- Hi, I'm Marc Rotterman.

Coming up on "Font Row," we'll discuss president Biden's healthcare initiative for underserved communities, candidates lineup to run for Congress in North Carolina, and could a national gun registry be just around the corner?

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 is provided by NC realtors, Helen Laughery, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, Stefan Gleason, and Jane and Van Hipp.

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

[thrilling music] - Welcome back.

Joining the conversation, Mitch Kokai with the John Locke Foundation, Jonah Kaplan with ABC News 11; Donna King, editor-in-chief for "Carolina Journal," and Nelson Dollar, senior advisor to North Carolina speaker of the house.

Jonah, let's start with Biden's healthcare initiative for underserved communities.

- Well, as we just celebrated another Thanksgiving in this COVID era, we think about the more than 700,000 Americans who have died.

And why has America suffered so much?

Well, Americans are inherently unhealthy.

And why are they unhealthy?

Because a good part of the country is obese.

And why are they obese?

Many of them don't have access to adequate healthcare, they don't have good fitness.

And why don't they have good access to healthcare?

Well, in many marginalized communities there just isn't.

I mean, it's a business model, what we have for healthcare, for better or worse.

They don't have the money to support more nurses.

They don't have the money for the education.

They don't have the money for the student debt.

And so what the Biden administration is doing, and they're using part of the American Rescue Plan, is to devote about a billion and a half dollars to try and shore up some of this access and basically the supply of healthcare professionals to these marginalized and underserved communities.

And how do they do that?

A lot of the money is for scholarships.

It's not so much of a job shortage, it's a skills shortage.

When we talk about people not applying for jobs, there aren't enough nurses, there aren't enough EMTs, paramedics, it's a skills shortage.

You can't just come off the street and get these jobs, you have to have education, you have to have certification.

You have to have a graduation for these very specialty positions.

And if you don't have access to those classes, if you need to take transportation to get there, that's tough for people who are in poor areas or where things are very far apart in rural communities.

- Nelson, do we have a similar program like this in North Carolina?

- Yes.

This state budget invests quite a bit in rural healthcare by expanding programs like NC-STeP, which is our Statewide Telepsychiatry Program that we're expanding around the state; AHEC, which is the Area Health Education Centers, and that's a statewide network that's operated by the UNC system with a mission to build the healthcare workforce in rural and underserved areas.

They work with around 3,700 pre-college students each year, they offer graduate medical residencies.

Over the years, they have produced over 1,500 physicians for the state of North Carolina, over 2/3 of which actually do stay in the state.

They also train.

Over 215,000 health professionals each year do some retraining.

Duke's also involved in this particular network.

And probably the most important investment this year was 215 million for the new Brody School of Medicine at ECU, hell of a huge impact on rural- - Donna, weigh in here.

- Well, I think it's important, particularly this Brody School of Medicine at ECU.

ECU has always traditionally served a lot of rural communities, particularly in Eastern North Carolina, and building that labor pipeline is critical for serving rural infrastructure for healthcare.

I think it's interesting how the White House announced this.

They had Vice President Kamala Harris make that presentation, make that announcement about this.

She's struggled lately in her ratings, in her popularity, in some of the issues that she's taken on.

- [Marc] Approval numbers.

- Low approval numbers.

So I think giving her this particular project to advance, really helps to bolster her credibility and hopefully let her ride what may be a really popular program moving into the next election.

- Mitch, put this in context.

- The most interesting thing to me about this is that, as Jonah mentioned, this is money that comes from that $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that was passed back in the spring.

We really haven't seen the Biden administration doing a whole lot to promote that plan ever since it was passed.

This could be the type of thing that he could have used as a political victory lap for months and months- - That's a great point because redundancy works - Yeah, I mean, basically we had heard right before the election that the Biden administration really hadn't done anything, they hadn't passed the Infrastructure Bill, they hadn't passed that Build Back Better plan.

Well, they did pass this bill and didn't spend a whole lot of time promoting it until now, eight months later.

- Okay.

I wanna move on and talk politics.

They're lining up, Donna- - They are.

- To run for Congress in North Carolina.

- They are.

They are.

So with new congressional maps approved, we've got a lot of lawmakers who are currently in the North Carolina Senate, North Carolina House, jockeying for position to figure out where they're gonna run.

And then we've had a couple of big retirements in the Democrats.

Of course, Representative David Price in the Fourth has announced he's retiring.

And more recently, G. K. Butterfield, Representative Butterfield in the First announced that he is not gonna run again, that he's gonna retire afterwards.

So we're seeing a shifting of folks that are interested in running for them, among them Representative Mary Erica Smith from the North Carolina Legislature.

One of the things that's important to note is both of these members readily, handily won their districts.

G. K. Butterfield I think has never won by less than 70% in the First District, but he says that he's not gonna run again because he calls the new maps partisan gerrymanders, and is hoping that they will be overturned through legal maneuvers.

But we're really also seeing... Madison Cawthorn has decided that he's not going to run in his district where he currently resides, he's gonna run there in the 13th instead.

So there's really a really shuffling of positions, people running in different places.

The filing period starts on December 6, runs through the 17th, so I think we're gonna be seeing a lot of these, a lot of members of the State Legislature looking to run for Congress now and move to Washington in their districts.

- Mitch, what will you be watching?

What races will you be watching?

- There are a lot of them that are very interesting.

I think among the most interesting to me are the Fourth District, which is kind of an open seat now, where you've seen Ben Clark is a state senator, a Democrat who had been talking for a while about going to Congress, he wants to go for this seat.

There are also some interesting Republicans.

John Szoka who has served in the statehouse is interested and has officially announced he's going to run.

Kelly Daughtry, the daughter of long-time Republican House member- - Leo Daughtry.

- Leo Daughtry, is looking at that seat.

That's an interesting one.

The Sixth District, which is the one that David Price would be in if he decided to run again, that's one where you've seen a number of Democrats come forward.

The first one that really talked about it was Wiley Nicholas, state senator; but now Valerie Foushee has been talking about it, she seems to be now the one that people are galvanizing around.

So I think those are gonna be very interesting.

The Seventh is gonna be interesting.

Does Mark Walker, who's been running for Senate, decide to get into this one?

- Yeah, and how does that impact the Senate race if he gets out, Nelson?

- Well, Walker would leave a huge boost for Ted Budd.

It gives him the inside track on social conservatives.

- Doesn't split the votes.

- That's right.

And both of them are from the Triad, so you would have a unification of that region behind one candidate.

And hey, who wants two senators from Charlotte?

- Okay.

[laughs] Let me ask you.

Do you think, Jonah, that these districts will withstand a court challenge?

- Well, that's a question.

And I'm not a jurist, so I can't really answer that.

But that's certainly a wild card.

And the other thing that I think is fascinating is that in North Carolina you don't have to live in the district to run in that district.

And when you have these kind of open seats in new districts, well, now you start to see the primary system and some of the vices of that system.

You're gonna have intra-party fighting; where in the Sixth, where David Price was, you can have, who could be the next member of the squad, Nida Allam come from the Sixth District, or maybe a more moderate, Wiley Nickel; or maybe Kathy Manning, who now doesn't have a district in the Triad, says, "Well, wait a minute.

I wanna be a moderate, a voice-" - It's bloodsport.

- It is.

And look what's happened with Madison Cawthorn switching districts.

And it's also interesting because Richard Hudson, who was the longtime representative from Fort Bragg; well, if he runs in technically where he lives, he won't be that military presence anymore.

So we don't know what's gonna happen with the lines; that could be very different, and that's obviously a huge wildcard.

But no matter what, when you have these open seats; yes, you kind of open yourself up to, now, these intra-party fighting of, "Are we gonna go radical or are we gonna go pragmatic?"

- More frankly.

Let's change topics, okay.

And I wanna talk about gun rights advocates are getting concerned that there could be a gun registry, a national gun registry.

- Republican U.S. Representative Michael Cloud of Texas and 51 of his colleagues, including, we've mentioned them already, Ted Budd and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, signed on to a letter that goes to the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

There's concern about a proposed ATF rule because the concern is that this eventually could lead to a national gun registry despite the fact that Congress has said, in something called the Firearms Owners Protection Act, "There can't be a national gun registry."

So here's why there's concern.

What the rule would do would end this 20-year burn rule that says that people who sell firearms have to get rid of the records after 20 years.

Why is this a big deal?

Well, if a firearm seller closes up shop, they have to give all the records to the ATF.

So if there is this rule that ends, the 20-year-old gun records will end up going to the ATF.

That's why these members of Congress think that this is a concern, that's why they've sent the letter.

I'm not sure that this is going to stop the Biden administration from moving forward with it, but it's certainly raising this issue.

- Nelson, is the Biden administration trying to bypass Congress?

- Well, they are.

I mean, it's the fourth time this year that the administration has put forward an agency rule or an executive order without the proper constitutional authority, and that's one of the main arguments that Biden had in his election was to restore democracy, yet on a host of these- - Regular orders is what he was talking about.

- Well, that's right.

But on a host of these hot button issues, the president is exercising unilateral authority without a specific congressional mandate.

And in this case, as Mitch said, there are congressional laws on the books to the contrary of what the ATF could be doing with this data and information on all these gun owners.

So it will all end up in court, it will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, and I think it's gonna be very difficult for them to prevail.

- Donna, collecting data on Americas is a big concern, isn't it?

- It is a big concern.

And it's something that we saw a lot with the school demonstrations from parents at school boards that went through DOJ and the FBI.

But I think what this really is, is exactly what Nelson said, that you have executive agencies that are creating rules that really should be going through Congress.

And if you can't get it through Congress, then it shouldn't be instituted at the agency level by the executive branch.

And this federal gun registry, you already are not allowed to do it, it's on the books, it's part of this law.

And you see these agencies circumventing Congress to get them on the books.

- Jonah, your thoughts, my friend.

- President Trump went around Congress to provide funding for the wall because Congress couldn't get it done.

President Biden is maybe using these executive agencies to do something that Congress isn't getting done, same with immigration, same with a whole host of issues.

So Congress's inability to pretty much do anything, even though many of these things like expanded background checks, bump stocks, very popular with the American people- - [Marc] Explain what bump stocks are.

- It's a tool to make a semiautomatic weapon feel like an automatic weapon and discharge a projectile and bullets more often.

I think when it comes to guns... And I realize I'm opening up a huge can of worms here when I mention- - [Marc] That's all right.

We'll give your email out.

- Thank you.

Yeah.

The Kyle Rittenhouse case, before we get to the legality of whatever, the self-defense, most Americans are probably thinking, "Well, how did a 17 year old, just in general, walk around with a weapon of war?

How does that just happen?"

So Congress is not doing anything- - I think a lot of people would dispute that that's a weapon of war, don't you think, Mitch?

- A lot of people think it's a very common weapon.

But other than Rittenhouse case, the most interesting thing to point out about this is if this rule goes forward, then basically anything that a gun seller has collected after the year 2001 could be in the hands of the federal government by the time all is said and done.

That's what really has prompted these members of Congress to raise concerns.

Donna, wrap this up in about 30 seconds.

- Well, I mean, I think that there's such a broad issue.

And exactly like what you're saying, that there's a broad issue, there's a lot of concern from different people about gun rights.

But this is really about collecting the data of individual Americans and whether or not they have a gun and what kind, and that's something that the federal government is forbid from doing.

- Okay, I wanna move on.

Great job.

House passed, this week, some reform measures for elections.

Talk to us about that.

- Yes.

The House recently took up three election reform bills: S326, the Election Day Integrity Act, which would align North Carolina with 32 other red and blue states in requiring absentee ballots to be received by the local board of elections on election day or at least by election day in order to be counted in the vote.

H259, the Election Integrity Act, requires voting machines to be made in America, you would think that [indistinct] before that.

It would also strengthen the procedures for ensuring that non-citizens are not registered to vote, and also have post-election audits as well.

S725 would prohibit private- - That's on the Senate side.

- Yes, another Senate bill.

Two Senate bills here and a House bill.

Would prohibit private money in election administration.

In other words, it would stop the Mark Zuckerbergs and others of the world who are selectively trying to finance activities at local boards of elections.

He did that with 33 of the 100 counties in North Carolina.

- [Marc] That's the first time we've ever seen that, right?

- We've never seen that.

And I think that bill raises very clear ethical issues out there.

I mean, you certainly wouldn't want...

The Democrats wouldn't want Trump to be sponsoring polling places on election day.

So unfortunately these bills all were passed on party line votes so they're not likely to be enacted, but they are forms that could come back in the future.

- Donna, are they setting this up?

That's a good point.

Are Republicans setting this up for a future session?

Perhaps when they have a veto proof majority?

- Well, I think that we'll see more and more election integrity measures and reforms.

But I think the Zuckerbergs is particularly interesting; and we actually saw Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, do something similar.

So keeping private money out of the polling places I think is one of the big ones.

And you're gonna see a lot of these cleanup bills happening ahead of 2022, certainly.

One of the measures also means that election day, close of business, close of the polls on election day is when absentee ballots are due.

And that's something that a lot of folks say, "Okay, what about the ones that are mailed the day before the election?"

Well, the close of business, close of the polls on election day is when they're due.

- And that was part of pandemic, right?

- Well, there was, there was.

And it means that when you don't know how many are outstanding at the end of election day, it has some uncertainty and there's a lot of suspicion and transparency problems, and that's what we saw a lot of in 2020.

- Jonah, critics say that Republicans wanna stifle people's ability to vote.

- Well, prior to the pandemic, the law had been if it was postmarked by election day and arrived by November 6th; then, yes, it's allowed to vote.

And that gives people, if they can't get to the polls, to actually vote on election day.

And let's remember, candidates are campaigning until election day.

Most Americans or all Americans have the right to choose up until election day.

So how are you giving people the right to choose who may be choosing at the last minute who they want to govern them on election day if they can't get that vote in on election day?

- [Marc] Mitch.

- And people are gonna respond to the rules however they are, meaning if you tell people that if you're gonna vote by mail, you gotta send it in a few days early so it's there by election day, that's what people will do.

We already have more than a couple of weeks of early voting, so even though people might be campaigning up to election day as Jonah said- - Is early voting a good thing or should people just vote on the day of the election?

- That is certainly a policy question.

My personal take on it is it was much better when everyone voted on election day.

But a lot of people like early voting 'cause they don't like standing in the lines.

I don't think that train...

I don't think that horse is going back in the barn.

We're gonna have early voting.

- Okay, we're gonna go to the most under-reported story of the week.

Mitch.

- All right, there's another sign that Toyota is seriously looking at North Carolina for this battery plant for electric cars.

We're talking about the Greensboro Randolph Megasite that's located just south of Guilford County.

The state budget includes up to $320 million in incentives for a project of this type that brings a billion dollars of investment and 1,750 jobs to that area, which this plant would seem to fit in with.

And we learned this week, from the Army Corps of Engineers, that the owners of this property have asked for permission to move dirt, which those who are in the know suggest is a sign that something's gonna happen.

- [Marc] Jonah.

- We all remember the images of the frantic departure from Afghanistan.

But what happened to all those Afghans?

About 80,000 of them are living in the country at army bases, these safe havens, one of them being Joint Base Mcguire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

And about 55 airmen from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base are helping in what's called Liberty Village.

They are actually assisting these Afghans, it's a remarkable job they're doing, in basically learning to adjust to American life, learning job skills, learning English, and they're doing this, these people...

I mean, these airmen who would normally work on munitions or on aircraft are folding laundry, are doing civic patrols, are teaching and playing soccer.

It's amazing, and we're very thankful for their service, whatever their job is.

- Donna.

- Very interesting.

The United States has fallen out of the top five countries in the world for economic freedom.

The Fraser Institute puts on an index every year.

The United States now ranks sixth behind Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland and Georgia.

- Who's the Fraser Institute?

- So the Fraser Institute looks at economic freedom throughout the world, and this is their annual ranking.

But now what they're saying is that the United States has dropped down in terms of privately owned property and a legal system that treats all equally, and even handed enforcement of contracts and stable monetary environment.

It should be alarming.

We really need to be looking at making sure that we have a free market economy.

- And these guys are based in Canada, so it's not just homers talking.

- Right.

- Okay.

Nelson.

- Biden's mismanagement of energy markets.

The president, in an absolutely amateur policy maneuver, is pumping oil now from the strategic petroleum reserve into the market, asking Asian countries to do the same.

Even if this works short term, the price of oil is determined by three things: demand, production and storage.

So prices were already falling this month because of demand concerns in Europe over COVID.

So if you're selling off your storage, you actually help the price bounce back up, which we've seen a little bit already.

A much better policy for the U.S. would actually be on the production end.

Produce more shell oil, pump it into global markets.

- But don't we have the cleanest energy in the world to process?

- We do.

And the easiest to process.

I mean, what we need to be doing as a policy is pumping that oil into the markets.

We don't need to be taking our oil companies to the FTC, claiming that there's collusion there.

They need to be converting our refineries and investing in our refineries to actually produce the cleaner product from the shell oil.

That's not happening right now.

- Did you notice that the Energy Secretary Granholm didn't know how many barrels of oil we produce per day?

- That's right.

And the figure does bounce around, but it's between, depending on the pandemic, between 18 and 20 million barrels a day.

World production right now our use right now is around 96.5 million barrels per day.

- The average person is paying $1.29 more per gallon than they did this time last year.

Okay, let's go to the Lightning Round.

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

- Who's up, North Carolina Christmas tree growers.

There's an 18 and a half foot Fraser fir at the White House courtesy of the father and son team of Rusty and Beau Estes of Peak Farms in Jefferson.

They are the winners for the third time of the National Christmas Tree Association contest, which gets that tree to the White House.

Good news for Christmas tree growers in the state.

Who's down, President Biden once again.

I'm thinking about the High Point poll, High Point University poll that came out this week that showed he had just 35% job approval in North Carolina, 52% disapproval to put it in context.

Governor Cooper was at 44% approval, but his disapproval was 35%, so he's still above water.

- Jonah, my friend.

- Consumer spending is up.

I mean, we saw the lines today, Black Friday, and when we're taping this, and it's just overwhelming.

And for all the talk of inflation, which is a thing, and for all the talk about higher prices, Americans are flush with cash.

They've been sitting at home for the last two years, they've been given money by the federal government, they're ready to spend, they're excited, and that is up.

All the forecasts are saying this is gonna be a very successful weekend for retailers.

What's down is Americans' patience for COVID.

I think we're seeing people get their boosters, I think we're seeing people get their vaccines, and they're saying, "All right, this is it.

This is life, let's move on already."

And we saw that with those astronomically long lines at RDU for travel.

- Donna.

- Yeah, I think people are ready for a normal life.

And one of the things I'm gonna say is up is school choice in this budget.

One of the lessons of COVID, of course, was a lot of parents looking over the shoulder of their children, watching what was happening in classrooms.

In this budget, this new North Carolina budget that Governor Cooper signed, the Opportunity Scholarship program is broader, it's a little more money, about $5,900 per student.

- By the way, Cooper got a shout-out on the budget in the Wall Street Journal.

- That's good news for our state, certainly.

But it also means that more foster children qualify now, and a lot more people can get in there and pick a school of their choice if their public school isn't working out for them.

Down, I gotta say Washington Democrats.

We're seeing a lot of whispering there, in the hallways of the White House.

Amy Klobuchar organized a kind of thought leader group on how they're going to message the problems that they're having and the low approval ratings that the Biden ministration is getting.

- Nelson.

- First of all, Jonah, I have my booster, so I'm good with that.

- Me too!

- Good, good, good.

On the retail side, Dollar Tree, national retailer known for selling all sorts of convenience items for a buck, it's now in January gonna be a buck and a quarter, that's a 25% increase on items from paper plates, four plates, can of beans.

- [Marc] Which shop there?

- The Dollar-25 Tree.

- If you are a senior, coming in January, winter heat is going to be up, Medicare premiums are gonna be up, and a can of Niblets is gonna be up 25%, so that's gonna be a problem.

- Niblets?

[overlapping chatter] - [Nelson] Corn.

- Headline next week, Mitch?

- With the budget signed and redistricting maybe finished, lawmakers are gonna try to wrap things up for the year.

- Headline next week.

- Discussions about the National Defense Authorization Act, that's gonna happen in the Senate.

- Tell us more.

- This is, I mean, everything about whether it's salaries for active duty, whether it's funding for different programs, this is a big congressional bill that is talked about and it has yet to be passed.

It's been there for...

They've been doing it for the last decades.

- Headline next week.

- Candidate filing for the congressional races opens December 6.

I expect a lot of folks filing their paperwork.

- Nelson, headline next week.

- Biden announces diplomatic boycott of Beijing Games.

- Symbolic.

- Symbolic, but at least it's something to show that the U.S. is standing up.

- Okay.

All right.

That's it for us.

Great job, panel.

Thanks for watching.

Have a great weekend.

See you next week on "Front Row."

♪ - [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 is provided by NC Realtors, Helen Laughery, Mary Louise and John Burress, Rifenburg Construction, Stefan Gleason, and Jane and Van Hipp.

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

♪