- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Front Row," the FBI raids former president Trump's Florida home, North Carolina teachers voice concerns about a proposed new pay plan, and the Army struggles to recruit new soldiers.

Next.

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♪ Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Nicholas B.

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[serious music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Dawn Vaughn with the News & Observer, Colin Campbell with the North Carolina Tribune, and Donna King with Carolina Journal.

Let's begin with the raid on former President Trump's home.

Mitch, kick us off.

- The FBI executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Largo estate in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday.

Some people are objecting the use of the R word, but I think most people would consider it in some form a raid.

It lasted for hours and this is... - Actually nine hours.

- and this is the first time that a former president has faced this public of a search of this sort, especially a former president who's considering running for office again and there was quite a bit of political pushback on this, especially involving the Attorney General Merrick Garland.

So much so that he came out and said that, "Hey, we'd like to unseal the information about what led us to this raid or this execution of the search warrant in the first place."

President Trump, in fact, also came out and said, "Hey, I want the information to come out as well."

- But they need to see the affidavit, right?

- Yeah, they definitely need to see what caused this.

I think folks across the political spectrum want to know, what is it that prompted this to happen.

Some may say that it's justified.

Others will not.

But they want to know why, because this is the type of thing that has been unprecedented.

It has had a political impact already.

There was a Trafalgar Group poll that showed that 83% of Republicans, 72% of Independent voters said that this raid makes them more likely to vote.

And a plurality of those voters, high majorities among Republicans and Independents, believe that the former president's political opponents are behind this.

- Carl, would this have been handled a different way?

I mean, could they have issued a subpoena?

Could they have worked with the Trump organization?

We don't know what the problem was.

What was the hold-up on this?

- Yeah, and I think when these documents and some details come out, we'll have a sense.

You know, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy saying, "Well, why didn't they just ask Trump for this document?

Surely he would have turned them over."

I think when the documents come out, or when some of the warrants and materials come out, we'll have a better sense for exactly why they felt like this was the route they had to go that they couldn't go through a subpoena process or some other measure.

We certainly seen the reporting from the Washington Post just in the last day or so that - Those were anonymous sources though.

- Anonymous sources, exactly, so you take it with a grain of salt.

- Said it was about nuclear - Nuclear related stuff, domestic or foreign and some people have jumped to the conclusion that it involves the nuclear codes which I don't think we've seen anything along that level, but anything involving national security, I think, could be a potential reason they're going this route.

- Donna, critics say this raid was designed to make headlines.

- For sure.

I mean whether it was designed intentionally to make headlines and embarrass the president and the country, frankly, or whether it was just grossly mismanaged, it's just not good either way.

One of the things that I think anybody in media kinda knows from watching over the years, that if you want to do something under radar, you do it on a Friday night or a Sunday morning or something.

Nope.

The warrant was signed on a Friday and it was done on a Monday morning, prime time.

I think any effort to fly it under the radar probably was not accurate.

There was some speculation that Trump's lawyers weren't allowed to see the warrant.

I think what they were allowed to see was the warrant which is the what, but they were not allowed to see was the affidavit which is the why and I think - And they weren't allowed to watch the search either.

- That's correct.

They are saying they were not allowed to watch the search, which went into sort of private parts of Trump's home.

I think there's a couple of things that are misunderstood just because people not involved in security.

Former presidents have a security clearance.

They have what's a called a SCIF which is a secured facility to keep classified documents.

And then there's a wide range of what's classified from secret - He could've declassified these documents.

- He had the authority to declassify while he was still president and that is correct, but there is also a very wide range of what's considered classified, whether it's secret all the way up to very top secret, but a president does have the authority to declassify things.

Now, whether these are among those, we don't know yet because there's just been so little transparency.

- Dawn, Dawn your take?

- I mean, as everyone likes to say, no one is above the law so we'll find out but part of doing things with the law and the court system is that there's documents and we'll see them all eventually so a lot of this is waiting to actually see everything and even by the time people are watching this or five minutes after, something else will come out and change.

Of course that's interesting, but we got to wait and find out what all comes out.

- Mitch, is there a double standard on people who get investigated to charge for this?

- Well certainly some people are saying that and the name that keeps coming out is Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden.

Why is there not seem to be - Well, Sandy Berger.

- Sandy Berger.

You can talk about anything that happened with Hillary Clinton.

To me, the most interesting thing - Her emails.

- is that one of the things that was talked about is perhaps this was done when it was known that former President Trump was not going to be at home so he wouldn't have a platform to complain.

That completed backfired cause it was, "Hey you do it while he wasn't there."

- And it was 90 days before the midterms.

I want to talk to you, Colin, about teachers.

They're upset about a new pay plan.

- So, this is a pay plan that has been in sort of preliminary stages before the State Board of Education for a while, but it really hit headlines this week when the North Carolina Association of Educators held a big rally opposing the plan.

This goes back to this age old debate of how do you structure teachers' salaries?

Do you pay them purely based on their years of experience, or do you factor in some form of merit pay where the better teachers get bigger raises than the teachers who are just mediocre, getting by?

And so what the State Board of Education is looking at is a system in which you'd have a new compensation structure where you could get raises based on student performance, maybe some mix of test scores, and evaluations by principals and other educators.

You'd have a system where you'd have an advanced teaching role, so you wouldn't necessarily have to go become a principal to get a better salary and more responsibilities, you could still be in the classroom but teaching students and also supervising other teachers, and sort of helping them grow as teachers.

- [Marc] Right.

- The concern is, all of this is against a backdrop of major teacher shortages, retention issues, a lot of people have quit the profession over the last few years.

I've seen school districts offering signing bonuses this year, and so the opponents of this plan say, "This is only gonna make this worse, you're not gonna have guaranteed raises going forward."

- That's a great point, because the NCAE thinks it's a risky gamble, don't they, Donna?

- Well, I think the NCAE always wants something better for teachers, higher raises, better benefits, everything like that, that's their job, is to advocate for that.

But I think just like what Colin was saying, there are a lot of teachers that have been around a while and there's a lot of ways to get in new teachers, and the government seems to be working on ramping that up.

But what about people who are in their thirties, forties, fifties, teaching, why should they stay?

What's their motivation other than of course, they love what they do, but you've gotta compensate people, give them something to look forward to, if you wanna keep 'em happy.

- Donna, what did Superintendent Truitt say about this?

- Well, Superintendent Truitt really points to that, this is not about discounting seniority, this is about creating new pathways to promotion and raises, whether it's different ways to get teaching assistants able to be teachers while they're in the classroom, whether it's new ways of recruiting or retaining people.

This particular plan is a proposal, I think that's important to point out, it's from the DPI's Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission.

This group put together this proposal, it's a group of teachers and administrators, they ran it through through focus groups of other teachers.

So, what it really does is it creates all these different ways beyond just seniority, to get promoted, and to get extra pay.

And it was well received in most of those focus groups- - Right.

- Of course the NCAE says that this is really about seniority.

- Is this about merit?

- Well, the plan is a lot more about merit than the old system, which is basically you log another year, you get more pay.

A couple of things that are important to know about this.

One, the NCAE represents about 17% of teachers.

So when they're complaining, they're complaining on behalf of less than one in five teachers.

Most teachers, even though it's incredibly easy to be part of NCAE, want nothing to do with this group.

The other thing that's important to note is that the plan would have a starting salary for new teachers that's much higher than the existing starting salary.

And it would be easier to move quicker up the pay scale with this new system than the current one.

So some critics are saying, "NCAE, why are you fighting higher pay for your teachers?"

- Okay, I wanna change gears, Donna, and talk to you about the crunch that the army's having for recruitment.

- Absolutely.

Yes, yes, so we're hearing more and more about this.

Even here in North Carolina, they're way behind their numbers of recruitment.

The military says that this is bad.

They're saying it's probably the worst recruitment period that we've had in 50 years or so.

Now, there are a couple of reasons, they say.

Among them, they said the pandemic really shutting down schools during the pandemic meant that all of these kids who might be potential recruits weren't exposed to the benefit that they could get in terms of pay and benefits and travel and extra education money, that we lost two full classes of potential recruits and that could really be harming recruitment for the military services.

But it's also harming an entire generation of students for whom they're looking for an alternative to four year college, or they're looking for a way to pay for it.

There are also studies that say 75% of potential recruits don't even qualify on the ASVAB, the testing, or on the physical requirements.

- [Marc] Aptitude or physical?

- The aptitude or the physical requirements to go into the military.

- And I hear only 9% of those want to go into service.

- Right, and that brings us to another one.

So if only 9% of those that qualify want to go in, why is that?

And it may be, and a lot of folks are saying, that this is a decades long effort to, you know, remove patriotism and American exceptionalism and all the things out of the public school system means that you're pulling from that potential pool of recruits because these kids weren't even born around 9/11.

So they don't know that sort of exceptionalism and that patriotism that the rest of us experienced at that time.

- Mitch is this a readiness problem?

- Well, certainly is gonna be a readiness problem if we're gonna have an issue of having enough people to fill the jobs.

And that should be especially concerning to us as we see what's happening around the world especially with China, what we've been talking about on this show with the problems with China and Taiwan.

If this is something that ends up needing a military response, not having enough soldiers to deal with the issue, it's gonna be a big problem.

- I mean, there is a draft.

We do still have a draft and we haven't used it in a really long time but if something comes down to it that you know, that's still there.

- Well do you think people should spend or kids should spend at least two years in service to this country?

- I don't think so.

I think obviously, of course I just mentioned the draft but a volunteer force is much better.

I come from a military family, I was an Army brat.

And one of the factors I've read about contributing to this is, did you have family members that are in it?

And part of that is generational.

You know, my father and grandparents were war veterans, but it's kind of the timing of of the age of everybody.

And did you see the, not necessarily war, but just you know, your time in service and the benefits.

Anyway did you see that firsthand for yourself, for your family members and a lot of that contributes to if you want to be part of it also.

- Jump in here, my friend.

- Yeah.

I think one of those challenges here that the military is facing is this shift towards a better work life balance and a lot of career fields where people are wanting to choose where they're gonna live.

They're wanting to choose the terms under which they're gonna work.

And so that's-- - What are the terms and is about 50 grand, isn't it?

If you volunteer to go in?

- Well they're offering bonuses up to 50 grands.

- Sure.

- And I think in some cases, they actually are letting you choose where you're gonna be stationed which is always sort of a detractor from being in the military is, well you might get shipped and so you're just gonna live on the opposite coast or opposite end of the country.

- Mitch.

I think we're at a place right now where some of this has to do with what they're teaching these people in the military, don't you think?

- It could be.

It certainly, if you're talking about the impact of the woke movement on it.

All parts of society, including the military that would conflict with a lot of the traditional military value of, as Donna was talking about, the patriotism, love of American exceptionalism.

If people are saying, if I go to the military I'm just gonna get more of what I'm seeing elsewhere, why bother, that could be an issue.

But I think the main thing is the thing that we talked about earlier, the supply of potential recruits is getting so much smaller because people aren't healthy, because they're having mental issues, that if you have a much smaller pool from which to choose when a larger number of those people don't wanna do it, you're gonna see the effects.

- Donna wrap this up in about 40 seconds please.

- Well and I think that that is exactly what we're talking about.

Qualifications are bigger.

If we had more people qualified to join our pool would be bigger.

I mean, that's at the end of the day, that's what it is.

So having kids prepared to take on the, you know the intellectual abilities to run, to lead a troop to the ability to run, to be able to fly, to be able to do all these other things, you know with a clean criminal record, clean drug record, all of those things are becoming less and less in this generation.

And that should be alarming for more than just the military.

- Okay, I wanna move on.

Talk to Dawn.

I think attorney general Stein's campaign had a legal setback this week.

Talked to us about it.

- Right, well it all started with a century old law that was passed in the thirties that makes it a crime to knowingly make derogatory reports and spread false information about a politician.

This has never been enforced.

It's coming up now, this is out of the 2020 campaign for attorney general.

That was a close race between between Stein and O'Neil.

And so Stein's campaign is in trouble for an attack ad about the backlog of rape kits.

Stein and O'Neil had accused each other both of blaming each other for the problem.

Well, Stein tried to get ahead of what was going on this summer by filing a lawsuit saying it was unconstitutional and that delayed things for a while.

And then now it can move forward with an investigation.

Then the democratic party said, well, we want you to look at O'Neill too.

And so there's new developments in this all the time.

And what's most interesting to me is because this has been around for a hundred years and hasn't been used at all yet, if it is then what's gonna happen next?

What is this gonna open the door for with other political things?

- For other campaigns.

- Oh, for sure.

So I think that's really interesting.

- Mitch, what impact does it have on Attorney General Stein if he runs for governor?

- Well, it certainly could have an impact if it turns out that he ends up getting charged and there's some sort of conviction or a trial, I think that could have an impact.

To me, there are several interesting competing parts in this one is the law itself and whether you think it's a good law or not which is an issue that I think folks on many parts of the political spectrum think it's a bad law and they ought to get rid of it.

But is the way that Attorney General Stein went about that the right way.

He went to federal court to have this state law declared unconstitutional because it was going to be applied to him.

I'm not sure he's going to be able to win in that piece of it but of course the time is on his side in some respects because this law carries a misdemeanor charge.

There's a two year statute of limitations that ad stopped running in October, 2020.

So if there's no charge by then, he's scot free.

- Donna.

- I think that one of the other interesting things about this, if we do start enforcing it, how many one campaigns are going back to the drawing board in the next six weeks, and two who decides what what's the next step, is it going to be, there has to be a grain of truth.

Does it mean it has to, it can't be misleading.

Does it, you know, what is going to be the next step and who decides what that is?

Is it based on lawsuits?

Is there going to be some sort of statutory creation in this, but you're right at the end of the day the attorney general, you know, filed this to avoid prosecution.

And this is a big deal considering he was somewhat the heir apparent for the Democrats to run for governor.

- Political consultants aren't regulated though, are they?

- No.

And so that's the question is, and also it comes down to who gets charged.

Do you charge a political consultant under this law?

Or do you charge the candidate themselves because ultimately they're responsible for what their campaign is about.

- Well, their name is on the campaign, right?

- Exactly.

I'm so and so and I approve this ad.

- Mitch.

- Yeah, there are three plaintiffs in this case.

So there was at least a sense that at at least three different parties could get charged.

It was a Stein campaign, not Josh Stein individually.

There's also the woman who made the statement that caused the problem who was a Stein employee and a sexual assault survivor complaining about the Republican candidate.

And the third group was the media company that put the ad together for Josh Stein.

All of them were plaintiffs.

So all of them at least think that they are potentially at risk of being charged.

- Dawn, any final thoughts?

- I don't think Stein is gonna make any announcement about his plans to run for governor soon until this passes, and Stein's not the only democratic name that's floated.

And, of course, there's one main or two of Republican names.

So a few months from now, maybe people won't pay attention anymore and they'll look ahead, but right now, there's not gonna be any movement on anyone declaring it.

I could see his potential opponents using it, trying to use that to their advantage now before everyone forgets.

- Great conversation.

Mitch, let's go to the most under-reported story of the week, my friend.

- We have talked on this show before about the Green Party and its efforts to get on the ballot, which seems to be secured now that the Green Party is going to have its two candidates on North Carolina's election ballot.

And for most people, the most interesting one is the US Senate race 'cause that's gonna be one of the most hotly contested races.

The under-reported piece was some statements made by federal judge James Dever talking about the state board of elections.

He said that the state board, up until it certified the Greens, basically said, "If the Greens win this certification, then yes, you should set aside this candidate filing deadline and put their candidates on the ballot."

As soon as they got the certification, the board voted for it, they went back to court and said, "No, this is something that a federal court shouldn't have anything to do with."

Dever said that that was an astonishing change and said that it smacked of some legal shenanigans and really called the state board of elections on the carpet.

For the state board of elections' purpose, they went in a fed later court ruling and said, "Look, we just said this wrong.

We always had the same stance."

- Dawn, under-reported please.

- So infrastructure.

There's a lot of over-reported things on infrastructure, big things that everyone notices, transportation, that sort of thing.

But the water system is actually very important and affects everybody's daily lives.

There was federal money that came down to all these different localities in North Carolina lately, and there's no whiz bang to it.

Everyone likes quality drinking water and your waste water systems and everything to function, but it's nothing to really get excited about until there's a problem.

Well, there's some problems, and so now the federal money is coming in to all these communities to fix it.

So it's something that's below the radar but affects all of us.

- Great catch.

Colin?

- Yeah, so this week, there was an interesting Twitter exchange between Governor Roy Cooper and US Senator Thom Tillis over the spending climate change, inflation reduction bill going through Congress.

- [indistinct] Twitter, right?

- Yeah, no, I spend a little too much time there, so I immediately picked up on this, and this is initially the governor coming out and attacking Tillis by name for his votes on this.

Didn't mention Richard Burr at all who, of course, voted the same way.

Tillis comes back and attacks Cooper and references his overall agenda.

It very much smacked the campaign rhetoric you also saw in the current US Senate race, which made me think four years into the future to the 2026 Senate race where Tillis will be up for reelection, and there's talk that Cooper could be be a potential candidate.

So was this the opening salvo of a campaign four years from now?

Cooper, I think, was asked by Dawn - Yes.

[laughs] - yesterday about that, and he said no, he just wanted to criticize Tillis.

- He called him particularly egregious, and I said, "You usually don't call people out on Twitter very much, so why this?"

- Donna.

- Very interesting.

Mine actually is from the Inflation Reduction Act as well, but to me, the under-reported is the fine print.

We're hearing a lot of supporters of this talking about caps on prescription drugs and that kind of thing.

But it's important to note that that $2,000 cap on prescription drugs is not phased in until 2025, and that the Medicaid negotiation will only be 2026 and will only apply to 10 drugs.

So I think that that's an important part to note, and we really haven't seen much about that in this discussion.

- Where were Burr and Tillis on that vote?

- They both voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, saying that there are far too many taxes in this and too much spending and it will actually drive inflation up farther.

We've seen a lot also, though, about these claims of tax reduction, 400,000.

There was a bill filed in Congress that said, "Okay, then nobody can go after somebody under 400,000."

If that's the case, that failed to make it.

We're really seeing- - 87,000 new IRS agents.

- Double.

It's going to more than double the size of the IRS, and you're also seeing that the JCT is saying that anybody over $10,000 annually will get at least a 3% tax increase.

- Okay, let's go to lightning round, Mitch.

Who's up and who's down this week?

- What's up is the price tag for renaming Fort Bragg.

You know that as part of this whole renaming of items involving the government that have some Confederate ties, Fort Bragg is to be renamed Fort Liberty, and a report to Congress says it's gonna cost about $6.3 million.

Who's down?

Well-behaved poll watchers.

The NC state board of elections is looking at changing some rules because they look back at the May primary and said that some of these poll watchers who work for the parties to make sure that things are going well did some things like intimidating voters, going in and out too frequently, and also trying to get into restricted areas, so bad news.

- Dawn?

- My up, down are connected, so I'm gonna lead in with the down and then give the good news.

So down are firefighters who spend their career keeping everybody safe and then they end up having, you know, some sort of related cancer.

So the related up is that money is finally starting to flow, it's out of the long budget in 2021 and it's a pilot program that we give a $25,000 lump sum payment to firefighters who have cancer.

There's some qualifying cancers, but you don't have to come up with like the direct I can prove this exactly, specifically.

And it's just a supplemental insurance that relieves some of that additional stress of how am I gonna pay all these extra medical bills when you're already dealing with something pretty terrible.

And so that money is starting to flow.

The Henderson police chief- - All right.

- I saw him at this fire rescue expo and he said it's been such a blessing in this life.

- Colin.

- So up this week, people who like to watch political debates.

There's been a lot of speculation whether we'll even have any this year in North Carolina congressional races and we haven't seen any developments on that front in the US Senate race, but this week NC Senator Chuck Edwards agreed to debate his democratic opponent out in western North Carolina, the district currently held by Cawthorn, so that'll be a fun one to watch.

Down this week, Democratic Party's super lawyer, Mark Elias' firm, that was really active in this challenge to the Green Party's ability to be on the ballot.

As mentioned earlier, that looks like that challenge is going to fail and the Green Party US Senate candidate will be on the ballot and probable able to take a few votes from Cheri Beasley.

- Donna?

- Sure.

- Actually Mark Elias was my down, too.

I think the curtain has been peeled back a little bit on his involvement.

- Explain who he is a little bit more.

- So Mark Elias was the attorney for Hillary Clinton.

He plays a huge role in really trying to navigate state law, election maps, you name it, to give the edge to the Democrats and he has played a huge role over the last decade or so, but I think operated largely in the shadows.

I think the curtain is pulling back a little bit, particularly one with this Green Party- - Right.

- Lawsuit.

- But he also tweeted about the raid, saying, oh, well, now now this means that you're all missing the story.

Now this means he can't run for President.

So we're now starting to see a little bit more about who he is.

- What we do without Twitter?

Okay, who's now- - Exactly.

- So my up is actually gonna be Trump candidates.

There was another primary and the Trump endorsed candidates came out on top again.

- Headline next week, Mitch.

- You mentioned how close we are to the election.

The ballot goes to the printer with the Green Party name in the Senate race.

- Headline next week, Dawn?

- After almost 2-1/2 years, the COVID state of emergency is finally gonna be over.

- In retrospect, do you think that was wise to shut everything down?

To the economy?

- Actual- - For our kids?

- It's interesting like every time I mention the state of emergency is the restrictions were gone so long ago and a lot of the criticism was that it drug out so much longer.

But the shutdown, I mean, obviously there's been a long-term setback.

- Headline.

- Yeah, so next week, there'll be some more finger pointing about who's at blame, who's at fault for the lack of a Medicaid expansion deal as the legislature gets ready to come back later this month and probably do nothing.

- Donna.

- Debate.

- Another primary, only this time we've got Sarah Palin on the ballot and it is a really right race.

- Okay, we gotta roll.

Great job, guys and gals.

Hope to see you next week on "Front Row."

Have a great weekend.

[dramatic music] - [Announcer] Major funding for "Front Row" with Marc Rotterman is provided by Robert L. Luddy.

Additional funding provided by Patricia and Koo Yuen through the Yuen Foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And by.

[dramatic music] Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Nicholas B.

And Lucy May Boddie Foundation, A.E.

Finley Foundation, NC Realtors, Rifenburg Construction, Stefan Gleason.

A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[dramatic music] ♪