- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Front Row," the president bans Russian oil, Governor Cooper keeps a COVID state of emergency in place, North Carolina groups step up to help war torn Ukraine.

Next.

- [Announcer] Major funding for "Front Row" was 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.

Funding for the Lightning Round provided by Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

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

[serious music] ♪ - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Morgan Jackson, chief political strategist for Governor Roy Cooper, Asher Hildebrand with the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, and Nelson Dollar, the senior policy advisor to North Carolina Speaker of the House.

Mitch, why don't we begin with the president's decision to ban Russian oil.

- As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, President Biden announced this week this ban on the importation of oil and natural gas from Russia seen to be an economic punishment of Vladimir Putin and his tactics there.

The US was the first country to take this step.

It had been talked about for a little while and it has had an immediate impact on gas prices because last year, Russia was responsible for 3% of the crude US oil imports.

So it's going to have an impact.

It's also a chance for President Biden to blame Putin for the higher gas prices.

We also see that the President is talking about the ending of normal trade relations with Russia which could open the door to more tariffs.

Meanwhile, though, critics are also saying, if you're talking about gas prices, it's not just Putin.

It's also the, - well, well, they were already way up.

- they were way up and also pointing to Biden administration policies, including the decision shortly after he took office to block new drilling on federal lands.

We're also seeing some criticism.

You would expect it from Republicans, but even some criticism from Democrats, including the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who's saying, "President Biden, as you're looking at Putin and trying to take action against him, you're turning to dictators like Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela to try to get some of the action."

So it'll be interesting to see how the president deals with this.

- Morgan, what is the president's energy policy?

- So, listen, I think the president's been very clear.

I think he was clear with the American people in the State of the Union, is that if we were gonna stand up and and punish Russia for this illegal invasion that it was gonna come to a cost to the American people.

I will tell you that it is near unanimous in Congress right now about support for banning Russian oil.

Mitch talked about potential of changing the trade status, that's obviously gonna take another hit but a Wall Street Journal poll this week said 79% of Americans, that's Republicans and Democrats, support the ban - And Independents.

- and Independents, but support the ban on Russian oil, even if it raises their gas prices.

Now, guys, this is the business I'm in.

You have 79% of people saying they support it when they know it's gonna cost them, that's America united behind.

- What I'm trying to get to, what is the president's energy policy and is the new cultural war the debate between fossil fuel and green energy?

- Oh, it absolutely is.

And it was a bad week for Biden, I mean, look, he couldn't get a call returned from the Saudis and the Emiratis for a US President.

and he's trying to trade one murderous authoritarian in Russia for oil from murderous authoritarians in Venezuela and Iran.

The right policy is to reward Americans.

The Shale Revolution here to doubled our oil production in the past decade.

It kept inflation down.

It kept our economy growing.

And that was based on secure supplies of low cost energy.

So our policy has got to include oil and natural gas.

We have to build the pipelines.

We have to cut the red tape and the regulation.

We have to have the investment, the capital to actually do this, retool the refineries, and end the Jones Act.

You know, we can have renewables.

That's great, but the fastest cheapest, cleanest way to energy independence is United States' oil and gas.

- Is energy independence a national security issue at this point, do you think Asher?

- I think it is.

It's a question of how we get there.

And the president has already said that he wants domestic production to ramp up.

The Secretary of Energy has said that new leases are on the table, much to the chagrin of some progressives.

But look, the idea if we open Alaskan forests or the coast of North Carolina to new exploration will do anything to bring down gas prices today is fairly fanciful.

And in the long run, if we really wanna rid ourselves of reliance on Russian or Venezuelan energy, then we should be investing in clean energy sources.

instead of increasing our reliance on fossil fuels.

- The fastest way is not the clean energy way.

The fastest way is the Shale Revolution and the whole leases thing, you could have a lease, but if you don't have a permit to drill, it's worthless.

- Okay.

I wanna come right back to you Nelson and talk about the governor's decision to keep the State of Emergency, the COVID State of Emergency in place.

- Okay, on Thursday, there was a tongue in cheek birthday party for the two year old COVID State of Emergency declared - Were you there?

- In 2019.

- I lit the candles.

- and this followed a letter that 69 Republican members of the House sent to the governor requesting the end, termination of the State of Emergency.

And that's Executive Order 116.

Businesses are back open.

Kids are back in school.

Mask orders are mostly gone.

Hospitalizations are down.

We have vaccines.

There is no emergency by any metric whatsoever.

So what people don't know is there are dozens and dozens of executive orders that were built off 116, some that were even coming this month.

It's time to get all that regulatory stuff out of the way for the governor to end this in the state and stop giving things that, "Oh, well, we're just gonna send it off to the local government."

We need to end the State of Emergency statewide at state level and the local level - Morgan, make the governor's case.

- Well, so first of all, I love my House Republican friends, but again, much to do about nothing.

You've got a State of Emergency in place that does really two things.

First of all, there are no restrictions on anything.

There are no mask mandates.

There are no gathering limits.

Nobody's freedom is being imposed at it at all.

What they do, the sate of emergency Literally what is left of the state of emergency does two things.

It provides doctors and pharmacists the ability to treat via, I mean excuse me, to dispense vaccines as well as treatment and testing.

So it cuts some red tape to make that happen, it gives flexibility.

The second thing it gives flexibility to is healthcare facilities.

Listen, we know nobody will, everybody wants COVID going away.

I want COVID to go away.

The governor wants COVID to go away, but we also have to be smart.

We have learned things in this pandemic that tells us that we need to adjust the way that we perform going, we're gonna have these issues moving forward.

So, there are only two things left.

You give healthcare facilities.

- [Marc] Right.

the ability to scale up very fast in how they treat patients and how they use mobile hospitals and everything else.

And you give pharmacies the ability to give vaccines to individuals.

- But why doesn't he end the executive order?

- The Governor has asked the general assembly to update the law in 15 months into the session.

- Let Asher get in here.

- They've done nothing.

- You'd think from some of the rhetoric's surrounding this that governor Cooper wanted to spend so much of his time in office and the state of emergency, I would guarantee there are about a million other things he would rather be working on than hurricanes and a pandemic, but that's the hand he was dealt.

And I think if we look around the country, at Democratic and Republican Governors, and how they've handled COVID, we have a lot to be proud of in this state.

My family's eager for this to be over, but we also have young kids who are not yet vaccinated for us the pandemic is not over, the emergency is still there.

- Mitch put this in context.

- It should not surprise us that this has turned out to be a separation of powers issue, 'cause this is basically what you have.

The legislative branch is the branch that's supposed to make the laws, set most of the policy, the governor carries it out.

The governor has liked the fact that having an emergency in place gives him a lot more of the authority of what to do, rather than relying on laws that are passed by the general assembly.

That's why the house wants to see him, the house Republicans want to see him get rid of the emergency.

And the governor is saying, well no, I'm not gonna do it at this point.

- Nelson, wrap this up in about 20 seconds, my friend.

- Well, you have dozens and dozens and dozens, you can look on the website, of executive orders that are based on the emergency.

It, the governor could very easily get rid of the state of emergency, get rid of all those extra executive orders.

And then if there are things that need to be done at the state level to address some of the issues that Morgan was talking about, do one very clean order and move forward with the current process that's in place.

- Okay, I wanna move on to talk to Asher about North Carolina groups that are really stepping up to help the folks, the refugees in Ukraine.

- That's right, Marc.

And you wouldn't necessarily know it listening to some of our politicians and pundits, but one of the real remarkable, and I think maybe unexpected things about this Russian invasion of Ukraine has been the unifying effect that it's had on Americans.

According to recent polling, three outta four Americans believe the Russian invasion was unjustified, 68% including 66% of Republicans blame Vladimir Putin for the conflict.

Even former president Trump is now calling it a crime against humanity, and in North Carolina and around the country, we've seen this outpouring of support from spontaneous gatherings, to street demonstrations, to the ubiquitous blue and yellow flags, and stand with Ukraine hashtags in your Twitter feed.

That's also been true of charitable organizations.

Here in North Carolina we've got groups like Samaritan's Purse out of Boone, which has a mobile field hospital in Poland, Feed The Hunger, a Burlington based nonprofit has been raising money to feed children displaced by the conflict.

The Ukrainian communities in Charlotte and elsewhere are raising money, and so if you're watching these heart wrenching images and wondering what you can do.

There are a lot of good causes right here we can give to.

One final caveat this week, the Secretary of State, Elaine Marshall circulated a press release saying, "We appreciate your generosity, but just be smart about how you're given.

There are a lot of scam artists out there.

So if you go to websites like charity navigator, some of the other sites out there before you give, just make sure that money's actually going to children and families in need and not to some scam artists."

- Mitch.

- Yeah, based on that last comment.

That's one of the of things that struck me is, if you look at places that have been the most likely to scam North Carolinians over the years, things that involve Russia and Ukraine have both been near the top of the list.

So people really need to be careful but it has been great to see the outpouring of support.

And I think we've been talking about some of the areas of unity.

It's nice to see that people have basically come around almost unanimously to the idea that Vladimir Putin is a murderous thug.

A lot of people have known that for decades.

- He's more criminal than you think.

- Yeah, but I'm certain that he is not even just for this.

If you go back to what he did in Chechnya years ago.

These are things that Vladimir Putin has done.

People I think are finally getting to the realization that this is a bad actor, and as long as he's going to be in power in Russia, we're gonna have to watch out for him.

- Morgan, what's the governor said about this?

- The Governor's done a lot of things.

He's talked a lot about uniting with Ukraine, he's talked about help sending supplies, talking about accepting refugees that are coming.

There are millions of refugees that are gonna be coming out of Ukraine.

It is a very tragic situation.

- Maybe 4 million.

- It's a tragic situation.

But you know, I wanna say both of my colleagues here, I agree with a lot of what they said.

I mean, I think the thing that heartens me the most, we are let's be clear, we are a war wary nation.

After 20 years of Afghanistan, we are, people do not want to.

- And Iraq.

- And Iraq, people do not want troops over there.

But the fact that they not only are doing things like flying the flag and tweeting about it, but people are giving money.

I've seen some incredible things.

Airbnb's a great example of somebody who is pushing people to rent Airbnb's in Ukraine, and obviously don't go.

That gives money directly to the families that are hosting these houses and doing things.

I mean, you see a lot of things like that, but I think both of their points about be careful.

There are a lot, there's just as many scammers as there are legitimate charities.

Make sure you're doing the right thing, that the money's actually going to the people that need it.

But it is very heartening to see the unity.

- Nelson, how would you characterize the Presidents response to the invasion of Ukraine?

- Well I think it lacks a lot you know, one thing I would wanna mention just in terms of what's going on in North Carolina real quick.

Speaker more in 75 members of the house sponsored a resolution in support of the Ukrainian people, calling on the federal government to give all of their support possible.

- [indistinct] been involved with saying some things about the pension fund too.

- Well, he has we, and that may be something that's taken up in the short session and also asking that you know, that the Congress amend the foreign sovereign immunities act so that you could take Russian nationals into US court that was adopted obviously unanimously in the house this week, that resolution.

But here is the tragic reality in the West, the West is willing to fight Russia to the very last Ukrainian and had the West been united at the start, applied sanctions early, demonstrated military resolve, exercise diplomatic flexibility, we could have potentially created a workable solution.

For Eastern Europe, before the war started, now things are looking like 1914.

And, I think that Biden is gonna be tied up in this for the balance of his presidency.

- We gotta move, because I want to talk to Morgan about his favorite topic, redistricting.

And, the US Supreme Court ruling.

- Our wonderful Republican friends in the US Supreme Court this past week made a ruling, the GOP law, and a real setback to GOP lawmakers, Republicans here in the general assembly had asked the United States Supreme Court to throw out a map that was imposed on them by a three judge panel of Superior Court Judges.

And, the US Supreme Court declined today, so declined last week.

Which means the maps that were imposed by the judges will be the maps for 2022.

Now, to remind folks on how all this happened, is first of all, you had a congressional map passed by the legislature that was ruled unconstitutional by the North Carolina Supreme Court.

They said, let's let you have another chance to do it.

A redo.

They come... A legislature came back again, and a three judge panel.

I think this is really important to note, made up of two Republicans and one Democrat.

- [Marc] Great points.

- Throughout the map and said throughout the second map and said this, it's unconstitutional.

- But, they had to do that based on the State Supreme Court judges ruling.

- Let me finish, Nelson.

So, you'll have good time in a minute.

- You'll get your chance.

- So two Republicans and one Democrat, okay?

And they ended up with a map.

North Carolina is a 50/50 state and what Nelson and his friends now at general assembly had was that 11 to three Republican map.

These judges imposed a seven to seven map that is more fair, more representative North Carolina.

- Nelson, you have the floor.

- Look, we did have four US Supreme Court justices that agreed with our argument-- - But, not by majority.

- Based on the constitutional power of the state legislatures to select presidential electors and the manner in which members of Congress are elected.

That that's vested in the legislature, not courts.

But, look, this is not about fairness.

This is about power politics.

It's about Democrats being able to maximize the number of seats.

You saw this in Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland now, North Carolina.

Here's what the irony is of this.

The second map that Republicans produced was really the most competitive map in the country.

And, it's very unfortunate that that got overturned, because Democrats are gonna pick up two guaranteed seats, but Republicans are gonna have the opportunity to redistrict congressional maps next year.

- Are judges now the...

I've said this before, but are they the power players in this state now?

Are they power brokers?

- They certainly are to some extent when they try to be rather than just interpreting the law as it's written.

But, I think Nelson's point is very important in the sense that had the three judge panel at the superior court level upheld that congressional map, what we would've seen is a good year for Republicans this year, 'cause it's shaping up to be, but it was a map that had four very competitive seats, every election cycle.

So, in a really good year for Democrats there would be an eight, six Democratic majority within that delegation.

I think they're forfeiting that by saying we're gonna have this map for this cycle, but then the Republican general assembly will draw it again next time.

- Asher, jump in here.

- I've been accused of being a glass half empty person on this issue.

And, so I'm gonna start by saying it's a tremendous relief from my perspective that this-- - [Marc] You filed a brief?

- That the Supreme court did not... That's right, that the Supreme Court did not take the bait on this appeal.

And, that as a result, the map that North Carolinians will be voting in, in 2022, is probably the fairest congressional map in our state's history, just on partisan basis.

Now, Nelson's point, I actually wanna highlight the fact that four justices on the Supreme Court did buy this argument that only the state legislature has power over this and other voting issues.

That's actually something I think should terrify a lot of us.

- Okay, we gotta move on.

I want to go the most under reported story of the week, Mitch.

- It's been nearly two years since the Cooper administration used an abatement order to shut down a speedway in Alamance county called the ACE Speedway.

It was really only shut down for a few months, but the legal wrangling over this has continued.

And, the case actually got to the North Carolina Court of Appeals this week.

The people who are representing the speedway are urging the judges on the three judge panel of the Appeals Court to let this suit continue.

They're saying that by shutting down the speedway, the government was denying people the fruits of their own labor, which is something that's part of our state constitution.

They're also, and this is interesting, alleging that there was selective enforcement, that as this way was being shut down, some other race tracks were also operating, but that Governor Cooper went out of his way to contact the Alamance county sheriff and said are you gonna shut those guys down?

Because, the owner of the speedway had been criticizing the governor and his COVID policies.

- Morgan.

- Okay, anyway, I'm gonna talk about something else, maybe.

It is so... A really cool thing happened this past week.

So, for folks who love history, Ernest Shackleton's ship the Polar Explorer's Endurance that sank over a hundred years ago off the Antarctic coast was found this week in 10,000 feet deep Antarctic waters.

It was the amazing preservation of this, because there's no light.

It's so cold.

There's very little life down there, just incredible for history buffs.

For folks who don't know about Shackleton, here's a guy who was trying to be the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole.

Again, 100 years ago, his ship got crushed in the ice, and this...

He and his crew, in an amazing feat, got in their lifeboats and traveled 800 miles, and probably the most amazing feat of survival that we've ever seen.

And, battled treacherous waters, ice, freezing, well below freezing temperatures, but for his ship to have endured this entire time being the endurance and the endurance.

It was just an incredible story.

- Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Go ahead, my friend.

- Awfully hard to top that, but, yesterday the Census Bureau-- - [Marc] Give it a shot.

- Released a detailed analysis of its 2020 decennial census.

And, the good news is that the overall count was more or less accurate, which, if you think about the challenges of administering the census in the middle of a pandemic, it's an extraordinary feat.

The bad news is that the census significantly undercounted Hispanic Americans, the Native Americans, Black Americans, and the Hispanic undercount was especially noteworthy more than tripling the number undercounted from about 1.5% in 2010 to about 5% in 2020.

Now, this is not just about numbers.

This has implications-- - It's about districts.

- For all kinds of things, from congressional districts, to federal funding, to where a local government is gonna build a new school.

But, it's also important to keep in mind that it was also kind of predictable.

The Trump administration tried to add a question about citizenship to the census, even when the Supreme court said it couldn't do that.

A lot of people were concerned that this would scare away participation and it seems like those concerns were warranted.

- Nelson.

- Germany's decision to re-arm after the reunification of East and West Germany coming off two great decades for their economy, it's back to history.

So right now, they're being kicked like a soccer ball back and forth between Moscow who provides their energy, and Washington who is their biggest customer and supplies their security.

So they've had enough of all this.

They're doubling down on their... Or doubling their defense budget.

And this may be the most important development in the war in Ukraine thus far.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a strong, united, re-armed Germany in central Europe?

It's kind of like Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it also rhymes," and this could be a very disturbing development in the future.

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

Mitch, who's up and who's down this week?

- What's up is good relations between the state treasurer, Dale Falwell, and State Employee's Association.

You already referenced the fact that the treasurer put out a release this week talking about changing federal law so that state pension funds could go after Russian assets.

As soon as he did that, there was this tweet from the State Employee's Association talking about how great it was and the great job he's doing.

So that's interesting to see.

Who's down, state senator, Kirk DeVier, a democrat from Cumberland County running for reelection in a newly-drawn District 19.

He's got a primary opponent and Governor Cooper has come out and endorsed that opponent.

- Morgan.

- Staying on the governor, I'll tell you, he's up this week.

Since 2019, the governor has vetoed 43 bills in the general assembly.

His record for those at home is 43 and 0.

This week, they tried to override the most recent veto and failed.

Who's down this week, former White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows.

It turns out he may have committed voter fraud by registering to vote at a sort of trailer in the middle of the woods that he's never stayed at.

And for one of the guys who's been out there pushing the big lie to have actually committed voter fraud, to me, is very rich.

- Self-inflicted wound.

- Up, I'm going with pay for congressional staff, which in the funding bill enacted by Congress yesterday, received the largest increase in history, about 20%.

You might fairly accuse me of being biased on this issue as a former congressional staffer, but this is a really important thing, not just for morale which is suffering really badly right now, but also if we wanna reduce the influence of special interests and lobbyists, this is one way we do that, by making sure the professionals are compensated for their work.

Down, easy target these days, I'm going with Congressman Madison Cawthorn, who started the work [men laughing] being charged with driving with a revoked license apparently for the third time.

And finished the week calling Ukrainian President Zelensky a thug and the Ukrainian government incredibly evil.

The fact that the footage leaked at about the same time that the lawmakers were unanimously approving Speaker Moore's resolution standing with Ukraine- - Was not a coincidence.

- Was just the chef's kiss.

[smooches] - Okay.

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

Nelson.

- Okay.

Up, Coach Hubert Davis's post-game press conference last weekend.

After a very big win that my friend here probably knows about, Davis had probably what was most inspiring, thoughtful, and faith-building post-game that I've ever heard listening to sports all these years.

It's well worth the 15 minutes to check it out online.

It's about basketball, but it's so, so much more about life.

And it is really wonderful.

Down, funding for border security and the $1.5 trillion omnibus just passed this week by Congress.

The US Customs and Border Protection was cut $428 million with no funding or no additional funding for immigration enforcement officers and no funding to support the Remain in Mexico program - Headline next week, Mitch.

- Lawmakers continue their in-depth study of Medicaid expansion and increased healthcare access.

- Headline next week, my friend.

- Following Nelson, March Madness is back, baby.

NCAA tournament starts.

- Who do you favor?

- The winner.

[all laughing] My people don't get to go, so- - You are the winner.

Headline next week.

- To be clear, I'm a Tar Heel for life, not withstanding my current employer, but my headline is that- - Quickly.

- Civilian casualties up while the war drags on.

- Nelson, headline next week.

- Well, similar to that, a new phase of the war in Ukraine as Russia ramps up the military tax, it's gonna flatten the country.

- Okay.

We gotta roll.

Great job, gents.

That's it for us.

Thanks for watching.

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

Have a great weekend.

[majestic music] - [Announcer] Major funding for "Front Row" was 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 Boddie-Noell Foundation, NC Realtors, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, and Helen Laughery.

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

[dramatic music] ♪