- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on Front Row, President Biden pivots to police reform.

Supply chain issues continue to plague America.

And North Carolina employees step up to help in the classroom, next.

- [Narrator] Major funding for Front Row 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, [upbeat music] Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenberg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

[upbeat music] A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Robert Rieves, a democratic leader in the House, Donna King, editor and chief of Carolina Journal, and Nelson Dollar, senior advisor North Carolina speaker of the House.

Let's start with President Biden's police reform agenda.

Mitch, what do we know?

- President Biden has been searching for another win really hard in recent weeks.

So first as he approached the one year anniversary of his term, which was officially reached this week, and then also as the State of the Union Address comes up in March.

He really liked something big to talk about.

After the Build Back Better agenda stalled out, then we saw the pivot toward trying to get election reforms done, that ended up stalling out, and he got quite a bit of criticism of the speech he made about ending the senate filibuster to try to get that to happen.

Now it looks as if he is turning his attention to issues related to police reform and maybe some executive actions on that front.

It's not exactly clear what those actions would be because the Justice Department last year already made some steps in the direction of police reform with the end of federal no knock warrants and new restrictions on choke hold.

But whatever the merits of what's going to be discussed at this time, the real impetus seems to be on trying to boost support among- - Jumpstart his second year?

- Yeah, jumpstart the second year and also boosts support among a real key part of the democratic based African American voters, the latest Quinnipiac poll had him at just 57% support among African Americans that was down from about 78% something he really needs to focus on.

- Robert, your thoughts, my friend.

- Well, I think that the good thing we've had in North Carolina is that we've had a lot of successful police reform here.

And I really do think they can emulate that at the federal level.

There's not an issue in anybody's mind.

- [Marc] What would you like to see?

- Well, I mean, I think some of the things you've already seen, like the banning of choke holds, things that sort, and really, I think just more of a circumstance where you've got more accountability for whenever things happen.

Because I think the big problem you have is you got a lot of great law enforcement people who want to keep their law enforcement great.

But the problem is that they get hamstrung when they're trying to hold accountable bad apples.

And I think more efforts like we did in North Carolina, where you can find out who those bad apples are, keep them off the force of what police officers want, that's what the public wants and that makes everybody happy.

- Donna, there's some pushback from police groups though, isn't there?

- There really is.

And I think that's one of the signs of a good leader is being able to bring all those folks to the table and get a consensus.

The National Sheriffs' Association, the National Police Association say they have not been consulted so far or seen any sort of draft on an order and they would like to see president Biden include them and show that it's not mutually exclusive to be pro-police and pro reform at the same time and that they want to be included in the process.

- I think what gets lost, and excuse me for interrupting.

- Sure.

- But 73 police officers were killed last year, murdered.

- It's important and we're seeing, that's what a lot of police officers are saying, is this a war on law enforcement?

And is he perpetuating it by this, you're either proreform or you're pro-police, you can't be both?

And doing this through executive order indicates there may not be consensus available for what he wants to do.

- Senator Tim Scott had a package that didn't make it through the Senate.

Talk to us about that.

- Well, that's right.

So Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina worked with Corey Booker, Senator Booker out of Maryland to put together a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill.

They worked on that in the spring and in the summer, and then Democrats decided they didn't want to compromise on the issue and they dropped it.

So now President Biden is actually late to the game.

As Robert was saying, new North Carolina appointed a community relations, law enforcement, and justice committee, Speaker Moore did that.

That broad bipartisan group actually put together three pieces of legislation that passed with broad support.

And in the General Assembly, a lot of states have moved in that direction.

Biden is actually coming late to the game, but if he wants to get into the game, and if he's serious about working with both sides of the gal, he needs to call Senator Scott to the White House and revive that legislation.

- Mitch, wrap this up in about 20 seconds.

Last word, please.

- It's gonna be very interesting to see what happens here.

I think as Donna alluded to, if this is done by executive action and it doesn't have bipartisan support, it's another effort that could end up falling flat.

- Okay, I wanna talk about the supply chain issue that continues to plague America's families dynamic.

- It does, I was at the grocery store last night and whether or not it was standing, there wasn't a gallon of milk to be had anywhere in the store.

And I think that's one of the notable things that's come from the president recently is he said, "There's not empty shelves."

And the reality is people are seeing it every day when they walk in, they're not able to get supplies they need, inflation is at a 40 year high, 7% in December.

So even if they do have access to it, the prices have gone up with inflation and it frankly comes across as tone deaf, even cruel to tell people that what they're seeing isn't real because they are seeing it.

They're seeing that inflation hit their pocketbook, it hits the poorest people first.

And they're seeing that at the end of the month, they don't have as much money to spend and that supply chain is playing a big role in it.

And it appears that the president isn't willing to pull the levers at his disposal to smooth out the supply chain, to deregulate some of the ports and vaccine mandates on truckers and all of those things that would get our supplies and our goods flowing.

And to say that this is an elitist problem seems tone deaf again.

So we're really talking about messaging.

You can't spin your way out of 7% inflation.

- Well, those vaccine mandate on truckers at the border, Mitch is really impacting our ability for commerce between Canada and the United States.

- Yeah, definitely in going both directions too, the truckers going into and out of Canada, because if you are a Canadian trucker and you go back and you don't have a vaccine, you have to quarantine for 14 days, that takes a trucker off the roads for a while when they need to be out there delivering the supplies.

To me, this reminds me of another thing that comes out often when we're in this show and that is government standing in the way of the economy doing its job.

When you have government regulations that don't seem to play a real role in promoting health and safety, but just find a way to block the economy for moving, that is the type of thing that hurts the supply chain.

- Robert, auto parts are a big problem right now, finding auto parts.

- Yes, and I would agree with that.

And I think at the top of that, the finding of auto parts also shows you that this isn't a uniquely American problem.

We're having this problem all over the world when it comes down to it.

And I think what Mitch just talked about how you're having problems with places like Canada and other areas that have different rules than we do about going in and out, what I have seen happen and I was glad to see happen is the US government set up an apprenticeship program.

And I think that's a good program to allow younger drivers to be able to cross state lines.

Before you had to be at least 21, to be able to cross state lines, now we're trying to get that younger so that more people people can drive.

But really at this point in time, it's something we're going to have to figure out how to push through.

I think it is very fair- - Great point.

- To say is that we've got to do something to get through this thing.

- I read the other day, Nelson that farmers are really having a hard time finding equipment.

- Well, you can.

So short term, these issues are gonna take another two to three years to sort out, long term, supply chains are gonna have to get shorter, they're gonna have to get simpler.

Manufacturing has to move back to North America and that includes tractors, and combines, and the like and we need a completely new regulatory structure, especially in the area of transportation.

For example, the United States has 15,000 miles of water borne navigable waterways.

That's more than the rest of the world combined.

And yet we still bind ourselves to the Jones Act that's 100 year old protectionist law that keeps us from maximizing the most efficient and cost effective methods of transportation even within the United States itself.

So those are issues, as Mitch said on the regulatory front and as Robert said as well, we need to fix and I wish the Biden administration would focus on those.

- Okay, I wanna move on to talk to Robert about the state employees that are really stepping up to help out in the classroom during the pandemic.

- Yes, and that's a real feel good moment that's going on right now.

What we've had is for the last two years, it is just been completely difficult for- - [Marc] Well, I'll try to give you the feel good stuff.

[all laugh] - For a great job, but it has really given us an opportunity for state employees to be able to come in and supplement what teachers are doing, because teachers are trying their best, students are trying their best, but the problem is we're not out the pandemic.

And so people get COVID, they have to quarantine, and that leaves us shorter and shorter.

State employees, thanks to the governor are gonna be able to go in now and supplement this and help.

And I hope this shows us actually some long term solutions to trying to help because bottom line's we've gotta keep kids in classroom.

- Is this a long term solution, Nelson?

- No, it's a good headline.

A few folks will pick up some extra bucks, but it's meaningless in terms of moving the needle.

The program needs- - [Marc] What needs to be done?

- Well, the program ends February 15th.

So the largest share- - [Marc] Now, what needs to be done to help out in the classroom right now?

- What needs to be done, what we need to do is remove the restrictions on the earnings cap that we have for state retirees.

We also need to find a way to allow them to take any time that they are coming back working for the state or working for local school systems to be added to their retirement calculation.

We have a fundamental labor shortage that is not transitory, it's gonna be with us for quite some time, we're gonna need to change our policies to get our retirees back in the workforce, we could start, as a state government, with changing policies to get our state retirees incentivized and back in the system.

- Donna weigh in here.

- You're really talking about tapping a tremendous resource in the state, reaching those people who are retired and have got so many years of experience so they can come back into the classroom.

That's an important thing.

Other states have also done this exact same thing this week, New Mexico, Oregon, Oklahoma, their programs last a little bit longer.

But I think what we're also seeing is the lessons learned, that you're right, absolutely, keeping kids in the classroom is critical than keeping them out of the classroom, moving to remote school was tremendously costly for students, parents, and it was politically costly for those whose names were attached to it.

- Some districts though are bucking getting kids back in the classroom, aren't they?

- We are seeing some of that.

And I think part of that is that there's some level of ambiguity.

There's a lot of mixed messages.

This tool kit DHHS has has put rules out that they have not really set our laws or rules or guidelines, or kind of ambiguous in terms of how closely schools need to follow it.

- Does that apply to mask mandates too?

- A lot of that is mask mandates.

Mostly that's a local thing, but they're also talking about how long are kids out and how long do they have to be quarantined if they're exposed versus having symptoms.

And these administrators are pretty much living day to day, they gotta get through the school day, they gotta get through the school week, they can't overanalyze this toolkit.

They have to follow it for what it has on its surface.

And this really requires clarification from DHHS.

- Mitch, put this in context.

- This is a nice idea.

It's a good to do it but remember, we're talking about state employees getting 24 hours of pay time for community service.

So that's basically three working days and they end up getting to keep the money that they make from the other job, but that's just a drop in the bucket for what's needed.

And as Nelson alluded to, a whole lot more is gonna need to be done.

That doesn't mean it's a bad thing, it's just not gonna solve the problem.

- Well, ground zero with the kids getting back to school and the mask mandates is Virginia, correct with Youngkin giving an executive order on that.

- Yeah, Youngkin is really setting a lot of good markers on the ground for other governors to follow.

He is basically, another thing about Youngkin is he's following through what he said he would do on the campaign trail, which is a shocker- - People are shocked about that, right?

- Yeah, when you actually do what you said you were gonna do during the campaign, it fools everyone.

- Robert, wrap this up about 40 seconds.

- Well, what I would say though, is that with everything that we've talked about, that's actually why I still think it's a good idea because we've got to figure out other things to do and this helps us show other things to do, whether that be to change the cap on retirees, whether that be to bring other personnel, because sometimes teachers just need another body to help them.

And I think that if we go in too many times, and just say, okay, well, this isn't a perfect idea so we'll do nothing, then we end up doing nothing.

I think we should always come in with a good an idea- - But would you also say that we also have the same shortage in the prison systems and in the state's healthcare facilities, which is where the majority of state employees actually are.

So those shortages are everywhere in the economy.

- Okay, we got to move on.

I wanna talk about party preferences.

We've seen a Gallup poll.

There's a sea change happening in America.

- Yes, this week Gallup released, its 2021 fourth quarter survey of 12,614 adults.

And it showed that 47% of Americans are now identifying themselves as Republican or Republican leaning and only 42% identify as Democrats or Democrat leaning.

That's a five point advantage, which is the largest gap- - [Marc] 14 point swing.

- It's a 14 point swing and it's the largest advantage that the GOP has had in 30 years and it's a seismic shift as you alluded to, Marc from the first quarter of 2021 when Democrats held a 49 to 40 advantage, it's a 14 point swing.

And it was the Washington Post, of course, that pointed out based on this survey work that Democrats have really not been successful so far this year of making Republicans toxic, that's been much of what they were trying to do.

- Well, Trump's out of the game right now, sort of.

- Well, he is.

From a voter perspective, they are focused on Biden, they're not focused on Trump.

And Biden is of course continuing in the other surveys that came out this week with the year anniversary of Biden- - [Marc] Right.

- Of looking at his approval ratings.

And those are now averaging real clear politics.

I have those down to 40.9%.

- Mitch, is this a referendum on Biden's first year?

- I think in some ways it certainly is.

These numbers are cyclical.

They're going to switch back and forth, but the timing is bad.

A year ago, right after President Biden got elected, the numbers were pretty good for Democrats, now, after he's been in office for a year and people have seen what he's done, the numbers are much better for Republicans.

That's a bad sign for Democrats as they get closer to the midterm elections.

- Robert, can Democrats rebound before the midterms?

- I have no doubt that Democrats will rebound for the midterms, 'cause just like Mitch said, this stuff is cyclical and the other thing with, cyclical rather, but the other thing is, is that people are frustrated right now.

We're still in this pandemic.

We've still got all these issues we've just talked about.

We've got inflation and all these type of things.

People need somebody blame and needs somebody to be upset with and that tends to happen.

And so what tends to happen is whoever is to see- - But the buck stop the bill of office, right?

- Right, and that's what I'm saying.

What tends to happen is that that's what people look at.

Now, at some point in time, I believe that when voters get out, they start, I actually believe politics are local.

Now, I think voters start voting up ticket more than they do down ticket anymore because I think all the noise coming out of Washington, nobody likes anybody in Washington at this point.

But I do think that people pay attention to their local folks.

And that's how they decide what they're gonna do when they're voting.

- Donna, stunning number I saw in the Gallup poll, 25% of independents only approve of Biden's job or his performance.

- And I think that's the big number.

That's the one that a lot of folks are focused on, that independent voter, which more and more is a millennial age voter.

- [Marc] That's a swing voter.

- It's a swing voter.

Now, traditionally that voter has identified more on the left but they are moving more to the right.

And this is a really seismic in that, it's the biggest swing we've seen for the GOP since '91, which actually was during the Bush administration and the Persian Gulf War.

So if you picture, if you can remember what that was and some of us still do, that's a big swing.

And that shows that that was a big time for Republicans, this is a big time for Republicans, but that independent voter, can Democrats convince them that the GOP is, as Nelson put it, toxic?

And it doesn't appear that that message is landing with them and they really focused it on January 6th and now these election bills that have definitely stalled on Capitol Hill.

- Quickly, I see Republican consultants think they can pick up about 45 seats in house, you agree with that?

- Yes, Sean Trende, who does analysis for Real Clear Politics is saying by his models, Republicans, if these trends continue pick up four seats to five seats in the US Senate and upwards of 45 to 50 seats in the US House.

So it would be seismic.

- Okay, we gotta move on.

Let's go to the most underreported story of the week, Mitch.

- Three different lawsuits are blocking voter ID in North Carolina.

We know that the US Supreme Court is about to hold hearings, hasn't been scheduled yet, but it'll be soon on whether the legislature can intervene in the federal suit.

Meanwhile, there's a suit that's already at the state Supreme Court that deals with the constitutional amendment guaranteeing voter ID and the future of that.

But the big action and the reason for the underreported story is in the third suit.

This is the one in which the law that was passed to implement voter ID was thrown out by a three judge superior court panel on a two to one vote, two Democrats didn't like it, a Republican did like it.

That happened in September.

The case is in the court of appeals, but now the people who won at the trial court level want to move it to the state Supreme Court.

I think they think the numbers are better for them there.

They also want Justice Tamara Barringer to recuse herself.

- You're the official court reporter for Front Row.

[Mitch laughs] - Robert.

- Underreported, I would say is Wilmington has been a set of multiple top movies lately.

And so the film industry's roaring back and that's a big deal because I remember in '14 when we kind of killed the film ministry in Wilmington, I'm glad to see it for Wilmington and for North Carolina.

- [Marc] Donna.

- So this coming week is National School Choice Week.

And the underreported piece of that is Governor Cooper who actually has resisted some efforts that would be beneficial to the school choice movement, lifting the cap on charter schools, opportunity scholarships.

He has been a pretty vocal opponent of some of those measures.

He actually issued a declaration recognizing School Choice Week.

So I would consider that- - So has he changed his tune?

- I don't know.

- Has there been in any other comments by him on school choice.

- It really hasn't truthfully that declaration hasn't appeared on his official gubernatorial website.

So it really- - [Marc] not that you're checking, right?

[all laugh] - Not that we're checking, but I do, I would consider it a victory for the school choice movement if they can pull over the governor, it may be that he is looking at poll numbers that say North Carolinians, generally between the magnet programs and opportunity scholarships and all of these charter schools that the poll numbers are in a its favor.

- It is extremely popular with the electric mom and dads, isn't it?

- It is, particularly now after we've had the school closures for kids for whom their traditional, their local neighborhood community school isn't working for them.

It gives them some options to customize their child's education.

- Are more those folks turning to charters in private schools?

- We are seeing an increase in folks looking at alternatives and some of those are public schools, charter schools, and magnet programs and others but people are turning more and looking at all of the options.

And that may be that technology means you may be able to homeschool online more often, you may have groups coming together to educate their children together, but that traditional public school, whether it's charter, magnet, or a neighborhood school, the majority of students are still going to those.

- And more money for opportunity scholarships in the budget.

- And more money for opportunity scholarships in the budget, yes.

- Okay.

- Political legitimacy.

People have been talking a lot about threats to democracy, but the greater threat is the government's legitimacy.

Even a superpower like the Soviet Union fell when it lost its legitimacy.

In America, questioning of legitimacy is on the rise.

In 2000, Democrats said that the Supreme Court elected George Bush, in 2008 President Obama's citizenship was questioned.

In 2016, it really got on steroids, Trump's win was attributed to collusion with the Russians.

And then of course in 2020, Trump supporters have attributed Biden's victory to voter fraud.

So unfortunately, this week, President Biden said that the Democrats elections bills, if they didn't pass, that the midterm elections will not be seen as being legitimate.

This is a fundamentally dangerous path that both sides are traveling and both sides need to steer the nation back away from the cliff.

- It's not helpful.

Let's go to the Lightning Round, who's up and who's down this week, Mitch?

- What's up is the number of directed grants in the state budget.

We heard a report in a committee this week that there are more than 900 of them, totalling more than 2 billion dollars.

Now, these are grants that go to counties and cities and hospitals, and nonprofit groups.

But the previous high apparently was 13, went from 13 to more than 900.

That means that the general assembly is having more direction on where particular pots of money are gonna go.

Down, trees in Charlotte, back in 2012 trees apparently covered 49% of Charlotte.

It's now down to 45%.

And that was enough for Charlotte to put more tree protections in their Unified Development Ordinance.

- Robert, who's up and who's down this week?

- Up is Jennifer Mundt.

She's been appointed by the North Carolina Commerce secretary, Sanders to be the assistant secretary for Clean Energy and Economic Development.

We're very glad for Jennifer.

And down is blood supplies.

And the Red Cross has said that there's a real shortage of blood, so if you're out there right now and you can go donate, please go donate, 'cause we need it.

- Donna, who's up and who's down this week?

- Up is new businesses in North Carolina.

Actually, there are 178,000 new businesses, which is a record high up 40% from the year before and I think what it really speaks to is that when folks started working from home and they started seeing online what they could do and they realized that especially if you have a small interest in opening a small retail business, you don't need as many as much square footage as you used to with curbside pickup and delivery.

So I think it speak really to our entrepreneurial spirit and the industriousness of North Carolinians.

- Okay, down.

- My down, the state health plan, actually.

The US Supreme Court has decided not to consider an appeal of a lawsuit that would be from folks who want the state health plan to cover what they call gender affirming treatments.

- Okay, Nelson, who's up and who's down this week.

- Up is a barrel of oil.

This week, the price of oil, both Brent and West Texas Intermediate reached seven year highs, both are headed toward $90 a barrel.

That means we're gonna see price is at the pump continue to go up.

- We're gonna see $100 barrel or- - I think that a lot of analysts believe that we will get to $100 or more barrel this year.

And if you see Russia invade Ukraine, oil will spike even higher than that, and it's also gonna impact food prices.

Well, who's down, China with their failure of cyto vac.

China has been left with no choice, but to lock down ports, cities, the supply chains, that's not gonna change anytime soon.

We're also likely to learn down the road that China's had far, far more deaths from COVID than what's been reported.

- Headline next week.

- New House committee studies, an education system for North Carolina's future, interesting idea.

- Headline next week, Robert.

- Hopefully, North Carolina is turning a corner on Omicron hospitalizations, and infections.

- There's gonna be a pill for that from Pfizer, right?

- There seems to be something coming out.

- More therapeutics.

Headline next week.

- It's encouraging.

I think the debate over mask mandates in school is going to heat up because on January 24th, Virginia is moving all mask mandates to mask optional even in schools.

- They're gonna be fought on that as we discussed earlier.

Headline next week.

- More bad news on the economy.

- [Marc] Okay, how bad's it we gonna get?

- Well, we'll see, but consumer prices come out, job reports come out, all of the end of the year fourth quarter GDP growth will come out this coming week.

And a lot of it's gonna be bad.

- Okay, great conversation.

We've got to roll.

That's it for us.

See you next week on Front Row.

Have a great weekend.

[upbeat music] - [Narrator] Major funding for Front Row 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.

[upbeat music] Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenberg Construction and Helen Laughery.

[upbeat music] A complete list of funders can be found at pbsnc.org/frontrow.

[upbeat music] ♪