- U.S.

Senator Thom Tillis unloads on members of the Trump administration.

How could his comments affect political debate here in North Carolina?

And a federal judge slows state legislative oversight efforts into the Iryna Zyrutska case.

This is State Lines.

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♪ - Welcome back to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Great panel here today.

Dawn Vaughan of the News and Observers to my right.

Seat 2 is Morgan Jackson of Nexus Strategies.

Attorney and government affairs consultant Larry Shaheen debuts on State Lines.

Hello, Larry.

- Hello.

- Break the ice with a great panel, because why?

You get to sit next to Joe Stewart.

- I'm excited.

I'm going to learn something today.

- He's worked on campaigns.

He's worked for insurance.

He's done a little bit of everything, Joe, and it's good to have you here.

- Golden Corral Buffet of career.

- There you go.

Nothing wrong with that.

Let's start with Thom Tillis, our North Carolina retiring US Senator.

Have you seen the attention he's earned the last couple of weeks for candid public remarks often directed towards the Trump administration's members, if not President Trump directly.

Tillis in North Carolina's US Senator Ted Budd, Joe, they want an official investigation into Alex Pretti's fatal shooting by that ICE agent about two weeks ago up in Minneapolis.

Tillis has called advisors to President Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, quote, "amateurish," calls their acts, their decisions, and their advice "incompetent."

He still represents North Carolina, so by my measure, he's speaking for North Carolina in so many ways.

Am I wrong?

- Well, no.

I think some of the conventional wisdom might be because Senator Tillis has chosen not to seek re-election.

He feels a little more comfortable being candid about his real feelings about the goings on in Washington.

Although I would say, having known Senator Tillis when he was Speaker Tillis, he's always been a pretty plain-spoken individual.

And even when it's been something that would otherwise be characterized as bucking his party's platform or the talking points that other Republicans should be following.

But I think in this instance, Tillis has tapped into something going into the midterm.

And this is somebody that has successfully sought statewide office in North Carolina twice now, that there's a little bit in any midterm, a desire among some portion of the voters to hear from candidates what they hope to do if elected to provide a counterbalance to the current administration.

And I think all Republicans across the country are now grappling with this notion.

How do you say what you think you need to say about the actions of the Trump administration in a way that's resonant with voters that you're going to have to face in the midterms?

- Dawn, great question.

About the spirit of being candid when you're a politician, you're a reporter and you're around legislators more than Congress members or anyone else.

How does this sit with you when you're covering the story to see people change a narrative and all of a sudden they've taken off, I don't know, the mask?

You're not playing the character anymore.

- Yeah, well, people in front of cameras is different than people off cameras.

There's a little bit of code switching that people do, but we call them out on it.

Like I've been in press gaggles where somebody says, "Oh, this and that, and we didn't do that."

And I've got my phone out recording their voice and I'll say, "Well, wait a minute, let me pull up that email press release where you actually literally said that."

So you call people out if there's something like that, but give them a chance to explain, "Well, my views on this have changed because I have more information," or whatever, however they want to phrase it.

But it is a shame that people don't feel free to speak their minds until they're not running again.

- They're safe.

Larry, I heard you, did you ever work with the Tillis campaign?

- I've never been employed by the Tillis campaign.

I know the Senator well, I know his family well, I know his consultant, Paul Shoemaker, very, very well.

Paul trained me coming up in the consultant game here in North Carolina.

And what I can tell you is, I don't have a lot of difference in opinion on what's happening from what Joe says.

I think this is who the Senator has always been.

I think this is what he's done in private for a long, long time.

And I think to a certain extent, he's navigated very successfully the intricacies that goes on between Washington and others.

But here's what I'm going to tell you.

I'm going to bring up Senator John Fetterman in Pennsylvania right now, polling at a 51% favorability rating.

And he has said exactly whatever he wants.

And you see him supporting the Trump administration.

So the interesting thing that we're seeing here is that Senator Tillis is not disagreeing with the president.

He's said it regularly and over and over and over again.

I'm not disagreeing with the president's policy of deportations.

I'm not disagreeing with the president's policy of removing people who are dangerous.

I'm disagreeing with the administration of Kristi Noem and Colonel Bongino and how they conducted that operation.

He's exactly right.

And now we see Tom Homan show back up in Minnesota, and he's able to effectively deal with this, because the problem here is not that the president is doing something wrong.

It's that his staff is not handling it correctly.

And Senator Tillis is accurately and well-informedly going public with it, saying, look, I've had enough.

And he's got a long history of doing that.

I think this is not outside of his character.

And I think you're seeing someone actually do a public service here that probably should have been done a little while ago, because we saw this same activity in Charlotte, and it wound up going exactly the same way it ended up in Minnesota.

There was a bit of backlash to it.

So you have to think about what the end result here is.

And I think the end result is good for the country, because it's not a repudiation of the policy.

Deportations are still what we voted on.

People want people to send people home.

But what we're seeing is a discussion of the actual how it's done.

- Morgan, you're in the active campaign, Cooper for Senate.

And if anybody at this table enjoys a good, controlled message, it's you, sir.

What is the difference?

- Nobody enjoys Republican infighting more than me.

It's good for democracy, people.

- Tell me about communication, though.

I mean, you have a candidate that's active.

Michael Whatley's out there as an active candidate.

And the guy's not even seeking re-election, but he's still a senator, and he's shooting straight, and people go, "Wow, that sounds refreshing."

Why don't those ever mix in an official campaign?

- So a lot of times it's a challenge.

It's a challenge you have to navigate between what voters want to hear, what your base wants to hear, and get them motivated to turn out to vote.

And a lot of the folks in the middle are not your highest priority voters, meaning they don't show up to vote as much.

And so you're often ping-ponging between the two most motivated groups of voters, and you try to speak to them.

But listen, I'll say for Tillis on this, it is incredibly refreshing to see Tom Tillis say the quiet part out loud.

And I think the reality to it, and Dawn mentioned this, is that a lot of folks have been saying this off-camera for a long time about policies of the Trump administration, that it's the execution, as Larry talked about, that is the real problem.

I mean, look at Minnesota.

We saw ICE on video kill two American citizens.

And the White House, and especially Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller and others, are saying, "Don't believe what you just saw.

Believe what we tell you."

And kudos to Tom Tillis and Ted Budd and others who are standing up and saying, "We need a real independent investigation."

Listen, at any police shooting in the country, you would have a real investigation.

That should be no different for ICE.

- All right, Larry, we're gonna come right back to you on this, because Thom Tillis is representing North Carolina.

How might those candid comments and criticisms affect the '26 U.S.

Senate race right here in our state?

The Republican primary frontrunner, Larry, Michael Whatley, he publicly says he's running for North Carolina's Senate seat because President Trump recruited him to run.

Well, Tillis wants Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign over immigration tactics, and now her leadership over the federal response to Western North Carolina's Hurricane Helene recovery efforts are on the radar.

This is all part of that race.

Here's what Tillis said this week.

- She's a complete failure on a disaster response.

There's no comparison between his Homeland Security and President Trump's first term and this one.

She's, they're asleep at the switch.

They're pushing paper and doing DOGE [bleep] and causing people not to get badly needed resources down there.

She clearly doesn't know how to manage.

She's never managed a large organization, and she's failing at every possible measure of the job.

- Larry, on this point, you have a U.S.

Senate frontrunner in the Republican primary.

You have Don Brown and others challenging Michael Whatley, but Trump's man is out there linked to Trump, and now you have the guy holding the seat that Mr.

Whatley wants going after the administration.

How do you balance this if you're a campaign trying to convince Republican voters to show up first and then go to the general?

- Well, I think to a certain extent what you're dealing with in that primary is that Michael Whatley is likely going to be able to get through that primary relatively unscathed.

So I think if there was an issue of infighting here, it's that you're not going to see a lot of difference between those candidates.

Don Brown, Michelle Morrow are very unqualified candidates as opposed to Michael Whatley, who's extremely qualified.

Yes, he has been endorsed by President Trump, but Michael Whatley's exceptionally... - Why are the other candidates not qualified?

They filed their legal candidates.

Michelle Morrow almost became state superintendent.

- I don't think I need to go into the reasons why Michelle Morrow's unqualified.

- State legal reasons.

- Not unqualified in terms of legal reasons to run for the office.

I don't believe they're qualified to serve in the U.S.

Senate in terms of their ability to serve the people of North Carolina well.

I think when you're dealing with the fact that you're looking at who Michael Whatley is from a Republican, if I'm a Republican now, full disclosure, I am not allowed to endorse in that.

I'm a member of the North Carolina Republican Party Central Committee.

I would make no endorsements whatsoever, but when I'm looking at those candidates and I'm evaluating them, I'm going to evaluate them based on how they are as individuals.

And I think that when you look at them, I think that that primary polling comes out that there really is not much comparison between the two.

So what we're going to see is a very quick pivot to the general, which is what I would like to pivot to.

So when you're dealing with the general, you talk about what's going to happen in the general, it's going to be a question on where North Carolina feels about the effectiveness of the lead administration, and then it's an effectiveness on whether on immigration.

And the issue that we're seeing with here is that North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis is actually saying that he wants to see Trump's policies enacted more effectively.

I think you're going to probably end up seeing Michael Whatley start to say some of those very same things in support of the president.

So ultimately the goal from my perspective from that campaign is going to be to see them coalesce around the president, coalesce around the concept that those things need to be done effectively.

Senator Tillis is free to criticize Secretary Noem as free as much as he wants, but I think what you're going to see in this campaign is going to be a contrast between what you've got from Michael Whatley and President Trump and their vision for what they'd like to see North Carolina and the other side.

- Morgan, if there's, Helene's going to be an issue in '26, for you, you've got to deal with Roy Cooper and the way Florence and Matthew played out last decade with the home building, that issue, which I'm sure the Whatley team's going to let you know about.

Also Roy Cooper talking about the partial funding bill that kind of withholds DHS funding to a degree to handle the ICE issue.

What kind of tightrope does candidate Cooper have to walk now to stay?

Is it defund ICE?

Is it ICE funding with conditions?

I mean, it can't be an easy walkover on the Democratic side either.

- No, but I think it's very straightforward and I think the reality to it and what you see Governor Cooper saying as well as a number of Democrats around the country is everybody, everybody, and Larry brought this up a minute ago, everybody believes that dangerous criminals should be deported and that we should do that and that we should have a secure border.

Those are not really debatable with the broader public because the reality, Democrats believe that.

I think, and what you see Governor Cooper saying is all of those things and listen, here's what we need.

We need an actual investigation into the shooting.

We need real accountability, real transparency.

People who talk about defunding immigration enforcement and defunding securing the border are just missing the boat.

The Democrats are saying that, in my opinion, are way out of lock step with voters.

Cooper's very clear.

Listen, I've spent my career as Attorney General locking up violent and protecting people in North Carolina and this is, you need to continue that, but what we don't need is the federal government coming in and occupying cities and killing innocent American citizens.

That's not what we need.

It is about execution and it's about having it together, but listen, one last point I'll make is the Tillis contrast is a real problem for Whatley and it is because it creates a contrast.

Tillis is showing what voters want, which is independence and leadership.

What Whatley ends up doing is showing fealty and he's subservient to Trump and parroting Trump's talking points rather than, and when you have two Republicans that are saying very different things in the state, that's a problem for Whatley.

- I'm gonna return to this, though, Morgan, 'cause I mean, how many times did Governor Cooper, while he was governor, veto bills and speak out against bills that forced sheriffs in North Carolina to comply with ICE?

How many times did Governor Cooper speak out against those very same policies while he was governor?

I think what we're talking about here, what Senator Tillis is doing, is very different than what the president is doing.

The president acknowledged what Senator Tillis did.

In fact, I would say that Senator Tillis did the country a favor by saying what he said because now Tom Homan is in Minnesota and let's remember, it was the same Democratic Party that tried everything they could do to deport as many people as possible under President Obama and last point, very last point, I think it's really important to remember that there are non-profits in Minnesota pushing all of these protests.

Whether or not the investigations are gonna show, I believe that those killings, as you say, there are a lot of people in Minnesota trying to create violence and stoke violence with these folks.

Now, Colonel Bengino, whoever it was, the gentleman that was responsible for enforcement up there, he's gone now, thank goodness.

And I think when you see professionalism return to that, you're gonna see peace return to that.

So I would say that the president, Michael Whatley, and Senator Tillis all did our country a favor by bringing us back to what the country wants.

- Dawn?

- Which is what Trump said.

(laughing) I love the way you think Thom Tillis has been helping Trump when Trump calls him a loser and a guy who needs to shut up and doesn't have a voice anymore.

- No, he's actually been helping him.

- Go ahead, sorry, Dawn.

- Tillis didn't just fall off the turnip truck, right?

He knows what he's doing.

And his words are candid but chosen carefully too because again, he's been around for a while, he knows what he's saying.

And what I'm saying is he's choosing to target things that are potentially in his control.

And it's more, it's a little bit of politics, but it's more governing, right?

So if he criticizes Trump, the Trump faithful will be mad at him if he picks people under Trump and wants them to shift to try to change policy, to change what's going on.

What's happened in Minnesota is very different than what happened in North Carolina recently, so far anyway.

And I think that's intentional with what he's doing.

- Joe, what is Michael Whatley doing if Trump, if the Trump administration can't level this discussion back out and start moving things back that way?

He's tied to Mr.

Trump, whether he likes it or not, does it matter?

- Well it matters in the sense that any election is about a combination of factors.

Very rarely is it one thing that ultimately drives voters to choose one candidate over the other.

I think for Whatley, a big challenge that he faces right now is his name recognition.

He's not ever held public office before, doesn't have a record of public service.

He's gotta introduce himself to North Carolina voters.

- Money takes care of that, Joe.

- Well, to a certain extent.

Governor Cooper has been in public office for 40 years, well known and widely respected across the political aisles, so that's part of the context of this election too.

But I think, as Larry alluded to, candidates are very adept at pivoting when they need to to make sure the voters that they're trying to reach and convinced to vote for them are hearing a message that's resonant with what those voters think is important.

And again, I think Tillis has identified this issue.

In this midterm election, among voters that are still as yet to make up their mind, they wanna hear what are you gonna do to stand up to policies and actions conducted by this administration that we as voters don't necessarily agree with.

- If I can come in, one more quick point that we haven't talked about yet as part of this conversation, especially with the shootings in Minnesota, is that the NRA got involved and the Second Amendment is now part of this.

- That's a fantastic point.

- And you're seeing some schisms with how this is gonna play out.

And again, November is a really long time from now, so it could not even be the main topic by the time the general.

- Better for Democrats to stay out of it and let this play out amongst Republicans?

- You know what, there's an old adage that says, "Never commit homicide when your opponent is committing suicide."

So let them do their own bidding.

- All right, Larry, we need the Charlotte guy on.

We've got him.

I wanna ask you about this federal judge who's limited a North Carolina House Oversight Committee's access to documents related to the investigation of Iryna Zarutska's murder on the Charlotte light rail system.

Some state house leaders are hoping to question Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary McFadden, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and Charlotte Transit officials, but they want the district attorney's emails and records as well from this investigation.

Your order has stopped that document release.

Representative Brendan Jones chairs it, has rescheduled the hearing for February 9th.

This is a criminal investigation, sir, and the politicians say they need to uncover something, there's something there that they need to know about.

Which comes first, political oversight or a criminal investigation where the documents are kept close?

- Well, I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time in both of these instances.

I think you can do an investigation into what's going on in criminal justice policy in Charlotte, but you can also conduct a necessary criminal investigation at the federal level.

And let me tell you, from a procedural standpoint, as an attorney who's admitted in the Western District of North Carolina, what's going on.

So what's happening here is that the General Assembly requested those documents from the district attorney.

District attorney is bound by law to turn them over.

The defense now sees an opportunity for either a dismissal or recusal or a taking off of the table of the death penalty.

They're going to file motions to keep that from coming out.

If the US attorney does not oppose the release of those documents, that is potentially a factor in the judge deciding to dismiss, to take the death penalty off the table or to recuse.

So the US attorney has no choice whether he wants these things out in public or not.

He has to go through the procedural process of saying, "Yeah, no, you can't have these because I believe it will prejudice, the jury will prejudice the court."

It's for, at the time, Magistrate Kiesler, for him to decide.

And the General Assembly has every right to say, "Well, no, we'd like to have those and we'd like to go through it."

This is not about one person wanting this or one person wanting that.

It's about two different branches of government going through their very different processes.

And the US attorney properly attempting to protect the seeking of justice that he's trying to do here against Carlos Brown in the Iryna Zarutsky killing.

I personally think this is all kind of just a little bit of boring procedural stuff.

Eventually it's going to come out anyway and this is all going to move down the road.

But I'm very grateful that the US attorney, Russ Ferguson, stepped in and said, "No, I'm going to do this."

But it's not personal.

There's nothing against anybody in the North Carolina House, but I have to protect my case for the people of North Carolina.

And that was the right thing to do.

- And Joe, what do you think of this issue?

If it gets to Raleigh, those documents, what are the odds they get leaked?

Or they just get exposed in a hearing full of television cameras?

- Well, I guess there's always that peril.

But I get a sense of what the legislature's after here.

They feel a sense of urgency to try to deal with anything that might necessarily need to improve the criminal justice system in terms of the very complicated issue of a criminal defendant having mental health issues.

And how the system is currently not serving the interest of justice by not necessarily identifying when someone early on in their criminal career actually has some sort of mental health need that is going unmet for some reason or another.

I think the House is really inclined to say, "We don't want this to happen any time again.

And we certainly don't want it to happen again soon."

The complexity of the fact that it's tied up in the criminal justice system now, not withstanding, I think the legislature's legitimately interested to try to find out what the facts of this case are so they can take any action they feel is appropriate to try to prevent it from happening.

- Well, this House Oversight Committee is the house arm of GovOps, which is controlled by Republicans because they control the legislature.

And really, the power of House Oversight is bringing attention.

So there's not anything they're gonna do now.

It could be some future legislation.

But it's really sort of they wanna call people out in front of the cameras, in front of everything, and talk about it.

But you need to make sure you're doing that the right way legally, which is why we're seeing this delay.

And House Oversight is doing this because of just going back to Iryna's Law.

So that was, what, almost six months ago now with the light rail killing.

So there's not really a rush for House Oversight to do this quite yet.

It's just nothing else is really going on at the legislature right now.

So that's why they're having these other committees.

- Morgan, performative politics, oversight committees, making statements when you're an executive of the state, if you will.

When does it make sense, and when does it make sense to be guarded?

Obviously, Brendan Jones says now's the time, at least by February 9th.

We need to have some transparency to this issue.

- Right, right.

You know, this is the kind of thing, and I think Dawn has spoken to this very well, is ultimately this is pure performance.

There is no bill that they're about to pass.

They haven't, frankly, these guys aren't coming back till April anyway.

And they've been sort of a do-nothing legislature, and all of a sudden they are very urgent because they see political benefit to trying to subpoena all of these Democratic elected officials locally.

But ultimately, listen, and this is a point Larry made earlier, the criminal process has to play itself out.

There's a reason for this.

And I think the U.S.

Attorney did the right thing.

Regardless of how it ends up, you have to have a fair trial if you want somebody to make sure that if they're guilty that they actually get convicted and actually serve time.

You've got to have a fair trial.

And that's what the U.S.

Attorney's trying to do.

The General Assembly's trying to impede that.

- Larry.

- But I would push back on you on this one thing, on what you're saying is the do-nothing General Assembly.

I would say, again, that the fact that they're moving so swiftly to protect the public safety interests of the people of Charlotte, who I can tell you, you know, there is a prevalence in Charlotte that public safety is a massive issue.

And to see the General Assembly responding this quickly and to see them trying to make it better and to see them doing everything they can to protect everyone in Charlotte, I think kind of counteracts that concept of do-nothingness.

Now, we're in a bit of a complexity from a legal perspective, but I applaud them for acting this way.

And I tell you, everyone in Charlotte on a bipartisan basis, at least everyone I've talked to, the city of Charlotte has worked very well with the General Assembly on this.

They agree that we need to be dealing with public safety.

And I hope that the outcome of a lot of this work done by the General Assembly is a refocusing on public safety that was lost by some of the folks in the executive branch who did not particularly pay attention to it for a long time.

- I wanna stay on this topic.

I got a couple more, but I wanna stay here.

Charlotte voters passed a tax increase on their citizenry for public transit.

And people at this table probably had a role in either supporting it or fighting it.

Is Charlotte gonna get safer transit because they're paying more for it now?

- Would you like to take this or would you like me to take this?

- So here's the thing you have to understand.

- We just wanna be safe.

- First of all, is the large majority of what was happening in Charlotte around the referendum in the sales tax referendum was to ease congestion.

Charlotte is a vastly, it is one of our largest economic engines in North Carolina, if not the largest.

But the problem is we don't wanna turn into places like Atlanta where you can't move and you can't traffic, traffic won't move.

And so a lot of that was built on, it's not just for transit.

A lot of the money is to build up local roads, is to build up a local infrastructure outside of transit, but it is also to expand transit to the airport, to North Charlotte, places that desperately need it.

And in that, there are gonna be additional security measures 'cause the funding is gonna be there.

- And that's what I wanna pile on.

- Yeah, go right ahead.

- And full disclosure, we both were involved in this.

And we actually, it's one of those few areas that I think we can say that in North Carolina, you've seen a lot of bipartisan agreement that we need more investment in some of our hard services.

Our transportation infrastructure, our water and sewer, a lot of those things.

But what I will tell you is this, the fact that you have heard several members of the new authority and the people who are associated with it, including the business community, talking about the need for the dedicated transit police and the fact that there's gonna be a new transit police force, at least that's what they're saying they're going to move towards, I think can assure the people of Charlotte that it's going to be a much safer and secure experience.

And I think that as that continues to move forward in the next six to nine months, 'cause they've got a lot of deadlines they gotta meet by July 1st, which includes a plan for safety.

So they're gonna be doing that.

So I think the people of Charlotte can say that that investment's gonna be made for a safe.

- Joe, about congestion, if you don't get the right rail safe, this issue dominated, nobody else, everybody cares about safety matter, where the subway is.

No one's talking about traffic jams in Charlotte when we're in Raleigh, Wilmington, Asheville.

So is it about safety?

What do you think about the tax being passed?

I get what it's gonna do with infrastructure, but it's Iryna Zarutska it dominated what we talked about out of that city for two months.

- Yeah, these sorts of issues are significant and poignant in a big metropolitan area like Charlotte, but the growth model in North Carolina, it's the cities that are growing.

These are the sorts of issues that will confront any number of other locations in North Carolina.

Wilmington has a tremendous traffic safety issue problem now because of the congestion.

Unfortunately, New Hanover County can't expand east.

There's something in the way there, but they are trying to deal with these issues in a way, but people wanna be safe and particularly if they live in a big population dense area.

- And we are out of time, Dawn, you did not get the last word.

Thank you folks for being on the show.

Email me, statelines@pbsnc.org, love to hear from you.

I'll see you next time.

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