Blackbeard

The state Board of Elections voted to authorize the alternative We the People party, allowing presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear on North Carolina ballots in November.

The Board rejected with a 3-2 vote along party lines the Justice for All party, Cornel West’s alternative party. Democrats rejected the Justice for All attempt to become a recognized party in part over questions about signatures on its petitions.

Tuesday’s votes came after weeks of deliberations, a request from Democrats on the board for an investigation into the petition efforts, and pressure from state and congressional Republicans to have both parties approved.

Republican-appointed leaders of the Environmental Management Commission have twice declined to advance proposed rules that would restrict industry’s release of some “forever” chemical pollution into drinking water supplies across North Carolina.

To further complicate things, the groundwater committee also asked DEQ to remove five of the eight chemicals from the list of what it wants to regulate.

An increasingly frustrated DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser, appointed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, said the commission is stalling full committee evaluation of the new rules, a departure from previous practices. “I hate to say that it wasn’t a huge surprise that they once again found reasons to move the goalposts and to not take action. It’s very frustrating,” Biser said.

Mark Robinson, the firebrand Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina, has for years made comments downplaying and making light of sexual assault and domestic violence.

A review of Robinson’s social media posts over the past decade shows that he frequently questioned the credibility of women who aired allegations of sexual assault against prominent men, including Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, actor Bill Cosby and now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. In one post, Robinson, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, characterized Weinstein and others as “sacrificial lambs” being “slaughtered.”

Robinson has drawn scrutiny for his incendiary remarks on other issues, including about LGBTQ+ people, religion and other political figures. But his comments on domestic violence and sexual assault stand out for their tone and frequency, as well as Robinson’s repeated questioning of accusers.

While Robinson is, in some ways, emblematic of the Republican Party’s turn under Donald Trump toward rewarding inflammatory, sexist language, his dismissals of women threaten to test Robinson’s appeal with voters troubled by that history, in particular female voters.

Last fall, out of public view, the North Carolina Supreme Court squashed disciplinary action against two Republican judges who had admitted that they had violated the state’s judicial code of conduct, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the decisions.

One of the judges had ordered, without legal justification, that a witness be jailed. The other had escalated a courtroom argument with a defendant, which led to a police officer shooting the defendant to death. The Judicial Standards Commission, the arm of the state Supreme Court that investigates judicial misconduct by judges, had recommended that the court publicly reprimand both women. The majority-Republican court gave no public explanation for rejecting the recommendations — indeed, state law mandates that such decisions remain confidential.

Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University, explained that in the 2010s, North Carolina had policies designed to keep the judiciary above the political fray, such as nonpartisan judicial elections. However, the gradual dismantling of these policies by the Republican-controlled legislature has driven the court’s polarization, according to Hildebrand.

Preventing local governments from reducing plastic waste is just one recent example of the many ways Republican lawmakers have used the state budget, theoretically a fiscal document, to weaken existing environmental regulations or prevent more.

Since taking power in 2011, GOP leaders have introduced dozens of environmental provisions in state budgets, rather than standalone bills. That includes 2023 provisions preventing North Carolina from joining a cap-and-trade program that could have limited greenhouse gasses released by the state’s power plants and stymieing Gov. Roy Cooper’s efforts to shift trucks across the state from diesel fuel to electric power.

Since 2017, state environmental officials have been grinding their way toward regulating these per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. While scientists know of thousands, DEQ identified eight present here that it intended to regulate in ground- and surface water.

But in April, the N.C. Chamber, the state’s powerful business interest group, urged the N.C. Environmental Management Commission to slow down and conduct more research before approving rules for the substances. Much of Chamber President Gary Salamido’s argument to delay setting new limits focused on new drinking water rules the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized this year for six of the eight PFAS the state is considering limiting.

He also pointed to the renewed Hardison Amendment, writing that regulators need to consider whether they are going further than the EPA’s rules.

Another home has crumbled into the sea in Rodanthe, N.C., the scenic Outer Banks community where rising seas and relentless erosion have claimed a growing number of houses and forced some property owners to take drastic measures to retreat from the oceanfront.

“Another one bit the dust,” David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said in an interview. And it probably won’t be the last, as many homes in the area are perilously close to the surf. “This situation will continue.”

The Environmental Management Commission is a 15-member body appointed by the governor, General Assembly leaders, and the agricultural commissioner. It is charged with reviewing and enacting rules for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

DEQ requested the EMC begin the rulemaking process to adopt PFAS surface water and groundwater standards at its May 10 meeting. Commissioners declined the request, citing the need for more time to study the financial implications of the proposal, namely costs associated with requiring companies to install filtration technology.

A Port City Daily review of EMC financial disclosures found at least three commissioners own stock in companies that have either directly lobbied against PFAS and 1,4-dioxane regulation or pay lobbying dues to organizations that lobby on their behalf, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the American Chemistry Council. Both organizations sent letters to the EPA opposing recent regulatory actions on PFAS and 1,4-dioxane.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15610251

Weeds have punctured through the vacant parking lot of Martin General Hospital’s emergency room. A makeshift blue tarp covering the hospital’s sign is worn down from flapping in the wind. The hospital doors are locked, many in this county of 22,000 fear permanently.

Some residents worry the hospital’s sudden closure last August could cost them their life.

“I know we all have to die, but it seems like since the hospital closed, there’s a lot more people dying,” Linda Gibson, a lifelong resident of Williamston, North Carolina, said on a recent afternoon while preparing snacks for children in a nearby elementary school kitchen.

More than 100 hospitals have downsized services or closed altogether over the past decade in rural communities like Williamston, where people openly wonder if they’d survive the 25-minute ambulance ride to the nearest hospital if they were in a serious car crash.

The North Carolina Rules Review Commission (RRC) voted unanimously at it April 8 meeting to disallow the temporary rules the Coastal Review Commission (CRC) put into place in February—a move that puts the status of Jockey’s Ridge environmental protections in limbo.

Included in the rules the RRC ordered dropped was the Area of Environmental Concern (AEC) language for Jockey’s Ridge State Park, a designation that protects the park from development in areas immediately adjacent to its boundaries and includes a prohibition on removing sand from the area.

The NC Chamber is pushing to delay the progress of proposed limits of forever chemical pollution in ground and surface water.

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission declined to start the rulemaking process for PFAS pollution standards Wednesday, after Republican-appointed EMC members Tim Baumgartner and Joseph Reardon stalled a vote.

Baumgartner and Reardon said DEQ had not provided adequate information for a vote, including a fiscal analysis. "The lack of respect by DEQ for this commission is evident by lack of communication and disregard for providing documents to the EMC for review in a timely manner," Baumgartner said.

Elizabeth Biser, the secretary of the NC Department of Environmental Quality, said in a letter that she is "deeply disappointed" that the Groundwater and Waste Management Committee is "refusing to hear" the proposed standards.