Keya Vakil

Democrat Lisa Grafstein was elected to the state Senate in November following a long career as a civil rights attorney. During her career, Grafstein focused on fighting for the rights and freedoms of those living with disabilities.

Callum Bradford is a 16-year-old transgender student in Chapel Hill. We interviewed him to hear his thoughts on two anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in North Carolina.

The two Democratic justices on the court disagreed with the majority’s decision, with Justice Anita Earls writing that rehearing the redistricting decision was a “power grab” and a “radical break with 205 years of history.”

Seven rural North Carolina co-ops and utilities are receiving $235 million in loans to expand and modernize the electric grid, improve grid security, make electricity transmission more reliable and efficient, and reduce costs for consumers. 

Republicans have introduced a bill that would create a federal anti-abortion website that provides misleading information about abortion, directs women to health “centers” that pressure them not to have abortions, and could even collect their personal information to share with anti-abortion groups.

Republican lawmakers introduced more than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills nationwide in January. Seventy-one percent of LGBTQ youth—and 86% of trans and nonbinary youth—said state laws restricting the rights of LGBTQ young people have negatively impacted their mental health, according to a recent poll.

The Biden administration introduced several new efforts to protect renters, make renting more affordable, and to increase fairness in the rental market.

Under state law, any physician prescribing the abortion pill mifepristone to patients must be in the same room with them at a certified surgical facility when they take the pills, despite FDA rules to the contrary.

Under the new plan, borrowers who earn less than roughly $30,600 a year would owe $0 a month on their federal student loans, effectively pausing them. A borrower who’s in a family of four and makes less than roughly $62,400 would also see their payments paused.

The GOP’s request for total control is not altogether surprising, as the courts have repeatedly found that North Carolina Republicans have gerrymandered and disenfranchised Black voters in the state with “almost surgical precision.”