- [Announcer] A North Carolina Congressman is interim Speaker of the US House and a federal judge blocks part of the state's abortion law from taking effect.

This is State Lines.

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

[intense music] ♪ - Hello everyone.

Welcome back to State Lines for this week.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me, my good friend, political analyst, Joe Stewart, Dawn Vaughan of the News and Observer, Michael McElroy of Cardinal and Pine and freelance reporter of Anderson Alerts Substack, if you have to search it, you'll find it, reporter and journalist, Bryan Anderson.

Welcome everyone.

Welcome to State Lines, Bryan.

If you haven't been on before, you haven't sat with, on the panel with me.

So, welcome to the show.

- Thanks for having me.

It's good to be here.

- It's a great, great week to have you here.

Joe, good to see you.

- Good to see you, sir.

Dawn, as always, and Michael, from now on your Mike on this show.

[everyone laughing] - I'm fine with that.

- Well, we have withheld talking about national politics for a long time on State Lines, however, eight Republicans in DC joined every Democrat in the US House and together they voted out US House speaker, former speaker Kevin McCarthy this week.

So, Representative McCarthy has been replaced by a North Carolina congressman.

There's the link.

Patrick McHenry has the gavel.

He is officially interim Speaker of the House.

Representative McHenry is from Western North Carolina.

He has served in Congress since 2005.

Joe and House Republicans say, or at least they said at the cable news outlets that they're gonna convene early next week to consider a permanent Speaker candidate.

Before everything gets really fun early next week, Joe, we have a house speaker from North Carolina.

Do we just take the victory amongst all the war?

- Well, you know, anything that gets the name North Carolina in the national news is good for economic development purposes.

People sitting around in states that are half as good as ours say, hey, North Carolina, we ought to check that place out and then we get another hundred thousand people moving here.

But Patrick McHenry has been in congress since 2005.

As you said, he got there as a young man full of energy and vigor and was gonna take over Congress one day and he fell in with some good older, tenured members of the body and learned the skills of being a member of Congress, has become a very effective legislator.

He was the Chief Deputy Whip when Steve Scalise, Representative Scalise, was shot in 2017.

Took over the duties and responsibilities of the whip and the Republican caucus and sort of distinguished himself for his capacities in that regard.

Currently serves as Chair of House Finance, which is a very significant committee assignment.

He's been very gracious in raising money for other Republican members of Congress, widely respected, and I think will acquit himself nicely in this somewhat awkward position of being the Speaker, but can't be the Speaker.

Not entirely sure what he does as Speaker, but I think principally will preside over the election of a new Speaker and then step back into the role that he's had.

- Well, he's learned how to use a gavel.

[everyone laughing] - I read somewhere he simply, just took control of the situation.

- I guess so, yeah.

- McHenry's known by legislators.

I think he, where's he from, Lincoln County?

Or somewhere out there.

Is there any tone at all in the general assembly from the, because they all know each other?

- Yes, I mean some of them know, I mean, there's people who have been around for a long time or come and go and it's, I guess like once you're in you never leave, sort of like "Fight Club" even if you're not in office.

But I thought it was interesting that McHenry, you know, pulled a very North Carolina political move of moving somebody's office.

So, I thought that was one thing about North Carolina that stood out.

- He moved Nancy Pelosi out, Micheal.

- Not just somebody, yeah.

- Not a Democratic member of the North Carolina House, was an entirely different story and I know where that closet is that that person was put into.

But he made moves quickly.

He made a statement even though we're in limbo as a US Congress, which I could say effective, that's a we.

That's the House, you know, for us.

Mike, your thoughts on a North Carolinian leading this charge right now through some, we got a shut shutdown coming up in about a month and a half and we need a House Speaker, whether it's a Republican of one different flavor or another, maybe even a Democrat, if everything breaks the right way.

- Well, that would have to be a lot of breaking for that to go that way.

- [Kelly] Well, it's broken.

- But, I think that the thing that that strikes me the most is that, and this may not even have time to play out but he was the, Chief McHenry was the chief, kind of like, go-between, between the far right and the Republicans and the others when getting McCarthy to speak as the Speaker.

He was the one taking these demands to McCarthy, so he knows what those demands are and at the same time, doing a lot of reading recently about it and in the last years he has been widely praised by even Democrats for his congeniality always willing to, GK Butterfield said he was always accessible, always talking.

So, you've got this like, yes, willing to listen, yes willing to, and also, the go between with the far right faction who aren't as willing to listen to anything other than the voices in their heads.

And so, whether that has a chance to play out in this next week, may not be but I think that's the interesting dynamic for them.

- Bryan, huge delegation of representatives, seven sevens.

You've got seven Republicans and that includes Mr. McHenry.

How does it balance out if you're a North Carolina caucus, do you rally behind Patrick McHenry, even if he wasn't your guy or you were more conservative than he or however this breaks, or you know, do you take this back home to your local district?

What do you do for the government of this country?

- Yeah, well, Patrick McHenry himself has said he doesn't want to be House Speaker.

He's made that painfully clear.

And recently, President Trump endorsed Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan for the House Speakership.

So, it seems that Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, that sort of further ideological right direction is one way to go, maybe more of an ideological center way with Steve Scalise.

And this just sort of reflects the internal battle that the Republicans are having right now within their party.

It took 15 votes to get to Kevin McCarthy as Speaker and we'll see how many votes it takes to get to a new one.

- Joe, with that in mind, if there's a new Speaker, if it's not gonna be McHenry, does North Carolina turn out, are we elevated as a state?

That's a weird way to say it, but by having an interim Speaker does he go back into an influential role to represent his portion of our state?

Or does he fade away as part of the McCarthy regime in the Republican caucus?

- You know, if you look at the Republican members of the North Carolina Congressional Delegation a lot of longer tenured members.

I mean, they've risen up in relative positions.

McHenry himself, as chair of a committee Congressman Rouzer, Congressman Hudson, Congresswoman Fox, they've all risen up in their positions.

Edwards is relatively new, but, we're well represented in terms of folks within the majority party in the US House of Representatives and folks in positions of leadership and responsibility that always enures to the benefit of any state.

- When you have your delegation so singularly in the positions of power in the US House.

- All right, well, another story was a federal judge who recently blocked two portions of North Carolina's new abortion law.

This actually happened about a week ago, however, the ban on elective abortions after 12 weeks will remain in effect.

The federal judge halted enforcement of the law, that requires any legal or authorized abortions occurring after that 12-week period to be conducted in a hospital and not in abortion clinics.

The judge also continued the halt to the law's requirement that doctors document a pregnancy in the uterus prior to prescribing an abortion-inducing medication.

Don, complex bill.

If you're not covering it, you're not gonna be in the weeds on it.

However, you pass a law, it gets sued, parts get thrown out, parts get kept.

Was that part of the legislative calculus, you think?

Take what you can.

- Well, I think with any bill, any legislation that becomes law, there's the big picture of, you know, we wanna restrict abortion, but then, how exactly does everything work out?

And that's why they already, Republicans already had to, you know, tweak the bill a little bit now.

I feel like there was always gonna be litigation, it was gonna end up in the courts.

And the criticism of it is that it's not clear from the physicians and everybody else.

So we'll see how that plays out as far as if there's some sort of change with the courts, the language, that sort of thing.

But there's a reason there are a lot of technical corrections on bills.

Nobody gets it right the first time they pass anything, I don't think.

- Michael, what do you make of a bill like this?

This is part of the culture wars of the early 2023, and now we're facing inflation.

Great jobs numbers for this week.

So there's a lot going on in this world.

Abortion in North Carolina, it's a law.

This didn't seem to have the static that we were hearing about early in the spring as bills were being debated as opposed to being passed.

- You mean static in the blowback?

- Being like just a lot of froth out there, tons of debate.

This is a court order, it comes down two provisions, the main part of the law stays in effect.

- Well, that's the two provisions for now.

Those are preliminary injunctions.

So there are more provisions that are being contested in this thing.

These are just what has to stop from now.

And one of them had already been, this is a continuation.

But I think that this speaks to a larger process.

This bill was unleashed two days before the final vote on this bill.

During the debate, during the few, I mean, it was one day of debate in the Senate, Senator Sawrey asked the sponsors about a lot of the provisions, including the one that had these diagnostic testing for medication abortion, these new rules.

And Senator Krawiec very willingly stood up to answer some of the questions.

And he asked about it, and she said, "I don't know."

And he asked about something else, and she said, "I don't know."

And then he asked something else, and she said, "Look, this is a 46-page bill.

I got it last night, just like you did.

I don't know all the parts of it."

And that speaks to why some of it was so vague, that a judge said, "Well, that's not gonna work," or why another provision was completely medically unnecessary, according to the judge and the doctors, who are filing the suit, and said, "So that's not going to work."

So it speaks to the process as well of people voting for a bill that they didn't even read.

And so, of course, there's going to be complicated mistakes.

- Whenever you rush something, right, there's gonna be, when it doesn't have that drawn-out committee process, you don't have time to make all those adjustments before the vote.

- And this has been discussed.

For decades this has been a policy ambition for Republicans, so it's not like, "Hey, two days, let's whip something up out of nowhere."

They have been thinking about this for a while now.

The drafting of this bill itself was very hasty, and lots of members didn't have a chance to read all the pages of this bill, let alone answer nuanced questions from people trying to just figure it out.

So I take that point, but certainly this is something that's been discussed for quite some time, too.

- And the last thing I wanted to say is that, these things, there was a large group of people that could have told them these things, and those were the doctors, who, months before, when there was word about this, more than 1,300 doctors sent them a letter warning them about this very thing.

So it wasn't like, "Oh, we didn't realize."

There was plenty of opportunity for them to realize.

- How do you define rushed legislation?

Just because you may you may take six months and write a bill for me, and you drop it on me the night before the vote, doesn't mean you rushed it, it means I have to rush to read it.

- Well, I think that the point that this has been a public policy objective of the Republicans and the legislature for a long time, I think a lot of consideration had gone into what the approach was that they hoped to take on this when the Supreme Court made the decision that undid Roe versus Wade.

There was a lot of public opinion research done on this, and it seemed like the consensus was that a majority of North Carolinians wanted some guardrails relative to abortion, and they wanted it somewhere between 12 and 16 weeks.

The problem is, it is a very complicated medical procedure sometimes, and trying to write that into statutes, that it takes into account every possible situation that a medical provider might encounter, does undoubtedly present a little bit of a challenge, whether the bill was drafted and debated for weeks and weeks or over the course of just a couple of days.

Anything involving an issue that really is perceived by some significant portion of the legislature as an issue of morality, but actually has a practical application within the course of the provision of medical services, is always gonna be a little difficult because the statutes can only describe what the writers of the statute can imagine could happen, which may not be everything that is possible to happen.

- Well, they didn't wanna talk about it for very long, right?

They wanted to get it out there because of all the criticism and the protests, and the less you talk about it, and just move it through, so instead of it being drawn out.

Same with the final budget, just shows up, and it's like, "Here's the budget, time to vote," you know, "You'd better read fast."

- And this is what happens when you have a super majority as well.

You don't need lots of dialogue.

- But why would a body who is going to write something that affects so many people have to base what could happen on what they imagine might happen, when there is so much evidence and experts who were kind of warning them?

And even if you kept, again, this isn't about the 12 weeks, right, this isn't about whether that's enough or whatever, but it's about how you do it.

There were people saying, "This is too vague, it's too vague, it's dangerous."

But why base that on your imagination instead of what could have been readily available at the time?

- For those of you in Raleigh, how long, realistically, do you need, even as a professional journalist, to gauge a big piece of legislation, assess it, and write about it or report on it in a way you're actually confident you've interpreted a bill correctly?

- How long do we need, or how long do we want?

[pundits laughing] - Well, how long do you need?

Because most of us are at home, and we're consuming your content, or, Joe, we're watching or listening to it.

How do we know?

How do you know you've gotten it right when they spring it on everyone, and there's a vote the next day?

- Policy is really complicated.

I mean, when I first started covering the legislature, it was overwhelming.

But the more experience you have, you learn what to look for.

You learn what the policy shifts or like who's behind it is a lot of like, what's the goal here?

And then you just have to read every single word because there's stuff in there that they're not gonna talk about it until you find it.

And obviously, like keyword search is great, in the budget anyway.

- But even that gets tricky because they sometimes they hide an idea in a keyword that isn't associated with that idea to a normal, like, to a regular way of thinking.

But for the abortion bill, I don't know, that found that one easier to read.

The budget bill, I had to read a paragraph 17 times to even realize I don't know what it says.

- What's the difference in reading a court order versus reading a bill?

- A court order is very, it could be very direct and there's a conclusion with a clear summary of X, Y, Z.

And sometimes with these fast track legislation, there's not even a bill summary to it for you to get, here's what you need to know out of the essence of this bill.

So that's the big difference for me.

- Yeah and now that I've got the reporters shouting at the clouds, Joe, let's talk about more veto legislation this week.

Governor Cooper used the veto pen for several bills, lots of provisions.

The word omnibus gets thrown around a bit.

But anyway, regulations for a natural gas pipeline.

Some environmental rules that vetoed that would allow that to be more easily installed in North Carolina.

One that I've been watching was a bill that would redefine energy definitions that would let nuclear power be boosted or considered as an option towards clean energy.

That legislation would've defined nuclear power as a clean energy source and it would've helped power companies like Duke meet carbon free electricity generation goals.

Duke wants to build these smaller modular based nuclear power plants, they say are quite high tech.

They put them in North Carolina, well at least one of them, it would replace coal and it would eventually replace gas powered power plants.

But the governor's veto notes that the current bill has passed by the General Assembly really seemed to him designed to boost power company profits ahead of using other strategies like energy conservation to meet carbon reduction goals.

Michael, kick this one off.

I remember Ben Sawrey, the senator from Johnston County, was part of this legislation.

He just hasn't been on to discuss the bill.

It disappeared for a while but renewable energy and then there's clean energy and there's a big difference there.

- Well, yes.

And but sometimes the, they can become very semantical and a real world effect as well.

But there's no doubt that nuclear power is carbon neutral.

That if all things considered it would hit, I mean even it's part of the Biden administration's push as well, the nuclear power, but it's kind of an all hands on deck approach to getting the carbon which has to be done if everyone wants to live.

But the issue, I think with that one, the Duke's got a simultaneous plan to raise rates.

And the raising the rates by a lot for most North Carolinians is hand in hand with this push to build these new nuclear reactors.

And so these nuclear reactors, according to several environmental groups, aren't as sure a bit as they're being portrayed.

That doesn't mean that they're gonna guaranteed to fail but they're super costly and they might not actually work the ways that Duke is saying but what Duke is going to do is drive up the rates.

So I think this one's a more complicated bill.

Like I don't know that there's a direct boogeyman in this one.

I would like to talk about the other one, the regulatory bill, if I can for a second.

- Go for it.

- So this gets all the one he vetoed.

So this bill is titled, "Regulatory Relief for North Carolinian Citizens."

So what are the regulations that are causing such a problem for North Carolina's citizens?

And one of the ones that is no longer, that was taken out in this new bill is one of the ways that the department of environmental quality can deny permits for hog waste lagoons or waste management, hog waste, waste management systems by considering civil rights legislation.

And so what this means is that it is going to be now easier or at least potentially easier if we want an asterisk, potentially easier for hog waste management companies to continue to make things much harder on the residents in there.

So the reality is that residents who live near these areas within a mile and a half have much higher increase of, or much higher rates of high blood pressure, kidney disease, asthma and breathing problems and infant mortality.

Infant mortality is higher in these areas, close to these things.

So we're talking about babies and that is what that regulation was there to try to prevent or at least try to address.

And so I just found it odd that it was titled "Relief from Regulations," when the regulations, at least that one was there to try and make lives better or at least stop the rate of decay.

- A lot of bill titles aren't what the bill's about at all.

It's just kinda how- - It's a 45 page bill too.

- Yeah.

- Also, by the way, sorry to interrupt, but also dropped at the last minute, two days before the final vote.

- The regulatory relief bill comes out every year.

So that's another thing.

Even if you agree with the regulatory relief provisions, how do you keep track of every little piece that's in there?

And how do you know that every little provision put in a bill is done for the relief of North Carolinians as opposed to a North Carolinian or a company?

- Well, I can get to that in the public records, portion of the budget there.

But yeah, I mean, it's a big issue when you have 45 page bills dropped with some provisions at the last moment.

But the regulatory reform bill, at least when it's introduced preliminarily, it does get a hearing.

People do have an opportunity to weigh in which is different than some of the other bills we've talked about.

But the bottom line that we see right now is Cooper vetoes the bill, Republicans have super majorities in both chambers.

It's gonna be overridden, likely, gonna become law.

And that's really the next steps from this.

- Joe, back to the topic they've dived through this bill, but you know let's talk about nuclear power in North Carolina.

They say it's high tech, it's modular, it's expensive.

Our rates are going to go up, saying this to the insurance man.

Are we down for nuclear power in North Carolina as a replacement for coal?

Let's start with coal and work our way to natural gas.

- Yeah, there was a big push for nuclear 30, 40 years ago.

And now the technology has changed enormously.

There is the capacity to have smaller reactors, producing large quantities of electricity but on all these issues, regulatory reform and energy generation, it's almost like a room full of porcupines.

I mean, everybody has a point.

I mean, we're trying to find a perfect balance between environmental protections, and what it takes for North Carolina to be economically successful.

People have an expectation, that when they flip the switch in their house, that the lights will come on.

Energy generation is a capital intensive business.

- [Co-Host] Sure.

- And, so, rates become a significant issue for any utility.

On regulatory reform, there is an intention to try to make sure the regulations aren't onerous, so that it doesn't discourage economic activity, while providing appropriate protections, for the life and wellbeing of the citizens of North Carolina.

But, it is something that goes back and forth.

And, there are interests, and competing interest in some instances, discussing and debating a lot of these issues.

But, I think for North Carolina to be successful, in the economy of the 21st century, we do have to keep in mind that we need that appropriate balance of generating electricity, making sure it's affordable, that companies want to come here because that as a utility is readily available, and it's not cumbersomely expensive to them.

And that things like hog waste and other issues that have to be regulated in a state that still relies heavily on agribusiness, to make sure that there is that appropriate balance.

- Don, you were hanging out at the general assembly this week.

Is there an appetite for coming back in to override vetoes, or does the governor get away with one for now?

- It's, one thing I noticed, and I don't know if they did it last session, but I noticed it in the House on Thursday, where they read what Governor Cooper says, and all of a sudden, you know, you're hearing one of the clerks say, "hodgepodge."

And that's not usually, 'cause you know, they're very, like, it's sort of an NPR tone of voice when you say things, and just reading what Cooper's veto message was.

And, anyway, so yeah, it's gonna happen on Tuesday.

Speaker Moore told reporters that the plan is, it's gonna be all Tuesday afternoon between the House and Senate, and they'll go back and forth.

And on the House anyway, I'm not sure about the Senate, there's just gonna be one senate, one voting session next week.

- Alright.

- And then, maps maybe at the end of the week, but no maps action until the following.

- And when there's nothing happening in Raleigh like that, and you're assigned to be down there, that is a long week to wait for something to happen.

The budget's in effect, Brian, near $30 billion took effect this week.

Interestingly, a lot of policy is in this bill, besides the spending.

It's a two year spending plan.

It's in practice.

So if you don't follow the budget process, lawmakers pass a two year budget, they come back into short session next spring, provided they go home at all this year.

And they'll tweak that budget in time for next July 1st.

Redistricting is the next big legislative work that's coming.

State House, state Senate, US House districts are likely drawn.

And then there are those policies in there that got all the reporters lathered up this past week or two, allows a legislative committee to access any organization, any company, Brian, any government agency that has ever, that takes government funding, your watchful legislative oversight committee can go in on that.

However, legislators exempted themselves, if they choose from open records requests by journalists and citizens alike.

I'll hand this over to you.

I think you said you've made open records requests to how many legislators?

- Every single lawmaker.

- Why would you do that?

- Just to make friends.

[laughing] 'Cause we have great relationships.

No- - Easier than sending Christmas cards.

- Here's a piece of advice.

When you tell a reporter they can't do something, or they can't access something, we're gonna annoy you to get it when it's available.

So, during this 51 hour period of time during budget week, they unveil language that really restricts records when it comes to redistricting, and it's sort of like talking out of both ends of your mouth, saying, you know, "We want GovOps to be emboldened, because we need transparency in all these agencies," while saying, you know, "We don't need transparency here."

And asking a lawmaker to voluntarily provide information potentially at their own expense is like asking me to run a marathon.

Like it's probably not gonna happen.

It theoretically could.

And even if it does, it's gonna be a long painful journey.

- Alright, this last topic, we've got about 20 seconds for each of you.

Michael, what do you think of...

The budgets in place, So now we can move forward towards redistricting, towards seeing how these policies play out.

And the media is very much in tune with open records.

- Yeah, I mean, I think the open records as you pointed out, they go hand-in-hand with the the lack of open records and the government ops that these are gonna be doing this simultaneously, and to call for transparency, at which I agree.

I mean, they did it for the North Carolina High School Association.

They changed rules before transparency, and then they changed the rules to make it far less transparent for themselves.

And they're already not transparent, and now it's gonna get even worse.

- Well they want the transparency within themselves.

So, public records are already a huge pain to get from anybody.

And it's not just the legislative branch.

The executive branch is a big pain to get public records from, and judicial.

But this is a lot harder now.

And the way it's looking, they can just, there's just no, no way for the oversight from the press, public, anything.

And, you know, obviously it's a question of a democracy.

Alright.

Joe, 20 seconds to you, and I gotta, I'll have to interrupt you, but hey, they've taken a side on this issue.

No non-bias there.

- No.

Absolutely taken, and having spent 10 years in state government and always had a healthy respect for the role that journalists play.

I mean, it's to keep government honest, to make sure that the things that are done, the decisions that are made, are fairly based and that there's information available on why those choices were made.

- The fourth estate.

- I totally understand that role, and it's an important role in our democracy.

It may be time for the legislature to become a little bit more sophisticated.

And part of the reason that they have this problem, may be that they're understaffed.

- And the crew in the control room is screaming right now.

Email your thoughts to "State Lines," @pbsnc.org.

We read every email.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you for watching "State lines."

We'll see you next time.

[majestic music] - [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.