- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Front Row," unions set their sights on North Carolina, "The New York Times" Editorial Board weighs in on free speech, and Congresswoman Deborah Ross wants to fast track the adoption process for Ukrainian orphans, next.

- [Announcer] 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... 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/front row.

[stately music] - Welcome back, joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Robert Reives, the democratic leader in the House, political analyst Joe Stewart, and Donna King, with "Carolina Journal."

Donna, why don't we begin with the unions and their efforts to gain a foothold in North Carolina?

- Sure, as we all know, we've talked about a lot on this show, North Carolina's economy is growing very quickly, got a lot of manufacturing here.

And one thing that that's also drawn is the attention of labor unions, of course, Now, labor unions are already in North Carolina, but North Carolina just celebrated 75 years of being a right-to-work state.

What that means is that workers don't have to join a union.

They can certainly, but they don't have to as a condition of getting or keeping their job.

And it really outlaws closed shops in North Carolina, which means that you can't require or garnish wages for a worker in order to join the union.

And one thing that we've seen is that even the Vice President, Kamala Harris, was at Durham Tech earlier this month and she said in her comments that we need to create more union jobs in North Carolina.

- [Marc] Is the governor on board with that?

- I would imagine that, he's been endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a lot of other labor unions.

But what we're really seeing nationwide is a drop in the amount of union membership that we've seen.

It was really at its height in the '40s and '50s and it's dropped considerably since then.

And I think that a lot of these unions see North Carolina as a place to grow and try and unseat our right-to-work status.

- Possibly because of changing demographics.

A lot of folks are moving in, Robert.

- Yeah, and I think that one of those things that you notice is North Carolina's has always been one of the lowest two when it comes down to percentage of people who are in unions.

But I think one of the big issues that you see with the unions is coming out of the pandemic.

And a lot of the pandemic has exposed situations where workers didn't feel protected, and so they wanted an opportunity to get protected.

You've seen the latest Gallup Poll that even 47% of Republicans starting to favor unions.

And I think what it is is that you do see a reduction in unions basically because of the kind of jobs that are out there.

You don't necessarily need a union at Apple or something like that.

But on the flip side, on the manufacturing jobs, I think a lot of people did feel exposed during that time and wanting to have the right to at least have the opportunity to unionize.

- Mitch, how would unions impact the job creators?

- Well, certainly job creators would look at this with some concerns.

- [Marc] Mom and pops.

- With some concern.

Now, big corporations often like unions.

We've seen corporations that have moved into North Carolina that have European bases where they're used to dealing with the unions.

And sometimes those big operations like to work with a union 'cause it's easier to deal with one person and deal with your thousands of workers.

But mom and pop operations, it does make it more difficult.

And certainly there is a big difference between the private sector unionization and public sector unionization.

In the private sector, the union may want more benefits, more pay but they also know that the business has to survive for them to be able to keep going.

So they do have some limits.

Whereas in the public sector, basically you have the people who are in a union or a union-like setting bargaining with politicians rather than with the people who really pay the bill to taxpayers.

- Joe, are union members still a reliable voting block for Democrats?

- Well, I think it still is the bulwark of the democratic base, and organized labor's long been affiliated with the Democratic Party on a political basis.

And interestingly enough, in this conversation, we talk it as a political factor, nationally, about 10% of the private work force is in a union, but a full third of public sector employees are in a labor union.

One of the attractive features of North Carolina as a place for unions is the fact that our public employees, state and local government employees, are prohibited from being in a union.

There's no collective bargaining allowed for our public sector employees.

We also very astutely decided many years ago to singularly manage the retirement system for state and local government employees, which is a big hallmark of what unions advocate for their employees, a solid retirement system in place.

We have a really strong retirement program here, so I don't know that a union would have appeal to public workers in North Carolina.

- Donna, wrap this up in about 25 seconds, please.

- Well, I think overall we're seeing some little signals of unionization in places like Charlotte.

There's a Starbucks, "The Charlotte Observer" recently unionized, but overall I think groups like the NCAE, who have had dropping membership, they only represent about less than 20% of teachers now.

I think what we're really seeing is that people are recognizing that the time may have already passed for that, because there is social media, there are ways for employees to work with their employers.

- Great conversation.

I want to turn to "The New York Times" Op Ed, editorial op ed on free speech, Mitch.

- There's no clearer example of elite mainstream opinion in our country than "The New York Times" Editorial Board.

And so that's why it was interesting to see the op-ed piece in "The New York Times" with the headline, "America has a free speech problem."

And the idea was that we have gone way too far in this idea of trying to cancel people with whom we disagree.

And the editorial mentioned people on the left and on the right.

And it also came along with a poll that said that there were 55% of people who said that they had held their tongue, wouldn't say something that they thought might be controversial 'cause they thought it would come back to bite them.

One of the most interesting things to me was the reaction.

People on the right often criticize what "The New York Times" writes.

That's no surprise at all.

- But they're all in on this one.

- People on the political left were the ones who looked at this editorial and said, "Oh no, what are you talking about?

Cancel culture, is this such a thing?

And why are you talking about it?"

That to me was the most interesting piece.

- Well, you know Donna, that is interesting about the left because when I came up, the left wanted government out of your life and they wanted free speech.

I think they've done about a 180, haven't they?

- It's funny that you say that.

I was listening to a podcast this morning about that very thing.

The commentators were saying that I think the traditional values of even the '60s hippies are much more libertarian in some cases than they would be today.

But really what we're talking about in many cases.

Is college culture.

We're seeing a lot of this on campuses where universities are trying to implement a free speech policy, but it only matters how it's put into practice.

And my own children go to a large North Carolina University.

And I see it in grad students and professors, where students are self silencing because they are concerned about their grades.

They're concerned about being singled out or canceled in some way.

So we're really seeing on college campuses.

- Are kids, Joe, worried about being shamed by other kids and by their peers?

- I think we are at a point in our history where folks are concerned that something they say may cause distress or discomfort to somebody else.

And perhaps it is an inhibiting factor, but the freedom to say what you want to like all of the other freedoms that we enjoy in this country, it's really a work in progress.

I mean, we famously had said, your right to swing your fist ends at the end of my nose.

And so we've gotta figure out what that balancing act is between things that people say that are protected by our right to free speech and things that do legitimately cause offense and are difficult to hear, or even may put people in peril for one reason or another.

But I think ultimately part of the problem is the lack of civil discourse.

- [Host] Good point.

- Maybe we need to encourage more open candidate forums where the two, not Lincoln Douglas where they traveled on the train together across the Illinois, but where candidates for office have to come together.

- [Host] You did an advancement on that one?

[all laughing] - I remember it like it was yesterday.

But where the candidates have to be together and engage in a spirit debate, but show civility towards each other.

That's the part of it that I think is missing.

- You know what I think though, Robert, I think Google and and Twitter are driving the narrative a lot of times and there's not equal access for opinion.

- Well and I think it depends on where you're coming from.

'Cause for an instance, I would just say, when you're talking about the right and the left and who's really falling in on this, if I could get the penalty that Joe Rogan got and get a hundred million dollar contract for getting canceled, I would get canceled, so... - [Host] Sign me up.

[all laughing] - [Joe] You would do it for half that.

- Exactly.

[all laughing] So I think we kind of overstate what happens, but I do think that the point about what happens with kids is true, but I don't think it's about cancel culture.

It's about social media and what's happened with social media is just that.

I mean, I have to talk to my kids all the time, my daughter especially 'cause she's of that age and just say, look, it's gonna come back someday and somebody's gonna take this comment that you made 35 years ago and they're gonna blow it into something that it wasn't when you intended to make it.

And that's, what's really got us to this point and that's where we've gotta get the horse back in the barn.

- To be- - When she's sitting there waiting for her Supreme court confirmation, oh my dad told me not to write this.

[all laughing] - Exactly.

- To be continued.

I wanna talk about Deborah Ross.

She had a very unique thing she wants to do as far as the orphans coming outta Ukraine.

- Yeah, Representative Deborah Ross, and the second congressional district here in North Carolina wrote a letter to the administration encouraging some expedited rule making that would make it easier for families that had already started down the pathway of adopting Ukrainian children to make it easier.

For example, allowing those hearings to be held at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, DC, as opposed to having to go to the Ukraine.

But this is recognition of the humanitarian aspect of this military conflict.

Representative Ross pointed out that at least a hundred children are known to have died already in this conflict, probably more that have yet to be reported.

And to her credit sees this as a value added proposition for this country to lend aid and comfort to the Ukrainian people who're suffering so dramatically.

The president announced this week they're gonna open up a hundred thousand slots for Ukrainian immigrants.

- [Host] And I bet it'll be more.

- Yeah and a billion dollars more for humanitarian relief.

But there's really two things.

This makes sense and representative Ross, I think is appropriately encouraging the administration to take this action.

But I think this is just an example of Representative Ross is gonna start taking a higher profile on some of these bigger international, national types of issues.

So credit to her for having done this.

- Donna, 10 million people I see are displaced in Ukraine.

- That's the largest, it's the largest in- - [Host] Since World War II.

- For World War II, yeah.

Years.

One of the things I would say that's important about what she's proposing, is that it's kids that are already in the pipeline.

They've already been adopted.

They've already been put up for adoption in one way or another, because I think it is very concerning to me to unilaterally lift any kind of restrictions or or the process in place to adopt children from another country before we know that their families are not living or don't wanna be- I mean, it's complete chaos there.

And this happened to Ukraine in the nineties, which I think is one reason why they've put a moratorium on these adoptions, because there were children hosted all over the world and many never went back to reunite with their families.

We saw it during the Haiti earthquakes.

Kids were literally disappearing from the streets and orphanages were being emptied.

Families didn't even know till they went to go find them.

It is a horrible situation.

Children are regularly displaced from their families during times of war.

So a well-intentioned policy that lifts international adoptions from Ukraine across the board could cause more damage than we expect.

And we've seen plenty of that over the last two years.

- Robert?

- I think Donna's points are excellent.

And that's a good thing.

I really respected with Representative Ross is the fact that she understood, get the folks who are in the pipeline already, who have already gotten in the process.

Let's get this done.

- [Host] Really good point.

- And do everything that we can.

Do everything that we can to help out.

Because I mean, even though we've had all this coverage, we have not gotten the scale of how horrible that situation is right now.

When you really go through it.

You're talking about an area that was mostly at peace and a first world country that suddenly has been thrown into such chaos and every parent is thinking about their children.

And so I applaud her for this.

- My friend?

- I echo the kudos for Representative Ross for taking this up.

And also I think it's an important reminder of just how complicated it is to get involved in something like this, an adoption from overseas, there are lots of rules and as Donna pointed out, you can lead to some unintended consequences if you just say, throw the rules away.

But that doesn't mean that the rules that we have all need to stay in place exactly as they are.

Perhaps this is a good opportunity to rethink some of the things that block people from making one of these adoptions that could be such a major positive change in kids lives.

- Joe, wrap this up in about a minute.

- Well, I think this is probably just the first of many types of initiatives like this that are necessary given the terrible scale of human suffering that we're seeing coming out of the Ukraine.

And I think it's absolutely true.

Probably the atrocities that have been committed already are unknown to us.

But as they're revealed, I think as a nation, we have a moral obligation to offer aid and support to the Ukrainian people.

- Okay, I wanna move on and talk about Ketanji Brown, Judge Brown and her nomination process for the Supreme court.

My friend?

- Well, I think one, it's a a truly historic and monumental moment.

And I think that, that's gotten a little bit lost but I'm glad to hear when I talk to, especially young people that get a chance to see this, that they understand the enormity of the moment.

What I see in Judge Brown's confirmation process is the fact that we've Gotta figure out how to fix this system, because what it's become now is that no matter your qualifications, no matter how well you've done, no matter how perfectly you've led your life, that everything seems to be fallin' on partisan lines.

I hope to see a unanimous support or close to unanimous support for her, but I think the reality is that you're not gonna see that.

And I think that we've got to be better than that.

When you look at her qualifications, she's literally got the background that you would draw up.

If you had a chance to draw up and say, okay, we need the new nominee.

Just don't talk about race, party affiliation, or anything.

These are things we want.

We want somebody who's had extensive experience in private practice, somebody who's had experience in our criminal system, somebody who has been a judge in some capacity before, a federal judge.

And now we're putting her here and has the educational background that you want.

So it's disappointing in some senses to watch the process, to hear some of the questions.

I think that this goes back to Joe's earlier point about the loss of civil discourse.

I mean, there was a time where no matter how much I disagreed, I'd love go back for instance, to Judge Antonin Scalia's confirmation.

- Well, it really started with Judge Bork and Kennedy.

- Yes, it did.

- I mean, so let's be honest about that.

Donna, what was your take on the hearings?

- I found it to be more civil probably than-- - Kavanaugh.

- Certainly more than Kavanaugh, but also more civil than Amy Coney Barrett.

So I think that that was one of the things that I liked initially is that all the members of the Senate Committee were saying this is not going to be a circus.

It is not gonna fall apart.

- Her sentences of child pornographers.

- Absolutely, there were a few, there were about three or four senators on that committee that were very alarmed at her tendency to under sentence, to deliver less than the federal recommended guidelines for child porn.

That was something that came up a lot.

And then also there were a few other things that really signaled her position as on the more progressive end of the Democratic Party.

But again, she had the qualifications.

She did not, one thing I did like hearing was that she didn't seem to view herself as some sort of super legislator.

She was very clear that she felt like laws came from Congress.

And so that was a plus side.

But we did see a lot of that concern about her sentencing of child pornography.

- And crime, in general.

But let me ask you, Mitch, how would you frame her judicial philosophy?

- Well, I would think you would say it's a little bit left of center.

I mean, there are some issues where you see that she is more likely to rule with the progressive way of thinking than with the conservative way of thinking.

I think one of the things that was interesting in the discussion that she had with Senator Thom Tillis who to his credit said, hey, this is historic.

We all, however you're gonna vote, this is historic.

We have an African American woman who's gonna have the chance to sit on the Supreme Court.

But he also said he thought that perhaps one of the flaws in her record is a tendency to show too much empathy to the criminals.

The people who most people would say if you commit this major crime, you should do the sentence, do the sentence as it's spelled out in the law.

And some of her sentences had gone sort of to the lower end or even lower than what the lower recommended sentence is.

So I think that is kind of a clue of where she stands on some of these things.

In other cases, we don't really know because all of these nominees have gotten into the habit of not telling you any more than they have to about what they actually think.

- Yeah, that's kind of become pro forma, hasn't it?

- I think it's called the Ginsburg rule.

I mean when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was up there and she was asked questions, she often said, "I can't tell you because this could be a case that could come before me."

- Do you have final thoughts in about 30 seconds?

- Well, I think the most significant thing I saw Dick Durban, the Democratic Senator from Illinois who presided over these hearings, said that he felt like the Republicans were testing out messages for November.

That a lot of the issues that they raised, critical race theory, crime, gender identities, sorts of things are very likely to be issues for Republican and candidates in the fall.

And so to some extent, I think a confirmation hearing, we say there's the thing and then there's the thing about the thing.

And then there's the thing about the thing about the thing.

And that's kind of what this was, an opportunity for Republican legislators to point to the issues they think are gonna resonate with voters.

- Okay, well we've gotta move.

Let's go to the most under-reported story of the week, Mitch.

- The State Supreme Court is taking up a very interesting case that comes out of Durham.

This is involving a police sergeant who was fired based on an incident in 2016.

He was a hostage negotiator.

He was involved with a fellow who had been barricading himself in an apartment for a couple of hours and after two hours and he had threatened to shoot himself, the guy said, "I'm gonna smoke a marijuana blunt."

And the police officer, rightly thinking that might be a bad idea, said, "Look, I'll let you smoke the blunt if you surrender."

The guy surrendered, got to smoke the blunt.

Four months later, the police department fired him, not necessarily following its normal procedure.

So the police sergeant sued to get his job back and the courts have thrown out the case except the court of appeals said maybe he has a case based on the violation of his right to the fruits of his own labor.

It'll be interesting to see if the Supreme Court goes along with that.

- Robert?

- Regional public colleges helped build economic resilience and that's something that we found from a study.

And I think what was really interesting for me is not only in the traditional sense that you think about how colleges help the community, but in the sense of when we go through an economic downturn, colleges are best suited to resist that economic downturn.

So job safety is still there.

Economic stability is still there.

And so that's further evidence that we gotta keep investing in public colleges.

- So they're the anchor.

Joe?

- Yeah, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an entity created out of the housing crisis back in 2008 to evaluate financial services sector announced that they're evaluating whether or not there is inherent bias in artificial intelligence that's used to make determinations in that sector of our economy.

Here, famously you would say-- - [indistinct] by you?

- Well, [laughing].

[all laughing] - Not specifically.

[all laughing] But the concern is, even though you'd say that an algorithm is really just a mathematical calculation based on data, but because it's human beings that are supplying the data, that there might be some inherent bias in the product that comes out.

So the decision on the cost of insurance or a particular loan terms or that are calculated automatically by these algorithms may actually have the same inherent bias in them that the human beings previously doing those calculations had.

- Donna?

- So my under-reported is actually about infamous, Hunter Biden's laptop.

Now that story has been kind of relegated to this right-wing conspiracy theory pool in mainstream media.

But guess what?

It's out now.

It actually was his laptop, he's admitted that it was, and on it is that he was peddling influence internationally while his dad was vice president.

- "New York Times" signed off on that, right?

- "New York Times" has finally signed off.

They buried it down on page 20 while everybody was watching Ukraine.

But now it's out.

And I think one of the things that I take away from this is there was a letter of 50 leaders of our National Security team that signed off in a letter saying you know what?

This was all BS, that we support them.

Well, those people are actually the ones who are in charge of getting data to send young men and women, our service members into battle.

I wanna know that they are not politically charged.

- Are there any follow up by the media with them?

- I've seen very little.

- I think this will come up though, don't you?

If Republicans, there'll be investigations, if they retake the Congress.

- Probably.

But I think that that initial story being kind of pushed aside into this sort of you know, conspiracy theory cesspool to make it very difficult for the actual story, which is only now coming out to get any traction.

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

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

- What's up is legal fireworks in this case involving North Carolina's opportunity scholarship program, there is lawsuit that's challenging them.

This is the school vouchers that we're talking about.

And the lawyers involved in this case are having a fight back forth.

It seems that the lawyers challenging the vouchers are conducting all of this discovery, where they're going to dozens of private schools across the state and asking them questions, even though they're not parties to the suit.

The state court appeals has shut down discovery in that case.

My down, also on the judicial front, judge David Lee, he's been overseeing the Leandro school funding case for several years.

He was removed this week and replaced.

- Robert who's up and who's down this week.

- Sadly deaths from opioids are up in North Carolina.

In 2020, we had a 40% rise.

But the good thing is that AG Stein was able to get a settlement that we're hoping that'll help pay for more education, more support, and to do something about that.

- Well, I read where 18 to 45, a hundred thousand folks have died from fentanyl overdoses.

- Yes.

And it's frightening.

- That signals to me, we gotta close the border.

Go ahead sir.

- Well fentanyl doesn't come from the border.

- Well it comes across the border.

- That comes from China and everywhere else too.

Down the public's opinion of the legislature whether you're Republican or Democrat, they hate us all right now because they think all we're doing is spending time on redistricting.

And we're not spending time on the issues that really matter to them.

- Okay, Joe.

- We love you.

Who's up, people's continued concern about what is fake news.

Ben Wallace, the defense minister for great Britain was the subject of a Russian prank.

He thought he was on communiK with the prime minister of Ukraine.

It turned out to all to be fraudulent, but the Russian news media pushed out these videos contending that this was actually an interview with the with the British defense secretary.

Interestingly enough, the British defense secretary's office is investigating how a prankster got into a conversation in the first place.

A down, the office of federal contract compliance programs.

The Biden administration looking to close the pay equity gap by making sure that contractors with the federal government are evaluating their pay structures to make sure that there's not an inequity between men and women.

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

- Up, it's gotta be potential fraud in mismanagement of 6 trillion of COVID taxpayer money.

- Unreal.

- It is.

A report from the state auditor's office questions Golden Leafs process for distributing $83 million this foundation was to be giving grants to small businesses across the state following COVID shutdowns.

But there was very little tracking the auditor's office says, and they don't really know who got it how much they got.

In the end, the secret service agency says about a hundred billion dollars of COVID money's been misappropriated.

- Down please.

- Down, state debt.

There's a new report out that says that North Carolina state debt has dropped from almost six and a half billion dollars in 2013.

Now the state has about $4 billion in debt.

- Okay, headline next week, Mitch.

- New attack ads crop up in North Carolina's Senate race.

- I'm shocked.

Headline next week my friend.

- UNC in the final four.

- Think they make it, what happens to Duke?

- UNC in the final four.

[all laughing] - Joe headline next week.

- Eclipsed by some of the bad news coming out of the Ukraine area, the Taliban has gone back on their promises, not to shutter academic institutions for young girls.

And so we're seeing the Taliban act like it did when it was in control of Afghanistan before.

- Sad.

Headline next week.

- I think Babylon Bee's gonna be back on Twitter.

They're gonna cave to public pressure.

If you know the Bee, you know that they have built a huge following after being canceled by Twitter.

- Tell people what to Babylon Bee is.

- So Babylon Bee is a satirical news site, kind of Mad Magazine for the digital age, and huge following.

And they've gotten a lot more fans since being canceled by Twitter.

- That's it for us.

Great job team.

Hope to see you next week on Front Row.

Have a great weekend.

[suspenseful music] - [Narrator] 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.

[light instrumental music] ♪