- [Kelly] The Trump administration asked North Carolina to screen voter registrations through a federal citizenship database.

And bar owners can sue North Carolina for losses caused by COVID lockdowns.

This is "State Lines."

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[uplifting music] ♪ - Welcome back to State Lines on this Labor Day weekend.

I'm Kelly McCullen and we have some great friends joining all of us today at the table.

To my right, Claudia Rivera Cotto of Enlace Latino NC is here.

Hello, Claudia.

- Hi, nice to be here.

- [Kelly] It's great to have you here.

Representative David Willis, representing Union County and to his right Senator Natalie Murdock of Chatham and Durham Counties and John Locke Foundations Mitch Kokai, who's been on public TV and radio and everywhere a time or three.

Good to see you, Mitch.

- Good to see you.

Thanks for having me back.

- Well, I don't know if a lot happened this week, but a lot of little things happened that are worth talking about for a few minutes.

Let's start with state legislators.

They came back to Raleigh for a legislative session that we told, held the promise of possible veto override attempts, maybe a budget negotiation breakthroughs, you know, all the good stuff as policy wonks like.

Well, the week's legislative sessions ended up being lightly attended skeleton sessions with no bill votes and House and Senate Democrats pulled together to say it's time for Republicans to at least reach a deal on a comprehensive budget.

House Republicans are one vote short of overriding vetoes on bills banning DEI across education and government.

And a few more votes short of enacting that constitutional carry of concealed firearms.

Claudia, well they came, there was promise the votes aren't there.

So what happens now?

Wait till September?

- Yeah, I think that this week has shown that some of those negotiations are stalled right now.

And as you were mentioning, the Democratic leaders are pushing for this budget, particularly for state employees and for teachers race.

I think that's their main concern.

And then on the other side, we have all those bills.

Eight of them had already been overridden by the General Assembly from the ones that were veto by Josh Stein.

And there are still some other ones that are under consideration.

Some of them I think might have the possibility of having like at least one Democrat that would flip to vote on them.

But I think other ones are a little bit more harder like the DEI one, for example.

- What was the vibe in the Press Corps coming into this week?

Was there a thought there might be progress on some parts of the budget or maybe some of the veto overrides?

- I think what we heard is that there might be like a mini budget even so like before a full comprehensive budget.

But that is not necessarily something that is explicitly said.

So I think that we would have to wait until September to know a little bit more about what will happen.

- That's why they pay you the big bucks to sit and wait.

Now talk about big bucks, representative Willis, you come all the way across this state to spend a week in Raleigh and not a darn thing really happens.

So why do all that?

The media drummed this up and just say and expect something out of late August?

- Well, I mean, you've gotta sell, you know, additions, right?

You gotta sell copy.

And so no, we came here just to be with you guys this weekend.

- [Kelly] Well we're glad to have you.

- Tremendous opportunity to be here.

Things continue to happen behind the scenes, conversations are happening, you know, between the House and Senate members and leadership and we continue to try to push forward to find a deal, but it's gonna take some time.

- And then those negotiations, does it involve the big chair levels like yourself talking amongst or does Dustin Hall and Phil Berger, the leaders of the House and Senate ever get on the phone or go have breakfast together and try to work something out like two neighbors would?

- You know, actually they do, and I give them credit.

It's not as, I guess adversarial as you might think.

I mean, there's a lot of conversations happening, but there's some principle, you know, ideas at stake on this.

And then there's two varying, two strong varying points of view on that and both sides are kinda holding to that right now.

And until we find some common ground to kind of work through some of that, I think it's gonna take some time- - And there's no splitting that tax policy debate.

There's no meeting in the middle, no halving of the baby.

- I think there will be eventually.

I just think there needs to be a certain amount of pressure that's applied on both sides and for them to come to an agreement somewhere in the middle.

- Senator Murdoch, over in the Senate, they just steamroll and override those vetoes.

But your House colleagues on that Democratic caucus, they have stuck together now for a second month and stopped at least a couple of the veto overrides, your thoughts.

- Yeah, we're really excited about that and minority leaders and the House and Senate joined together and with a lot of House members and senators that were present on our side to have a press conference basically saying, "We do have to do more," we know that with all the federal cuts, Medicaid rebates is a really big one.

We know we're gonna have a gap of around $319 million and so I think we need to put all the heads together to figure out how we're gonna make up for these gaps the same for Snap, the state will now have to pay more money for those gaps and even when it does come to these tax cuts honestly applaud the House of saying, "We cannot afford to do this."

We have a very competitive tax rate for corporations and personal income tax and the state cannot afford these extreme tax cuts.

So I'm glad that this, the House is holding firm and I hope my Senate colleagues come around to say, "With all the federal money that we will be losing to provide tax cuts to billionaires and trillionaires, this is not the cycle where we need to aggressively reduce taxes when we already have a very competitive tax rate."

- Will there be a point when the House and Senate Democrats will at least put together a shadow budget?

Oh, Skip Stam, representative Stam is former Republican leader in the House would always put a budget out.

I wouldn't say waste a thousand pages of paper, but he had a vision even though it would never pass.

I get you're against everything, a lot of what the Republicans have done, when are we gonna see what the Democrats are for?

- Yeah, really overwhelmingly we support the buget, the budget Patrick, package provided by Governor Stein.

There's a lot of great pieces in there.

Even for Helene, he wanted a billion dollars of recovery.

He wanted more funding for teachers, he wanted more funding for the childcare, funding skipped over that.

We need a lot more childcare stabilization grants.

So we support the proposal from Governor Stein.

- Mitch, I saw the report, came out Thursday afternoon, that state legislative leaders as Republicans saying, "Don't expect the Medicaid cuts to take effect in October."

I saw that and I go, "Okay, well the cuts are scheduled to take effect in October," what gives here?

- Well, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens.

I think it's still unclear what happens with Medicaid but that is a big elephant in the room about what you could do on the budget.

Couple of interesting developments that have happened within the last couple of weeks, one of which is, you asked earlier whether the Speaker of the House, Destin Hall and Senate leader, Phil Berger, ever actually come to the table together.

That seems to have been happening recently, the conversation has actually gone to that level with the two of them going back and forth.

Another interesting development is that on the senate side, Senator Berger hasn't said this, but one of his communications people said that the Senate has come and said, "Okay, you don't like our tax proposal of further tax cuts, let's just go back to what's already in the law with the tax cuts that would go in with triggers and start as that at the base."

But apparently that has not yet been at a point of agreement because the House plan was the triggers that we have, let's raise the amount of revenue we have to have to get those triggers.

I think with the expectation that there is some concern about that revenue coming in and you don't want to be in a situation where you cut taxes so much that then you later have to go back and raise them because you don't have enough revenue.

- When was the last time the state actually passed a major budget bill during the long session?

- Oh, it's been a while and- - We're.

We're going on continuing, basically the equivalent of a continuing resolution for what, three, four years?

- Well, remember, one of the reasons why there's less incentive to come to the table now is that law that was passed in 2016.

It was actually signed on Bastille Day, July 14th.

It was back when Republicans had the Governor's Mansions and both chambers.

They had seen some delays in getting the budget done and said, "Look, we don't wanna, in the future, have to have the threat of a government shut down or have to deal with two or two week or one month continuing resolutions.

Let's just say if there's no new budget deal on July 1st, the old budget remains in effect."

That had the positive impact of getting rid of these fights over government shutdown.

The unintended negative consequence is that there's less incentive to actually come up with a deal, and that's what we're seeing now.

- I wanna put Representative Willis on the spot on this.

In good-natured fun, would it be easier to work with a Democratic Senate or a Republican Senate in getting a budget deal done if you can't pass one over multiple years?

- Wow, that was in good fun.

- [laughs] I mean, I'm a citizen.

You guys are on the same team, but to the point, there's not been a budget bill passed, but now you're new in leadership.

You're coming up the ranks.

Do you see it ever breaking through in the future sessions?

- In terms of a deal or- - [Kelly] Just getting budget bills, yeah, you know.

- Yeah, no, I think there will be, and I think, I mean, obviously we've had tremendous turnover in the House this year in terms of leadership and a new speaker, new leadership down the line.

And so I think, you know, it kind of brings a new way of thinking, a new way of doing things.

And for us, I think that's kind of brought some new energy in the way that we'll do things.

I think our caucus is united as ever, which I think is really positive.

You know, going on, you know, six years in the House, I've never seen us this cohesive as a group, and you know, I think, you know, jokingly, obviously, it's better to have the majority in the Senate, and we can work with, you know, the folks there because obviously, we align with what we want to ultimately accomplish.

It's just the final details of what those tax triggers look like and how we can, you know- - Oh, that question to the Senate.

But let me ask you, would Democrats have played such a stunt as voting for a Republican budget if they really had the leverage to influence that budget?

- I mean, I definitely think we would've come to the table in good faith.

I think we would've come to the table and negotiated as you have to.

You know, you have to be adults.

You have to run this state.

Working families, teachers, children, they're waiting on a real budget.

There's a lot of uncertainty as a result of those federal cuts.

And we would've come to the table with a good faith effort to work to reach an agreement.

- I tried, Mitch.

- Yeah, well, one other thing that's probably worth mentioning is that another recent development that didn't get a ton of attention, but Senator Berger put out his list of interim committee assignments.

You usually don't see that unless the session is done, and they're basically just saying, "Right, we're done for the year.

Let's put these committees in place.

that'll be in place until the spring of the even numbered year."

If he's done that at this point, it's pretty much they're saying, "The work for the year's done."

- Status quo is the status.

Well, the Trump Administration is asking North Carolina Elections Officials to screen North Carolina voter registration roles through a federal citizenship database called the SAVE Program.

It is designed to screen applicants for government benefits and licensing for the most part.

The federal database has been recently overhauled it's reported, so North Carolina's asked to be an early user by submitting up to 1 million voter identifications.

"The Charlotte Observer" reports at least 20 US states are using the SAVE Program for some level of voter screening.

The State Board of Elections did not make a decision on whether they want to adhere to this request of the Trump Administration.

Senator Murdock, so run the voter registration roles through to make sure the voters are documented citizens.

- Yeah, for one, we already know that you have to be a citizen to vote.

Every year when I campaign, and I'm out there with literature, I typically always have someone say, "You know, I'm not a citizen, and I can't vote," so they're also aware that they're not able to vote.

So I just think that this is, and for one, applaud the State Board of Elections for tabling it.

I believe even some of their, it's my understanding, their own legal counsel had some concerns and said they weren't ready to move forward with it quite yet.

But this is not a one-off, it is a multi-layered strategy.

We're also looking at a federal push from the administration to potentially end mail-in voting.

We also saw the state board strike down Sunday voting.

We also know we have over 80,000 voters that will have to provide more information to vote.

So voters are confused, they're confused.

And I think this was a kind of a two for one of continue the push for changes around immigration and make it...

There's been a pattern of making it more difficult to vote.

But again, it is already law that if you're not a citizen, you cannot vote.

And I'm not aware of a widespread issue where we had folks that were voting saying that they were citizens when they were not.

I'm not aware of that being a widespread issue.

- A very interesting timing that as this debate was happening, the US Attorney's Office in the Eastern district filed an indictment against a Canadian who apparently who's been voting in North Carolina elections for years, and they've charged him with voting in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

My guess is there's not a coincidence here that this is happening at the same time that the Trump administration's calling for that.

- Could you imagine the knock on that door representative, but you're a Canadian and they're gonna throw you in the jail for this.

Hey, however, there's been bipartisan elected leaders on here saying the State Board of Elections has been making movement to clean up voter rolls in a legitimate fashion with getting everyone's registrations in line.

So I've heard that from Democrats and Republicans, but the Trump administration coming into, I would say, not so lightly suggest you run the voter registration roll.

How much should the state see its information to feds?

- I think there's a double-edged sword.

I mean, obviously we wanna retain control at the state level of what we do and managing our own operations.

But at the same time, I think we also wanna make sure that the voter rolls are clean and that we have good faith in who is showing up and I would disagree with my counterpart.

I think there is confusion out there.

I mean, you got folks going through various instances and the immigration process is difficult and there's a lot of paperwork and a lot of steps and folks with temporary IDs, folks with green cards coming in and they don't always know.

And you've got states around the country that allow foreign voting within municipal elections.

And so I do think there's confusion that does happen more so than not.

And anything that we can do to shore up our elections, the better.

- Claudia, what's your coverage been like in this area of trying to keep voter rolls clean for all legal voters, for lack of a better term?

- Yeah, so I think that we can all agree that we want like safer and secure elections.

And that's part of what we also want to tell people and for us, the Latino community particularly, what we've also seen is that there is a process.

And right now for voting, you have to the ID requirement, you also have the registration.

And even like after the elections, we have the audits.

So in that sense that we have all those things that already cover that, so non-citizens cannot vote.

And on the other hand, we have naturalized citizens and also people from mixed status families that are seeing this programs like save as something, as a trigger that might disincentivize them from voting.

So that's what we've been hearing.

- And also applauding local elections officials, they take administering these elections very seriously.

I was a part of that process where we would look at the chief judges at the various polling locations.

So to your point, yes, there may be various forms of ID, but there is a process to make sure that it is only citizens that are voting.

And even if we have maybe this one instance, is that worth saying we're going to create an unfunded mandate and put more work on a woefully underfunded and understaffed board of elections and local election staff.

- On your beat of reporting in the community, when it comes to voter reform and cleaning voter rolls Are your readers seeing this as a good-faith effort to clean the voter rolls, or do they see politics in it?

And I don't know.

- I think people do see that there is an effort to have that, you know, non-citizens no voting, but at the same time, because of the politic area that we are right now with immigration, I think that also plays a part in people being afraid to go to the polls and vote, even if they are able to do it and eligible to do it.

- Representative Willis, do you think the state can get to the point where the voter rolls are clean, this can become an issue that's part of North Carolina history, and we have good processes going forward?

- I think the voter rolls, and I think giving credit to the Board of Elections over the last year has done a really good job of cleaning it up, and they continue to move forward.

I think under the leadership of Dave Bullock from our auditor's office, we'll continue to push forward and make sure they're as clean as they can be.

And I think we'll have really good confidence in our elections going forward.

I think we've got, you know, tremendous support right now.

And we talk about... You know, I come from a family, you know, my wife is an immigrant to this country.

And a lot of folks come in, and they come from countries that you can't trust the elections, right?

And so I think even the immigration side of this and immigrants coming into this country wanna know they've got safe and secure elections, their vote actually means something when they show up.

And so I think it's important for us to get it right.

- All right, State Board of Elections will allow local boards of elections across North Carolina to end Sunday voting for the 2025 city elections.

The legislature tried to end Sunday voting back in 2013 as a state effort.

It was ruled unconstitutional, but Davidson County officials told the state board, I think this week, that Sunday voting is not popular.

It's very expensive to administer.

Democrats and activist groups, of course, say Sunday voting's being targeted to diminish the African American vote across North Carolina.

And as of now, Claudia, Davidson and Union Counties will seek or have ended Sunday voting, but it's a local decision now going forward whether each county can decide if they wanna hold votes on Sunday.

What happens now?

- So for now, I believe that this is only a decision for the municipal 2025 election.

So what we will see in those two counties particularly and what we've been hearing is that it can diminish the vote for the African American community because of the Souls for the Polls initiatives.

Specifically, that's a Democratic initiative to help African American community be able to have transportation and also access to the polls on a day that not necessarily they are working.

So from that part, we have seen that that's gonna impact maybe the turnover, African American community.

On the other side, we have heard that there is some costs related to this and the impact that it can have for counties.

But I think the concern is also what will happen beyond that.

And if this can happen in the municipal elections, what will happen, for example, in the 2026 midterm elections as well?

- Representative Willis, what is the real-world application of ending Sunday voting?

'Cause at a press conference in Raleigh, I've done a million where you'll give your soundbite to me, and then I'll just step right outside, and there's the activist to give me the other soundbite in very stark terms, you know, just this sheer good-guy, bad-guy operation.

However, Sunday voting, is it expensive?

Is it difficult to administer in Union County, if nowhere else?

- Yeah, well, I think, you know, in Union County, and I'd say municipal elections statewide, you look at the data, you know, there's somewhere between 10 and 20% turnout overall.

So the fact that this is gonna hold back, or this is gonna change elections, I think it's a tired talking point, and it's just not factual.

When you look at the data, you're only open for four or five, six hours, maybe, on a Sunday afternoon.

There are no lines of folks lining up to come do this.

You've got folks, at least in Union County, I can tell you specifically, the Democrat and the Republican activists and the supporters who are out there handing out information just sit around chit-chatting with each other, with a handful of people maybe trickling in throughout the day.

So it is an expense, and the reality is now we've got almost two months of voting between mail-in, early voting, and then the day of elections for to be able to close maybe a day or two during that cycle and say that this is gonna change the election process is absurd, and the data just doesn't support that.

- Senator Murdock, you've organized voters out there.

Well, what does it change?

Take Sunday off the boards, does it impede you in any way to get those same voters to the polls during the early voting session?

- It definitely does, and I think we have to put this in context.

We've seen the director for the state BOE be abruptly fired.

We've seen now statewide, you have Republican chairs of the boards of elections.

I believe when Governor Macquarie was governor, he had more flexibility as far as who he wanted to be appointed to those local boards of elections.

And as we've said on this very show, we still should have local control over elections.

We have a process in place where your local board of election can vote collectively to say, do we wanna have Sunday voting, yes or no?

They hear public comment.

So if you are a county that wants to have that, you should have every right to do that.

And it definitely has racial implications.

We have data right here from North Carolina, from Catawba College, that shows there are Sunday votes where 54% of those voters are Black.

So yes, it is a direct attack on Black voters.

And also, putting it in the context of this is the South, this is the South that was subjected to Jim Crow and voter suppression.

So it's not a one-off.

It is a multifaceted strategy to make it more difficult to vote.

And even if it isn't huge lines of folks voting, it makes a difference, because we're a state with razor thin margins.

Some elections are decided by 10, 20 voters per precinct.

That Sunday can make or break the decision of these elections, where folks aren't working on Sundays, they have more flexibility.

So in addition to souls to the polls, for working people that have to work from nine to five Monday through Friday, or may work late, it gives them extra time to vote.

We should be making it easier to vote, to have safe, legal elections, but definitely, we should be making it easier to vote and not more difficult to vote.

- When you're talking about 15% of your population showing up to vote in these municipal elections, which is the data points that we actually see, and anyone can go out on the voter registration sites and the State Board of Elections and look at the data.

For every single municipal election across the state.

I mean, we're not turning back anybody from being able to come and vote during the timeframe that they have.

- Which is why if the local board of elections says that they wanna put the money up to do that, and their local counties are gonna provide them with the funding because they wanna make it easier to vote, that is the right of that county to make that decision, and not the state to bring the hammer down to say that local counties don't have the ability to make that decision for themselves.

- It's still a local decision, right?

- It is.

And remember, this crops up because of recent changes with the boards of elections.

Once the State Board of Elections went under the auditor's office, and you changed the makeup of that board from 3:2 in the Democrats' majority to 3:2 in the Republicans' majority, also, all of the local boards of elections went from 3:2 Democrat to 3:2 Republican.

So you're seeing different opinions about Sunday voting because of the changes at the Board of Elections.

In the cases that you mentioned, Davidson and Union Counties, the majority plan was no Sunday voting.

The minority now Democratic party plan was, we'll have some Sunday voting.

They went with the majority rule, and that's because of the change of the leadership.

- Yes.

You have to connect all those dots.

The change of the makeup of the local boards is all connected.

So now when you have those votes, you could have that three to two split for local boards where there could be two that say, we wanna keep Sunday voting, three that say no.

So, it's still strategic.

- And it remains to be seen what will happen on that front in counties that have had a ton of Sunday voting.

I mean, I would guess Durham County's probably still gonna have it.

- I got two and a half minutes left.

I do wanna touch on what President Trump said earlier this week that furniture tariffs were coming soon.

Didn't say when the tariffs would be imposed.

North Carolina Congressman Tim Moore told the Charlotte Observer he believes China is, quote, "Dumping cheap goods in the United States, and Trump's tariffs will address the undercutting of the domestic furniture industry."

Here's President Trump on using tariffs to benefit our state.

- And North Carolina, the most talented woodworkers that you've ever seen.

And that business was stolen from us by others.

Not only China, but by others.

All of a sudden, you're ordering your furniture from China.

And if we would've said, "It cost 100% or 200% tariff," you wouldn't have lost one job.

It's so sad.

But we're gonna rebuild North Carolina furniture.

- Representative Willis, I've heard that from way back in the day.

I was in high school when NAFTA and all this first came, and now we're talking about China, yes.

Global trade with no tariffs can get furniture made with lower-cost labor than we can afford in Hickory, North Carolina.

I think that's known, right?

- Absolutely, I mean, I think you go back to, you know, like you mentioned, high school.

I mean, you think about the Hickory furniture market, you know, the high point furniture market.

I mean, people used to come from across the world to come to get North Carolina furniture and we've got some of the best artisans and you know, companies like Broyhill back in the day and you know, companies that just, you know, were tremendous in supplying furniture across the world and we had that just taken right away from us.

We see what happens with China dumping cheap goods in.

I mean, even, you know, for example, like Charlotte Pipe and Foundry.

You know, they even went as far as manufacturing a building that looks just like the headquarters, and we know they've been dumping pipe across the world.

They've been dumping every product you can imagine across the world, and I think tariffs is the right step in the fight against that.

- For our state jobs, fair trade versus free trade.

Senator Murdock, we have about a minute.

- Yeah, I mean, as someone born and raised in Greensboro, very familiar with the high point furniture market, had family friends that would rent out their homes throughout the entire furniture market and pay for their mortgages the whole week.

And so, we of course want more goods made here, especially right here in North Carolina.

But I just think with this administration, it's been a lot really fast.

I think you have to build up that local industry before you can just say, "We're gonna just shut down some of this global trade and increase the tariffs."

And so I think yes, the goal is more local goods to bring those jobs back.

I remember the mills closing, but I just think it's a lot really fast.

It's creating a lot of uncertainty for those local furniture marketeers along with our global trading partners.

- Very quickly, Claudia, will us shoppers, will we agree to pay higher prices for US-made furniture in the United States as opposed to all that stuff like $50 tables and beds and things we've ordered off the internet?

- I know, I think that's gonna be the issue probably for consumers.

It might be a little bit more expensive to buy here, although we all want to boost the economy here in North Carolina and the market here, but I think that's gonna be what the consumers are gonna be seeing.

Higher prices probably.

- That's the show.

Thank you all.

We're under 10 seconds.

To email me, statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll see you next time.

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