The Assembly

When Brayden Smith visited the Career and Professional Development Center at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) for the first time, the staff had to ask him to speak up. The freshman from Jacksonville, N.C. was quiet and shy. Smith had a compelling reason to overcome his nerves, however: In a tough job market, career preparation can’t wait until graduation. During the three years since, Smith has presented at conferences around the country to hundreds of people.

Democratic Gov. Josh Stein signed North Carolina’s long-overdue budget into law Tuesday, marking the largest spending plan in state history. The 634-page law includes money for Hurricane Helene relief, provides salary increases for state workers, and cuts income taxes, among other measures. But the $34 billion budget also includes several provisions that move money for lesser-known priorities, such as a new complex at the North Carolina Zoo.

Excerpted from the new book Aycock Brown on the Outer Banks. Published with permission of Arcadia Publishing. Imagine the Outer Banks with vast, beguiling, barren stretches of beach running for miles. Cottages on stilts here and there along a two-lane road by the sea. No TVs, few phones save for pay phones in their glass boxes in random parking lots. A handful of local grocery stores, not supermarkets. Mom-and-pop motels and just a few majestic hotels.

North Carolina community colleges hope to benefit from a major expansion of federal financial aid this month to help students pay for job-training certifications. But only a small share of programs in the state are expected to qualify for Workforce Pell Grants right away. Congress approved the Workforce Pell program last summer as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Lee’s face becomes a canvas of beet-red as he hugs his mom,” then News and Observer journalist and current Assembly contributor Billy Warden wrote in a profile of UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee Roberts way back in 1990. (The piece is not on the N&O website, but can be found on newspapers.com.) Roberts’ mother, famed NPR journalist Cokie Roberts, was in town for a fundraiser, so Warden spent a day with her son, then a Duke University senior. “What an amazing pair they make,” Warden wrote.

This story is copublished with The Chronicle of Higher Education. In the spring of 2023, administrators at UNC Greensboro announced that significant changes would be coming. Enrollment had dropped by 11% in three years, a concerning number for a tuition-dependent regional college, so the institution would be reviewing all of its academic programs. “We are not in a ‘rainy day’ situation,” Chancellor Franklin Gilliam later wrote in an email to campus.

In late May, Granville County teachers and administrators met around a U-shaped table to review the results of an experiment that had pushed the small district north of Raleigh outside the mainstream of public education in 2026. At the beginning of the school year, Superintendent Stan Winborne had declared Tuesdays and Thursdays “tech-free.” The Chromebooks and iPads now ubiquitous in American classrooms were replaced by old-fashioned pencils and paper across all grade levels.

Gov. Josh Stein on Tuesday signed the $34 billion budget lawmakers sent him, bringing an end to a more than year-long saga after state House and Senate Republicans resolved their stalemate over several policy issues.

This is part 3 of “Barely Legal,” The Assembly’s investigation into North Carolina hemp. Learn more here. With time running out on the General Assembly’s legislative session, North Carolina’s $3.2 billion hemp industry was hanging on by a thread. Businesses had already been bracing for the federal ban on intoxicating hemp that Congress passed last fall.

This story is republished from KFF Health News. Some issues, like immigration or student loans, are too divisive to unite Trinity Moravian Church. “We’ve got quite a spread of political beliefs,” said the Rev. John Jackman, who leads this 114-year-old red-brick church near Winston-Salem’s old textile mills. Conservative Republicans sit with liberal Democrats. Supporters of President Donald Trump mix with his fierce critics. “It’s definitely a purple congregation,” Jackman said.