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black.

It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+.

COLUMN | ROBERT BORTINS

COLUMN | BEN SHAPIRO

SIDELINE REPORT

NBA Magic’s Isaac resumes NBA career after missing 2½ years

Orlando, Fla.

Jonathan Isaac finally got back into a game after 2½ years Monday, helping the Magic beat the Boston Celtics 113-98. The 6-foot10 power forward scored 10 points, grabbed three rebounds and added a couple of steals in his limited time on the floor. Isaac originally injured his knee on Jan. 1, 2020. He returned seven months later, but tore his left ACL while playing in his second game in the NBA bubble at Disney World.

Only three Magic players are still on the roster who played with the former Florida State standout before his knee injuries.

GOLF

LIV to stage 3 events on Trump sites; ranking decision looms Knutsford, England

The second year of Saudifunded LIV Golf will be going to three courses owned by former President Donald Trump as part of a 14-event schedule in 2023, according to a report from SI.com. The report said LIV Golf announced its schedule, although the LIV website only said that a full schedule was coming soon. Whether LIV gets world ranking points will be decided by the four major championship and the chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking board.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Georgia transfer Thomas arrested on felony charge Athens, Ga.

Wide receiver Rodarius “Rara” Thomas, who recently transferred to Georgia from Mississippi State, has been arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges. Thomas was booked early Monday on a felony charge of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of family violence battery and was later released on $1,850 bond. Thomas was arrested by University of Georgia police. Thomas was Mississippi State’s leading receiver last season with 626 receiving yards on 44 catches and seven touchdowns. He announced his transfer to Georgia in December shortly before the Bulldogs won their second straight national championship.

MLB Twins acquire veteran OF Taylor from Royals

Minneapolis

The Minnesota Twins acquired veteran outfielder Michael A. Taylor from the Kansas City Royals for two relief pitching prospects.

Taylor should provide depth and defense to Minnesota’s outfield. He batted .254 with nine home runs and 43 RBIs in 414 at-bats last season for the Royals. That was his second year with the club after spending his first seven major league seasons with Washington. Taylor was a Gold Glove winner in his Royals debut in 2021. He gives the Twins a third outfielder on the roster who has won the award, joining Byron Buxton and newcomer Joey Gallo.

Kenseth highlights 3-person NASCAR Hall of Fame induction

the All-Star race.

CHARLOTTE — Two-time Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth finally reached the top rung of his career on Friday night when he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The 50-year-old Kenseth, who drove 18 full seasons in NASCAR before retiring in 2020 with 39 Cup victories and 20 poles, highlighted a class that also included longtime driver Hershel McGriff and crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine.

The driver, who many referred to as “Matt the brat” when he first broke into racing, ranks 21st on NASCAR Cup Series’ career wins list. He won all of the sport’s biggest races including the Daytona 500 in 2009 and 2012, the Coca-Cola 600, the Southern 500 and

“I always looked at my career as a ladder — you always start at the bottom and you hope to climb your way to the top,” Kenseth said in his acceptance speech. “My ladder has hundreds and hundreds of rungs on it. and without any of them, bottom, middle or top — no matter who you fit in my life — I wouldn’t be here without any of you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you all.”

Kenseth’s wife, Katie, and father, Roy, inducted him.

“The internal drive is what put Matt on this stage tonight,” Katie Kenseth said.

Kenseth captured the 2003 Cup Series championship behind a dominating season in which he led the points standings for the final 32 weeks. When the series switched to a playoff format, he reached the postseason in 13 of 14 seasons and finished runner-up twice. He also won 29 Xfinity Series races.

Kenseth talked about learning to love NASCAR by watching his

family race at Jefferson Speedway where he grew up in Wisconsin and begging his father to take him to his uncle Gary’s house so he could help him work on his race cars.

“Racing truly is a family sport,” he said.

Shelmerdine was the crew chief and front tire change for four of Dale Earnhardt’s seven championships. Only two crew chiefs have more premier series titles than Shelmerdine: class of 2012 inductee Dale Inman with eight and Chad Knaus, who will be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration in 2024, with seven.

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver,” Shelmerdine said. “What else can we say about him? When we started together, Dale and I just kind of clicked intuitively.”

The 95-year-old McGriff competed on racetracks for 68 years.

From 1954 until 2018, he participated in 271 races in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West (now ARCA Menards West Series), winning 34 races and posting 100 topfive finishes. He captured the series championship in 1986 at 58 years old and finished second in points in 1985 and 1987.

McGriff spoke at length about his career path, saying he started driving vehicles at age 7.

“I have had a happy life and this induction is just icing on the cake,” McGriff said, tearing up several times during his speech. He joked that he still plans to write a book about his life.

Mike Helton was honored as the Landmark Award winner for outstanding contributions to the sport. Helton was the first person outside the France family to handle NASCAR’s day-to-day operations.

Photographer T. Taylor Warren was named the recipient of the 2023 Squier-Hall Award.

Former Wake player Hamby accuses WNBA’s Aces

The WNBA players’ union said Saturday it will review Dearica Hamby’s complaints about Las Vegas management after the Aces traded the two-time All-Star to the Los Angeles Sparks.

In an Instagram post, the 29-year-old Hamby said the Aces attacked her character and work ethic.

“Being traded is a part of the business,” Hamby posted. “Being lied to, bullied, manipulated, and discriminated against is not.”

A message was left by the AP seeking comment from the Aces.

Hamby agreed to a two-year contract extension with Las Vegas in June. She said in her Instagram post that Aces management said she knew she was pregnant at the time of the deal.

“This is false,” Hamby wrote. “I was told that I was a ‘question mark’ and that it was said that I said I would ‘get pregnant again’ and there was a concern for my level of commitment to the team.”

She also said the Aces said they were concerned Hamby wouldn’t be ready for this season. Hamby said she plans to play this season.

“I remained transparent with everyone within the organization, and yet, my honesty was met with coldness, disrespect, and disregard from members of management,” Hamby wrote. “I have only put this organization first since

day one before any of them were here.”

The Women’s National Basketball Players Association said it would “seek a comprehensive investigation” to ensure that Hamby’s rights under the league’s 2020 labor agreement as well as state and federal laws were not violated.

The Sparks also received the Aces’ first-round pick in 2024

in exchange for the exclusive negotiating rights to Amanda Zahui B., plus the Sparks’ 2024 second-round pick.

“Adding Dearica to our roster plus a future first-round pick was a solid move for us,” Sparks GM Karen Bryant said in a statement. “We’re excited to have another key piece in place as we start free agency.”

The 6-foot-3 Hamby, the sixth overall pick out of Wake Forest in 2015, spent her first eight WNBA seasons with the same franchise, dating to the Aces’ days in San Antonio as the Silver Stars.

Hamby was the WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year in 2019 and 2020. Hamby averaged 9.3 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Aces last season when they won their first WNBA championship. She was limited in the playoffs due to a knee injury.

“Dearica has dedicated eight years of her career to this organization, and played a big role in our success since the team moved to Las Vegas,” Aces general manager Natalie Williams said in a statement. “We’re going to miss her as a teammate, and are grateful for all of her contributions to the Aces over the years.”

Hamby announced at the Aces’ championship parade last September that she was expecting her second child. Hamby’s 5-year-old daughter Amaya accompanied her mother during the 2020 season, which was played in a bubble in Florida because of the pandemic. They were among those featured in the documentary “144.”

Former Dale Earnhardt Sr. crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine and driver Hershel McGriff were also enshrined

The Associated Press

Dale Earnhardt Jr. inducted Shelmerdine, saying “he put my dad on the path to greatness.”

The 2015 sixth-overall pick says the team knew she was pregnant when she signed a contract extension

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Matt Kenseth speaks during his induction into the the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday in Charlotte.

AP PHOTO

Two-time WNBA All-Star Dearica Hamby was traded by the Las Vegas Aces to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday.

of bullying, manipulation

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver.”

Kirk Shelmerdine, former crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Albemarle named home of collegiate wood-bat baseball team

athletics, and outdoor recreation.”

Canucks fire coach Boudreau, hire Tocchet as replacement

“Bruce, there it is!” to the tune of Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)” echoed around the arena as a tribute to the well-respected 68-year-old hockey lifer who ranks among the top regular-season coaches in NHL history.

He’s the second coach Vancouver has fired in under 14 months.

various styles.”

The Canucks have missed the playoffs the past two seasons since reaching the second round in the COVID-19 bubble in 2020.

By Jesse Deal Stanly County Journal

ALBEMARLE — This summer, a new collegiate wood-bat baseball team will be calling Albemarle’s Don Montgomery Park its home.

The city announced on Jan. 23 that its city council has approved a multiyear lease between Albemarle Parks and Recreation and Sullimak Entertainment, which also owns and operates the Winston Salem-based Carolina Disco Turkeys.

BRUCE BOUDREAU has been fired as coach of the Vancouver Canucks, who are again on track to miss the playoffs with another underachieving season.

The team announced the change Sunday, less than a week since president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford said “major surgery” was needed to fix the Canucks, who have only made the playoffs once in the past eight years. Rick Tocchet was hired as Boudreau’s replacement for a Vancouver team that has lost 28 of 46 games this season.

“This was not an easy decision to make but one that we felt was necessary for this franchise,” general manager Patrik Allvin said in a statement thanking Boudreau for his contributions.

Boudreau waved to the crowd after the Canucks’ latest defeat Saturday night, their third in the past four games. Chants of

Boudreau took over in December 2021 when previous coach Travis Green and general manager Jim Benning were let go 25 games into last season.

Assistant Trent Cull was also relieved of his duties, the team said Sunday. Adam Foote was named as an assistant and Sergei Gonchar a defensive development coach on Tocchet’s staff.

Tocchet previously coached the Tampa Bay Lightning for parts of two seasons from 2008-10 and the Arizona Coyotes for four years from 2017-21. He won the Stanley Cup as a player with the Pittsburgh Penguins and then twice as an assistant for them.

“Rick Tocchet brings a wealth of knowledge to this team from both a coach and player perspective,” Allvin said. “He has had more than two decades of coaching experience, guiding teams of

Boudreau was with his fourth NHL organization after stints with Washington, Anaheim and Minnesota. He won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 2007-08 when he was elevated from the minors to coach the Capitals on Thanksgiving and got them to the playoffs.

Teams coached by Boudreau for a full season have made the playoffs nine out of 10 times. His .626 points percentage ranks fourth among coaches with at least 500 games behind the bench, and his 617 wins are tied for 20th in league history.

But a Canucks team in disarray did not give him much of a chance to keep that success going. Rutherford in a news conference Monday said big changes would be coming in the offseason, citing the need for the team to get younger.

They could happen before that, especially with captain Bo Horvat unsigned beyond this season and attracting attention ahead of

The name of the new Albemarle ball club will be introduced later this month.

“We’re very excited to not only bring a team to Albemarle but to do it in a way where the community and our organization each benefit,” Greg Sullivan, president of Sullimak Entertainment, said in a press release. “We’re looking forward to being in Albemarle and Stanly County for many years to come and look forward to being the baseball team for the Uwharrie region, like the Cannon Ballers are to Kannapolis and the Knights are to Charlotte. We’ve already brought on an exciting head coach and several players as we build our first team.”

“We’re thrilled to welcome this new ball club to our city,” Albemarle Mayor Ronnie Michael said. “They’re a wonderful addition to what defines us as a regional destination for entertainment,

The upcoming team — led by Catawba Valley Community College assistant coach Houston Wright — will play independently of a league, hosting more than 20 home games in Albemarle between late May through early August.

A s part of the contract, Don Montgomery Park is slated to receive upgrades such as tabletop and picnic seating additions, a new sound system, updates to the bathroom and concession areas, and additional fencing. In addition to rent, Albemarle will also receive a portion of ticket revenue from the team’s games this summer.

Historically, the eight-acre park located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 52 and Efird Street has been the home for Albemarle Dixie Youth Baseball, Albemarle Babe Ruth Baseball and Albemarle High School Baseball.

“Our parks have always been the place where the community creates memories, especially at the ball field,” said Lisa Kiser, director of Albemarle Parks and Recreation. “Our community now has a chance to experience the best college baseball players in the region competing against other high-level teams. It’s a great opportunity to inspire our young local athletes.”

Any area college baseball players or locals interested in hosting players for the summer (and receiving season passes for their family) are advised to contact team president Greg Sullivan at sullivan.gl@gmail.com.

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey stepping down after this season

MIKE BREY needed only one season to turn Notre Dame from a forgotten program into an NCAA Tournament team.

He spent the next 22 seasons chasing the school’s second Final Four appearance, and this season will be his last chance.

On Thursday, Notre Dame announced Brey would be stepping down at the end of the season after winning a school-record 481 games and leading the program for a school-record 23 years. In a statement, Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick indicated Brey would remain on staff in an as-yet undefined capacity.

“It has been a great run for me and our program over the past two decades, but it is time for a new voice to lead this group into the future,” the 63-year-old Brey said in a statement released by the athletic department. “I want to thank our student-athletes, assistant coaches and support staff who have played such a key role in the culture we have created.”

Notre Dame scheduled a news conference for Friday.

Brey left Delaware in July 2000 after taking the Blue Hens to two NCAA Tournaments in three seasons — something that seemed little more than an afterthought in South Bend, considering that in the nine seasons following Digger Phelps’ retirement in 1991, Notre Dame’s once blue-chip program had been shut out of the NCAA tourney and had earned only three NIT bids.

But the man who served as an assistant under America’s best-known prep coach — Morgan Wootten at Maryland’s DeMatha High School — and under Division I’s winningest college coach, Mike Krzyzewski, helped Notre Dame return to its more glorious days.

Notre Dame snapped a 10-year tourney drought in 2001 and made 13 total tourney appearances under Brey. He won 15 tourney games, tying the school record, and Notre

Dame reached back-to-back Elite Eights in 2015 and 2016.

“That Mike is the winningest coach in the 119-year history of Notre Dame men’s basketball speaks to his skill as a teacher of the game,” Swarbrick said. “His even greater legacy, however, lies in his achievements as an educator and mentor of the young men who played for him. In that sense, he represents this university as well as any coach I have worked with during my time at Notre Dame.”

Brey became a part of the community and excelled on the court, turning the Irish into title contenders in two different conferences.

Three times, he was named Big East coach of the year and won 146 conference games, which still ranks fifth all-time in the league. In 2011, Brey was named The Associated Press coach of the year after leading

the Irish to a 27-7 mark and a 17-0 home record.

Notre Dame moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013 and two years later, Brey won the conference tourney title by defeating Miami, Duke and North Carolina during a 32-6 campaign. The Irish returned to the ACC tourney semifinals in 2016 and the ACC championship game in 2017 and seven of Brey’s players were NBA draft picks.

But lately, it’s been more challenging for Brey and the Irish. After going 24-11 and ending a fiveyear tourney drought last season, the Irish are 9-10 off to a 1-7 start in ACC play.

Brey is 580-321 overall and ranks 50th on the Division I career wins list. He is 481-269 with Notre Dame, a victory total that ranks sixth among active coaches at their current schools.

The former Duke assistant is in his 23rd year with the Irish

The Associated Press

The move to hire the TNT analyst, rumored all season, was finally made

The Associated Press

“We’re very excited to not only bring a team to Albemarle but to do it in a way where the community and our organization each benefit.”

Greg Sullivan, president of Sullimak Entertainment

“It is time for a new voice to lead this group into the future.”

Mike Brey, Notre Dame basketball coach

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey will step down following this season, his 23rd in South Bend.

Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau responds to questions during a news conference following Vancouver’s loss to the Oilers.

Boudreau was fired Sunday morning and replaced with Rick Tocchet.

AP PHOTO

DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS VIA AP

The team’s name will be announced later this month

STATE & NATION

Hockey brawls to debt limit: Emmer wrangles House GOP votes

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The way Republican Rep. Tom Emmer tells it, the lousiest job he ever had — he has a saltier way of describing it — was running the House Republican campaign committee.

But after having helped lead his party back into control of the House in November, the former youth hockey coach now must round up votes from those Republicans, as the majority whip, in order to pass GOP priorities.

Corralling colleagues for their support on the debt ceiling, spending cuts and investigating the Biden administration will be tough work for the third-ranking leader who has served in Congress since 2015. With Republicans holding only 222 seats in the 435-member House, almost everyone is needed to reach the 218 votes needed for approving most bills.

Just agreeing to elect California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the House speaker took 15 ballots.

Emmer was a central negotiator in that effort, hammering out the side-deal to win over holdouts after endless meetings in his first-floor office at the Capitol. It was a crash-course for the budget battles and showdowns ahead.

A look at how the rough-andtumble Minnesotan told The Associated Press he plans to tackle the job.

Speaker’s election as hockey brawl

Before joining Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state legislator. Some of his most applicable professional experience, however, comes from coaching hockey.

When McCarthy failed to win the speaker’s race on the first votes, Emmer convened the holdouts in his still new Capitol office, so bare there are no pictures hanging on the walls.

“Good teams are always going to have differences of opinion,” Emmer said. “If you don’t let them express that, you are never going

to succeed.”

Emmer told the story of a fabled hockey coach who would let players fight it out during practices — almost encouraging it, he said — much the way Republicans nearly came to blows on the House floor during the speaker’s election.

“You know what, these guys actually become closer,” Emmer said.

Bracing for budget battles

Emmer is not part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In fact, some Republicans did not think he was conservative enough for the leadership post.

But he won his own internal GOP election to become the whip, brushing back two challengers. When it came time to broker the deal for McCarthy’s election, Emmer had to win over some of those same conservative holdouts.

One of the many key concessions McCarthy made to earn the votes of his detractors was a commitment to return to federal spending to 2022 budget levels.

Cuts of that size would amount to an 8% reduction in domestic defense, veterans and domestic accounts — or even more, 17%, if the Pentagon money is spared.

The Republicans also agreed to aim for a balanced budget in 10 years.

From Emmer’s point of view, much of what was agreed to with the holdouts is “aspirational.”

“Some might criticize me when I say it’s an aspirational document because they think it’s more than that, and they’re right,” Emmer said. “Because we now have to hold ourselves to this.”

Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and debt ceilings past

One of the biggest challenges Emmer will face is rounding up the votes for the coming debt ceiling showdown.

Congress is being asked by the Treasury Department to raise the nation’s debt cap so it can borrow more money to pay off the nation’s already accruing bills.

House Republicans insist they will not lift that limit without changes in the way the federal government spends money — most likely, cuts in spending levels. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that she expects Congress will ultimately vote to increase the cap. But she said GOP demands for spending cuts in return for backing an increase are “a very irresponsible thing to do” and risk creating a “self-imposed calamity” for the global economy.

Those decades-old spending battles simmer on Capitol Hill, especially for conservatives, which is why the Freedom Caucus and others drove such a hard bargain with McCarthy during the speaker’s race.

“A lot of it was personality issues that have probably been driven from as far back as when John Boehner was the speaker and then Paul Ryan,” Emmer said about dynamics.

Sparing defense cuts

Republicans have different views when it comes to what spending to cut as they try to use the debt ceiling vote to extract their own budget priorities.

While some say they want to see all spending on the table for review, Emmer is among those who believe defense should largely be spared.

“The argument is if you go to FY22 baseline, it affects both domestic and defense — not under Republicans,” he said, referring to 2022 budget levels. “Republicans will look for efficiencies, they’ll look for waste. We aren’t cutting defense. We assured our appropriators and ask our House Armed Services Committee. That’s not what we’re doing.”

March for Life eyes Congress for post-Roe abortion limits

By Calvin Woodward The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A half century after Roe v. Wade, March for Life supporters on Friday celebrated the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the 50-year decision and heralded the political struggle set loose by the court’s decision.

President Joe Biden pledged to do all in his limited power to restore core abortion policies.

The first March for Life since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June came with a new focus. Instead of concentrating their attention on the court, the marchers vowed to push for action from the building directly across the street: the U.S. Capitol.

Congress, movement leaders say, must be warned against making any attempt to curtail the multiple pro-life laws imposed last year in a dozen states.

Tens of thousands spread across a section of the National Mall for speeches, the Capitol Building in sight, then marched.

“For nearly 50 years, you have marched to proclaim the fundamental dignity of women, of their children and of life itself,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose office argued the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, told the crowd. “But this year is different.”

Indeed, with the constitutional victory behind them and lawmakers now the ones to be persuaded, marchers took a new route along

the western face of the Capitol, to their usual destination between that complex and the court.

“I am the post-Roe generation,” read one sign. “Excommunicate Pro-Choice Catholics,” said another. Banners proclaimed “Love Them Both,” meaning mother and child.

Tammy Milligan came dressed as “patriot Wonder Woman” and stood out in the crowd. She said she never thought Roe v. Wade would be overruled in her lifetime, but the fight doesn’t stop there. “We want it to be unthinkable for a woman to have an abortion,” she said.

In a counter-protest outside the court building, 15 or so activists in favor of abortion rights held signs of their own: “Bans off our Bodies,” “Mind your own uterus.” They chanted, “Our bodies do not need advice from priests.”

They were easily outnumbered and surrounded by March for Lifers, but interactions were civil and police did not separate the two camps.

Biden offered his counterpoint in a proclamation recognizing Sunday — Jan. 22 — as the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. “Never before has the Court taken away a right so fun-

damental to Americans,” his statement said. “In doing so, it put the health and lives of women across this Nation at risk.”

“The struggle has changed,” said Marion Landry, 68, who came from North Carolina with her husband, Arthur, 91, for the sixth time. “In some ways you don’t have that central focus anymore. Now it’s back to the states.”

In the absence of Roe v. Wade’s federal protections, abortion laws vary by state.

Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho,

Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.

Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to legal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.

Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.

Pro-life activists also have their eye on the 2024 presidential elections and are essentially vetting prospective candidates over their views on the issue. SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said she met recently with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential leading Republican candidate, and came away “incredibly impressed,” but said it was still too early for her organization to endorse anyone.

She predicted that there will be some “fault lines” among Republican presidential contenders over abortion rights and protections, but warned that any candidate perceived as being soft on the issue will have “disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes, and having done so has very little chance of winning the nomination.”

AP PHOTO

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023.

AP PHOTO

With the U.S. Capitol in the background, anti-abortion demonstrators march toward the U.S. Supreme Court during the March for Life, Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

Randolph record

COUNTY NEWS

Asheboro ABC Board announces availability of grant funds

Last week, the Asheboro ABC Board officially announced the availability of first- and secondquarter 2023 grant funds for the treatment or research of alcoholism and substance abuse. The grants are part of a program established by state lawmakers under NC Statute 18B-806, which requires that at least seven percent of the gross receipts from the stores shall be spent for the treatment, research, or education of alcoholism and substance abuse. Applicants may apply for these funds by submitting the following information to the Asheboro ABC Board before 1 pm on Friday, February 3: organization name and contact information, a brief statement about your organization’s history and mission concerning alcohol and substance abuse, details about whether or not funds or for a one-time or ongoing project (with a description of the project), a budget narrative, and the most recent filed IRS form 990 or 990EZ (for tax-exempt agencies). All grant applications must be signed by the applying entity’s chief executive officer and board chair, or in the case of a governmental agency, the person authorities to request and receive grant money. For more details, please contact the board at abcasheboro@gmail.com.

RCC Board is seeking applicants

The Randolph Community College Board of Trustees announced Friday, January 20, that it is seeking applications and nominations for the position of President. The preferred candidate has a terminal degree and a minimum of three years of experience in administration in a situation comparable to a senior level in a community college. This application process was initiated following a brief period where the public was encouraged to submit surveys regarding the desired qualities of RCC’s fifth president. In addition, two forums were also held in December 2023 to elicit feedback from stakeholders. Interested applicants should visit https://www.randolph.edu/ about-us/presidential-search. aspx for more details.

State and federal officials investigating Randolph County substation damage

Gunfire damage

to substation in Randolph County is the third in the state since Nov. 2022

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — State and federal law enforcement officials are investigating a gunfire incident at a Randolph County power substation.

The incident involved a transformer at an EnergyUnited power substation in Randolph County that sustained damage from gunfire. Investigators believe the incident occurred sometime around 3 a.m. on Jan. 17, according to a statement from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office.

The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office received a call there had been damage to the substation on Post Road in Thomasville that morning.

The substation serves around 1,500 customers, however, none of them lost power because the

load was transferred to another area substation. The impacted area of service included Trinity, Thomasville, and areas of Davidson County south of Thomasville.

EnergyUnited Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) is headquartered in Statesville, North Carolina.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) were informed. Per the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is conducting a parallel investigation.

The investigation is still ongoing, and anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to contact the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations at 336-318-6658 or Randolph County Crime Stoppers tip line at 336-672-7463.

Anonymous tips may also be submitted via the Sheriff’s Office app or Crime Stoppers app. (Information about those apps is available on the Sheriff’s Office website.)

On Jan. 17, EnergyUnited issued the following statement: EnergyUnited officials responded to an alarm that notified personnel of an equipment issue at its Pleasant Hill Substation early Tuesday morning. Crews were dispatched to assess the situation and discovered damage to the substation transformer from an apparent gunshot. The damage was quickly assessed and contained to mitigate the impact to members in the Pleasant Hill area and law enforcement officials were notified. EnergyUnited members who are served by this substation did not experience an outage as a result of the cooperative’s swift response.

“EnergyUnited continually strives to deliver safe, reliable energy to its members,” said Steve McCachern, vice president of energy delivery for EnergyUnited. “While we are glad that our members did not experience any service interruptions, we take this matter very seriously and are currently investigating the incident.”

Staying ahead of any chal-

Cigna and Randolph Health contract impasse causes coverage interruption

By A.P. Dillon North State Journal

RALEIGH — Cigna insurance plan members received notification that they would no longer be covered at Randolph Health after February 10.

A letter from Cigna on “Continuity of Care” obtained by North State Journal indicates the insurer and Randolph Health have been unable to agree on a contract.

Cigna’s letter informed members that if hospital stays were approved by February 10, their continued stay would still be covered. For medical care beyond that date, members would have to seek treatment at a different in-network provider.

A list of in-network providers offered by Cigna includes Chatham Hospital, Cone Health Wesley Long Hospital, and Novant Health Kernersville.

According to Cigna’s letter, members should check MyCigna. com or use the Cigna app to find out more details on Continuity of

Care or to talk to customer service.

“Especially as our clients and customers are managing rising prices due to inflation, we want to keep their health care affordable and in line with other area providers,” a Cigna spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement to North State Journal. “Unfortunately, Randolph Health has notified us they will leave our network on February 10 unless we agree to their demand for unreasonably high rates that would impact employers, their employees, and their families.”

“We hope that Randolph Health will do what is best for our shared customers, and we will continue to negotiate with them in good faith to reach a fair agreement,” the Cigna spokesperson wrote. “If they don’t, we are prepared to quickly help our customers find other quality, in-network providers nearby.”

North State Journal also reached out to Randolph Health communications officer Paula Richards who responded with

a press statement confirming a contractual agreement with Cigna had not been reached.

According to the statement, Cigna has not given Randolph Health “is seeking an increase in reimbursements to help cover the tremendous rise in costs over the last decade for labor and other necessary costs of providing quality healthcare to this community.”

The statement points out that Cigna has not given Randolph Health any reimbursement increases in almost 10 years.

“Randolph Health Over the last ten years, Cigna has seen an increase of 500% in its stock value, and its CEO receives a salary of approximately $20 million per year. It is because of insurance companies like this that community hospitals continue to go out of business,” the Randolph Health statement says.

“Now, Cigna is threatening to severely restrict access to health care of Randolph County citizens who are Cigna members by forc-

lenge is a collaborative effort. EnergyUnited is collaborating with electric cooperatives, industry partners, peer organizations, as well as federal, state, and local officials to share information that improves member service and strengthens critical systems. Additionally, EnergyUnited encourages community members to share information with the cooperative and local officials whenever suspicious activity is observed near any of its substations or facilities.

The Randolph substation incident is the third such occurrence in North Carolina in the last three months.

On Dec. 3, 2022, an attack on multiple substations operated by Duke Energy in Moore County also involved gunfire and caused significant damage. The damage resulted in 45,000 customers being left without power for several days.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper issued a press release on

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

The power substation at the intersection of Old Mountain Rd. and Post Rd. in Trinity, on Jan. 19, 2023.

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Universal educational vouchers is not a winning policy

Don’t believe the press releases from universal school voucher enthusiasts ― it wasn’t a winning message in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona this past election.

10% of students are not in governmentfunded K-12 institutions in the United States.

The GOP should abandon expanding taxpayer-funded school choice and focus on empowering parents, not expanding the reach of more government. The GOP will be making a big mistake if they decide to enact universal taxpayer-funded school choice policies, which will increase dependency on the government and normalize welfare for all.

Exit polls show that three main groups vote for Democrats ― single women, people with advanced degrees, and welfare recipients. Those who vote Republican are men, married women, and those without advanced degrees.

Marxism is the economic theory where central government controls all funding. You can’t defeat Marxism being taught in the public school system by expanding the Marxist financing mechanism.

The policy of expanding government-funded vouchers will take the “men and married women” category of voters and move them into the “welfare” category. Corey DeAngelis, who is a spokesperson for enacting universal school choice, cites food stamps as a good policy comparison because of its transferability.

Who do those on food stamps generally vote for? Democrats.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona ran on universal school vouchers, and the results were disastrous ― losing state representative seats, governorship, and senate seats. School choice itself is an idea worth supporting but expanding the welfare state to do so is not a winning strategy.

Many proponents of universal taxpayer-

CARTOON BY RUTH LOPEZ

funded school choice call Arizona the gold standard for their bill signed by the Republican governor. If winning elections is something you’d like to do, then clearly, it is gold for democrats, who flipped the governorship. It is still early, but some early results showed that less than 1% of Arizona students left the public school system last year while tens of thousands of previously privately funded students went back to public schools.

“What about the kids? We need to help the kids?” Yes, but universal school choice does not help them. You are not helping the kids when you are creating policy that promotes dependency on the government and increases government control on their lives. If you are embracing government collecting taxes and then using those taxes to pay for private education, you aren’t getting kids out of the public system, you are putting more of them into it because they are being funded by public dollars.

Roughly 10% of students are not in government-funded K-12 institutions in the United States. Imagine if universal school choice is enacted and the number of students who are free of government dependency drops to less than 1%. As adults, they will vote for progressive ideas like Universal Basic Income, singlepayer health care, and a host of other welfare programs because they will be inured to the idea that the government provides funds for their use, not the private sector.

Good governance requires oversight. Oversight requires money and power. As a taxpayer and a conservative, we should demand oversight of how our taxes are being spent. These vouchers literally open the door to your home to more government. You might say that the government wouldn’t do that, but it already does in states such as Alaska, Michigan, and California with more limited vouchers. The laws may be initially passed with limited or no controls, but that will quickly change because good governance demands it.

The good news is we already have true school choice in North Carolina. We don’t need taxpayers to pay for every student and for every school option. You can homeschool or send your kids to a private school or a government institution. Conservatives should promote policies that lower true costs for families, help them keep more of their money in their own pocket, and encourage private and direct private investment in education locally. That is a winning message, not just today but for our future. The kids are depending on you. They are worth it.

Robert Bortins is CEO of Classical Conversations in Southern Pines

Racial reparations solve nothing

The federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States.

THIS WEEK, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad — as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”

This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure to be cured with social engineering.

This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.

Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco’s reparations committee — simply cutting checks — has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you

have been completely fair.”

To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black.

It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+.

COLUMN | ROBERT BORTINS

COLUMN | BEN SHAPIRO

SIDELINE REPORT

NBA Magic’s Isaac resumes NBA career after missing 2½ years

Orlando, Fla.

Jonathan Isaac finally got back into a game after 2½ years Monday, helping the Magic beat the Boston Celtics 113-98. The 6-foot10 power forward scored 10 points, grabbed three rebounds and added a couple of steals in his limited time on the floor. Isaac originally injured his knee on Jan. 1, 2020. He returned seven months later, but tore his left ACL while playing in his second game in the NBA bubble at Disney World.

Only three Magic players are still on the roster who played with the former Florida State standout before his knee injuries.

GOLF

LIV to stage 3 events on Trump sites; ranking decision looms Knutsford, England

The second year of Saudifunded LIV Golf will be going to three courses owned by former President Donald Trump as part of a 14-event schedule in 2023, according to a report from SI.com. The report said LIV Golf announced its schedule, although the LIV website only said that a full schedule was coming soon. Whether LIV gets world ranking points will be decided by the four major championship and the chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking board.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Georgia transfer Thomas arrested on felony charge Athens, Ga.

Wide receiver Rodarius “Rara” Thomas, who recently transferred to Georgia from Mississippi State, has been arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges. Thomas was booked early Monday on a felony charge of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of family violence battery and was later released on $1,850 bond. Thomas was arrested by University of Georgia police. Thomas was Mississippi State’s leading receiver last season with 626 receiving yards on 44 catches and seven touchdowns. He announced his transfer to Georgia in December shortly before the Bulldogs won their second straight national championship.

MLB Twins acquire veteran OF Taylor from Royals

Minneapolis

The Minnesota Twins acquired veteran outfielder Michael A. Taylor from the Kansas City Royals for two relief pitching prospects.

Taylor should provide depth and defense to Minnesota’s outfield. He batted .254 with nine home runs and 43 RBIs in 414 at-bats last season for the Royals. That was his second year with the club after spending his first seven major league seasons with Washington. Taylor was a Gold Glove winner in his Royals debut in 2021. He gives the Twins a third outfielder on the roster who has won the award, joining Byron Buxton and newcomer Joey Gallo.

Kenseth highlights 3-person NASCAR Hall of Fame induction

the All-Star race.

CHARLOTTE — Two-time Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth finally reached the top rung of his career on Friday night when he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The 50-year-old Kenseth, who drove 18 full seasons in NASCAR before retiring in 2020 with 39 Cup victories and 20 poles, highlighted a class that also included longtime driver Hershel McGriff and crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine.

The driver, who many referred to as “Matt the brat” when he first broke into racing, ranks 21st on NASCAR Cup Series’ career wins list. He won all of the sport’s biggest races including the Daytona 500 in 2009 and 2012, the Coca-Cola 600, the Southern 500 and

“I always looked at my career as a ladder — you always start at the bottom and you hope to climb your way to the top,” Kenseth said in his acceptance speech. “My ladder has hundreds and hundreds of rungs on it. and without any of them, bottom, middle or top — no matter who you fit in my life — I wouldn’t be here without any of you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you all.”

Kenseth’s wife, Katie, and father, Roy, inducted him.

“The internal drive is what put Matt on this stage tonight,” Katie Kenseth said.

Kenseth captured the 2003 Cup Series championship behind a dominating season in which he led the points standings for the final 32 weeks. When the series switched to a playoff format, he reached the postseason in 13 of 14 seasons and finished runner-up twice. He also won 29 Xfinity Series races.

Kenseth talked about learning to love NASCAR by watching his

family race at Jefferson Speedway where he grew up in Wisconsin and begging his father to take him to his uncle Gary’s house so he could help him work on his race cars.

“Racing truly is a family sport,” he said.

Shelmerdine was the crew chief and front tire change for four of Dale Earnhardt’s seven championships. Only two crew chiefs have more premier series titles than Shelmerdine: class of 2012 inductee Dale Inman with eight and Chad Knaus, who will be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration in 2024, with seven.

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver,” Shelmerdine said. “What else can we say about him? When we started together, Dale and I just kind of clicked intuitively.”

The 95-year-old McGriff competed on racetracks for 68 years.

From 1954 until 2018, he participated in 271 races in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West (now ARCA Menards West Series), winning 34 races and posting 100 topfive finishes. He captured the series championship in 1986 at 58 years old and finished second in points in 1985 and 1987.

McGriff spoke at length about his career path, saying he started driving vehicles at age 7.

“I have had a happy life and this induction is just icing on the cake,” McGriff said, tearing up several times during his speech. He joked that he still plans to write a book about his life.

Mike Helton was honored as the Landmark Award winner for outstanding contributions to the sport. Helton was the first person outside the France family to handle NASCAR’s day-to-day operations.

Photographer T. Taylor Warren was named the recipient of the 2023 Squier-Hall Award.

Former Wake player Hamby accuses WNBA’s Aces of bullying,

The WNBA players’ union said Saturday it will review Dearica Hamby’s complaints about Las Vegas management after the Aces traded the two-time All-Star to the Los Angeles Sparks.

In an Instagram post, the 29-year-old Hamby said the Aces attacked her character and work ethic.

“Being traded is a part of the business,” Hamby posted. “Being lied to, bullied, manipulated, and discriminated against is not.”

A message was left by the AP seeking comment from the Aces.

Hamby agreed to a two-year contract extension with Las Vegas in June. She said in her Instagram post that Aces management said she knew she was pregnant at the time of the deal.

“This is false,” Hamby wrote. “I was told that I was a ‘question mark’ and that it was said that I said I would ‘get pregnant again’ and there was a concern for my level of commitment to the team.”

She also said the Aces said they were concerned Hamby wouldn’t be ready for this season. Hamby said she plans to play this season.

“I remained transparent with everyone within the organization, and yet, my honesty was met with coldness, disrespect, and disregard from members of management,” Hamby wrote. “I have only put this organization first since

day one before any of them were here.”

The Women’s National Basketball Players Association said it would “seek a comprehensive investigation” to ensure that Hamby’s rights under the league’s 2020 labor agreement as well as state and federal laws were not violated.

The Sparks also received the Aces’ first-round pick in 2024

in exchange for the exclusive negotiating rights to Amanda Zahui B., plus the Sparks’ 2024 second-round pick.

“Adding Dearica to our roster plus a future first-round pick was a solid move for us,” Sparks GM Karen Bryant said in a statement. “We’re excited to have another key piece in place as we start free agency.”

The 6-foot-3 Hamby, the sixth overall pick out of Wake Forest in 2015, spent her first eight WNBA seasons with the same franchise, dating to the Aces’ days in San Antonio as the Silver Stars.

Hamby was the WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year in 2019 and 2020. Hamby averaged 9.3 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Aces last season when they won their first WNBA championship. She was limited in the playoffs due to a knee injury.

“Dearica has dedicated eight years of her career to this organization, and played a big role in our success since the team moved to Las Vegas,” Aces general manager Natalie Williams said in a statement. “We’re going to miss her as a teammate, and are grateful for all of her contributions to the Aces over the years.”

Hamby announced at the Aces’ championship parade last September that she was expecting her second child. Hamby’s 5-year-old daughter Amaya accompanied her mother during the 2020 season, which was played in a bubble in Florida because of the pandemic. They were among those featured in the documentary “144.”

Former Dale Earnhardt Sr. crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine and driver Hershel McGriff were also enshrined

The Associated Press

Dale Earnhardt Jr. inducted Shelmerdine, saying “he put my dad on the path to greatness.”

The

2015 sixth-overall pick says the team knew she was pregnant when she signed a contract extension

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Matt Kenseth speaks during his induction into the the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday in Charlotte.

AP PHOTO

Two-time WNBA All-Star Dearica Hamby was traded by the Las Vegas Aces to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday.

manipulation

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver.”

Kirk Shelmerdine, former crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Sr.

A new way of doing it works fast for Eastern Randolph boys’ team

By Bob Sutton Randolph Record

MEBANE – No longer in a rut, the Eastern Randolph boys’ basketball program is doing it on its own terms.

That’s fast – and to the point.

“We practice fast,” senior Davonte Brooks said. “We come to the games just like practice. All fast, all fast. We all knew from the getgo what we were getting into, from Day 1.”

Turns out this means getting all sorts of victories under first-year coach Johnny Thomas.

The Wildcats are a rapid-paced, action-filled group all the way to a 16-1 record, which is double last season’s win total.

Prior to this week, the latest accomplishment came with a 97-77 romp past host Eastern Alamance in Friday night’s non-conference game.

Eastern Randolph has eight games of scoring more than 90 points, including four in a row. The Wildcats have eclipsed 80 points in three others.

Part of this stems from conditioning and attitude.

“We start practice out with a 1½-mile run,” Thomas said. “With great sacrifice comes great things. We’ve understood so far what it’s going to take to get to that next level. Moving forward, we cannot be a team that just puts points on the board. We have to be a team that keeps points off the board as well.”

The scoring part, though, is probably the most noticeable. It’s certainly one of the enjoyable aspects for the Wildcats, who embrace the pace.

“I love it,” point guard Pierce Leonard said. “It gets us steals. Gets us 90 points. That’s all we go for.”

Leonard is a senior in his first season with the Wildcats after transferring from Uwharrie Charter Academy. He has fit right in with Thomas’ style.

Thomas said Leonard probably

doesn’t understand the impact he has made by being able to generate a brisk pace.

“We’re not planning on slowing down for anybody,” said Thomas, a former North Carolina State player. “If you get in front of us, with all due respect, our job is to roll over you and get to that next win. All these guys, they’ve never had this sort of environment when it comes to the basketball side of things.”

Brooks is averaging 25.3 points per game, bolstered by his 43 points and 15 rebounds at Eastern Alamance.

“His ability to get the ball off the rim and just push the ball,” Thomas said of one of Brooks’ strengths. “Davonte has always had that in him; it was just giving him the opportunity and freedom to do it.”

Thomas said Brooks was an accomplished scorer last season. Now, he’s in a system that allows him to flourish even more.

The approach works for Brooks.

“I just go out there and try to add to it,” he said.

The style has been endearing for the Wildcats.

“It was different getting out there the first couple of months and the first couple of weeks,” senior guard Connor Carter said. “It’s just special. (Thomas) believes

PREP ROUNDUP

Cougars, Tigers head toward girls’ showdown

were 3-1 in those.

There was a more comfortable result for the Cougars last week, when Caressa King’s 15 points led four players in double figures in a 65-42 home victory vs. Trinity.

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

in us and takes us everywhere. It’s definitely sad that I’m a senior and have to leave.”

Carter made a stirring 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer Friday night. Leonard ended up with 15 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists, Nicah Taylor posted 13 points, and Jani Norwood came off the bench to grab ten rebounds.

Eastern Randolph made it halfway through the Piedmont Athletic Conference portion of its schedule with a 6-0 mark.

The Wildcats don’t intend to slow down.

“We play really intense,” Thomas said. “I try to tell a lot of people when we get out there, our goal is for you to stop us. We’re a very aggressive team, so from time to time, we get in foul trouble. That’s going to happen. … The pace is different. The expectation is different. People’s understanding about what we do is also different.”

Thomas said the Wildcats want to set the tone on all levels.

“We set our expectations,” he said. “We intend to take it. You don’t got to give it to us. We’re going to take it. There’s really nothing you can do about it. You can try. That may be a little cocky. But if you’re not cocky, you’re not confident.”

Colton Wood

Providence Grove, wrestling

Wood has had a solid wrestling season, with the postseason approaching.

The senior, who competes in the 285-pound weight class, placed second in the RJR Invitational late last month in Winston-Salem. Wood reached the championship bout of that tournament with three pins.

Wood finished sixth in last season’s Class 2-A state tournament.

He’s a multi-time all-conference selection in football as a lineman for the Patriots.

SOUTHWESTERN RANDOLPH and Randleman are on course for a showdown in girls’ basketball Friday night in Randleman.

The teams have split two meetings this season.

Depending on results leading up to the game, Randleman could be in a position to clinch at least a share of the PAC regular-season championship.

Randleman won 55-41 on Dec.

16 at Southwestern Randolph. The teams met again in the championship game of the Davidson-Randolph Christmas Classic at Providence Grove, with the Cougars pulling out a 49-48 victory.

That began a stretch for Southwestern Randolph with four consecutive games decided by single-digit margins. The Wildcats

Since its only regular-season loss in two seasons, Randleman put together a five-game winning streak through last Friday. Three of those outcomes were by at least 20 points.

The Tigers held a 17-1 overall record entering this week.

Friday’s game will be the last scheduled road game for Southwestern Randolph.

Also in girls’ basketball, Brecken Snotherly’s 28 points were tops for Eastern Randolph in a 6137 non-conference trouncing of host Eastern Alamance on Friday night. That gave the Wildcats a five-game winning streak.

Boys’ basketball

Asheboro entered this week with a 4-0 mark in Mid-Piedmont

Conference action. D.J Headen scored 20 points in a 76-30 romp past visiting Montgomery Central.

There are numerous challenges ahead for the Blue Comets, who’ll play four of their last six league games on the road.

In the PAC, Southwestern Randolph had four players with double-figure point totals, led by Thomas Leal’s 16 (all in the first half), to overcome Trinity in a 5950 home triumph. That gave the Cougars a four-game winning streak after a five-game skid to pull the team to a 9-9 overall record.

Dominic Payne’s 34 points and Dylan Hodges’ 10 points accounted for most of Trinity’s offense.

Providence Grove avenged a loss to Uwharrie Charter Academy by winning 70-65 on the road. That result came despite 31 points for UCA’s Ashton Troutman.

Wrestling

Asheboro has won another Mid-Piedmont Conference championship. This one was clinched by defeating visiting Montgomery Central 36-31 on Friday night at North Asheboro Middle School.

The Blue Comets have won four league titles in a row. The past two have come in the realigned conference.

Moran moves to AD role at Providence Grove

Moran, a 2013 graduate of Randleman, is in his fifth year as a teacher. His first year was at Randleman before taking a spot on Brown’s football staff. He’s in his fourth year as a history teacher at Providence Grove.

By Bob Sutton Randolph Record

CLIMAX – Cody Moran figured that staying at Providence Grove might fit him best.

Moran is the new athletics director at the school.

“This might be my opportunity to move up here,” he said.

Moran replaces Calvin Brown, who was named the new football coach at Asheboro. At Providence Gove, Brown held the dual role as football coach and athletics director.

Brown remained in the AD role at Providence Grove through last week.

Moran was an assistant coach on Brown’s staff and also has been an assistant for two seasons with the baseball program.

“I can’t thank Calvin enough for everything he has done,” Moran said. “I’ve been in his back pocket the past week and a half.”

He said he chose not to follow Brown to Asheboro.

Providence Grove’s football coaching vacancy should be filled no later than February, Moran said. The interview process could be hitting a key juncture.

Second interviews were to begin Monday, Moran said, suggesting school administrators are close to making a selection.

Brown’s departure has been known since early December.

Moran went to college at Lees-McRae. He helped on the football staff at Randleman Middle School.

Moran, 28, was running backs coach when he joined the Providence Grove staff and then spent the past three seasons overseeing defensive linemen. He said he’ll be willing to fill a role on the next coach’s staff if he’s needed.

FILE PHOTO

Colton Wood of Providence Grove works on top against Chase’s Robert Ward during last February’s Class 2-A state tournament.

Baxter hits milestone win with SWR

Randolph Record

Eastern Randolph’s Pierce Leonard drives against Uwharrie Charter Academy’s Sam Hoskins during a game earlier this month.

New Asheboro coach finishes duties at Providence Grove

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Kenzie Martin of Southwestern Randolph goes up for a shot during last week’s victory against Trinity.

COURTESY PHOTO

Cody Moran has been on Providence Grove’s football staff.

State auditor: I made ‘serious mistake’ leaving accident

By Gary D. Robertson The Associated Press

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s elected state auditor apologized Monday for leaving the scene of an accident last month after she drove her state-issued vehicle into a parked car, calling it a “serious mistake” and adding she would continue at her job.

In a statement released days after the two charges against her became public, Auditor Beth Wood, a Democrat, said the collision happened when she left a holiday gathering where she had been for about two hours the evening of Dec. 8. She was cited by Raleigh police four days later for a misdemeanor hit-and-run and another traffic-related charge. A Wake County court date is scheduled for Thursday.

“I made a mistake in judgment on December 8, but I am committed to continuing to perform my duties with the same energy and determination I am known for,” said Wood, who was first elected to the auditor’s post in 2008. Her position is next on the ballot in 2024. No one was hurt in the accident, which she said occurred

when she “made a sharp right turn and inadvertently hit a parked car.” Wood, 68, was driving her state-assigned vehicle, a 2021 Toyota Camry. Photos and 911 calls reported on by media outlets show that part of her car was on top of the parked vehicle.

“I was shaken by the incident and, when I was unable to move my vehicle, I left the scene,” Wood said in the written statement, her first comments since the charges were revealed. “That was a serious mistake and I regret my decision.”

The state auditor, one of 10

members of the North Carolina Council of State, performs financial reviews of state agencies, as well as performance audits and other studies sought by the General Assembly.

Sam Chan, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, said in a written statement that Wood’s collision “was a troubling incident and the Governor is glad that the Auditor has addressed it publicly.”

“There’s an investigation and court proceeding going on and he believes it’s appropriate for that to proceed,” Chan said.

The state Republican Party said in a social media post that Wood should resign her position because leaving the scene “was intentional and wholly unbecoming of an elected official.”

Raleigh police accused Wood of hit-and-run — leaving the scene and property damage — and for an unsafe movement infraction, court records show. Someone without a previous criminal record would face no active jail time for a hit-andrun misdemeanor but could face probation. An unsafe movement count can be punishable by a fine.

Wood said she was continuing to cooperate with law enforcement. Monday’s statement said Wood wasn’t available for media interviews for now.

The court citation says there was probable cause to believe Wood operated the vehicle and failed to provide her name, address and other information. It also appears Wood operated a vehicle while “failing to see before turning from a direct line that such movement could be made in safety,” the citation reads.

Chris Valverde, the owner of the parked car, said his daughter had borrowed the car the evening of the collision to work at a downtown restaurant.

“I get a phone call from my daughter (who) “literally … says ‘There’s a car on top of the car,’” Valverde told WRAL-TV late last week. Wood said Monday she apologizes to Valverde, “my staff and all I serve for leaving the scene of the accident.”

Wood said Monday that she contacted the state government’s motor fleet management office the day after the collision. An “automotive loss report” filed Dec. 12 and provided by the state Department of Administration described damage to the front passenger side of the vehicle and panel damage.

The report said Wood was traveling at 15 mph when the collision occurred and was neither using a mobile device nor reaching for anything.

Alex Murdaugh goes on trial in 2021 killings of wife, son

AS HIS LIFE unraveled over the past two years, disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh didn’t fight giving up his law license and said he made plenty of mistakes tied to missing client money and a financial mess that led to 100 criminal charges.

But he has adamantly insisted, from the moment he found the bodies of his wife and youngest son both shot multiple times at the family’s estate in June 2021, that he was not the killer.

Lawyers expect jury selection to last several days before testimony begins. It took state agents 13 months of investigation to charge Murdaugh with two counts of murder, and a judge has set aside three weeks for the trial. Murdaugh insisted on the trial as soon as possible.

Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, but said they will ask for life without parole if Murdaugh is convicted of murder. The minimum sentence is 30 years.

Here’s an overview of the trial and the scene surrounding it as hundreds of lawyers and their support staff, reporters and true crime enthusiasts are expected to swell Colleton County’s population of 38,000 in the rural, southern part of the state.

The killings and evidence Murdaugh, 54, told police he found Maggie, 52, and their son, Paul, 22, dead outside their Colleton County home on June 7, 2021. He said he’d been gone for an hour

to visit his ailing father and mother.

Authorities released little information about the killings beyond saying that Maggie Murdaugh was killed with a rifle and Paul Murdaugh with a shotgun.

Prosecutors have not detailed direct evidence linking Murdaugh to the deaths. So far they have filed with the court no confession or witness statements about the killings. There is no evidence on the eve of the trial that either gun has been found.

There is a video from Paul Murdaugh’s phone with a timestamp not long before the killings. The three are talking without evidence of anger. Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers said he has never denied being at his home.

There is DNA from the victims

on Alex Murdaugh’s shirt, but his defense said that came from checking for signs of life when he found their bodies.

The defense and prosecution are fighting over whether to allow an expert to testify that the blood on Murdaugh’s shirt was splattered on it when his son was shot. Defense lawyers said the expert testing the shirt is lying and destroyed it before the defense could conduct its own tests.

Prosecutors are expected to rely heavily on evidence of Murdaugh’s financial problems, which they said led him to kill to buy time as he covered up his theft of settlement money from clients.

Prosecutors said the killings gave Murdaugh sympathy and, more importantly, allowed him to

hide his thefts and other crimes.

Other crimes

The murder charges are only two of about 100 different criminal counts Murdaugh faces. He also is on trial on two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

Still hanging over his head are a broad range of dozens of state charges. They include stealing millions of dollars from clients, diverting a wrongful death settlement for the family’s longtime maid from her family to himself, running a drug and money laundering ring, evading taxes, and committing fraud from what police said was an attempt to have someone kill him so his surviving son could

collect a $10 million life insurance policy.

Powerful family

The Murdaugh name is well known in judicial circles in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Alex Murdaugh worked for the family law firm that had been in business in tiny neighboring Hampton County for a century, winning a number of multimillion-dollar settlements for fatal accidents and workplace injuries.

Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the elected prosecutors for 87 years straight in Colleton, Hampton and three other counties.

Small town, big trial

Murdaugh’s downfall has attracted media from around the world and dozens of true crime podcasts and other coverage. It’s probably the most sensational trial in South Carolina since Susan Smith was convicted of killing her children and sentenced to life in 1995 in tiny Union County.

The Murdaugh trial is taking place at the historic Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, where the large, old Southern courtroom can seat nearly 250 people.

The city last month asked food trucks to park nearby to help a handful of downtown restaurants handle the lunchtime crowds. On a county website for reporters on the case, nine residents offered their homes or businesses to media outlets to use as a base to cover the trial.

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Beth Wood has a court date on Jan. 26, 2023, after she was cited for misdemeanor hit-and-run and another traffic-related charge when police said she hit a parked car while driving on a Raleigh road.

STOCK PHOTO

Alex Murdaugh is escorted out of the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on July 20, 2022.

Samuel "Sam" Howard Bell

December 4, 1961 — January 20, 2023

Samuel "Sam" Howard Bell, age 61, of Denton passed away on Friday, January 20, 2023 at Hinkle Hospice House in Lexington.

Sam was born in Loris, SC on December 4, 1961 to Samuel and Patricia Harrell Bell. He was employed as a Floral Designer with Asheboro Florist for 11 years. Sam received numerous awards, including the 1995 NC State Designer of the year and the 1995 Southern Retail Designer of the Year, 1997 Greensboro Triad Designer of the Year, 1996 Cardinal Cup Designer of the Year, 1999 FTD America's Cup Designer of the Year, the 1999 NC State Mask Design Winner, and the 2011 NC State Body Flower Winner.

He is survived by his husband, Francis "Lee" Maynard, Jr.; brother, Timmy Bell; and fatherin-law, Francis Maynard, Sr.

James Jonathan Eggen

February 6, 1963 - January 17, 2023

James Johnathan Eggen, 59, of Star, passed away on January 17, 2023 at his home.

James was born on February 6, 1963 in Yonkers, NY to James and Faith Gazaway Eggen. He was a graduate of Pfeiffer University.

James was preceded in death by his father, James Oscar Eggen.

He is survived by his sons; Jesse Eggen of Troy and Jamie Eggen of Star; mother, Faith Trollinger of Star; sisters, Joy Reynolds of Star and Jana Eggen of High Point. Grandchildren, Brody Eggen, Jackson Eggen and Griffin Eggen; long life friend Patrick Efird and canine companion Shelby.

Andres ValenciaAlba

March 7, 1936 — January 17, 2023

Andres Valencia-Alba, age 86, of Asheboro passed away Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at his home.

He was a native of Michocan, Mexico. Mr. Valencia-Alba loved to farm and feed his animals and was a retired wheat farmer.

Mr. Valencia-Alba was preceded in death by his parents, Lazaro Valencia and Otilia Alva.

Mr. Valencia-Alba is survived by his wife, Rosa HvertaMendez; sons, Jose Valencia, Fernando Valencia Huerta, Armando Valencia Huerta; daughter, Maricela Garcia Valencia, Mariaeugenia Valencia Huerta; 11 grandchildren; 6 great grandchildren; 3 sister and 1 brother.

Betty Ann Treece

September 1, 1938 — January 16, 2023

Betty Ann Treece, age 84, of Asheboro passed away on Monday, January 16, 2023 at Clapp's Convalescent Nursing Home.

Betty was born in Norman, NC on September 1, 1938 to Thomas David and Lela Dennis Treece. Betty was employed with Rose's Department Store for over 24 years and retired from JCPenney in Asheboro after 13 years of service. She was a member of New Hope United Methodist Church.

She is survived by her sister, Jane Treece of Asheboro; several cousins; and friends, Wendy Blake Thompson (Wyatt) of Asheboro and Regina Blake Johnson (Darren) of Randleman.

Cain Steiner

July 26, 2000 — January 14, 2023

Cain Robert Benjamin Steiner, age 22, died Saturday, January 14, 2023, at his home.

Cain was born July 26, 2000, to Jeremy and Tayra Adkins Steiner.

Cain was a 2018 graduate of Randleman High School where he enjoyed wrestling, golf, and fitness training. He was employed at Sir Pizza in Randleman and attended Vintage Church.

The world will be a little different now for the people that knew and loved Cain. He was always full of joy and laughter and brought the best out of people when he was around. He touched many lives in the short time he was here and showed his love towards people continuously, even if it was just a smile. Cain had energy that most people don't have. He will be greatly missed by our family and many others I'm sure, but never forgotten. We as a family are very grateful and blessed to have had the opportunity to have Cain in our lives and to have those memories of and with him for the rest of our lives. Thank you Cain for everything! We Love You Forever!!

Fernanda De Blas De Medina

July 11, 1937 — January 16, 2023

July 6, 1961 — January 16, 2023

Thomas "Tom" Lee Peak, age 61, of Kernersville, passed away on Monday, January 16, 2023, at his home.

Mr. Peak was born in Cleveland, Ohio on July 6, 1961, to Opie K. Peak and Helene B. (Peak) Smith. He was employed for many years with Camco where he had many wonderful friends. Tom enjoyed fishing and collecting gems and rocks. He loved collecting Hot Wheels cars and Marvel & DC Comics and was an avid Batman fan. He was preceded in death by his father Opie K. Peak, his step-father Alfred M. Smith, his sister and brother-in-law James T. and Joyce A. Hogston, and his precious grandson, Corey Peak.

He is survived by his mother, Helene B. Smith; his two beautiful daughters, Tiffany Peak Billiot (Brett) and Teila Peak; grandchildren, Gabriel Whitaker, Elijah East, Lily Mathews, Laila, Mathews, Amelia Peak, Camilla Billiot, Bryanna Billiot, Brett Billiot III, Kyla Marks, Kori Marks, and Kohen Marks; his two nieces, Rebecca L. Hogston and Sarah J. Hogston; his two greatnephews John C. Leahy Jr and Josiah J. Sides: and special friend Tresa Peak.

Fernanda De Blas De Medina, age 85, of Winston Salem, NC, passed away at her home on Monday, January 16, 2023. Today she rests in the tender arms of her Lord and Savior.

Fernanda was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico to Irineo De Blas and Concepción Rodríguez in 1937.

She enjoyed singing hymns and old Mexican songs. She really loved butterflies, flowers, and traveling with her grandchildren. Fernanda was a companion to her husband’s ministry in northern Mexico and North Carolina where she served as a pianist, Sunday school teacher, and led the children’s ministry. In her illness and pains, Mamá Nanda found the strength to serve the needy, the weak, and the lost.

Fernanda is survived by her husband: Daniel Medina y Martinez; children: Daniel C. Medina (Julieta), Josué Medina (Rosalba), Gustavo Medina (Norma), Marcos Medina (Mary), Pablo Medina (Lorena); grandchildren: Daniel (Cynthia), Amsi (Mario), David (Abigail), Jair, Gidalti, Abdi (Elizabeth), Ammi (Román), David, Michelle (Mark), Isaac, and Andrea; three great-grandchildren (Liam, Levi, Ivy). She was preceded in death by her infant son David Benjamin.

Bill "Pops" Smith

June 28, 1925 — January 16, 2023

William LaRue “Bill” “Pops” Smith, age 97, formerly of Ramseur, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on Monday, January 16, 2023, at Cross Road Retirement Center in Asheboro.

Bill was born on June 28, 1925, in Chatham County, to John Chelsey and Roxie Thompson Smith.

Bill was a lifelong farmer and loved animals, particularly his goats: Dunkin and Dolly and the many Great Danes he had over the years. Bill was a great conversationalist, always willing to talk with anyone who would listen, and was quite capable of spinning a good yarn. His grandchildren were the light of his life, and he enjoyed spending any time he could with them. Bill is preceded in death by his wife of 42 years: Doris Stout Smith, special friend Jan White and special canine companion “Gracie.”

Bill is survived by his son: Elton (Patsy) Smith; daughter: Roxanna (Bill) Bryant of Asheboro; grandchildren: Connor, Tucker, Chloe and Madison Bryant and step grandchildren: Todd, Taylor, and Parker Lanier and numerous step great grandchildren.

The family would like to thank the staff and nurses of Crossroads Assisted Living for taking such wonderful care of Pops and loving him so.

James Derek Singletary

March 10, 1979 — January 16, 2023

James Derek Singletary, age 43, of Asheboro passed away on Monday, January 16, 2023 at Forsyth Medical Center.

Mr. Singletary was born in Guilford County on March 10, 1979 to Richard and Kay Boling Singletary. He was the former owner/operator of Extreme Tire & Auto and was a jack of all trades. Derek was preceded in death by his father, Richard Singletary and his grandparents, James Kinnie Boling and Ida Louise Cranford Boling. Derek was a loving dad, uncle, and Pappy, a good friend to many, and loved helping people. He was a jokester, loved the outdoors, fishing, and shooting guns, and was known as the "Badin Lake Bandit."

He is survived by his daughter, Madalyn Singletary; mother, Kay Singletary; stepchildren, Britany Seagraves, Christian Duncan, and Tyler Barnes; granddaughter, Sophie Kamryn; grandsons, Badin and Zaxton Teague; sisters, Amanda Allred (Michael), Wendy Morrison, and Kelly Hardwick; brothers, Richie Singletary and Victor Matthews; nieces, Autumn Small and Adalyn Coble; nephews, Bryson and Jase Allred; and his little buddy, his dog Nibbles.

He is survived by his parents: Jeremy and Tayra Steiner, siblings: Blair and Ashley Cummings, Kristin Cummings, Taylor Peace and Mario McInnis and Gage Steiner; grandparents: Lupe and Sharon Leija; James and Linda Adkins; girlfriend: Mia Leonard and several aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by: Robert and Sandra Steiner, Jerry Adkins and Carol Francis.

Toby

Toby was born in Asheboro and was a graduate of Randleman High School. He worked as a logger in the family business, Montgomery Sawmill, with his father and attended Triad Cowboy Church in Sophia. He was preceded in death by his grandparents, Raymond and Irene Hussey of Randleman and Randy and Max Montgomery, Sr. and his favorite canine companion, Reecie.

He is survived by his daughter, Haley Montgomery; parents, Max Montgomery of Asheboro and Martha Hussey Montgomery of Sophia; and brother, Josh Montgomery of Sophia.

Thomas "Tom" Lee Peak

Toby Montgomery August 13, 1979 — January 14, 2023

Carroll Montgomery, age 44, passed away Saturday, January 14, 2023 in Asheboro.

STATE & NATION

Hockey brawls to debt limit: Emmer wrangles House GOP votes

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The way Republican Rep. Tom Emmer tells it, the lousiest job he ever had — he has a saltier way of describing it — was running the House Republican campaign committee.

But after having helped lead his party back into control of the House in November, the former youth hockey coach now must round up votes from those Republicans, as the majority whip, in order to pass GOP priorities.

Corralling colleagues for their support on the debt ceiling, spending cuts and investigating the Biden administration will be tough work for the third-ranking leader who has served in Congress since 2015. With Republicans holding only 222 seats in the 435-member House, almost everyone is needed to reach the 218 votes needed for approving most bills.

Just agreeing to elect California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the House speaker took 15 ballots.

Emmer was a central negotiator in that effort, hammering out the side-deal to win over holdouts after endless meetings in his first-floor office at the Capitol. It was a crash-course for the budget battles and showdowns ahead.

A look at how the rough-andtumble Minnesotan told The Associated Press he plans to tackle the job.

Speaker’s election as hockey brawl

Before joining Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state legislator. Some of his most applicable professional experience, however, comes from coaching hockey.

When McCarthy failed to win the speaker’s race on the first votes, Emmer convened the holdouts in his still new Capitol office, so bare there are no pictures hanging on the walls.

“Good teams are always going to have differences of opinion,” Emmer said. “If you don’t let them express that, you are never going

to succeed.”

Emmer told the story of a fabled hockey coach who would let players fight it out during practices — almost encouraging it, he said — much the way Republicans nearly came to blows on the House floor during the speaker’s election.

“You know what, these guys actually become closer,” Emmer said.

Bracing for budget battles

Emmer is not part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In fact, some Republicans did not think he was conservative enough for the leadership post.

But he won his own internal GOP election to become the whip, brushing back two challengers. When it came time to broker the deal for McCarthy’s election, Emmer had to win over some of those same conservative holdouts.

One of the many key concessions McCarthy made to earn the votes of his detractors was a commitment to return to federal spending to 2022 budget levels. Cuts of that size would amount to an 8% reduction in domestic defense, veterans and domestic accounts — or even more, 17%, if the Pentagon money is spared.

The Republicans also agreed to aim for a balanced budget in 10 years.

From Emmer’s point of view, much of what was agreed to with the holdouts is “aspirational.”

“Some might criticize me when I say it’s an aspirational document because they think it’s more than that, and they’re right,” Emmer said. “Because we now have to hold ourselves to this.”

Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and debt ceilings past

One of the biggest challenges Emmer will face is rounding up the votes for the coming debt ceiling showdown.

Congress is being asked by the Treasury Department to raise the nation’s debt cap so it can borrow more money to pay off the nation’s already accruing bills.

House Republicans insist they will not lift that limit without changes in the way the federal government spends money — most likely, cuts in spending levels. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that she expects Congress will ultimately vote to increase the cap. But she said GOP demands for spending cuts in return for backing an increase are “a very irresponsible thing to do” and risk creating a “self-imposed calamity” for the global economy. Those decades-old spending battles simmer on Capitol Hill, especially for conservatives, which is why the Freedom Caucus and others drove such a hard bargain with McCarthy during the speaker’s race.

“A lot of it was personality issues that have probably been driven from as far back as when John Boehner was the speaker and then Paul Ryan,” Emmer said about dynamics.

Sparing defense cuts

Republicans have different views when it comes to what spending to cut as they try to use the debt ceiling vote to extract their own budget priorities.

While some say they want to see all spending on the table for review, Emmer is among those who believe defense should largely be spared.

“The argument is if you go to FY22 baseline, it affects both domestic and defense — not under Republicans,” he said, referring to 2022 budget levels. “Republicans will look for efficiencies, they’ll look for waste. We aren’t cutting defense. We assured our appropriators and ask our House Armed Services Committee. That’s not what we’re doing.”

March for Life eyes Congress for post-Roe abortion limits

By Calvin Woodward The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A half century after Roe v. Wade, March for Life supporters on Friday celebrated the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the 50-year decision and heralded the political struggle set loose by the court’s decision. President Joe Biden pledged to do all in his limited power to restore core abortion policies.

The first March for Life since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June came with a new focus. Instead of concentrating their attention on the court, the marchers vowed to push for action from the building directly across the street: the U.S. Capitol.

Congress, movement leaders say, must be warned against making any attempt to curtail the multiple pro-life laws imposed last year in a dozen states.

Tens of thousands spread across a section of the National Mall for speeches, the Capitol Building in sight, then marched.

“For nearly 50 years, you have marched to proclaim the fundamental dignity of women, of their children and of life itself,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose office argued the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, told the crowd. “But this year is different.”

Indeed, with the constitutional victory behind them and lawmakers now the ones to be persuaded, marchers took a new route along

the western face of the Capitol, to their usual destination between that complex and the court.

“I am the post-Roe generation,” read one sign. “Excommunicate Pro-Choice Catholics,” said another. Banners proclaimed “Love Them Both,” meaning mother and child.

Tammy Milligan came dressed as “patriot Wonder Woman” and stood out in the crowd. She said she never thought Roe v. Wade would be overruled in her lifetime, but the fight doesn’t stop there. “We want it to be unthinkable for a woman to have an abortion,” she said.

In a counter-protest outside the court building, 15 or so activists in favor of abortion rights held signs of their own: “Bans off our Bodies,” “Mind your own uterus.” They chanted, “Our bodies do not need advice from priests.”

They were easily outnumbered and surrounded by March for Lifers, but interactions were civil and police did not separate the two camps.

Biden offered his counterpoint in a proclamation recognizing Sunday — Jan. 22 — as the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. “Never before has the Court taken away a right so fun-

damental to Americans,” his statement said. “In doing so, it put the health and lives of women across this Nation at risk.”

“The struggle has changed,” said Marion Landry, 68, who came from North Carolina with her husband, Arthur, 91, for the sixth time. “In some ways you don’t have that central focus anymore. Now it’s back to the states.”

In the absence of Roe v. Wade’s federal protections, abortion laws vary by state.

Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho,

Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.

Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to legal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.

Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.

Pro-life activists also have their eye on the 2024 presidential elections and are essentially vetting prospective candidates over their views on the issue. SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said she met recently with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential leading Republican candidate, and came away “incredibly impressed,” but said it was still too early for her organization to endorse anyone.

She predicted that there will be some “fault lines” among Republican presidential contenders over abortion rights and protections, but warned that any candidate perceived as being soft on the issue will have “disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes, and having done so has very little chance of winning the nomination.”

AP PHOTO

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023.

AP PHOTO

With the U.S. Capitol in the background, anti-abortion demonstrators march toward the U.S. Supreme Court during the March for Life, Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Fort Bragg soldier killed in Raeford

A Fort Bragg soldier was shot and killed in Raeford this past Wednesday. Staff Sergeant Jimmy Lee Smith III, 24, was found unresponsive on Hammock Lane by deputies from the Hoke County Sheriff’s Office. Smith joined the Army in 2016 and served in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. He joined the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) in March 2020.

Smith is the second Fort Bragg soldier to have been shot and killed in the last four months, following the death of Sgt. Nicholas Antonio Bobo, who was killed in Fayetteville last September. According to WRAL, Smith’s death might be connected to another shooting that took place in Harnett County, Virginia, where a man opened fire on his fiancée and her child. At this time, the sheriff’s office has not released any additional details.

Lumber River United Way board of directors welcomes 5 new members

The Lumber River United Way has officially added five new community leaders to its 2023 board of directors. The new members are Ashley Locklear, Demetrice Patterson, Justin Boster, Zac Greene, and Anna Clark. The new members join a group of volunteers bringing the board total to 16, including current board members Dr. Cathy Gantz (President), Gary Locklear, Johnny Robertson, Debbie Branyon, Pamela Wright, Linda Branch, Danielle McLean, Andrew Jacobs, Denise Ward, Meredith Bounds, and Randy Ellis. “We are excited to have these new members bring their perspectives and expertise to the Lumber River United Way Board,” said Executive Director Tate Johnson. “We work across many sectors to improve the health, education, and financial stability of all people in Bladen, Hoke, and Robeson counties. We value the collective wisdom and leadership of our dedicated board members, who are passionate about making our communities a better place.”

State lawmakers propose power grid protections after attacks

RALEIGH — When gunshots at two electrical substations cut power to thousands of central North Carolina homes for several days in early December, Republican state Rep. Ben Moss watched his vibrant district full of family farms, small businesses and sprawling golf courses become “a ghost town.”

After the latest attack last week on a substation in Randolph County, northeast of Charlotte, Moss is urging fellow lawmakers to prioritize new legislation that would secure the state’s critical infrastructure when the legislative session begins in earnest this week. He’s among the first state legislators to propose power grid protections this year amid a surge in attacks on U.S. substations, primarily in the Carolinas and Pacific Northwest.

The recent attacks in Moore County, North Carolina, and others in Washington, Oregon, South Carolina and Nevada, have underscored the vulnerability of the nation’s far-flung electrical grid, which security experts have long warned could be a target for domestic extremists.

Lawmakers in at least two affected states — North Carolina and South Carolina — have begun proposing remedies.

“I don’t want to see anybody else go through what Moore (County) did,” said Moss, a 2024 candidate for state labor commissioner whose district saw a peak of more than 45,000 customers lose power. “When the power goes out, you don’t have heat, don’t have food, can’t get fuel or some medications, the people are unsafe.”

Moss is drafting legislation, obtained in its preliminary form

by The Associated Press, that would require utilities to provide 24-hour security at substations, which transform high-voltage electricity into the lower voltages that power communities. Security provisions would vary across sites, some of which are already gated with nearby cameras while others are more exposed.

He considers the bill “a conversation opener” between lawmakers, utilities and security experts to help the General Assembly identify cost-effective defenses that wouldn’t drive up consumer prices.

His call for increased surveillance comes as questions linger about the Moore County shootings. The FBI is still seeking information and no arrests have been made.

Federal regulators in December ordered a review of physical security standards across the na-

tion’s vast electricity transmission network following the attacks in North Carolina. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which oversees the nation’s bulk power system, has until early April to submit a report and recommend possible improvements.

Manny Cancel, a NERC senior vice president and the CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said the situation demands more communication and collaboration between the different levels of government, industry leaders and law enforcement.

“The frequency has increased, the targeting has increased,” Cancel said. “What we’ve seen are patterns of clusters ... or assets that are in proximity to each other being repeatedly targeted.”

Board of Commissioners approves contracts for new positions at Health Department

Commissioners approve releases from deferred property taxes

By Ryan Henkel North State Journal

RAEFORD — The Hoke County Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, January 17, with various contracts and financial matters on the agenda.

The board of commissioners was first presented with two requests for releases from deferred property taxes.

The first request was from Peggy Johnson, asking to be released from four years of deferred taxes totaling $10,389.43.

“I sent her a notice because she had sold another piece of property that was in PUV,” said Acting Assessor Mandi Davis. “I ended up auditing her because her application was out of date, and we didn’t have a forestry management plan on file. I sent the first notice in July 2021 and gave her six months, then I sent a second one in December 2021, and I still didn’t receive any response. Then in September

2022, I billed it because I still had no response. Mrs. Johnson came in November of 2022 and requested that the taxes be released.”

The second request was from Randall Distel Jr., asking to be released from $3,566.48 of a deferred tax bill from a property he purchased that was in PUV. He ended up being billed because he missed the 60-day limit to reapply for continued use.

“I bought this land on March 25 of last year,” Distel said. “The reason was that my father-in-law had gotten sick from a stroke, so we wanted to move back to Hoke County to just be close to him. So we bought this land, and then three days later, he passed. As you probably know, it was chaotic. I had to take care of my wife to make sure she was okay, and so the 60 days elapsed, and it was honestly my fault. I take full responsibility... I thought I had reapplied for the program, but it turns out I didn’t.”

After hearing both requests, the commissioners voted to release both sets of deferred taxes.

“I will say, in watching county governments, it is not normal for

counties to be as receptive to their residents in understanding that we all can make a small mistake,” said Chairman Allen Thomas, Jr. “I hope it doesn’t go on deaf ears that we recognize that we all make mistakes.”

The board then heard a request to purchase real property from the county’s surplus.

“We have one new bid on a property off Hamilton Drive, which is off of Aberdeen Road near Lake Elizabeth Road,” said Clerk Gwen McGougan. “ It’s been on our books since 2019, and the minimum bid is $5,658.66. That’s what the county has in it, but the 75% is $4,244, and she’s bid $4,300.”

After a suggestion from Chairman Thomas, the board approved the sale of the land in order to help get it off the county’s books, and there will be a 10-day period where an upset bid may be submitted.

The board then gave final approval to the sale of two surplus properties which had already been through the necessary 10-day potential upset bid period.

One property off of Cheer Lane

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Workers set up an automated display warning drivers on NC211 of the power outage in the area and how to approach the upcoming intersections in Southern Pines, Monday, Dec. 5, 2022. The North Carolina lawmaker who represents a county where gunfire at electrical substations cut power to thousands in December is pushing legislation to increase power grid security when the legislative session begins in earnest next week.

Correction:

Utilities in South Carolina — where gunshots were fired near a Duke Energy facility but caused no damage days after the North Carolina shootings — are asking lawmakers to increase penalties for intentionally destroying electrical infrastructure or other utility property.

A state Senate proposal would set a sliding scale based on how much damage is done — if it costs more than $25,000 to fix equipment and cover losses, the perpetrator could face up to 20 years in prison, double the current 10-year maximum.

utility equipment. Kissam agreed but said sometimes that damage isn’t an accident, as hunters use equipment to set their gun sights or as target practice. A subcommittee plans to review the bill further in a few weeks.

Another South Carolina bill seeks stiffer penalties for destruction caused specifically by a gun or explosive.

under the Clean Energy Transformation Act, which commits the state to an electricity supply free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Physical and cybersecurity updates are in the works as the electrical grid undergoes significant changes to meet new standards, Furze said.

“’Security by design’ is a core component of these systems,” he said.

in enrollment in charter schools.

A maximum 25-year penalty would apply if anyone died or their health was endangered by a resulting outage.

Dominion Energy South Carolina President Keller Kissam said the state saw at least 12 incidents of people intentionally damaging equipment last year.

“You want to demoralize people, you put them in the dark,” he said.

the actual number of students enrolled in school in Month 1 and Month 2 and whichever is greater is the number they used to determine if there will be a budget revision. Our actual ADM for month 1 was 8,498, and for Month Two, it was 8,665. Therefore the ADM for Month Two - 8,665 was used for our budget revision which is a difference of 423 students less than what was projected in our initial budget allotment.”

Some state senators worried that the law could be used against hunters who accidentally damage

The difference accounts for about $804,520.52 in funding that will return to the state’s budget. According to Chavis, some of the differences in actual enrollment numbers can be attributed to an uptick

Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said that although harsher penalties for equipment sabotage may be a deterrent, state legislatures can best support utilities by freeing up funds for additional security measures.

Finally, the board approved a new partnership and contract with Global Teaching Partners for the acquisition of international teachers.

“Specifically, ensuring monies for perimeter security, cameras and alarms,” said Harrell, who now oversees security for an energy company that services multiple states.

“This is a new organization that will be an international partnership that will sponsor our J-1 Visa teachers and international faculty, which was previously referred to as our visiting international faculty or VIF,” said Assistant Superintendent Shawn O’Connor.

Construction of all new security features would cost about $2.5 million per site, he said. But many substations already have fencing, which reduces the cost significantly. About $800,000 can outfit a single substation with pan-tilt-

According to O’Connor, Hoke County Schools currently has established partnerships with Participate (8 teachers in the district) and Education Partners Internationals (22 teachers), which are officially recognized cultural exchange programs by the US Department of

zoom cameras, intrusion detection and an access control system.

The Pacific Northwest has become a hotspot for these physical attacks, with Washington and Oregon utilities reporting at least 15 incidents in 2022, including 10 in the last two months of the year.

State and provide J-1 Visas, meaning these teachers go through federal screening. These visas cover three years and can be extended for an additional two.

Attackers hit four Washington substations on Christmas Day, forcing entry, setting fire to equipment and temporarily cutting power to thousands of customers.

Michael Furze, director of the Washington State Energy Office, said that although no legislation specifically addressing substation security has been introduced, broader bipartisan discussions are underway about grid resilience.

Washington is already revamping its electrical infrastructure

Some of the other services these partners cover are teaching experience reviews, educational program audits, instructional and behavioral interviews and observations, english language proficiency assessments, cultural adaptiveness assessments, state licensure reviews, international background checks, and specifically Global Teaching Partners helps provide specific NC teacher training.

Global Teaching Partners, however, is located in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, and they do all of their business only in

In neighboring Oregon, the state’s Public Utility Commission is working with regulated utilities to increase vigilance and explore possible security updates, after gunfire attacks damaged two substations southeast of Portland in late November. Spokesperson Kandi Young said the commission monitors proposed legislation and is not aware of any related bills introduced this session.

North Carolina and South Carolina.

“We’re not just filling vacancies with these individuals,” O’Connor said. “The people that we have gotten, their attrition rate, which means they come back every year and don’t quit their job, is so much lower than all of our other teachers. They typically stay their five years, and a lot of them are very effective teachers. These are quality individuals who want to be here to teach our kids, and with the J-1 Visa, they’re here for five years.”

And in Nevada, where a man set fire to a solar power unit this month, a search of the 138 bill draft requests with pre-filed text found none that would explicitly address electrical infrastructure security. But with more than two weeks until the biennial session begins, most legislative proposals have yet to be formally introduced.

Hoke County Schools currently has 30 international employees from eight different countries across nine different schools.

The Hoke County Board of Education will next meet February 14.

Hoke County Sheriff’s Office

A

podcast getting to the facts across the state, around the world

A weekly podcast getting to the facts across the state, around the world and at home HERE in Raeford, Hoke County, NC.

Hosted by:

“You want to demoralize people, you put them in the dark.”

Keller Kissam, President of Dominion Energy South Carolina

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Universal educational vouchers is not a winning policy

Don’t believe the press releases from universal school voucher enthusiasts ― it wasn’t a winning message in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona this past election.

10% of students are not in governmentfunded K-12 institutions in the United States.

The GOP should abandon expanding taxpayer-funded school choice and focus on empowering parents, not expanding the reach of more government. The GOP will be making a big mistake if they decide to enact universal taxpayer-funded school choice policies, which will increase dependency on the government and normalize welfare for all.

Exit polls show that three main groups vote for Democrats ― single women, people with advanced degrees, and welfare recipients. Those who vote Republican are men, married women, and those without advanced degrees.

Marxism is the economic theory where central government controls all funding. You can’t defeat Marxism being taught in the public school system by expanding the Marxist financing mechanism.

The policy of expanding government-funded vouchers will take the “men and married women” category of voters and move them into the “welfare” category. Corey DeAngelis, who is a spokesperson for enacting universal school choice, cites food stamps as a good policy comparison because of its transferability.

Who do those on food stamps generally vote for? Democrats.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona ran on universal school vouchers, and the results were disastrous ― losing state representative seats, governorship, and senate seats. School choice itself is an idea worth supporting but expanding the welfare state to do so is not a winning strategy.

Many proponents of universal taxpayer-

CARTOON BY RUTH LOPEZ

funded school choice call Arizona the gold standard for their bill signed by the Republican governor. If winning elections is something you’d like to do, then clearly, it is gold for democrats, who flipped the governorship. It is still early, but some early results showed that less than 1% of Arizona students left the public school system last year while tens of thousands of previously privately funded students went back to public schools.

“What about the kids? We need to help the kids?” Yes, but universal school choice does not help them. You are not helping the kids when you are creating policy that promotes dependency on the government and increases government control on their lives. If you are embracing government collecting taxes and then using those taxes to pay for private education, you aren’t getting kids out of the public system, you are putting more of them into it because they are being funded by public dollars.

Roughly 10% of students are not in government-funded K-12 institutions in the United States. Imagine if universal school choice is enacted and the number of students who are free of government dependency drops to less than 1%. As adults, they will vote for progressive ideas like Universal Basic Income, singlepayer health care, and a host of other welfare programs because they will be inured to the idea that the government provides funds for their use, not the private sector.

Good governance requires oversight. Oversight requires money and power. As a taxpayer and a conservative, we should demand oversight of how our taxes are being spent. These vouchers literally open the door to your home to more government. You might say that the government wouldn’t do that, but it already does in states such as Alaska, Michigan, and California with more limited vouchers. The laws may be initially passed with limited or no controls, but that will quickly change because good governance demands it.

The good news is we already have true school choice in North Carolina. We don’t need taxpayers to pay for every student and for every school option. You can homeschool or send your kids to a private school or a government institution. Conservatives should promote policies that lower true costs for families, help them keep more of their money in their own pocket, and encourage private and direct private investment in education locally. That is a winning message, not just today but for our future. The kids are depending on you. They are worth it.

Robert Bortins is CEO of Classical Conversations in Southern Pines

Racial reparations solve nothing

The federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States.

THIS WEEK, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad — as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”

This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure to be cured with social engineering.

This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.

Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco’s reparations committee — simply cutting checks — has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President

Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you

have been completely fair.”

To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black.

It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+.

COLUMN | ROBERT BORTINS

COLUMN | BEN SHAPIRO

SIDELINE REPORT

NBA

Magic’s Isaac

Kenseth highlights 3-person NASCAR Hall of Fame induction

resumes

NBA career after missing 2½ years Orlando, Fla.

Jonathan Isaac finally got back into a game after 2½ years Monday, helping the Magic beat the Boston Celtics 113-98. The 6-foot-10 power forward scored 10 points, grabbed three rebounds and added a couple of steals in his limited time on the floor. Isaac originally injured his knee on Jan. 1, 2020. He returned seven months later, but tore his left ACL while playing in his second game in the NBA bubble at Disney World. Only three Magic players are still on the roster who played with the former Florida State standout before his knee injuries.

GOLF

LIV to stage 3 events on Trump sites; ranking decision looms Knutsford, England

The second year of Saudifunded LIV Golf will be going to three courses owned by former President Donald Trump as part of a 14-event schedule in 2023, according to a report from SI.com. The report said LIV Golf announced its schedule, although the LIV website only said that a full schedule was coming soon. Whether LIV gets world ranking points will be decided by the four major championship and the chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking board.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Ga.

Wide receiver Rodarius “Rara” Thomas, who recently transferred to Georgia from Mississippi State, has been arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges. Thomas was booked early Monday on a felony charge of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of family violence battery and was later released on $1,850 bond. Thomas was arrested by University of Georgia police. Thomas was Mississippi State’s leading receiver last season with 626 receiving yards on 44 catches and seven touchdowns. He announced his transfer to Georgia in December shortly before the Bulldogs won their second straight national championship.

The Associated Press

CHARLOTTE — Two-time Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth finally reached the top rung of his career on Friday night when he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The 50-year-old Kenseth, who drove 18 full seasons in NASCAR before retiring in 2020 with 39 Cup victories and 20 poles, highlighted a class that also included longtime driver Hershel McGriff and crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine.

The driver, who many referred to as “Matt the brat” when he first broke into racing, ranks 21st on NASCAR Cup Series’ career wins list. He won all of the sport’s biggest races including the Daytona 500 in 2009 and 2012, the Coca-Cola 600, the Southern 500 and the All-Star race.

“I always looked at my career as a ladder — you always start at the bottom and you hope to climb your way to the top,” Kenseth said in his acceptance speech. “My ladder has hundreds and hundreds of rungs on it. and without any of them, bottom, middle or

top — no matter who you fit in my life — I wouldn’t be here without any of you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you all.”

Kenseth’s wife, Katie, and father, Roy, inducted him.

“The internal drive is what put Matt on this stage tonight,” Katie Kenseth said.

Kenseth captured the 2003 Cup Series championship behind a dominating season in which he led the points standings for the final 32 weeks. When the series switched to a playoff format, he reached the postseason in 13 of 14 seasons and finished runner-up twice. He also won 29 Xfinity Series races.

Kenseth talked about learning to love NASCAR by watching his family race at Jefferson Speedway where he grew up in Wisconsin and begging his father to take him to his uncle Gary’s house so he could help him work on his race cars.

“Racing truly is a family sport,” he said.

Shelmerdine was the crew chief and front tire change for four of Dale Earnhardt’s seven championships. Only two crew chiefs have more premier series titles than Shelmerdine: class of 2012 inductee Dale Inman with eight and Chad Knaus, who will be eligible for Hall of Fame con-

sideration in 2024, with seven.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. inducted Shelmerdine, saying “he put my dad on the path to greatness.”

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver,” Shelmerdine said. “What else can we say about him? When we started together, Dale and I just kind of clicked intuitively.”

The 95-year-old McGriff competed on racetracks for 68 years.

From 1954 until 2018, he participated in 271 races in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West (now ARCA Menards West Series), winning 34 races and posting 100 top-five finishes. He captured the series championship in 1986 at 58 years old and finished second in

Former Wake player Hamby accuses WNBA’s Aces of bullying, manipulation

The Associated Press

The WNBA players’ union said Saturday it will review Dearica Hamby’s complaints about Las Vegas management after the Aces traded the two-time All-Star to the Los Angeles Sparks.

In an Instagram post, the 29-year-old Hamby said the Aces attacked her character and work ethic.

“Being traded is a part of the business,” Hamby posted. “Being lied to, bullied, manipulated, and discriminated against is not.”

A message was left by the AP seeking comment from the Aces.

Hamby agreed to a two-year contract extension with Las Vegas in June. She said in her Instagram post that Aces management said she knew she was pregnant at the time of the deal.

“This is false,” Hamby wrote.

“I was told that I was a ‘question mark’ and that it was said that I said I would ‘get pregnant again’ and there was a concern for my level of commitment to the team.”

She also said the Aces said they were concerned Hamby wouldn’t be ready for this season. Hamby

said she plans to play this season.

“I remained transparent with everyone within the organization, and yet, my honesty was met with coldness, disrespect, and disregard from members of management,” Hamby wrote. “I have only put this organization first since day one before any of them were

here.”

The Women’s National Basketball Players Association said it would “seek a comprehensive investigation” to ensure that Hamby’s rights under the league’s 2020 labor agreement as well as state and federal laws were not violated.

points in 1985 and 1987.

McGriff spoke at length about his career path, saying he started driving vehicles at age 7.

“I have had a happy life and this induction is just icing on the cake,” McGriff said, tearing up several times during his speech. He joked that he still plans to write a book about his life.

Mike Helton was honored as the Landmark Award winner for outstanding contributions to the sport. Helton was the first person outside the France family to handle NASCAR’s day-to-day operations.

Photographer T. Taylor Warren was named the recipient of the 2023 Squier-Hall Award.

The Sparks also received the Aces’ first-round pick in 2024 in exchange for the exclusive negotiating rights to Amanda Zahui B., plus the Sparks’ 2024 second-round pick.

“Adding Dearica to our roster plus a future first-round pick was a solid move for us,” Sparks GM Karen Bryant said in a statement. “We’re excited to have another key piece in place as we start free agency.”

The 6-foot-3 Hamby, the sixth overall pick out of Wake Forest in 2015, spent her first eight WNBA seasons with the same franchise, dating to the Aces’ days in San Antonio as the Silver Stars.

Hamby was the WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year in 2019 and 2020. Hamby averaged 9.3 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Aces last season when they won their first WNBA championship. She was limited in the playoffs due to a knee injury.

“Dearica has dedicated eight years of her career to this organization, and played a big role in our success since the team moved to Las Vegas,” Aces general manager Natalie Williams said in a statement. “We’re going to miss her as a teammate, and are grateful for all of her contributions to the Aces over the years.”

Hamby announced at the Aces’ championship parade last September that she was expecting her second child. Hamby’s 5-year-old daughter Amaya accompanied her mother during the 2020 season, which was played in a bubble in Florida because of the pandemic. They were among those featured in the documentary “144.”

Dr. Tony Santangelo, DC, named NC Chiropractic Association Chiropractor of the Year, based on community service & the profression

Former Dale Earnhardt Sr. crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine and driver Hershel McGriff were also enshrined

AP PHOTO

Matt Kenseth speaks during his induction into the the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday in Charlotte.

Georgia transfer Thomas arrested on felony charge Athens,

The 2015 sixth-overall pick says the team knew she was pregnant when she signed a contract extension

AP PHOTO

Two-time WNBA All-Star Dearica Hamby was traded by the Las Vegas Aces to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday.

Canucks fire coach Boudreau, hire Tocchet as replacement

a statement thanking Boudreau for his contributions.

The Associated Press

BRUCE BOUDREAU has been fired as coach of the Vancouver Canucks, who are again on track to miss the playoffs with another underachieving season.

The team announced the change Sunday, less than a week since president of hockey operations Jim Rutherford said “major surgery” was needed to fix the Canucks, who have only made the playoffs once in the past eight years. Rick Tocchet was hired as Boudreau’s replacement for a Vancouver team that has lost 28 of 46 games this season.

“This was not an easy decision to make but one that we felt was necessary for this franchise,” general manager Patrik Allvin said in

Boudreau waved to the crowd after the Canucks’ latest defeat Saturday night, their third in the past four games. Chants of “Bruce, there it is!” to the tune of Tag Team’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)” echoed around the arena as a tribute to the well-respected 68-yearold hockey lifer who ranks among the top regular-season coaches in NHL history.

He’s the second coach Vancouver has fired in under 14 months. Boudreau took over in December 2021 when previous coach Travis Green and general manager Jim Benning were let go 25 games into last season.

Assistant Trent Cull was also relieved of his duties, the team said Sunday. Adam Foote was named as an assistant and Sergei Gonchar a defensive development coach on Tocchet’s staff.

Tocchet previously coached the

Tampa Bay Lightning for parts of two seasons from 2008-10 and the Arizona Coyotes for four years from 2017-21. He won the Stanley Cup as a player with the Pittsburgh Penguins and then twice as an assistant for them.

“Rick Tocchet brings a wealth of knowledge to this team from both a coach and player perspective,” Allvin said. “He has had more than two decades of coaching experience, guiding teams of various styles.”

The Canucks have missed the playoffs the past two seasons since reaching the second round in the COVID-19 bubble in 2020.

Boudreau was with his fourth NHL organization after stints with Washington, Anaheim and Minnesota. He won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 2007-08 when he was elevated from the minors to coach the Capitals on Thanksgiving and got them to the playoffs.

Teams coached by Boudreau for a full season have made the playoffs nine out of 10 times. His .626 points percentage ranks fourth among coaches with at least 500 games behind the bench, and his 617 wins are tied for 20th in league history.

But a Canucks team in disarray did not give him much of a chance

to keep that success going. Rutherford in a news conference Monday said big changes would be coming in the offseason, citing the need for the team to get younger.

They could happen before that, especially with captain Bo Horvat unsigned beyond this season and attracting attention ahead of the March 3 trade deadline.

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey stepping down after this season

MIKE BREY needed only one season to turn Notre Dame from a forgotten program into an NCAA Tournament team.

He spent the next 22 seasons chasing the school’s second Final Four appearance, and this season will be his last chance.

On Thursday, Notre Dame announced Brey would be stepping down at the end of the season after winning a school-record 481 games and leading the program for a school-record 23 years. In a statement, Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick indicated Brey would remain on staff in an as-yet undefined capacity.

“It has been a great run for me and our program over the past two decades, but it is time for a new voice to lead this group into the future,” the 63-year-old Brey said in a statement released by the athletic department. “I want to thank our student-athletes, assistant coaches and support staff who have played such a key role in the culture we have created.”

Notre Dame scheduled a news conference for Friday.

Brey left Delaware in July 2000 after taking the Blue Hens to two NCAA Tournaments in three seasons — something that seemed little more than an afterthought in South Bend, considering that in the nine seasons following Digger Phelps’ retirement in 1991, Notre Dame’s once blue-chip program had been shut out of the NCAA tourney and had earned only three NIT bids.

But the man who served as an assistant under America’s best-known prep coach — Morgan Wootten at Maryland’s DeMatha High School — and under Division I’s winningest college coach, Mike Krzyzewski, helped Notre Dame return to its more glorious days.

Notre Dame snapped a 10-year tourney drought in 2001 and made 13 total tourney appearances under Brey. He won 15 tourney games, tying the school record, and Notre

Dame reached back-to-back Elite Eights in 2015 and 2016.

“That Mike is the winningest coach in the 119-year history of Notre Dame men’s basketball speaks to his skill as a teacher of the game,” Swarbrick said. “His even greater legacy, however, lies in his achievements as an educator and mentor of the young men who played for him. In that sense, he represents this university as well as any coach I have worked with during my time at Notre Dame.”

Brey became a part of the community and excelled on the court, turning the Irish into title contenders in two different conferences.

Three times, he was named Big East coach of the year and won 146 conference games, which still ranks fifth all-time in the league. In 2011, Brey was named The Associated Press coach of the year after leading

the Irish to a 27-7 mark and a 17-0 home record.

Notre Dame moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2013 and two years later, Brey won the conference tourney title by defeating Miami, Duke and North Carolina during a 32-6 campaign. The Irish returned to the ACC tourney semifinals in 2016 and the ACC championship game in 2017 and seven of Brey’s players were NBA draft picks.

But lately, it’s been more challenging for Brey and the Irish. After going 24-11 and ending a fiveyear tourney drought last season, the Irish are 9-10 off to a 1-7 start in ACC play.

Brey is 580-321 overall and ranks 50th on the Division I career wins list. He is 481-269 with Notre Dame, a victory total that ranks sixth among active coaches at their current schools.

DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS VIA AP Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau responds to questions during a news conference following Vancouver’s loss to the Oilers. Boudreau was fired Sunday morning and replaced with Rick Tocchet.

The former Duke assistant is in his 23rd year with the Irish

The Associated Press

“It is time for a new voice to lead this group into the future.”

Mike Brey, Notre Dame basketball coach

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey will step down following this season, his 23rd in South Bend.

AP PHOTO

State auditor: I made ‘serious mistake’ leaving accident

By Gary D. Robertson The Associated Press

RALEIGH — North Carolina’s elected state auditor apologized Monday for leaving the scene of an accident last month after she drove her state-issued vehicle into a parked car, calling it a “serious mistake” and adding she would continue at her job.

In a statement released days after the two charges against her became public, Auditor Beth Wood, a Democrat, said the collision happened when she left a holiday gathering where she had been for about two hours the evening of Dec. 8.

She was cited by Raleigh police four days later for a misdemeanor hit-and-run and another traffic-related charge. A Wake County court date is scheduled for Thursday.

“I made a mistake in judgment on December 8, but I am committed to continuing to perform my duties with the same energy and determination I am known for,” said Wood, who was first elected to the auditor’s post in 2008. Her position is next on the ballot in 2024.

No one was hurt in the accident, which she said occurred

when she “made a sharp right turn and inadvertently hit a parked car.” Wood, 68, was driving her state-assigned vehicle, a 2021 Toyota Camry. Photos and 911 calls reported on by media outlets show that part of her car was on top of the parked vehicle.

“I was shaken by the incident and, when I was unable to move my vehicle, I left the scene,” Wood said in the written statement, her first comments since the charges were revealed. “That was a serious mistake and I regret my decision.”

The state auditor, one of 10

members of the North Carolina Council of State, performs financial reviews of state agencies, as well as performance audits and other studies sought by the General Assembly.

Sam Chan, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, said in a written statement that Wood’s collision “was a troubling incident and the Governor is glad that the Auditor has addressed it publicly.”

“There’s an investigation and court proceeding going on and he believes it’s appropriate for that to proceed,” Chan said.

The state Republican Party said in a social media post that Wood should resign her position because leaving the scene “was intentional and wholly unbecoming of an elected official.”

Raleigh police accused Wood of hit-and-run — leaving the scene and property damage — and for an unsafe movement infraction, court records show. Someone without a previous criminal record would face no active jail time for a hit-andrun misdemeanor but could face probation. An unsafe movement count can be punishable by a fine.

Wood said she was continuing to cooperate with law enforcement. Monday’s statement said Wood wasn’t available for media interviews for now.

The court citation says there was probable cause to believe Wood operated the vehicle and failed to provide her name, address and other information. It also appears Wood operated a vehicle while “failing to see before turning from a direct line that such movement could be made in safety,” the citation reads.

Chris Valverde, the owner of the parked car, said his daughter had borrowed the car the evening of the collision to work at a downtown restaurant.

“I get a phone call from my daughter (who) “literally … says ‘There’s a car on top of the car,’” Valverde told WRAL-TV late last week. Wood said Monday she apologizes to Valverde, “my staff and all I serve for leaving the scene of the accident.”

Wood said Monday that she contacted the state government’s motor fleet management office the day after the collision.

An “automotive loss report” filed Dec. 12 and provided by the state Department of Administration described damage to the front passenger side of the vehicle and panel damage.

The report said Wood was traveling at 15 mph when the collision occurred and was neither using a mobile device nor reaching for anything.

Alex Murdaugh goes on trial in 2021 killings of wife, son

AS HIS LIFE unraveled over the past two years, disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh didn’t fight giving up his law license and said he made plenty of mistakes tied to missing client money and a financial mess that led to 100 criminal charges.

But he has adamantly insisted, from the moment he found the bodies of his wife and youngest son both shot multiple times at the family’s estate in June 2021, that he was not the killer.

Lawyers expect jury selection to last several days before testimony begins. It took state agents 13 months of investigation to charge Murdaugh with two counts of murder, and a judge has set aside three weeks for the trial. Murdaugh insisted on the trial as soon as possible.

Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty, but said they will ask for life without parole if Murdaugh is convicted of murder. The minimum sentence is 30 years.

Here’s an overview of the trial and the scene surrounding it as hundreds of lawyers and their support staff, reporters and true crime enthusiasts are expected to swell Colleton County’s population of 38,000 in the rural, southern part of the state.

The killings and evidence

Murdaugh, 54, told police he found Maggie, 52, and their son, Paul, 22, dead outside their Colleton County home on June 7, 2021. He said he’d been gone for an hour to visit his ailing father and mother.

Authorities released little information about the killings beyond

saying that Maggie Murdaugh was killed with a rifle and Paul Murdaugh with a shotgun.

Prosecutors have not detailed direct evidence linking Murdaugh to the deaths. So far they have filed with the court no confession or witness statements about the killings. There is no evidence on the eve of the trial that either gun has been found.

There is a video from Paul Murdaugh’s phone with a timestamp not long before the killings. The three are talking without evidence of anger. Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers said he has never denied being at his home.

There is DNA from the victims on Alex Murdaugh’s shirt, but

his defense said that came from checking for signs of life when he found their bodies.

The defense and prosecution are fighting over whether to allow an expert to testify that the blood on Murdaugh’s shirt was splattered on it when his son was shot. Defense lawyers said the expert testing the shirt is lying and destroyed it before the defense could conduct its own tests.

Prosecutors are expected to rely heavily on evidence of Murdaugh’s financial problems, which they said led him to kill to buy time as he covered up his theft of settlement money from clients.

Prosecutors said the killings gave Murdaugh sympathy and,

more importantly, allowed him to hide his thefts and other crimes.

Other crimes

The murder charges are only two of about 100 different criminal counts Murdaugh faces. He also is on trial on two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

Still hanging over his head are a broad range of dozens of state charges. They include stealing millions of dollars from clients, diverting a wrongful death settlement for the family’s longtime maid from her family to himself, running a drug and money laundering ring, evading taxes, and commit-

ting fraud from what police said was an attempt to have someone kill him so his surviving son could collect a $10 million life insurance policy.

Powerful family

The Murdaugh name is well known in judicial circles in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Alex Murdaugh worked for the family law firm that had been in business in tiny neighboring Hampton County for a century, winning a number of multimillion-dollar settlements for fatal accidents and workplace injuries.

Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were the elected prosecutors for 87 years straight in Colleton, Hampton and three other counties.

Small town, big trial

Murdaugh’s downfall has attracted media from around the world and dozens of true crime podcasts and other coverage. It’s probably the most sensational trial in South Carolina since Susan Smith was convicted of killing her children and sentenced to life in 1995 in tiny Union County.

The Murdaugh trial is taking place at the historic Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, where the large, old Southern courtroom can seat nearly 250 people.

The city last month asked food trucks to park nearby to help a handful of downtown restaurants handle the lunchtime crowds. On a county website for reporters on the case, nine residents offered their homes or businesses to media outlets to use as a base to cover the trial.

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Beth Wood has a court date on Jan. 26, 2023, after she was cited for misdemeanor hit-and-run and another traffic-related charge when police said she hit a parked car while driving on a Raleigh road.

STOCK PHOTO

Alex Murdaugh is escorted out of the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on July 20, 2022.

Benjamin (Frank) Taylor

May 14, 1960 ~ January 14, 2023

Mr. Benjamin F. Taylor (Frank) of Aberdeen, North Carolina was born May 14th, 1960, to the late Elizabeth Pierce Taylor and Paul Taylor. He was born into Eternity on Saturday, January 14th, 2023.

In addition to his parents, Frank was preceded in death by his son, Frank Alexander Taylor and one sister, Dianne T. Royce. He was gainfully employed with Asplundh Tree Company for 23 years.

Mr. Taylor is survived by a very special friend, Roberta Locklear of the home; two daughters, Anjelica Taylor (Mitchell) of Red Springs and Ashley Reavis of Aberdeen; one son, Flando Locklear of Red Springs; brother, Paul Taylor (Sylvia) of Wagram; three granddaughters Elizabeth Nicole Jacobs, Nilah Shea Jacobs, and Layonna Irene Jacobs, all of Red Springs; and a host of friends that became family over the years.

Mackenzie Paige Wolcott

March 24, 1995 ~ January 7, 2023

Mackenzie Paige Wolcott, daughter of Joseph Wolcott Jr and Nicole Brown (Thorp), was born on March 24, 1995 in Sayre, Pennsylvania, and passed away on January 7, 2023 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She attended Sayre Area High School before relocating to Southern Pines, North Carolina with her father, where she completed her education at Pine Crest High School. She was a lover of art, fashion, cosmetology, dance, music, and animals, particularly her beloved pets, Dodger and Dinah, who preceded her.

Exceptionally funny and kind, Mackenzie could easily make friends wherever she went. Though light-hearted, Mackenzie could just as easily hold deep, soulful conversations on life, bringing her experience and colorful visions forward. She would have late night conversations with her mother reflecting on life, God and their shared love of art. Though in different states, Mackenzie and her mother remained close and shared a special bond. Mackenzie was also a talented athlete with natural abilities.

Jamel Oshea Davis

November 15, 1995 ~ January 6, 2023

Mr. Jamel Oshea Davis age, 27 went home to be with his heavenly father on January 6, 2023. He leaves to cherish his loving memories his parents, Mary Lowery and Johnny Davis; grandmother, Carolyn Wesley; sisters: Jacqueline Davis, Ciarra Davis, Lakyrah Jenkins; brothers: Demarrius Tolbert, Jesse Curtis, Johnathan Davis, Rodrick Mason; aunts: Malika Allen, Martha Washington Holton, Dorothy Stevens, Annette Brown, Lavondra Boyd, Peggy Dorsey, Evett Clarke, Stephane Crugar, Sharon Davis; uncles: Jerry Hollingsworth Jr, Gary Davis, John Davis, Titus Wesley, John Wesley, Andrew Dorsey along with a host of other family and friends. Jamel will be greatly missed.

Trina Latisha Williams

April 27, 1975 ~ January 6, 2023

Trina Williams departed from this life on Monday, January 9, 2023.

Mackenzie was a beloved daughter, sister, granddaughter, aunt, cousin and friend. She was especially close with her nephew Caston and niece Celess, whom she was with from the moment she was born and loved dearly. However, she spent her final years battling addiction. Her family wishes to share this information in hopes that it may help save another’s life.

Mackenzie was preceded in death by her uncle, Matthew Wolcott (Teresa), great-uncle Warren Wolcott, numerous greatgrandparents, and great-great grandmother Dorothy Kreidler. She is survived by her parents, Joseph Wolcott Jr of Sayre, PA, and Nicole Brown (Thorp) of Chemung, NY, maternal grandparents, Frank and Michele Thorp of Litchfield, PA, paternal grandparents Joseph Sr and Mary Wolcott of Sayre, PA, sisters Devan Wolcott, Heather Wolcott, and Courtney Brown; uncle Vince Thorp (Stacy); paternal aunt and uncles Becky, Mark, Brian and Daniel (Violeta) and family; nieces Celess, Dannika, Deja, Zoe and Elaina; nephews Caston, Everett and Jayce; cousins Alexa, Ashley, Cody, Derek, Megan, Mindy, Ruby, Stacy and Zachary, and numerous second cousins, great aunts and uncles, other extended family, and close friends, particularly her lifelong best friend, Tiffany Lafritz. Mackenzie will be deeply missed.

Celebrate the life of your loved ones. Submit obituaries and death notices to be published in NSJ at obits@northstatejournal.com

STATE & NATION

Hockey brawls to debt limit: Emmer wrangles House GOP votes

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The way Republican Rep. Tom Emmer tells it, the lousiest job he ever had — he has a saltier way of describing it — was running the House Republican campaign committee.

But after having helped lead his party back into control of the House in November, the former youth hockey coach now must round up votes from those Republicans, as the majority whip, in order to pass GOP priorities.

Corralling colleagues for their support on the debt ceiling, spending cuts and investigating the Biden administration will be tough work for the third-ranking leader who has served in Congress since 2015.

With Republicans holding only 222 seats in the 435-member House, almost everyone is needed to reach the 218 votes needed for approving most bills.

Just agreeing to elect California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the House speaker took 15 ballots.

Emmer was a central negotiator in that effort, hammering out the side-deal to win over holdouts after endless meetings in his first-floor office at the Capitol. It was a crashcourse for the budget battles and showdowns ahead.

A look at how the rough-andtumble Minnesotan told The Associated Press he plans to tackle the job.

Speaker’s election as hockey brawl

Before joining Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state legislator. Some of his most applicable professional experience, however, comes from coaching hockey.

When McCarthy failed to win the speaker’s race on the first votes, Emmer convened the holdouts in

his still new Capitol office, so bare there are no pictures hanging on the walls.

“Good teams are always going to have differences of opinion,” Emmer said. “If you don’t let them express that, you are never going to succeed.”

Emmer told the story of a fabled hockey coach who would let players fight it out during practices — almost encouraging it, he said — much the way Republicans nearly came to blows on the House floor during the speaker’s election.

“You know what, these guys actually become closer,” Emmer said.

Bracing for budget battles

Emmer is not part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In fact, some Republicans did not think he was conservative enough for the leadership post.

But he won his own internal GOP election to become the whip, brushing back two challengers. When it came time to broker the deal for McCarthy’s election, Emmer had to win over some of those same conservative holdouts.

One of the many key concessions McCarthy made to earn the votes of his detractors was a commitment to return to federal spending to 2022 budget levels. Cuts of that size would amount to an 8% reduction in domestic defense, veterans

and domestic accounts — or even more, 17%, if the Pentagon money is spared.

The Republicans also agreed to aim for a balanced budget in 10 years.

From Emmer’s point of view, much of what was agreed to with the holdouts is “aspirational.”

“Some might criticize me when I say it’s an aspirational document because they think it’s more than that, and they’re right,” Emmer said. “Because we now have to hold ourselves to this.”

Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and debt ceilings past

One of the biggest challenges Emmer will face is rounding up the votes for the coming debt ceiling showdown.

Congress is being asked by the Treasury Department to raise the nation’s debt cap so it can borrow more money to pay off the nation’s already accruing bills.

House Republicans insist they will not lift that limit without changes in the way the federal government spends money — most likely, cuts in spending levels. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that she expects Congress will ultimately vote to increase the cap. But she said GOP demands for spending cuts in return for back-

ing an increase are “a very irresponsible thing to do” and risk creating a “self-imposed calamity” for the global economy.

Those decades-old spending battles simmer on Capitol Hill, especially for conservatives, which is why the Freedom Caucus and others drove such a hard bargain with McCarthy during the speaker’s race.

“A lot of it was personality issues that have probably been driven from as far back as when John Boehner was the speaker and then Paul Ryan,” Emmer said about dynamics.

Sparing defense cuts

Republicans have different views when it comes to what spending to cut as they try to use the debt ceiling vote to extract their own budget priorities.

While some say they want to see all spending on the table for review, Emmer is among those who believe defense should largely be spared.

“The argument is if you go to FY22 baseline, it affects both domestic and defense — not under Republicans,” he said, referring to 2022 budget levels. “Republicans will look for efficiencies, they’ll look for waste. We aren’t cutting defense. We assured our appropriators and ask our House Armed Services Committee. That’s not what we’re doing.”

March for Life eyes Congress for post-Roe abortion limits

By Calvin Woodward The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A half century after Roe v. Wade, March for Life supporters on Friday celebrated the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the 50-year decision and heralded the political struggle set loose by the court’s decision. President Joe Biden pledged to do all in his limited power to restore core abortion policies.

The first March for Life since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June came with a new focus. Instead of concentrating their attention on the court, the marchers vowed to push for action from the building directly across the street: the U.S. Capitol.

Congress, movement leaders say, must be warned against making any attempt to curtail the multiple pro-life laws imposed last year in a dozen states.

Tens of thousands spread across a section of the National Mall for speeches, the Capitol Building in sight, then marched.

“For nearly 50 years, you have marched to proclaim the fundamental dignity of women, of their children and of life itself,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch,

whose office argued the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, told the crowd. “But this year is different.”

Indeed, with the constitutional victory behind them and lawmakers now the ones to be persuaded, marchers took a new route along the western face of the Capitol, to their usual destination between that complex and the court.

“I am the post-Roe generation,” read one sign. “Excommunicate Pro-Choice Catholics,” said another. Banners proclaimed “Love Them Both,” meaning mother and

was sold for $3,033.16 to Briarwood Family Group LLC, and the second property off of Vass Road was sold for $3,114.96 to Lakisha Graham.

The board then approved three contracts presented by the Hoke County Health Department.

The first contract was for an additional $50,000 for an additional peer counselor position in conjunction with the Hoke County Sheriff’s Department.

“This is in relation to the Opioid funding that we had during COVID times to reduce substance misuse in the detention centers,” said Health Director Helene Edwards. “That program’s been going very well, and Sheriff Virgil has requested another $50,000 to staff another peer coun-

selor in the jail to work with the inmates. We do have that funding through the Justice Grant. When it was initially approved, it was for two people, and so now the jail has the two people, and it’s working very well.”

The second contract was for a Community Health Worker to act as a bridge between the community and the Health Department.

“This person would be based in the Health Department and would actually work with resource allocation and with people that do have substance abuse issues,” Edwards said. “Working in our health department and our clinic with anybody that is identified as having issues. It’s just another way that we can spend the money in a reasonable way as this grant fund will end

child.

Tammy Milligan came dressed as “patriot Wonder Woman” and stood out in the crowd. She said she never thought Roe v. Wade would be overruled in her lifetime, but the fight doesn’t stop there. “We want it to be unthinkable for a woman to have an abortion,” she said.

In a counter-protest outside the court building, 15 or so activists in favor of abortion rights held signs of their own: “Bans off our Bodies,” “Mind your own uterus.” They chanted, “Our bodies do not need

May 31 of this year.”

The final contract was with Maxim Healthcare Staffing to help staff the Health Department.

“Maxim Healthcare Staffing, Inc., is based in Fayetteville, and they provide nurses that do public health work,” Edwards said. “There is a nursing shortage around our nation, but at the health department, we’ve had a loss of nurses since November, a couple each month. We just hired two nurses since Christmas, but we’re looking to use this staffing agency to work with our COVID funding to provide services at the Health Department. This funding is state funds that’ll end May 31, so it’s a way to have some nurses working with us until that time as we try and search and find other employees.”

advice from priests.”

They were easily outnumbered and surrounded by March for Lifers, but interactions were civil and police did not separate the two camps.

Biden offered his counterpoint in a proclamation recognizing Sunday — Jan. 22 — as the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. “Never before has the Court taken away a right so fundamental to Americans,” his statement said. “In doing so, it put the health and lives of women across this Nation at risk.”

“The struggle has changed,” said Marion Landry, 68, who came from North Carolina with her husband, Arthur, 91, for the sixth time. “In some ways you don’t have that central focus anymore. Now it’s back to the states.”

In the absence of Roe v. Wade’s federal protections, abortion laws vary by state.

Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.

Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to le-

Finally, the board heard from Attorney Angelica McDonald, whose nonprofit had secured the funding and supported the Hoke County Teen Court program for the last four years but is now requesting that the county absorb the responsibilities for supporting it.

“Last July, I came and talked to you all about the county taking on the Teen Court Program,” McDonald said. “My nonprofit has been running the Teen Court program for the last four fiscal years, and now that it is basically a state-mandated program, I felt like it would be best for the county to take that over.”

The county would take on the responsibility for applying for funding through the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council and will work to help

gal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.

Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.

Pro-life activists also have their eye on the 2024 presidential elections and are essentially vetting prospective candidates over their views on the issue. SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said she met recently with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential leading Republican candidate, and came away “incredibly impressed,” but said it was still too early for her organization to endorse anyone.

She predicted that there will be some “fault lines” among Republican presidential contenders over abortion rights and protections, but warned that any candidate perceived as being soft on the issue will have “disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes, and having done so has very little chance of winning the nomination.”

secure a space for the Teen Court to take place.

“We need Teen Court in Hoke County,” said Commissioner Harry Southerland. “Because a lot of our kids need second chances. A lot of us are second-chance kids. There’s no question of whether or not we need Teen Court, because we do.”

“Giving our youth who commit small, petty crimes a chance to not go through our criminal justice system and actually be tried and judged by their peers, I think, is a program that should be taken under the county’s wing,” Thomas said. “We’ve seen over the past two years that they’ve received grants that cover the necessary positions.”

The Hoke County Board of Commissioners will next meet February 7.

AP PHOTO

With the U.S. Capitol in the background, anti-abortion demonstrators march toward the U.S. Supreme Court during the March for Life, Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

Boys basketball

WHAT’S HAPPENING

NC tops 50K EVs; Triad’s electric vehicle pace trails state

Forsyth County

North Carolina has accelerated past the 50,000 mark for electric vehicle registrations, but EV saturation in the Triad continues to lag behind the state as a whole.

Through October, 51,500 plugin vehicles were registered in the state, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Ten Triad region counties accounted for nearly 10% of that total but 16.5% of all North Carolina vehicles.

The latest figures showed there were 59 EVs for every 10,000 registered vehicles statewide compared to 36 per 10,000 in the Triad. Guilford (54), Forsyth (45) and Alamance (37) counties had the region’s highest EVper-10,000 vehicle rates.

Wake and Mecklenburg counties, which claim nearly 20% of the state’s total vehicles, were at 127 EVs per 10,000 EVs.

North Carolina added 15,555 plug-in vehicles during the latest year of available data. That growth rate would put the state on pace to meet Gov. Roy Cooper’s goal of at least 80,000 “zero-emission” registrations by 2025 but not his target, established in a 2019 executive order, of 1.25 million EVs on the road in North Carolina by the end of this decade.

However, a new report offers hope that North Carolinians could put a charge in the electric vehicle market.

More than half of North Carolina drivers would consider plugging in when it comes time to buy their next car or truck, but price continues to be the biggest barrier for potential EV drivers, according to findings in “North Carolina Drives Electric 2022,” released this month by Generation180, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based clean-energy advocacy organization.

1st Black woman serving in N.C. legislature dies

WINSTON-SALEM — Annie Brown Kennedy, an attorney who was the first Black woman to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly, has died at age 98, a family member said.

Kennedy, a Democrat who first joined the House in 1979 to fill a vacancy, died Tuesday from natural causes at her home in Winston-Salem, according to Harvey Kennedy, one of her sons. A plaque inside the Legislative Building in Raleigh recognizes her pioneering achievement.

“She was a wonderful mother,” Kennedy said. “She was a

trailblazer.”

Kennedy ran unsuccessfully to keep her House seat in 1980 but was elected to return to Raleigh two years later, the newspaper reported. She served in the chamber for another decade. Her son said she worked for passage of paid family leave and successfully prevented the Winston-Salem State University nursing program from being shuttered by other lawmakers.

An Atlanta native, Annie Kennedy graduated from Spelman College and the Howard University law school, according to a written biography.

Her son said she was also among

the first African American female attorneys in North Carolina and first women to practice law in Forsyth County. She and her husband, Harold Kennedy Jr., created a law partnership that included two of their three sons and focused on family law and civil litigation.

Former Gov. Jim Hunt, who formally appointed Kennedy to the legislative seat in 1979, said she “was a real scrapper when it came to getting opportunities for people … she made no bones about that. I was real proud to have an opportunity to appoint her.”

U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., said Kennedy was a mentor to her when she joined the state House in

the 1990s.

“She helped guide me, and I admired her because she was a brilliant woman, a brilliant attorney and the consummate stateswoman,” Adams said. “She was always genuine, kind and supportive. She wasn’t loud in her speaking, but always spoke with strength.”

WSFCS to implement new master scheduling software

Policy update to loosen certain graduation requirements

By Ryan Henkel North State Journal

WINSTON-SALEM — The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Board of Education met Tuesday, Jan. 10 with just three action items – one contract and two policy updates – on the agenda.

The board approved a contract with Education Advanced for its Cardonex master schedule software.

“Cardonex is a program where you can prebuild your schedule before you have to commit it to PowerSchool,” said Chief Human Resources Officer Leslie Alexander. “By using this program, high school principals will be able to figure out certain questions before they go through the trouble of loading all of their coursework into PowerSchool.”

The focus of the software will be on creating a flexible master

schedule that will allow as many students as possible to get the course they need and desire. The program will also allow principals to play with certain schedule layouts to see the potential conflicts and problems that would arise.

“Creating student schedules that work for students is our main goal and so while we have the option of doing a hybrid schedule this year, we really do still need to work on getting the best schedule for students,” Alexander said.

The current process for designing a master schedule requires around a 6-week build time and up to a combined total of 800 additional guidance counselor summer days to complete student schedules, so Cardonex should save the district a lot of time and effort.

In order to not lock themselves into a program they hadn’t used before, the board approved just a one-year contract.

The board also approved updates to two policies – 5131.01Use of Metal Detectors: Guide -

lines for Implementation and 5127 - Graduation Requirements.

“[Policy 5131.01] is mostly just a realignment,” said General Counsel Dionne Jenkins. “We removed some alternative schools and programs that no longer exist in the district since the last time the policy was updated. We referenced the Code of Conduct, Character and Support as a potential consequence for students who fail to abide by the metal detector regulations. We changed the reference from airport style to walkthrough style because that is just more up to date with what it is. We also changed some of the language. We removed the term pat down because we don’t do pat down searches and we eliminated some language that was just no longer relevant to our process. Just updating the policy and making it more relevant to our current processes.”

The purpose of the second policy update was to remove the local requirement of a fourth science and physical education II

The Associated Press

PHOTO VIA NCAJ

Annie Brown Kennedy

PJ WARD-BROWN | NORTH STATE JOURNAL

Glenn’s Amani Mock lays the ball up for 2 points against Parkland’s Brock Jackson and Brandon Rorie during a conference game at Parkland high school in Winston-Salem on January 17.

Publisher Matt Mercer Editor in Chief Griffin Daughtry Local News Editor Shawn Krest Editor

Cory Lavalette Sports Editor Frank Hill Senior Opinion Editor Lauren Rose Design Editor

Published each Wednesday as part of North State Journal

1201 Edwards Mill Rd. Suite 300 Raleigh, NC 27607

TO

POSTMASTER:

Racial reparations solve nothing

THIS WEEK, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad — as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”

This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure to be cured with social engineering.

This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.

Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco’s reparations committee — simply cutting checks — has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’

and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black.

It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+.

DEATH NOTICES

♦ Kane Jacob Bowen, 30, of Forsyth County, died Jan. 19, 2023.

♦ Vui “Lillie” Tran Burris, 83, of Winston-Salem, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦

Mandy Annette Cathcart, 57, of Mocksville, died Jan. 19, 2023.

♦ Victor Otto Crews, Jr., 92, of Salisbury, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦

Myra Ann Crowe, 73, of Clemmons, died Jan. 21, 2023.

♦ Ann Doyle, 66, of WinstonSalem, died Jan. 18, 2023.

♦ John Donald Hiatt, Sr., 95, of Winston-Salem, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦

Lori Stafford Huneycutt, 58, of Forsyth County, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦

Charles Mark Nathaniel Karalles, 33, of Rural Hall, died Jan. 18, 2023.

♦ Bunny Thompson Llewellyn, 81, of Clemmons, died Jan. 19, 2023.

♦

Herman “Gene” Eugene Manuel, 89, of Kernersville, died Jan. 18, 2023.

♦ Ann Louise (Thomas) Poteat, 82, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦

Linda Jean Propst, 74, of Clemmons, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦ Jean Warner Stack, 88, of Oak Ridge, died Jan. 18, 2023.

♦

Patricia Hart Sumners, 67, of Forsyth County, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦

♦

William “Bill” Kalick Templeton, 89, of Kernersville, died Jan. 19, 2023.

Martha Lewis “Dixie” Thomas, 90, of Winston-Salem, died Jan. 20, 2023.

♦ Christopher Dwight Thomson, 69, of Clemmons, died Jan. 21, 2023.

♦

Timothy Randall Tuttle, 59, of Forsyth County, died Jan. 19, 2022.

♦ William “Bill” Eugene Walker, 84, of Winston-Salem, died Wednesday 18, 2023.

♦ Thomas Edwin Walsh, 78, of Kernersville, died Jan. 21, 2023.

BOE from page 1

from graduation requirements.

This update provides more choices for students in course selections and makes all graduation requirements standard in order to afford students the opportunity to explore more courses that are of interest towards their post-sec-

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

♦ ABNEY, DATHAN MARQUE was arrested on a charge of PROBATION VIOLATION at 199 POLO RD/CRAFT DR on 1/23/2023

♦ ALBINI, ANTHONY WADE was arrested on a charge of POSS COCAINE FEL at 1110 BURKE ST on 1/19/2023

♦ BASS, BRIAN LEMONT was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 7910 NORTHPOINT on 1/20/2023

♦ BORTZ, IAN MICHAEL was arrested on a charge of BREAKING/LARC-FELONY at 1400 N LIBERTY ST on 1/20/2023

♦ Clark, Cartland Cortrez (M/39) Arrest on chrg of 1) Poss Cocaine Fel (F), 2) Fail To Appear/compl (M), 3) Fail To Appear/compl (M), and 4) Fail To Appear/compl (M), at 4878 Oak Branch Ln, Walkertown, NC, on 1/20/2023 00:39.

♦ Contreras, Romel (M/34) Arrest on chrg of 1) Impaired Driving Dwi (M), 2) Fail To Appear/compl (M), 3) Fail To Appear/compl (M), 4) Fail To Appear/compl (M), 5) NdlSuspended / Revoked (M), and 6) Driving In Center Lane When Such Movement Is Not Allowed (M), at Bethania Rural Hall Rd, Winstonsalem, NC, on 1/18/2023 16:20.

♦ Cooper, Ryan Alexander (M/23)

Arrest on chrg of 1) Kidnapping (F), 2) Assault On Female (M), and 3) Battery On An Unborn Child (M), at 688 Asheby Woods Rd, Kernersville, NC, on 1/18/2023 20:25.

♦ Crews, Patrick Renard (M/39) Arrest on chrg of Assault On Female (M), at 5023 Baux Mountain Rd, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/23/2023 11:12.

♦ Dantzler, Jocelyn Hermine (F/29) Arrest on chrg of Fail Ret Hired Prop, M (M), at 49 Eb 74/ new Walkertown Rd_eb 74 Ra, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/21/2023 12:45.

ondary pursuits.

Finally, the board got clarification on a new state required course that was going to be introduced next year, but had some bearing on early graduation candidates.

“That course, Economics and Personal Finances, is a state required course and it has been

grandfathered in,” said Lead High School Counselor Kenya Rocker. “That change has been made already. The course was accepted three years ago, so this year was the first year since we did have a few students who are graduating early or who graduated midyear who are actually taking the course to meet the graduation require-

ment. But that is a state requirement for all seniors next year.” Rocker continued to state that there may be opportunities for the course to be taken in partnership with the NC Virtual Public School in order to help students fulfill that requirement.

The WSFCS Board of Education will next meet Jan. 24.

♦ Dow, Deirdre Jarenee (F/38) Arrest on chrg of 1) Vand-personal Prop (M) and 2) Vand-personal Prop (M), at 182 Driftwood Ln, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/19/2023 11:18.

♦ Evans, Spencer Taelor (F/29) Arrest on chrg of Assault-simple, M (M), at 301 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/19/2023 12:50.

♦ Figueroa Caraballo, Ariel (M/44) Arrest on chrg of Misuse Of 911 System (M), at 5871 Stanleyville Dr/shellhabour Bv, Rura, NC, on 1/18/2023 04:54.

♦ Fulp, Leigh Anne (F/47) Arrest on chrg of 1) Larceny-felony (F), 2) Larceny-felony (F), 3) Larcenyfelony (F), 4) Fail To Appear/compl (M), and 5) Fail To Appear/compl (M), at Guilford Co. Jail, High Point, NC, on 1/20/2023 09:10.

♦ Gonzalez, Antonio (M/56) Arrest on chrg of Fail To Change Address - Sex Offender Registration (F), at 301 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/19/2023 16:35.

♦ Hamblin, Casey Justin (M/35) Arrest on chrg of 1) Aslt On Offcr/ felony (F), 2) Open Beverage (M), 3) Ofa-fta-dwlr Impaired Rev (M), 4) Ofa-fta-fict/alt Title/reg Card/ tag (M), 5) Ofa-fta-drive/allow Mv No Registration (M), 6) Ofafta-no Liability Insurance (M), 7) Ofa-fta-felony Probation Violation (M), 8) Ofa/fta-fel Prob Viol Out Of County (M), 9) Ofa/fta-fel Prob Viol Out Of County (M), 10) Ofa/fta-defraud Drug/alc Test 1st (M), 11) Probation Violation (F), 12) Resisting Arrest (M), 13) Speeding To Elude Arrest (F), 14) Ndl-drive While Lic Revoked After Division Sent Notificatio (M), 15) Equip - Defective Rear Lamp (M), and 16) Stop Light Violation (M), at 12 Germonton Rd / Hollow Rd, Winstonsalem, NC, on 1/18/2023 23:32.

♦ Holliday, Anthony Earl (M/64) Arrest on chrg of 1) Possesses Count/instrument/currency (F) and 2) Fraud-obt Property (F), at Mecklenburg Jail, Mecklenburg

Co, NC, on 1/19/2023 13:00.

♦ Horne, Joshua Dale (M/35) Arrest on chrg of Assault On Female (M), at 4923 Aladdin Rd, Pfafftown, NC, on 1/21/2023 10:32.

♦ JEFFERSON, JACOBIE ABRAHAM was arrested on a charge of RESISTING ARREST at 100 W FIFTH ST on 1/21/2023

♦ JOHNSON, BETTY JO was arrested on a charge of VIO. PROTECTIVE ORDER BY COURTS ANOTHER STATE/ INDIAN TRIBE at 3554 THORNABY CR on 1/22/2023

♦ JONES, CHRISTOPHER JOHN was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT-POINT GUN at 201 N CHURCH ST on 1/22/2023

♦ Knight, James Kameron (M/35) Arrest on chrg of 1) Assault On Female (M) and 2) Weap-poss By Felon (F), at 4815 Mustin Farm Ln, Belews Creek, on 1/21/2023 23:25.

♦ Knight, James Kameron (M/35) Arrest on chrg of 1) Kidnapping (F), 2) Assault - Strangulation (F), 3) Assault-point Gun (M), 4) Communicate Threats (M), 5) Misuse Of 911 System (M), and 6) Resisting Arrest (M), at 201 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/22/2023 23:50.

♦ Lee, Michele (F/51) Arrest on chrg of 1) Fail To Appear/compl (M) and 2) Probation Violation (M), at 201 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/18/2023 05:05.

♦ LYNCH, ASHLEY JORDAN was arrested on a charge of BREAKING/LARC-FELONY at 600 BATTERY DR on 1/21/2023

♦ MCINTURFF, HALEY MARISSA was arrested on a charge of RESISTING ARREST at 1110 BURKE ST on 1/19/2023

♦ Melian, Jessica Ann (F/36) Arrest on chrg of Fugitive Arrest (magistrate`s Order) (F), at 108 Piccadilly Dr, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/20/2023 12:56.

♦ Mitchell, Cedric Lavon (M/51) Arrest on chrg of 1) Larceny/ misdemeanor (M), 2) Larceny/ misdemeanor (M), 3) Rec/ poss Stole Mv (F), 4) Possess Marijuana Up To 1/2 Oz (M), 5) Possess Drug Paraphernalia (M), 6) Fail To Appear/compl (M), 7) Fail To Appear/compl (M), and 8) Resisting Public Officer (M), at 5700 Germanton Rd, Winstonsalem, NC, on 1/19/2023 20:48.

♦ NOYOLA, CAMMIE MARIE was arrested on a charge of RAPE-2ND DEGREE at 901 WAUGHTOWN ST on 1/20/2023

♦ NOYOLA, CAMMIE MARIE was arrested on a charge of POSSESSION MARIJUANA at 901 WAUGHTOWN ST on 1/20/2023

♦ OKUN, FERNANDO FRANKO was arrested on a charge of RESISTING ARREST at 2501 QUEEN ST on 1/22/2023

♦ Patterson, Confucious Ledrell (M/42) Arrest on chrg of 1) Contempt Of Court (M), 2) Habitual Felons (F), and 3) Speeding To Elude Arrest (F), at 200 N Main Street, Winston Salem, NC, on 1/19/2023 11:30.

♦ REYNOLDS, WILLIE LAMONT was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 172 HIGHLAND AV on 1/23/2023

♦ RHYNES, DESHANE QUARTEZ was arrested on a charge of RESISTING ARREST at PETERS CREEK PW on 1/21/2023

♦ Rutzler, William Edward (M/33) Arrest on chrg of Violation Of A Valid Protective Order (F), at 203 Bingham Cr, Clemmons, NC, on 1/21/2023 14:14.

♦ SEWARD, STEVEN TYRONE was arrested on a charge of ASSAULT ON FEMALE at 201 N CHURCH ST on 1/22/2023

♦ Spegal, Lloyd Matthew (M/58) Arrest on chrg of Probation Violation (M), at 200 N Church St, Winston-salem, NC, on 1/20/2023 11:58.

Twin City Herald

Twin City Herald

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SIDELINE REPORT

NBA Magic’s Isaac resumes NBA career after missing 2½ years

Orlando, Fla.

Jonathan Isaac finally got back into a game after 2½ years Monday, helping the Magic beat the Boston Celtics 113-98. The 6-foot10 power forward scored 10 points, grabbed three rebounds and added a couple of steals in his limited time on the floor. Isaac originally injured his knee on Jan. 1, 2020. He returned seven months later, but tore his left ACL while playing in his second game in the NBA bubble at Disney World.

Only three Magic players are still on the roster who played with the former Florida State standout before his knee injuries.

GOLF

LIV

to stage 3 events on Trump sites; ranking decision looms

Knutsford, England

The second year of Saudifunded LIV Golf will be going to three courses owned by former President Donald Trump as part of a 14-event schedule in 2023, according to a report from SI.com. The report said LIV Golf announced its schedule, although the LIV website only said that a full schedule was coming soon. Whether LIV gets world ranking points will be decided by the four major championship and the chairman of the Official World Golf Ranking board.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Georgia transfer Thomas arrested on felony charge

Athens, Ga.

Wide receiver Rodarius “Rara” Thomas, who recently transferred to Georgia from Mississippi State, has been arrested on felony and misdemeanor charges. Thomas was booked early Monday on a felony charge of false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of family violence battery and was later released on $1,850 bond. Thomas was arrested by University of Georgia police. Thomas was Mississippi State’s leading receiver last season with 626 receiving yards on 44 catches and seven touchdowns. He announced his transfer to Georgia in December shortly before the Bulldogs won their second straight national championship.

MLB Twins acquire veteran OF Taylor from Royals

Minneapolis

The Minnesota Twins acquired veteran outfielder Michael A. Taylor from the Kansas City Royals for two relief pitching prospects. Taylor should provide depth and defense to Minnesota’s outfield. He batted .254 with nine home runs and 43 RBIs in 414 at-bats last season for the Royals. That was his second year with the club after spending his first seven major league seasons with Washington. Taylor was a Gold Glove winner in his Royals debut in 2021. He gives the Twins a third outfielder on the roster who has won the award, joining Byron Buxton and newcomer Joey Gallo.

Kenseth highlights 3-person NASCAR Hall of Fame induction

the All-Star race.

CHARLOTTE — Two-time Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth finally reached the top rung of his career on Friday night when he was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

The 50-year-old Kenseth, who drove 18 full seasons in NASCAR before retiring in 2020 with 39 Cup victories and 20 poles, highlighted a class that also included longtime driver Hershel McGriff and crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine.

The driver, who many referred to as “Matt the brat” when he first broke into racing, ranks 21st on NASCAR Cup Series’ career wins list. He won all of the sport’s biggest races including the Daytona 500 in 2009 and 2012, the Coca-Cola 600, the Southern 500 and

“I always looked at my career as a ladder — you always start at the bottom and you hope to climb your way to the top,” Kenseth said in his acceptance speech. “My ladder has hundreds and hundreds of rungs on it. and without any of them, bottom, middle or top — no matter who you fit in my life — I wouldn’t be here without any of you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you all.”

Kenseth’s wife, Katie, and father, Roy, inducted him.

“The internal drive is what put Matt on this stage tonight,” Katie Kenseth said.

Kenseth captured the 2003 Cup Series championship behind a dominating season in which he led the points standings for the final 32 weeks. When the series switched to a playoff format, he reached the postseason in 13 of 14 seasons and finished runner-up twice. He also won 29 Xfinity Series races.

Kenseth talked about learning to love NASCAR by watching his

family race at Jefferson Speedway where he grew up in Wisconsin and begging his father to take him to his uncle Gary’s house so he could help him work on his race cars.

“Racing truly is a family sport,” he said.

Shelmerdine was the crew chief and front tire change for four of Dale Earnhardt’s seven championships. Only two crew chiefs have more premier series titles than Shelmerdine: class of 2012 inductee Dale Inman with eight and Chad Knaus, who will be eligible for Hall of Fame consideration in 2024, with seven.

Former Wake player Hamby accuses WNBA’s Aces of bullying, manipulation

Dale Earnhardt Jr. inducted Shelmerdine, saying “he put my dad on the path to greatness.”

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver,” Shelmerdine said. “What else can we say about him? When we started together, Dale and I just kind of clicked intuitively.”

The 95-year-old McGriff competed on racetracks for 68 years.

From 1954 until 2018, he participated in 271 races in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West (now ARCA Menards West Series), winning 34 races and posting 100 topfive finishes. He captured the series championship in 1986 at 58 years old and finished second in points in 1985 and 1987.

McGriff spoke at length about his career path, saying he started driving vehicles at age 7.

“I have had a happy life and this induction is just icing on the cake,” McGriff said, tearing up several times during his speech. He joked that he still plans to write a book about his life.

Mike Helton was honored as the Landmark Award winner for outstanding contributions to the sport. Helton was the first person outside the France family to handle NASCAR’s day-to-day operations.

Photographer T. Taylor Warren was named the recipient of the 2023 Squier-Hall Award.

in exchange for the exclusive negotiating rights to Amanda Zahui B., plus the Sparks’ 2024 second-round pick.

“Adding Dearica to our roster plus a future first-round pick was a solid move for us,” Sparks GM Karen Bryant said in a statement. “We’re excited to have another key piece in place as we start free agency.”

The 6-foot-3 Hamby, the sixth overall pick out of Wake Forest in 2015, spent her first eight WNBA seasons with the same franchise, dating to the Aces’ days in San Antonio as the Silver Stars.

The WNBA players’ union said Saturday it will review Dearica Hamby’s complaints about Las Vegas management after the Aces traded the two-time All-Star to the Los Angeles Sparks.

In an Instagram post, the 29-year-old Hamby said the Aces attacked her character and work ethic.

“Being traded is a part of the business,” Hamby posted. “Being lied to, bullied, manipulated, and discriminated against is not.”

A message was left by the AP seeking comment from the Aces.

Hamby agreed to a two-year contract extension with Las Vegas in June. She said in her Instagram post that Aces management said she knew she was pregnant at the time of the deal.

“This is false,” Hamby wrote. “I was told that I was a ‘question mark’ and that it was said that I said I would ‘get pregnant again’ and there was a concern for my level of commitment to the team.”

She also said the Aces said they were concerned Hamby wouldn’t be ready for this season. Hamby said she plans to play this season.

“I remained transparent with everyone within the organization, and yet, my honesty was met with coldness, disrespect, and disregard from members of management,” Hamby wrote. “I have only put this organization first since

day one before any of them were here.”

The Women’s National Basketball Players Association said it would “seek a comprehensive investigation” to ensure that Hamby’s rights under the league’s 2020 labor agreement as well as state and federal laws were not violated.

The Sparks also received the Aces’ first-round pick in 2024

Hamby was the WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year in 2019 and 2020. Hamby averaged 9.3 points and 7.1 rebounds for the Aces last season when they won their first WNBA championship. She was limited in the playoffs due to a knee injury.

“Dearica has dedicated eight years of her career to this organization, and played a big role in our success since the team moved to Las Vegas,” Aces general manager Natalie Williams said in a statement. “We’re going to miss her as a teammate, and are grateful for all of her contributions to the Aces over the years.”

Hamby announced at the Aces’ championship parade last September that she was expecting her second child. Hamby’s 5-year-old daughter Amaya accompanied her mother during the 2020 season, which was played in a bubble in Florida because of the pandemic. They were among those featured in the documentary “144.”

Former Dale Earnhardt Sr. crew chief Kirk Shelmerdine and driver Hershel McGriff were also enshrined

The Associated Press

The 2015

sixth-overall pick says the team knew she was pregnant when she signed a contract extension

The Associated Press

AP PHOTO

Matt Kenseth speaks during his induction into the the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday in Charlotte.

AP PHOTO

Two-time WNBA All-Star Dearica Hamby was traded by the Las Vegas Aces to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday.

“What makes a great crew chief? It’s simple, a great driver.”

Kirk Shelmerdine, former crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Sr.

STATE & NATION

Hockey brawls to debt limit: Emmer wrangles House GOP votes

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The way Republican Rep. Tom Emmer tells it, the lousiest job he ever had — he has a saltier way of describing it — was running the House Republican campaign committee.

But after having helped lead his party back into control of the House in November, the former youth hockey coach now must round up votes from those Republicans, as the majority whip, in order to pass GOP priorities.

Corralling colleagues for their support on the debt ceiling, spending cuts and investigating the Biden administration will be tough work for the third-ranking leader who has served in Congress since 2015. With Republicans holding only 222 seats in the 435-member House, almost everyone is needed to reach the 218 votes needed for approving most bills.

Just agreeing to elect California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the House speaker took 15 ballots.

Emmer was a central negotiator in that effort, hammering out the side-deal to win over holdouts after endless meetings in his first-floor office at the Capitol. It was a crash-course for the budget battles and showdowns ahead.

A look at how the rough-andtumble Minnesotan told The Associated Press he plans to tackle the job.

Speaker’s election as hockey brawl

Before joining Congress, Emmer was a lawyer and state legislator. Some of his most applicable professional experience, however, comes from coaching hockey.

When McCarthy failed to win the speaker’s race on the first votes, Emmer convened the holdouts in his still new Capitol office, so bare there are no pictures hanging on the walls.

“Good teams are always going to have differences of opinion,” Emmer said. “If you don’t let them express that, you are never going

to succeed.”

Emmer told the story of a fabled hockey coach who would let players fight it out during practices — almost encouraging it, he said — much the way Republicans nearly came to blows on the House floor during the speaker’s election.

“You know what, these guys actually become closer,” Emmer said.

Bracing for budget battles

Emmer is not part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. In fact, some Republicans did not think he was conservative enough for the leadership post.

But he won his own internal GOP election to become the whip, brushing back two challengers. When it came time to broker the deal for McCarthy’s election, Emmer had to win over some of those same conservative holdouts.

One of the many key concessions McCarthy made to earn the votes of his detractors was a commitment to return to federal spending to 2022 budget levels.

Cuts of that size would amount to an 8% reduction in domestic defense, veterans and domestic accounts — or even more, 17%, if the Pentagon money is spared.

The Republicans also agreed to aim for a balanced budget in 10 years.

From Emmer’s point of view, much of what was agreed to with the holdouts is “aspirational.”

“Some might criticize me when I say it’s an aspirational document because they think it’s more than that, and they’re right,” Emmer said. “Because we now have to hold ourselves to this.”

Speaker Boehner, Speaker Ryan and debt ceilings past

One of the biggest challenges Emmer will face is rounding up the votes for the coming debt ceiling showdown.

Congress is being asked by the Treasury Department to raise the nation’s debt cap so it can borrow more money to pay off the nation’s already accruing bills.

House Republicans insist they will not lift that limit without changes in the way the federal government spends money — most likely, cuts in spending levels. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an Associated Press interview Saturday that she expects Congress will ultimately vote to increase the cap. But she said GOP demands for spending cuts in return for backing an increase are “a very irresponsible thing to do” and risk creating a “self-imposed calamity” for the global economy.

Those decades-old spending battles simmer on Capitol Hill, especially for conservatives, which is why the Freedom Caucus and others drove such a hard bargain with McCarthy during the speaker’s race.

“A lot of it was personality issues that have probably been driven from as far back as when John Boehner was the speaker and then Paul Ryan,” Emmer said about dynamics.

Sparing defense cuts

Republicans have different views when it comes to what spending to cut as they try to use the debt ceiling vote to extract their own budget priorities.

While some say they want to see all spending on the table for review, Emmer is among those who believe defense should largely be spared.

“The argument is if you go to FY22 baseline, it affects both domestic and defense — not under Republicans,” he said, referring to 2022 budget levels. “Republicans will look for efficiencies, they’ll look for waste. We aren’t cutting defense. We assured our appropriators and ask our House Armed Services Committee. That’s not what we’re doing.”

March for Life eyes Congress for post-Roe abortion limits

By Calvin Woodward The Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A half century after Roe v. Wade, March for Life supporters on Friday celebrated the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the 50-year decision and heralded the political struggle set loose by the court’s decision.

President Joe Biden pledged to do all in his limited power to restore core abortion policies.

The first March for Life since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June came with a new focus. Instead of concentrating their attention on the court, the marchers vowed to push for action from the building directly across the street: the U.S. Capitol.

Congress, movement leaders say, must be warned against making any attempt to curtail the multiple pro-life laws imposed last year in a dozen states.

Tens of thousands spread across a section of the National Mall for speeches, the Capitol Building in sight, then marched.

“For nearly 50 years, you have marched to proclaim the fundamental dignity of women, of their children and of life itself,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, whose office argued the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, told the crowd. “But this year is different.”

Indeed, with the constitutional victory behind them and lawmakers now the ones to be persuaded, marchers took a new route along

the western face of the Capitol, to their usual destination between that complex and the court.

“I am the post-Roe generation,” read one sign. “Excommunicate Pro-Choice Catholics,” said another. Banners proclaimed “Love Them Both,” meaning mother and child.

Tammy Milligan came dressed as “patriot Wonder Woman” and stood out in the crowd. She said she never thought Roe v. Wade would be overruled in her lifetime, but the fight doesn’t stop there. “We want it to be unthinkable for a woman to have an abortion,” she said.

In a counter-protest outside the court building, 15 or so activists in favor of abortion rights held signs of their own: “Bans off our Bodies,” “Mind your own uterus.” They chanted, “Our bodies do not need advice from priests.”

They were easily outnumbered and surrounded by March for Lifers, but interactions were civil and police did not separate the two camps.

Biden offered his counterpoint in a proclamation recognizing Sunday — Jan. 22 — as the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. “Never before has the Court taken away a right so fun-

damental to Americans,” his statement said. “In doing so, it put the health and lives of women across this Nation at risk.”

“The struggle has changed,” said Marion Landry, 68, who came from North Carolina with her husband, Arthur, 91, for the sixth time. “In some ways you don’t have that central focus anymore. Now it’s back to the states.”

In the absence of Roe v. Wade’s federal protections, abortion laws vary by state.

Since June, near-total bans on abortion have been implemented in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho,

Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Legal challenges are pending against several of those bans.

Elective abortions also are unavailable in Wisconsin, due to legal uncertainties faced by abortion clinics, and in North Dakota, where the lone clinic relocated to Minnesota.

Bans passed by lawmakers in Ohio, Indiana and Wyoming have been blocked by state courts while legal challenges are pending. And in South Carolina, the state Supreme Court on Jan. 5 struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction violates a state constitutional right to privacy.

Pro-life activists also have their eye on the 2024 presidential elections and are essentially vetting prospective candidates over their views on the issue. SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said she met recently with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential leading Republican candidate, and came away “incredibly impressed,” but said it was still too early for her organization to endorse anyone.

She predicted that there will be some “fault lines” among Republican presidential contenders over abortion rights and protections, but warned that any candidate perceived as being soft on the issue will have “disqualified him or herself as a presidential candidate in our eyes, and having done so has very little chance of winning the nomination.”

AP PHOTO

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2023.

AP PHOTO

With the U.S. Capitol in the background, anti-abortion demonstrators march toward the U.S. Supreme Court during the March for Life, Friday, Jan. 20, 2023, in Washington, D.C.

WHAT’S HAPPENING

Moore County Airport ranked as top 15 general aviation airport in NC

The Moore County Airport has officially been placed on the list of the top 15 General Aviation Airports in North Carolina. This placement was determined by recent data published by the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Division of Aviation and the NC State University Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE), which revealed that the recent annual impact of the airport had increased to over $107 million. In addition, the Moore County Airport is directly responsible for nearly 600 local jobs, $36 million in personal income, and over $4 million in state and local tax revenues. The airport is also home to the only full-motion threeaxis general airplane simulator in the state, which is used to help train new pilots. Currently, over 100 customers use the airport for permanent parking, and additional hangar space is currently under construction. “Moore County Airport continues to be an engine of economic growth and opportunity for the people of Moore County,” said Mike Jones, chairman of the Moore County Airport Authority. “That’s our number one job, and we take it very seriously. Every investment we make at the airport is focused on the potential impact that decision will have on our local economy.”

Robbins man arrested following drug investigation

A man from Robbins was recently arrested during a drug investigation after deputies from the Moore County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant in the 100 block of Littlefield Lane. During the investigation, deputies located methamphetamine, firearms, drug paraphernalia, and $542. Ignacio Sanchez Gomez, 46, is facing several charges for trafficking in methamphetamine by possession, possession with the intent to sell and deliver methamphetamine, maintaining a vehicle/dwelling place for controlled substances, and possession of drug paraphernalia. Gomez was taken to the Moore County Detention Center, where he was held under a $250,000 secured bond. His first court appearance is set for Thursday, January 26.

State lawmakers propose power grid protections after attacks

Council approves contract for design services for renovations to Givens Library and Tufts Archives

The Associated Press

RALEIGH — When gunshots at two electrical substations cut power to thousands of central North Carolina homes for several days in early December, Republican state Rep. Ben Moss watched his vibrant district full of family farms, small businesses and sprawling golf courses become “a ghost town.”

After the latest attack last week on a substation in Randolph County, northeast of Charlotte, Moss is urging fellow lawmakers to prioritize new legislation that would secure the

state’s critical infrastructure when the legislative session begins in earnest this week. He’s among the first state legislators to propose power grid protections this year amid a surge in attacks on U.S. substations, primarily in the Carolinas and Pacific Northwest.

The recent attacks in Moore County, North Carolina, and others in Washington, Oregon, South Carolina and Nevada, have underscored the vulnerability of the nation’s far-flung electrical grid, which security experts have long warned could be a target for domestic extremists.

Lawmakers in at least two affected states — North Carolina and South Carolina — have begun proposing remedies.

“I don’t want to see anybody

else go through what Moore (County) did,” said Moss, a 2024 candidate for state labor commissioner whose district saw a peak of more than 45,000 customers lose power. “When the power goes out, you don’t have heat, don’t have food, can’t get fuel or some medications, the people are unsafe.”

Moss is drafting legislation, obtained in its preliminary form by The Associated Press, that would require utilities to provide 24-hour security at substations, which transform high-voltage electricity into the lower voltages that power communities. Security provisions would vary across sites, some of which are already gated with nearby cameras while others are more exposed.

He considers the bill “a conversation opener” between law-

makers, utilities and security experts to help the General Assembly identify cost-effective defenses that wouldn’t drive up consumer prices.

His call for increased surveillance comes as questions linger about the Moore County shootings. The FBI is still seeking information and no arrests have been made.

Federal regulators in December ordered a review of physical security standards across the nation’s vast electricity transmission network following the attacks in North Carolina. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), which oversees the nation’s bulk power system, has until early April to submit a report and recommend possible improvements.

Manny Cancel, a NERC senior vice president and the CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said the situation demands more communication and collabora-

Southern Pines Country Club expansion hearing continued to next month’s meeting

Southern Pines updates UDO with various text amendments

By Ryan Henkel North State Journal

SOUTHERN PINES — The Southern Pines Town Council met Tuesday, January 10, with multiple public hearings on the agenda.

The first public hearing was for various text amendments to the UDO.

“When we are engaging with the Unified Development Ordinance in our office, and we encounter problematic language or things that aren’t clear, we sometimes print off a page, sometimes scribble a note, throw it into a file, and set it aside. And then every so often, when we have an opportunity, we’ll run through what we refer to as a package of text amendments,” said Planning Director BJ Grieve. “This is just that.”

The nine text amendment topics included the removal of

zoning exception provisions, revision of various planned development standards, removal of references to sketch plat provision, clarification of the common sign plan process in planned developments, allowance of metal awnings for businesses in downtown overlay zones, removal of redundant permitting for food trucks operating in food truck campuses, clarification of the responsibilities of the Board of Adjustments, clarification of eligibility for historic district commission, and an addition of a definition for neighborhoods.

The council voted to approve all the amendments to the UDO.

The second public hearing was an application for a special use permit submitted by MidPines Development Group, LLC, for the development of ten guest cottages on a portion of property that formerly served as the Southern Pines Elks Club Facilities, also known as the Southern Pines Country Club.

Extensive expert testimony was presented before the council, but the council ended up rais-

ing multiple concerns with the project, such as threats to the integrity of existing nearby neighborhoods, the intensity of the project, compatibility with the local community, and the overall safety concerns with the introduction of those facilities with things such as traffic impacts.

“The UDO states that the purpose of FRR is intended for open space, public facilities and privately owned and recreation areas, and this precludes major residential, retail, office, institutional and industrial uses that typically provide limited open space,” said council member Ann Petersen. “And based on the fact that Mr. Koontz said that this was residential, I have a significant issue with that and would not agree with that finding of fact based on what we’ve heard.”

The council decided to take more time to review over the material they were provided as well as their own UDO before rendering a decision, voting to continue the hearing to next month’s reg-

AP PHOTO

Workers work on equipment at the West End Substation, at 6910 NC Hwy 211 in West End, N.C., Monday, Dec. 5, 2022, where a serious attack on critical infrastructure has caused a power outage to many around Southern Pines, N.C. The North Carolina lawmaker who represents a county where gunfire at electrical substations cut power to thousands in December is pushing legislation to increase power grid security when the legislative session begins in earnest next week.

WEEKLY CRIME LOG

♦ SMITH, BRANDON MAURICE, 32, B, M, 1/21/2023, Whispering Pines PD, IV-D Non-Support Child (x2), DWI

♦ RATLIFF, GREGORY RAY, 46, B, M, 1/21/2023, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, PWISD Marijuana, Maintain Veh/Dwell/Place CS, DWI

♦ LOUK, GARY LEE, 53, W, M, 1/21/2023, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, Possess Methamphetamine, Possession of Firearm by Felon

♦ KEENE, HAYDEN DWIGHT, 20, W, M, 1/20/2023, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, Misdemeanor Larceny, Shoplifting Concealment Goods, Possession of Stolen Goods/Property

♦

AMIR, RAFIQ NAJI, 64, B, M, 1/20/2023, Southern Pines PD, Communicating Threats

♦ WILLIAMS, ROBERT LEGRAND, 40, W, M, 1/19/2023, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, Possess Schedule II CS (x2)

♦ MALAN, TABITHA LEIGH, 37, W, F, 1/19/2023, Aberdeen PD, Identity Theft (x35), Obtain Property False Pretense (x35), Financial Card Theft

♦ HUGHES, LEAHANN RACHEL, 34, W, F, 1/19/2023, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, Obtain Property False Pretense, Identity Theft, Forgery of Instrument, Uttering Forged Instrument

♦ MITCHELL, FRANKLIN EUGENE, 55, B, M, 1/18/2023, Moore County Sheriff’s Office, Intoxicated and Disruptive

POWER GRID, from page 1

tion between the different levels of government, industry leaders and law enforcement.

“The frequency has increased, the targeting has increased,” Cancel said. “What we’ve seen are patterns of clusters ... or assets that are in proximity to each other being repeatedly targeted.”

Utilities in South Carolina — where gunshots were fired near a Duke Energy facility but caused no damage days after the North Carolina shootings — are asking lawmakers to increase penalties for intentionally destroying electrical infrastructure or other utility property.

A state Senate proposal would set a sliding scale based on how much damage is done — if it costs more than $25,000 to fix equipment and cover losses, the perpetrator could face up to 20 years in prison, double the current 10-year maximum.

A maximum 25-year penalty would apply if anyone died or their health was endangered by a resulting outage.

Dominion Energy South Carolina President Keller Kissam said the state saw at least 12 incidents of people intentionally damaging equipment last year.

“You want to demoralize people, you put them in the dark,” he said.

Some state senators worried that the law could be used against hunters who accidentally damage utility equipment. Kissam agreed but said sometimes that damage isn’t an acci-

dent, as hunters use equipment to set their gun sights or as target practice. A subcommittee plans to review the bill further in a few weeks.

Another South Carolina bill seeks stiffer penalties for destruction caused specifically by a gun or explosive.

Brian Harrell, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said that although harsher penalties for equipment sabotage may be a deterrent, state legislatures can best support utilities by freeing up funds for additional security measures.

“Specifically, ensuring monies for perimeter security, cameras and alarms,” said Harrell, who now oversees security for an energy company that services multiple states.

Construction of all new security features would cost about $2.5 million per site, he said. But many substations already have fencing, which reduces the cost significantly. About $800,000 can outfit a single substation with pan-tilt-zoom cameras, intrusion detection and an access control system.

The Pacific Northwest has become a hotspot for these physical attacks, with Washington and Oregon utilities reporting at least 15 incidents in 2022, including 10 in the last two months of the year.

Attackers hit four Washington substations on Christmas Day, forcing entry, setting fire to equipment and temporarily cutting power to thousands of cus -

tomers.

Michael Furze, director of the Washington State Energy Office, said that although no legislation specifically addressing substation security has been introduced, broader bipartisan discussions are underway about grid resilience.

Washington is already revamping its electrical infrastructure under the Clean Energy Transformation Act, which commits the state to an electricity supply free of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Physical and cybersecurity updates are in the works as the electrical grid undergoes significant changes to meet new standards, Furze said.

“’Security by design’ is a core component of these systems,” he said.

In neighboring Oregon, the state’s Public Utility Commission is working with regulated utilities to increase vigilance and explore possible security updates, after gunfire attacks damaged two substations southeast of Portland in late November. Spokesperson Kandi Young said the commission monitors proposed legislation and is not aware of any related bills introduced this session.

And in Nevada, where a man set fire to a solar power unit this month, a search of the 138 bill draft requests with pre-filed text found none that would explicitly address electrical infrastructure security. But with more than two weeks until the biennial session begins, most legislative proposals have yet to be formally introduced.

areas.

SOUTHERN PINES, from page 1

ular meeting.

The next hearing was for a preliminary development plan for Caropines Phases 3B and 4.

“This application started a while back as an original submittal for three phases of Caropines,” Grieve said. “It was withdrawn and came back as two phases of Caropines and has been continued a number of times as staff has worked with the applicants to improve the two-phase application for Caropines.”

The property totals 75 total parcels of land divided over two

“Caropines Phase 3B is 23 parcels, 12 of which are detached single-family lots with a minimum lot size of 8,000 square feet, and 11 of those are smaller cottage lots with a 5,000 square foot minimum lot size, both of which are allowed under the Caropines CDP in the development areas in which they are proposed,” Grieve said. “Caropines Phase 4 is 52 attached single family, otherwise referred to as townhomes, lots.”

“The design for 3B is roughly 14.3 acres and proposes 23 single-family homes,” said Paul Saathoof of KoontzJones De -

sign. “This was actually reduced from the original submittal. We originally submitted a plan that showed 44 units on here, but after working with the town and our engineer, we reduced it due to some of the issues of topography and getting the gravity sewer line to work. Phase 4 is 21.4 acres and proposes 52 townhome lots. The area is just north of Phase 3B across the existing wetland bridge.”

Following the hearing, the council approved the PDP for the project.

The Southern Pines Town Council will next meet February 14.

moore happening

Here’s a quick look at what’s coming up in Moore County:

January 26

Friends of the Aberdeen Library Meeting

6pm

The Friends of the Aberdeen Library holds a meeting the 4th Thursday of every month! New members are welcomed to support the efforts!

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.

January 27

Civil War Series

1pm – 2:30pm

The Moore County Senior Enrichment Center is welcoming Dr. Matt Farina, who will be hosting a six-part series on the American Civil War. The series will take place each Friday in January and February.

Cosmic Bowling 6pm

Enjoy fun for the whole family with Cosmic Bowling at Sandhills Bowling Center! Cosmic Bowling takes place every Friday and Saturday beginning at 6pm. The cost is $5.50 per game or $17.00 for two hours of unlimited bowling.

January 28

Moore County School Choice Expo

1pm – 5pm

The second annual Moore County School Choice Expo will be held at the Dempsey Student Center on the campus of Sandhill Community College. Have all of your educationrelated questions answered in one place!

OPINION

Neal Robbins, publisher | Frank Hill, senior opinion editor

Universal educational vouchers is not a winning policy

Don’t believe the press releases from universal school voucher enthusiasts ― it wasn’t a winning message in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona this past election.

10% of students are not in governmentfunded K-12 institutions in the United States.

The GOP should abandon expanding taxpayer-funded school choice and focus on empowering parents, not expanding the reach of more government. The GOP will be making a big mistake if they decide to enact universal taxpayer-funded school choice policies, which will increase dependency on the government and normalize welfare for all.

Exit polls show that three main groups vote for Democrats ― single women, people with advanced degrees, and welfare recipients. Those who vote Republican are men, married women, and those without advanced degrees.

Marxism is the economic theory where central government controls all funding. You can’t defeat Marxism being taught in the public school system by expanding the Marxist financing mechanism.

The policy of expanding government-funded vouchers will take the “men and married women” category of voters and move them into the “welfare” category. Corey DeAngelis, who is a spokesperson for enacting universal school choice, cites food stamps as a good policy comparison because of its transferability.

Who do those on food stamps generally vote for? Democrats.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona ran on universal school vouchers, and the results were disastrous ― losing state representative seats, governorship, and senate seats. School choice itself is an idea worth supporting but expanding the welfare state to do so is not a winning strategy.

Many proponents of universal taxpayer-

CARTOON BY RUTH LOPEZ

funded school choice call Arizona the gold standard for their bill signed by the Republican governor. If winning elections is something you’d like to do, then clearly, it is gold for democrats, who flipped the governorship. It is still early, but some early results showed that less than 1% of Arizona students left the public school system last year while tens of thousands of previously privately funded students went back to public schools.

“What about the kids? We need to help the kids?” Yes, but universal school choice does not help them. You are not helping the kids when you are creating policy that promotes dependency on the government and increases government control on their lives. If you are embracing government collecting taxes and then using those taxes to pay for private education, you aren’t getting kids out of the public system, you are putting more of them into it because they are being funded by public dollars.

Roughly 10% of students are not in government-funded K-12 institutions in the United States. Imagine if universal school choice is enacted and the number of students who are free of government dependency drops to less than 1%. As adults, they will vote for progressive ideas like Universal Basic Income, singlepayer health care, and a host of other welfare programs because they will be inured to the idea that the government provides funds for their use, not the private sector.

Good governance requires oversight. Oversight requires money and power. As a taxpayer and a conservative, we should demand oversight of how our taxes are being spent. These vouchers literally open the door to your home to more government. You might say that the government wouldn’t do that, but it already does in states such as Alaska, Michigan, and California with more limited vouchers. The laws may be initially passed with limited or no controls, but that will quickly change because good governance demands it.

The good news is we already have true school choice in North Carolina. We don’t need taxpayers to pay for every student and for every school option. You can homeschool or send your kids to a private school or a government institution. Conservatives should promote policies that lower true costs for families, help them keep more of their money in their own pocket, and encourage private and direct private investment in education locally. That is a winning message, not just today but for our future. The kids are depending on you. They are worth it.

Robert Bortins is CEO of Classical Conversations in Southern Pines

Racial reparations solve nothing

The federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States.

THIS WEEK, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a report calling on the city to pay every black resident $5 million and absolve all of their outstanding personal debt. Their rationale was broad — as it had to be, since California was founded as a free state: “While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the tenets of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were codified through legal and extralegal actions, social codes, and judicial enforcement.”

This rationale serves as the same sort of catchall term as “equity,” widely beloved by the political Left. It conflates specific harms from deliberate policies — which deserve redress — with vague societal ills that indirectly and unverifiably impact the specific life paths of individuals. Thus, every inequality between blacks and whites, for example, becomes an instance of societal failure to be cured with social engineering.

This is bad ethics, and it is bad social science. It’s bad ethics because the innocent should not be forced to pay people against whom they have not sinned, and because the connection between continued suffering and past discrimination must be measured and clarified rather than merely assumed. It’s bad social science because it ignores the role of individual decision-making in persistent intergenerational inequality, despite the massive intervention of state, local and federal government.

Simply put, the preferred solution of San Francisco’s reparations committee — simply cutting checks — has been a dramatic failure in the United States. In 1965, speaking at Howard University, President

Lyndon Baines Johnson explained that he wanted to pursue a program of widespread redistributionism in order to right the racial wrongs of the past: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you

have been completely fair.”

To that end, the federal government has spent in excess of $25 trillion on redistribution programs in the United States. The result has been exceedingly poor: While the income gap ratio between the poorest quintile of Americans and the wealthiest quintile of Americans post-transfer payments and taxes is just 4-to-1, the wealth gap between black and white Americans has skyrocketed from approximately $50,000 pre-1960 to well over $130,000 in 2016. Why? Because it turns out that public policy designed to alleviate inequality can also alleviate the consequences of bad decision-making. If we assume that all inequality is inequity, then solving inequality should alleviate inequity — but if it turns out that a great deal of inequality is the result of bad decision-making, then inequality cannot be solved by simply helicoptering money to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder.

And yet the Left continues to do precisely that. Then they wonder why intergenerational wealth creation has not narrowed the racial gap. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 70% of black children are born to unwed mothers; nearly 8 out of 100 black males drop out of school; black college students tend to major in subjects that result in worse job prospects (just 12% of black students get a bachelor’s degree in STEM, compared with 33% of Asian students and 18% of white students, for example); one-third of the American prison population is black.

It is possible to blame all of this on systemic evil, but any fixes will have to come at the level of individuals making good and responsible decisions. Cutting checks won’t fix this. But such a policy recommendation makes for excellent demagoguery: It allows those who promote foolish and failed ideas to revel in their own supposed altruism, all while helping no one.

Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+.

COLUMN | ROBERT BORTINS

COLUMN | BEN SHAPIRO

Mary Isabelle Morales

January 17, 1954 - January 20, 2023

Mary Isabelle Morales, age 69, passed away suddenly at her residence in North Carolina on January 20, 2023. She was born in Elkton, Maryland, daughter of Paul Stoud and Gladys Osborne (Titter).

Mary was a compassionate spirit whose passion was caring for others. She loved spending time with her family and was a loving and devoted mother, mommom, sister, daughter and friend. Mary was loved by many and will be deeply missed.

Mary is preceded in death by her mother Gladys Osborne (Titter); sisters, Carrie Wood, Ethel Garst, Paula Beltran; husband, Emiliano Cruz.

Mary is survived by her daughters, Carmen Poore (Tom), Tina Crampton; grandchildren, Kirsten Crampton, Kristina Crampton, Thomas Poore “TJ”, Madison Poore, Britny Jourdan and Brandon Jourdan; great grandchildren, Kendall Heath, Jensen Heath, Bentley Jourdan, Estella Jourdan, Kayden Jourdan; Brother, Harry Stoud (Vickie); Sister, Virginia Woerner (Rick) and many nieces and nephews.

John Thomas Maher

June 6, 1939 - January 20, 2023

John Maher Age 83, of Southern Pines; passed on Friday, January 20th at his home.

John was born June 6th, 1939, in the Bronx, New York, to the late John and Cecilia Maher.

John grew up in Brooklyn, where he developed his lifelong devotion to the NY Yankees and Giants. After graduating from Brooklyn Prep High School and Fordham University, he began a professional career in accounting.

This led to a long career in the insurance field and an eventual role as general manager of Utilities Mutual Insurance Company in lower Manhattan.

Above all this, and very much in the example of his patron, Saint Joseph, his life’s primary focus was his dedication to his wife and children.

John is survived by his beloved wife of 59 years, Nancy, and twin sons Anthony and John, along with daughter-in-law Gaielle, grandchildren Abigail and AJ, and nephew Michael Costelloe and niece Joan Killala.

Azalea "Blossom" Brooks Autry

January 13, 1941 - January 19, 2023

Azalea “Blossom” Brooks Autry, age 82, died Thursday, January 19, 2023 at the FirstHealth Hospice House in Pinehurst. Azalea or “Blossom” as she was known by many was a lifetime member of the Ives Memorial Baptist Church in Pinebluff, where she was very active, especially in the music ministry.

She was preceded death by her husband, J.D. Autry, her parents, Preston and Doris Brooks, her sister, Hazel Pridgen and a daughter, Sherry Autry.

She is survived by a daughter, Angela Reiter and her husband David of West End, a granddaughter, Ashley Rieter, a brother, Paul Brooks of Pinebluff, nieces and nephews, Melanie Pridgen, Andrea Lang and husband Kevin, Cletus Fred Pridgen, Jr. and wife Robin, Chris Brooks and wife Donna and Tammy Bryant. She is also survived by many great nieces and nephews and great great nieces and nephews.

Lacy Bernard Hall

August 31, 1961 - January 18, 2023

Lacy Bernard Hall, 61, of Southern Pines, passed away on January 18, 2023 at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital.

Born on August 31, 1961 in Camden, New Jersey to Frances and James Hall, Sr.

The thing that brought him the most joy was family times and all the laughs, love and fun that came along with it. He will be greatly missed by his loving family.

In addition to his father, he was preceded in death by one sister, Frances Hall.

He is survived by his wife, Debra Hall; children, Dana Hall, Nekita Gant (Ronnie Gant), Emoki Manning (Aaron) and Ryan Goldsborough (Laura); mother, Frances Hall; sister, Natalie Hall; brother, James Hall, Jr.; granddaughter, Diamond Blue; niece, Clover Hall Williams; also survived by a host of many other family and friends.

Charles (Chuck) Boyer

November 12, 1947 - January 16, 2023

Charles (Chuck) Boyer died January 16th. Chuck, a Missouri farm boy, graduated from Northwest Missouri State University with a degree in business and finance. Chuck spent his entire career as a banker. His 15-year Missouri banking career also included earning certification from The School of Banking of the South at LSU.

Chuck and his college sweetheart Paula Weston have been married nearly 55 years and have three children: Julie Newton and husband Al; Jenn Spittal and husband Nick, and son Jonathan. Chuck’s great joy was his seven grandchildren: Gabrielle, Grace, and Gianna Newton; Weston, Walker, Wilson, and Weather Spittal. He is also survived by his sister, Kathy Ward, brother Rod Boyer and sister-in-law Di; nieces Britt Boyer and Michelle Shane and nephews Doug McWilliams, Darin and Kevin Ward, and Landon Boyer, and 13 greatnieces and nephews. Chuck’s parents, Frieda and Louis Boyer, brother-in-law Jim Ward, sister Lynn and brother-in-law Ken McWilliams predeceased Chuck.

Donald McCord Lynn, Jr.

Harry Frank Holloway

November 30, 1939 - January 14, 2023

Harry Frank Holloway, 83, of Foxfire Village in Jackson Springs, NC passed away peacefully on Friday, January 14, 2023 at FirstHealth Hospice House in Pinehurst, after a long hospitalization.

Harry was born November 30, 1939 in Kansas City, MO to the late James and Ora Capper Holloway.

He is survived by his loving wife of 40 years, Sandra FrazierHolloway; his sons, Donald, David, John and James Holloway, and daughter Arlene McCue; and grandchildren that he dearly loved.

Frank worked as an executive with Avon in New York for 44 years, which afforded him the opportunity to travel the world. He was an American Kennel Club (AKC) delegate and his passion was showing, breeding and grooming his beloved Chow Chows.

Helen "Jane" Kelly

August 24, 1934 ~ January 15, 2023

Helen J “Janie” Kelly, 88 of Southern Pines, NC died Sunday, January 15, 2023, at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital. She was born August 24, 1934, in Terre Haute, IN to the late Oscar C and Lynn (Kell) Johnson. She graduated from Wiley High School in Terre Haute and attended Indiana University. She married William R “Bill” Kelly in 1953, also of Terre Haute. The couple raised three boys and a girl in the Hoosier state.

In addition to her late husband and parents, she was preceded in death by a son, William Sean Kelly (1993), and a sister Sue Ann Justus (1995). She is survived by two sons, Kevin J Kelly (Marijo) of Naples, FL, and Timothy P Kelly (Deenie) of Saginaw, MI, a daughter, Laura Kelly Lang (Michael) of Pinehurst, NC, six grandchildren, Kristin Hansen (Jake), Megan Kelly, Colleen Wolfson (Dan), Sean Kelly, Stone Kelly, and Will Kite, as well as six great-grandchildren, Sam, Abby, and Andrew Hansen, and Millie, Rosie, and Juliette Wolfson.

August 9, 1929 - January 13, 2023

Donald McCord Lynn, Jr. passed away on January 13, 2023 at the age of 93 in Southern Pines, NC.

Don was born in Cleveland, OH on August 9, 1929 to Donald Lynn, Sr. and Ruth Keppie Lynn.

Don attended Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, and went on to medical school in Cincinnati, OH.

It was here that he met Coralie, who became his faithful companion and partner in marriage for over 70 years.

As a person, Don was both an impressive intellectual and a connoisseur of joyful living. He loved to golf, ski, and be outside.

Don and Coralie loved to visit art museums throughout the world, were patrons of classical music and the opera.

Don is survived by his wife, Coralie, and 5 of their children: Cheryl McKay, Catherine Procaccini, David Lynn, Daniel Lynn, and Carol Blackwelder.

He will be remembered as “Opa” to 12 grandchildren and 7 great grandchildren. He is preceded in death by their first born daughter, Rebecca, as well as by his brother, Richard Lynn.

William Joseph Marks

June 20, 1931 - January 12, 2023

William Joseph Marks, a dedicated husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and friend passed away peacefully in his sleep in Knoxville Tennessee on January 12, 2023, at the age of 91.

Bill was blessed with a loving family and met his wife Claire on a blind date 67 years ago and they were engaged and married a year later on July 7, 1957. They were blessed with three children, six grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Bill and Claire resided in Pinehurst, North Carolina for over 32 years. They enjoyed their retirement years traveling, fishing, watching Duke basketball and enjoying what Bill and Claire continued into their 80’s - playing golf.