- [Kelly] Some of North Carolina's congressional delegation says their paychecks should be withheld if the federal government shutdown continues.

And the state wants a list of all books being offered in public schools and classrooms and teachers are responding.

This is "State Lines".

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[dramatic music] ♪ - Welcome back to "State Lines", I'm Kelly McCullen.

We're having a great time here as we kick off this show.

A great panel of friends, Dawn Vaughan with the "News & Observer" is to my right.

Hi Dawn.

- Hello.

- [Kelly] Public relations consultant, Pat Ryan.

- Hello, Kelly.

- [Kelly] Kimberly Reynolds of Maven Strategies.

- Hello.

- [Kelly] I guess you represent the Dems and the Republicans in some roundabout ways.

- Roundabout, yeah.

- That's the rumor.

And look who's here, Adam Wagner of WUNC Radio.

He's a capitol correspondent down in Raleigh.

News reporter, got a long title and he's a debut guest.

Are you ready for this?

- I am glad to be here, Kelly.

- You've got a big notepad there that when you entered the stage has zero notes on it.

- Note pad, we got a couple notes now.

We're good, we got some numbers.

- Okay, well, we know what we're gonna talk about.

Try to get to everything, there's a lot.

Normally we will try to stay local with this show.

However, the federal government continues partially operating under shutdown conditions because our dear Congress is stalling on a budget bill of any sort.

In North Carolina, that means paychecks for military personnel and federal workers are being paused with President Trump not promising any back pay, even if Congress does reach a deal.

Hurricane recovery funds, there's a debate about that.

Are they on hold, are some flowing through North Carolina?

Remains to be seen.

And this week four US Congress members from North Carolina requested that their paychecks be withheld.

Though Congress is allowed to receive pay during shutdowns.

Whole lot more, Dawn, about a shutdown that effects North Carolina.

But I wanna start with that story because how are we hanging out here in this state?

Hurricane relief, a lot of paychecks stalled, that can't help the state economy.

- I feel like paychecks is the biggest thing.

If people go to work, you deserve to be paid for it.

And now just this latest about that, the military may not get their paychecks.

You know, I think it's important to remember that not everyone is an officer in the military where you're up higher pay.

A lot of enlisted people live paycheck to paycheck.

Even officers, they are middle class too.

And, you know, there's, the private sector doesn't care what the federal government is doing if they want, you know, their rent, the mortgage, you know, all these other things.

So this is having a pretty big impact on people's lives.

And I think there's a reason that people complain about Washington, and this is really an example of it, that you're affecting people's paychecks because Congress can't reach a deal.

- Yeah, I think as time goes on and more people are impacted by this, pressure will ramp up on congress to come to some sort of agreement.

Right?

I mean, the question is, who is losing and who is winning in this messaging war?

That's usually what these things come down to at the federal level.

I'm not really sure why the Democrats won't agree to fund the government moving forward for a little while.

I think it probably has to do with Senator Schumer's primary, potential primary against AOC.

But in any event, I think the pressure will only increase as time goes on and people get even more sick of all this stuff.

- And Kimberly, I remember when I was a much younger person, we had government shutdowns and everyone would freak out.

And here we've entered a government shutdown, what, 10, 11 days ago.

And you know what?

It's just fed another cycle of news analysis in "State Lines" and all that.

It's like we just moved on as an American collective family here.

What gives?

Why are these shutdowns not scaring us like they used to?

- Well, the ones in the past, I mean, I think I read the sort of, the shortest one was about three days and the longest one was in 2018, 2019.

And that was 35 days, so.

I think, and they got the back pay and then they went and filed a bill that is, has a long title, I think G-E-T-A or something, I can't remember the name of it, where they said that they would fill the back pay.

So I don't think that would probably lead them to be worried.

But when there's talk about working and not getting paid for it and them not coming back and giving that back pay, I think that's even more concerning.

I mean, they deserve, I looked it up, there's 83,000 federal employees in North Carolina and 96,000 active military people.

And as Dawn said, you know, they're already worried about groceries, gas, the cost of housing when they have a paycheck, and to be asked to do this without getting paid, it's just, it's not something we should be doing and Congress should be doing their job.

- Adam, why would paychecks, I'll take Don's analysis as an experienced journalist, paychecks might trump this worry over Helene recovery funds either not flowing or at least in completely flowing back into our state during a shutdown.

- Sure, I think that you've got a couple things going on there.

One is just sort of rising costs everywhere.

Everyone's already pretty stressed out about groceries, electric bills, everything.

The other thing is we've got locally kind of concentrated pockets in North Carolina, going back to the troops.

I mean, Fayetteville's economy is Fort Bragg, Jacksonville's is Camp Lejeune.

Goldsboro to a large degree is the Air Force base.

So you're gonna start seeing it in those pockets more quicker, I think, than elsewhere.

- And Helene, they've already been asked, they've been on hold a year, and we were on here, I was on here a couple of episodes ago, and we were talking about the fact that the funding was already slow.

It was at record lows when it comes to what the feds were doing.

So the people in the mountains, this is just even double, triple the impact on them, and they are ready to have that money.

- Pat, what do you make of this deal?

It's when two sides can't come together, whether it's inside the Republican party in Raleigh or on a partisan basis in DC, people just walk away, and the citizenry who elected everyone get to sit and watch nothing happen.

Is nothing a strategy and a form of leadership these days?

- I think that when disagreements are not necessarily centered on a bonafide policy matter, which I don't think this shutdown Democrats will say that this is centered on extending expiring healthcare subsidies.

It seems like it's an important issue for a lot of people, but it seems like a fairly minor issue to shut down the entire government over.

So I don't think that's really what it is.

I think it's either something they don't wanna say or it's just it's a political struggle.

And when it's a political struggle, all that will move any party towards a compromise or a resolution is one side being seen as losing, another seen as winning.

Like you need the, for lack of a better term, the bleeding to stop if you're getting blamed for something.

And so you have to come to the table.

That's how these things result in stuff.

If nobody's paying much attention to it, it's kind of hard to see how one side ends up losing and winning in the long run, which may cause it to drag on even longer.

- Republicans control the federal government, so that's an important thing for the American people don't care about the political wins and losses between Democrats and Republicans.

People wanna get paid.

I mean, it's just, I remember the living in Northern Virginia, growing up and the government shutdowns.

Once it gets to somebody's paycheck, that's like such a tangible thing that nobody cares about your political fight anymore.

It's about paying your bills.

- Sure, yeah.

That's what angers and frustrates a lot of people.

I get it, the incentives in our system are, you wanna win elections.

And so when it comes down to it, whether it's a policy fight or a political fight, winning and losing that fight in the public's eye is the incentive for the parties that are involved.

- But on the messaging piece, I wonder if both parties aren't so much in their echo chambers right now that they both think they're winning the messaging war.

And I listen to the Left Wing podcast, the Right Wing podcast, and they're both convinced that they're winning this thing and I don't know.

We'll see and we'll see where- - But the loser is the American people and the people that are federal employees, that is military.

- Bring this back North Carolina, Kimberly, if this is a race going out, you got some clients coming in and running for these races that will we care in 2026?

About what happened in fall of 2025 regarding a shutdown, provided we're still not shut down a year from now.

- Well, I think we're still gonna care about the economic issues.

I think that's gonna be the number-one issue in 2026 is just where the economy is.

And I think money may be spent reminding people where it is in some of these pockets.

But again, the American people have, they have a [laughing] very slow, little, small attention span.

But I think when you don't pay people, people will remember that.

- I would agree with that.

State law is now requiring our North Carolina public school teachers to catalog and offer public listings of the books contained in the individual classroom libraries as well as the school-wide libraries.

It's leading some teachers to simply remove their many libraries.

Schools will be publishing the names of all books contained in the school library, every teacher's classroom, some teachers, Kimberly, say they don't feel trusted.

Social conservatives say teachers should be excited to inventory and share their book titles publicly.

And in the real-world sense, a teacher has to go and write down every book in their library.

So, you know, this is political, but that's a lot of work, even if you want to share your library with someone.

- It is, and I feel like often the saying of a solution looking for a problem, and that's somewhat what this feels like to me.

And you know, teachers aren't the villains here.

They're not packing their libraries with something.

Oftentimes they're using their own resources in these elementary schools to go buy the books for these children to have access.

You know, you remember circle time when you were little, and going around and reading the books.

They are already so overwhelmed.

And I think we've talked about that before.

And then now they have to catalog their books.

I mean, these teachers are not villains, they're not doing anything wrong.

And parents could come in to those classrooms if they wanted and just say, "Can I take a look at your books?"

And then they could opt their child out if they wanted to.

I think making them catalog and asking them to do more when the fight really should be about, are you paying them?

How do we keep them in the classroom?

And how do we give them the respect that they need?

I think this is unnecessary.

- Pat?

- I think for probably the vast majority of teachers, this is a frustrating and time-consuming process.

And it probably is unnecessary because they probably do just have books that nobody's going to object to.

And no, you know, second-grade parent can say is, you know, "Above my child's age level."

But the fact is, there are some books out there, we've been talking about this for years, that are steeped in, you know, racially charged ideology, for better or worse, and that are steeped in, you know, gender questions, and some could call it ideology.

Those things exist.

It's not everywhere, it's probably in very few places, but it does exist.

And I don't blame parents for saying, "I don't know if I want that for my kid," just like I wouldn't blame a parent for saying, "I do want to read that to my kid."

I just don't think that an elementary school classroom is the battleground for that.

I think elementary schools and probably middle schools are sort of like the lowest common, we're not gonna get involved in this battleground, we're gonna have [laughing] the books that nobody will object to ever, right, and let parents do what they want at home."

So I agree with you somewhat, probably a distraction for a lot of classrooms, but it's not a problem that doesn't exist, and I don't blame parents for pressing the issue on this.

- Adam, what do you make of the, one school system out there has come up with a compromise, which says teachers can go and pick any book out of the school library, 'cause it's already been cataloged, to build a mini library, is that fair or should?

And I can't ask you an opinion really, you're a reporter.

[Adan laughing] But teachers having carte blanche to buy books on their own dime and fill their own mini libraries in a public classroom, I know a lot of businesses wouldn't let you have your own policy for your own office, why would that be any different for a classroom?

- Yeah, I really don't know.

I think it's a tough one, I mean, it's a really tough.

spot to be in for the teacher, right?

Because you want your students to have resources available to them, and now you have this new kind of onerous thing that you have to do.

So, yeah, I'm not sure.

- But I mean, this is, most of the books are more along the lines of "Clifford the Big Red Dog", right?

And if you had a problem and to Pat's, if you're, you know, one of the minority parents that has an issue and you wanna look at it, I believe our classrooms, I've been a elementary school mom, I could walk up to the teacher and say, "Hey, I just want to, you know, I have some concerns.

Can I look at your book catalog," and it would be done.

I don't know that you needed a bill for that.

I don't need that it needs to be on the teacher's back to catalog and prove herself again as if they can't be the adult in the room and know these things.

- I think there's two things.

One, it's interesting that there's a focus on books and not about internet access in schools or on kids' phones, which has a lot more than in books, which obviously are being tracked now.

The other thing is logistics.

In elementary schools, at least in my experience, in Wake County schools, the students rotate when they can go to the library.

And it's a whole big, like it's all these moving parts of the classrooms, and the library has a certain number of books.

And part of the reasons for a classroom library of their logistics of you don't have to leave your classroom, a teacher doesn't have to get someone else to watch the classroom, all the kids are there.

You can give them all the, you know, the same book to read, you know, at once without leaving.

Or if they have some downtime and they can pick a book here and there, or the little kids, or where they're reading a book.

So, that's kind of the reason of why there are these libraries in classrooms, because you don't, you know, the flow back and forth to the school library isn't constant and as convenient, I guess, as having books in the classroom.

- Going to the library was fun as a kid.

- Don't take that.

- I have all kinds of flashbacks.

- Don't take that away from us.

- Okay.

Well, you know, great point.

And the social wars just continue.

They make somebody too much money and give 'em too much power, doesn't it?

The North Carolina Child Fatality Task Force has identified social media and artificial intelligence algorithms as potential challenges in their fight against youth suicide.

I saw this article on WREL TV, they were tracking this week's discussion by task force members who are blaming social media and AI for possibly sparking mental health problems.

Some members believe these AI chatbots are being leaned on by kids to give them emotional support.

North Carolina has banned cell phones in class, mandated social media literacy lessons for kids coming in.

Pat, what more can the state do?

I mean, the more you use AI and get used to chatting with it, it is a helpful tool.

It's in my household and it hasn't led me astray yet, but we're talking kids.

- Yeah.

So, on the AI question, I actually think, and I have two small kids.

I think that we're sort of in a place where we were with social media like 10 years ago, right?

We just don't really know how bad it could be.

We don't really know all the use cases that kids could possibly conceive for this technology.

But like on the question of cell phones and social media, I think we're certainly more advanced, right?

I think we're at something of an inflection point here, probably with the publication of Jonathan Haidt's book "Anxious Generation".

But like when my daughter's gonna ask me for a phone in a few years, I feel comfortable knowing that when I say no, there are gonna be a bunch of other kids in the class whose parents also said no, like the culture has changed on that.

Whereas 10 years ago, you know, your kid might be the only one in the class without an iPhone or without social media, if you said no.

So, like things grow and mature and the culture changes and policy follows that.

And I think that's probably going to be true of AI.

It's just gonna take a lot of time.

- [Host] Dawn.

- I think it's optimistic that, you know, it'll shift that much.

And I think because of, like I said, of being a parent and seeing this play out in real time, you need to like not wait 10 years to do something, because like someone went from a kid to a grownup, you know, in 10 years.

And there with AI especially like you really need to have, like, safeguards and parameters in place.

Don't build the plane, you know, while you're flying it, really.

- I just don't know that it's possible without having the experience of time.

Like, we don't- - Sure, sometime.

- Yeah.

- But, you know, everyone criticizes the government for taking forever to do things.

You know, the fact that there was a bill about cell phones in schools, that took a really long time for kind of that to build, and then schools having their own kind of patchwork policies.

And I guess maybe we could see similar things with AI, that it's a patchwork policy instead of, you know, looking at, I guess if you do have that, there's examples of what's worked and what hasn't.

But the phone issue, it's gonna take some time to make that, like, a larger cultural shift, and sometimes people will be dragged kicking and screaming for changes.

- I think it's also a mix of where the line is, and the line is gonna be very gray on what emotional support is, and then we're hearing cases.

there is a gut wrenching case about a young man committing suicide, and AI walking him through the steps, and his parents not knowing that he was even distraught like that.

And he has a whole conversation, and he had been talking to AI for weeks.

And I think if we are smart enough to build a system that can have algorithms that can get to know us and give us all this information, they could have suicide prevention, and really, like, once a certain amount hits the algorithm, that the police are called.

I mean, I think we could be creative when it gets really serious beyond and it gets suicidal and things of that nature.

- So, yeah, what you're hitting on there is kind of the problem with AI, where when you go with it with something emotional, it's kind of leaning into your emotions, and when your emotions are suicidal tendencies, and it's steering you in that direction, that's incredibly dangerous.

But kind of the broader issue we have here is we're just developing these technologies, right?

I mean, OpenAI is putting out a new version, it's like every six months, so we don't even really know what we're dealing with yet, and at the same time, we're acknowledging this is gonna be something that's gonna be a key part of the economy moving forward.

That just kind of seems to be an accepted fact right now.

And so you want kids to be exposed to that.

How do you expose 'em to one side of it and not to the other side?

I don't think there's a great answer for that.

- That's right.

- Because it's not real.

- Totally.

- Yeah.

- If adults can be fooled by this, I mean, children's brains aren't completely developed yet, you know?

- How expert is this task force?

I've heard it's been around for years, and in the last couple of weeks, though, some legislative leaders have said we should reign in these task forces, as they often get the wrong policy recommendations that bureaucrats will implement.

- Yeah, I mean, I think task forces and commissions in general are sort of a way to distribute responsibility and accountability for policymaking.

I think those things are probably rightly done in committees of the legislature that are elected bodies.

Task forces are sort classically viewed as the, "I don't know the answer, let's create a task force."

That's sort of the classic exception, right?

I don't know the particular expertise of this task force in particular, but that's, I think in general, you know, might be why policymakers say maybe we should start reining those in a bit.

- But I think with technology, a lot of times, we have been, to your point, behind the eight ball, and we need to stay in front of this one and force companies as they are building the tools to think through these things in real time versus getting behind and then trying to go govern them once they're already created.

I think that gets very difficult.

- But young people often find all the great parts of a new technology, and they find the worst, but they also find the best in it.

And it's a bunch of quote, "adults and squares," up there on these task forces making all these decisions because they're there to protect, you know, society, Adam.

How do we balance this out?

How do we use the human brain to attack the AI problem?

- I have no idea.

That is a huge question.

You need several more hours of shows on that, but I'll just make the point that young people will find every side of victim dodging.

Like if you put an age blocker up, a 13-year-old's gonna find their way around your age blocker every time.

They're- - Yeah, like, you can't.

- Totally, you can't regulate your way out of a problem that you don't even know exists yet, because it hasn't worked its way through the culture and the system yet.

I just don't see how it's possible without time.

- On task forces though, I think there's a political dynamic event.

- You have a task force?

[panelist chuckles] - No, I'm not on a task force.

I'm just saying- - [Panelist] We can change that.

- The reason for it, you know, people like, everyone likes a meeting, another meeting to go to or a committee.

It's political.

Task forces are something that the governor does a lot, you know, which is controlled by a different party than the legislature, and maybe they're not as amenable to task forces, or sometimes they are.

A lot of times they're bipartisan, you know, but I think there's a political element to why they- - Usually a PR stunt.

- And we'll conclude this PTA portion of the show, take it to your local school and all and debate AI and social media in the classroom.

The cell phone thing is, that was hot too, but that was a few shows back.

US Senator Thom Tillis is pushing back on wider spread use of National Guard troops in US cities.

What he's saying is he's just trying to understand some of the deployment decisions and whether putting troops in a town removes local and state officials from accountability for poor local law enforcement policies, and he doesn't support federalizing police efforts in Charlotte.

This is some skepticism that has been shared by former moderate Republicans.

Here's more.

- I get that President Trump wants to solve problems and he likes solving 'em fast, but I just don't think it's sustainable, nor do I think, is it appropriate to let local leaders off the hook?

- There you go.

Pat, is Tillis right about this, the senator?

If Trump steps in, in Chicago, is he putting a Republican victory and maybe giving a Republican victory to Democrats?

- Yeah, he has a reasonable case to make.

I think he's making two points, right?

One is like, what is the core mission of a deployment in cities?

Is it to be a defacto police force or is it to just protect federal interests like buildings or ICE agents?

Very reasonable question for a US senator to be asking in my opinion, right?

And then two, he's making the long-term point that if the guard comes in and cleans up a city for maybe a month or a year even, it's just gonna go back to being the way it was once they leave.

And isn't that really just diverting accountability and responsibility onto local elected officials?

It certainly is, but I think there's also a political win and opportunity for the president and his party in being seen as doing all that they possibly can within the confines of the law to enforce law and order and reduce crime.

That's a winning political message as well.

- But is sending troops to police inside cities within the confines of the law and sending the National Guard and doing these things, I mean, I think that's one of the issues in Chicago that the governor's talking about is where is the border and they're having a fight over can they come into the city because it's not a border issue and all of these things.

And that's, so I think he makes good valid points and he should be asking those questions.

But I don't agree that it's within the confines of the law.

- Well, so the play, it puts the mayors of Chicago and LA, et cetera, in a really tough sort of lose/lose position.

- The democratic mayors- [overlapping chatter] He's picking all cities with democratic mayors, and democratic governors.

- But you force them to either accept the National Guard into their city, which is defacto, sort of admitting that they haven't done a good job, which is not a win for them, right, or you're forcing 'em to say no, and I think Chicago had 570 murders or something last year, more than 10 a week.

That's not really a good position to be in either.

So it's sort of a squeeze play, I think, on just the purely political question of this.

- I think Pat has a really good point about if you do this for a certain amount of time, and then what's your, what's your exit strategy, which we see with like, you know, the broader military.

Anytime you go somewhere, what's your purpose?

Is this an acute issue that needs, you know, that has a finite amount of time of where the support is actually needed, that the city wants the support or the state wants the support, versus is this done because of what people see, you know, on TV and like, that's what they want the target for political reasons versus looking at, you know, what's the overall crime rate?

Is this a a problem that can be solved in a month in a particular place?

Or is it, you know, does the National Guard need to go like, live in a city for a while and like, don't they have, you know, other places where they're needed and who's making those decisions?

And you really just can't, like, you need to think longer term with with anything.

I think.

- Part of the problem has been that it hasn't been always totally clear what their mission is.

I mean, it feels like they don't even necessarily know exactly why and what they're doing there, specifically guarding federal buildings.

Great, beyond that, what are you doing?

So I think just figuring that out is gonna be important as we kind of move along.

- And are those people in the National Guard getting their paycheck and do they, I mean, you have to also, long term, do people wanna join the National Guard if their job is gonna be, you know, somebody's with, is it gonna be more thought out and planned as far as when they're called to do something?

- How do you cover this locally?

Because at some point some cities will believe, leaders will believe they need some help 'cause the police force isn't effective, but you're gonna have certain members on the right, because it's popular with Trump, wanting troops in certain cities just because that's just what we do right now.

How do you balance that as someone who would know the local police, but also have dealings with federal officials and state officials?

How do you balance this out?

- Well, I think, I mean, it hasn't happened here, but you talk to everybody, you know, like there's, you think ahead to say that, you know, Trump goes on TV tomorrow and suddenly doesn't like Raleigh or Durham or whatever.

And then so you, you know, talk now or talk, you know, meet as quickly as possible to the local law enforcement, to the leaders and look at these local, state, federal levels because, you know, local, state and federal governments all like, have a lot of differing opinions on how they want things handled, on really every issue.

- Well, and there was a slight flashpoint on this in Charlotte where the FOP wanted the National Guard and the mayor's been very clear that I do not want the National Guard.

So, you know, why are those opinions different and sort of is the National Guard willing to go as well?

- And there's a reason Tillis said, "Stay out of Charlotte."

Somebody's thinking it.

Great panel guys, thank you so much for being on the show this week.

More importantly, thank you for watching, "State Lines," Email your thoughts and opinions to the email address statelines@pbsnc.org.

We'll read your email, I'm Kelly McCullen and thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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