Previewing President Trump's address to the Nation | Hour 1

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all of the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow dot com make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. I'm Donna King from the Carolina Journal filling in for Pete Calendar this week on the Peak Calendar Show. Glad to spend some time with you. This afternoon, We're going to be previewing President Donald Trump's comments the scheduled for this evening on elections. We're going to be previewing those with doctor Andy Jackson, who is head of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. He's got some details on that. Plus our own NcSP our State Board of Elections is meeting today, so we'll have an update on that as well with Teresa Opeka who's been covering that meeting this afternoon. A lot going on, a lot to look forward to we're all working actually toward that November election. We're going to be talking about that throughout the day today, plus a lot more so stick around. We've got a lot coming your way. But right now, let's talk a little bit about some of the headlines for the week. A North Carolina bill dealing with homelessness and public safety is now headed toward a possible veto override House Built four thirty seven, known as the Drug Free Zone Unauthorized Public Camping Bill, was vetoed last week by Governor Josh Stein. That legislation would create drug free homeless service zones and established penalties for drug offenses committed within those areas. Now, supporters of that bill. They say it was designed to help me move people out of unsafe encampments. North Carolina is certainly seeing a lot of those throughout North Carolina in some of our major cities and even smaller towns. But they say the House Speaker leadership says lawmakers will revisit this when they come back to Raleigh. Despite the veto from the governor, Representative Brian Briggs, Republican from Randolph County, criticized the veto, arguing that the bill would have helped communities address homelessness while connecting people with these essential service at stein veto the bill defended the veto, saying that the bill would make it more difficult for local governments, organizations, churches to help provide people struggling with addiction. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of twenty six to sixteen and pass the House by seventy three to forty, so they did have the votes to override should they decide to do that when they come back. In the Senate, no Democrats voted for the bill and no Republicans voted against it, but four senators were absent with an excused absence from that. But in the House, five Democrats voted for the bill and no Republicans voted against it. Four senators were absent in the lawmakers are scheduled to return to Raleigh in about two weeks, where a vote veto override could be considered. Also, a key piece of child welfare reform is included in North Carolina's new state budget. The budget provides six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for provisions connected to the Dominique Moody Safety Act. The legislation follows a death of Dominique Moody, a six year old Mecklenberg County girl who died in December after alleged abuse and neglect. Three caretakers were charged in connection with her death. A Department of Health and Human Services review found that Mecklenburg County child welfare officials missed opportunities to intervene. The review found four of five reports involving Dominique's household were screened out and should have been accepted for investigation. So the new budget funding that has been signed into law creates a child welfare case Escalation Team within the Department of Health and Human Services. That funding is five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in recurring money for six full time employees and one hundred thousand dollars and one time funding for training those child protective service employees and county social workers. The team will provide additional state review when a county receives a new abuse and neglect report involving a child in a home with a significant child welfare history. County Social services directors will be now required to notify the state escalation team within two business days after receiving a report. Involving a high risk home. The state specialists will review previous reports, safety plans, service provided, and any county decision. Several other proposals included in that House version of the legislation that were not included in the final budget include a public dashboard comparing county welfare performance, predictive risk modeling, expanded disclosure requirements after child fatalities, and additional documentation requirements during some home assessments. Will be following that story closely as it unfolds. There's also a federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina foster care system that's now before the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals. Plaintiffs in this case are asking appellate judges to revive the case after a federal judge dismissed it last fall. The lawsuit involves thirteen foster children and argues that the state's foster care system is in crisis. The plaintiffs say the children are experiencing placement and stability, staffing shortages, high case loads, delays in receiving medical, mental, health care, and education services. The case was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that adults who filed the suit did not have a close enough relationship with the foster children to represent them in court. That issue is known as next friend standing. The plaintiffs, though, argue that standard prevents Foster Care from accusing the courts because children in say custody often can't bring legal action on their own. The Fourth Circuit will now review whether the lower court was correct and dismissing the case. New studies show that enrollment in the Affordable Care Act plans have dropped in North Carolina. Federal data shows enrollment declines by twenty one point three percent between February twenty twenty five and February twenty twenty six. Enrollment dropped from seven hundred and seventy four thousand people to six h nine six hundred and nine thousand people, a decrease of about one hundred and sixty four thousand people. The decline was one of the largest percentage drops in the country. Nationally, more than two point six million Americans are no longer enrolled in ACA plans compared to last year. The data includes people who signed up, those automatically re enrolled, and those who paid their first monthly premium to maintain coverage. One factor cited in this decline is the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits, which helped lower insurance cost for some consumers. Another factor is increased government oversight aimed at identifying fraud in some of these enrollments. We're going to following this story and a lot more coming up on the Pete Calender Show. I'm Donna king Filly in for Pete this week. Coming up very shortly, We're going to have more details. We have State Auditor Dave Bollock is going to be here later in the afternoon. We also have Jeff Moore and economists. We're talking about polymarkets and predictive modeling, predictive markets for betting, and a new tax six percent tax, plus the latest from the State Board of Elections, and a preview of what President Donald Trump is going to be talking about coming up this evening. And housing affordability. Is it hard to buy a house nowadays? I know my family is going through that process with our daughter. And why is it? Why have prices gone up so much? It's not just a lot of folks moving into the area. Often it. Is just that prices are going up and there's zoning requirements and lots of other things. That are playing a factor in that. Kelly Leicester from the center of Food Power in Life, She's going to be talking about that and a lot more. All Right, For over a year now you've heard me talking about create a video. 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So if you've been out there, you're spending some time this weekend, make sure you take care of yourself and be aware that there are going to be some isolated storms this week, but they really aren't don't seem to be making a major impact because the rainfall has you know, just been sort of scattered. Charlotte area in eastern North Carolina would need about seventeen to twenty inches of rain in a one month period to bring us back from these drought conditions, and the likelihood of that, forecasters say is less than one percent. So you know, I think that we're it looks like we're going to continue with this for some time. We'll be following more of it as we go, and for the moment though, this really impacts food power in life right. Kelly Leicester from the Center for Food Power and Life over at the John Locke Foundation, joins us. Now, Kelly, thanks for. Your time, of course, thanks for having me. Great. Yeah, we've been talking a little bit about the drought. I know that we're talking about you and I are talking about housing affordability, but this drought has to be a big concern for folks, particularly in the ag industry. Are you hearing anything about that? Yeah, well, I haven't heard anything right off the bat, But with anything with droughts, obviously there's going to be expected shortages in yield, which when farmers are already struggling right now, when most crops are in the negatives as far as profits, go, it's going to take a huge. Toll on them, absolutely, and we'll probably see that at the grocery store. Let's talk about housing. Housing affordability is something everyone's talking about right now. We've got so many folks moving to North Carolina. Inventory is low, especially in our fast growing communities around Mecklimberg County, certainly around Wake County, but other areas. When you look at this problem, you've been doing some study about it. What do you think is driving the affordability challenges that we're seeing in North Carolina. Yeah, I mean I think we're seeing it across not just North Carolina, but in all of the states. Right now, it's a supply problem. We're simply just not building enough housing. And for years, I feel like there's always been talk about how do we you know, you know, what do we do on the financial side to make it easier for people to access capital so they can buy homes. Well, that's great, and all we need that people need access to capital. The only problem is this isn't the demand side problem. There's tons of people who want to own homes. The reality is there's enough homes that are affordable to them, and so there's finally it's kind of getting federal recognition with the Road to Housing Act, but mainly, at the end of the day, it comes down to local regulation and specific zoning regulations that make it difficult for builders to build. Sure, I mean you're talking about local zoning. That's something that hits us obviously at home for listeners who may not be familiar with that. How do local zoning rules affect the types of houses and how many houses. Can be built? Yeah, so zoning basically says that in certain areas, in certain geographic areas as only things like maybe commercial real estate can be sold and built right or residential. And then they go even further down into residential. Whether it can be single family, do plexus, triplexes, or even going into you know, larger apartment communities. So you'll usually find more you know, sprawl out in the suburbs and the more density in the cities. And that's because they keep these things restricted. Now there's a city city that does not have any zoning, and that's Houston, Texas. I'm from Texas and most of my family was reduced in so that was like second home growing up. Houston. Fascinating you You drive by there and there's just random areas with high rises. It makes no sense, but it actually is perfectly good sense because those areas that those high rises are located in are high demand areas. People want to live in those areas, and therefore they build in them. It just makes sense, and kind of it's kind of shocking that it's taken this long for it to get kind of the recognition that I think it's needed to get. Do you think local communities, local zoning boards are cognizant of the pricing of the housing as they make these own decisions. You know, I think they are, and I do think that some of that goes into play with it. But at the same time, a lot of the problem comes down to community issues, right, and so you don't want to upset homeowners and people who already live and own property in those areas. And that's where zoning becomes challenging, because when the zoning board wants to lose his zoning, that can affect neighborhoods, especially single family home neighborhoods. And if all of a sudden you have multi family home developments that can actually sometimes in certain cases, lower the value of single family homes in that area. So that concerns people, right, and so then you get the residents get involved. It becomes the whole process instead of it just being a developer goes the local government goes, hey, I want to build this, and they say, okay, that checks all of our boxes. You're good to go, right, which would be a by right approval process. Instead of that, they have to do a series of hearings and things like that, and community members can grow concerns about these things, and it can halt a lot of the process and make it more expensive to even build to begin with, especially if the land's already purchased. Right. Sure, sure, what you know you've written about Senate four forty five, tell me more about that, because it talks about adu's what I guess would be like grainy cottages or if you wanted to put a rental property in your backyard something like that. What would four forty five do? Yeah, fourty five. The biggest thing it would do is the ADUs. It also does do some stuff on like owner occupancy mandates, excessive parking requirements and a lot sizes and encouraging global governments to restrict to not restrict those things as much. And then another big thing it does. It would no longer make it to where you can say only commercial housing can go here or commercial development can go here. It would allow residential development to be made in commercial areas, which is great because that's where the jobs are, right. You want residential housing in commercial areas. It's a good thing, and a lot of cities have been doing a lot more with like mixed use development, which is where you have like I live in a mixed youth unit where like we have apartments on top and then shops at the bottom. Right, the whole North Hills area and Rawleigh is like that. All the apartments are like that, which is great, But yeah, that scporp PI takes it a little step further, really forcing the state, I mean the local legislator, legislator, but the local zoning boards to allow. For this right right and south End Charlotte, I think, is another good example of that. What about you know, we. Hear all the commercial real estate and office space, just the shift to at home. Work more remote work. What are your thoughts on that. Commercial to residential conversion? Is that possible? And do you see more of that happening? There's so much more of it happening, and with a law like this, you're gonna see even more of that happening, right And it's so that's the four point five had passed. It's simply that they're halted right now into amendments before that can actually get through. So probably I'm guessing by next year we'll see movement on it. But there's so much movement on this. I'm I mentioned earlier was from Texas and San Antonio. Comcast used to have this huge, huge headquarters in San Antonio. It's all been converted now into housing. It still looks like an office building. They kind of kept it looking the exact thames that people live there now. And I think you're gonna see more and more that there's demand for it, like across the board, I think, and we need those are structures that already built. Why tear something down and build something new and spend all this money We have already infrastructure that we can and renovate to make it accessible for residents. Very interesting, So five years from now, put it, get your crystal ball out. What would success look like for housing in North Carolina When we look at the market now with folks just you know, not simply not being able to afford to live where they work. Yeah, I mean, I think it's not just a housing thing. And when we talk about affordability, it's every necessity that you know comes under that light. So you know, food, shelter, water, electricity, all those things. So and all those stuff you know fluctuates in prices. Right, So it's like housing. You can look at key performance indicators of housing and say, well, yeah, now we have affordable housing, but does that mean we have affordable energies? I mean, we have affordable food, So affordability I guess, you know, as far as living is the bigger problem there. But going back, I guess a little bit more. To your question. In five years, I think what you really want to see are those those as far as key performance indicators, is housing supply keeping up with you know, things like population growth, income growth, or wealth grow, things like that, right, So you want to see you really want to see that how these apply increasing And it has been in North In fact, North Carolina between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four had I think some of the highest numbers for development in the country. However, that has not been enough to offset the tons of new residents we've had moving to the state right. Sure, sure, Kelly Lester at the Center for Food, Power and Life at the John Locke Foundation, Thanks so much for your time today. Very interesting, Thank you so much, Dona. President Donald Trump is is expected to reveal what he says is really big news on election security during primetime this evening. You'll be able to catch the speech right here on WBT. But joining us now doctor Andy Jackson from the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation. He is our elections expert. Thank you, Dan, I appreciate your joining me. Thanks for having me. All right, So, what do you anticipate from this speech because we don't have the details of it yet, but he's saying really big news and election security. That's been something that we've talked about here in North Carolina about firming up our processes and you know, cleaning up roles and that kind of thing. What do you expect from this speech. Well, I expect that he's going to be trying to make a big final push to get this thing passed. There's been opposition in Congress, particularly from the Democrats. There's you know, through normal procedures, Republicans need sixty votes to close debates, and there just isn't any crossover support on the Democratic side. And that's kind of normal for election bills. It's almost impossible to get any kind of bipartisanship on these things. So he's going to talk about the need for improving security. He's going to talk about the need for making sure that only American citizens can vote in American elections. Some of his reporters might be a little nervous that he might bring up twenty twenty again and allegations that that election was stolen from him. Those are allegations at about a third of Americans believe that, a majority don't, but about half of Republicans do. So I think he's probably going to come out with guns of blazing to try to get Congress to get this thing done. Sure. Now, moving closer to home, the State Board of Elections, of course met today and they've been working on election security and really rebuilding and trust and integrity and public image of the election system. And some of that does stem from twenty twenty. Tell me what the State Board of Elections is working on now. Well, they met today. It was a voting meeting. I had the privilege of being able to sit in on most of that. I had to leave a few minutes before they did because how to go to a meeting. But they set up. They voted on three different sets of rules. One was vainly technical changes on recount, and that one was not controversial at all. It was passed unanimously. There wasn't really much public pushback on that one either. The other one was on photo ID and there was a lot of tension over that one that ended up being passed three to two by party vote. The biggest thing was they were changing the rules for people who say that they don't have an ID, so they fill out this AFFI David, basically an excuse form about saying well, I don't have an ID because and if the board finds that there is evidence that that affidavit is false, then they'll have a hearing to determine whether or not they should accept the ballot or not. And the old rules that was what was required was unanimous vote by the board. This changes it to a majority vote, which I believe in others do including most of the board members, is in more in keeping with state law. The Democrats were really against it. Jeff Cameron one of the Democrat board members was laughing at times. It wasn't a happy laugh, it was more of a tense laugh. And the last one was on voting site rules. That one also passed on a party line vote because there are disagreements about what constitutes noise disruptions of voting sites. Very interesting now you mentioned these administrative rules. One of the criticisms that's been raised over the past election board was that they were making policy through these rule changes rather than making sure it aligned with legislation or state law. Do you think that's a fair concern and what is the new board doing to shift that perception. It's definitely a fair concern. This is something that I have been complaining about for years over here at the John Locke Foundation that the board was taking this and even worse, the board wasn't even doing this through a rules process. I mean, in North Carolina, there's a process for passing rules and regulations, you know, so there's a law pass the agencies will write rules based on the law, and then there's a public hearing process for those rules, just like we had today. But the previous boards they had relied on the executive Director, who is a person appointed by the board to basically run and oversee. The state Board of Elections would write these memos, they're called numbered memos, and they would kind of interpret rules, interpret law, and guide the counties the county boards of Elections based on those interpretations. Now, as far as like giving some guidance, that's great, But the problem is those numbered membos were basically purporting to be the rules and regulations themselves. So none of us went through a vetting process, none of us went through a rules or view or a public hearing process. And this is especially true on some of those rules on something that they didn't vote on today, but they'll take up probably at their next meeting on absentee ballot rules. We even had one of those rules about carrying ballots overturned in federal court because it contradicted the statements from the own executive director and contradicted state law. Very interesting, and I want to talk while we've got you here about the US the North Carolina's race for US Senate a Democrat Governor Roy Cooper and Republican candidate Michael Watley. Are you sensing a vibe shift? I don't know if it's new. Ads are popping up or we're just getting closer. What are your thoughts on that? Well, there seems to be one. The polling is we're back down in the single digits at least the several of the most recent polls that still Cooper ahead. But also I've been seeing the ads, So that's something I'm not privileged I get. I end up with access to all these ads all the time from all the candidates. It's in my feed. But the Cooper administration or the Cooper campaign is being forced to play defense on the crime issue. There. I saw ads where Cooper had to declare that he is against defunding the police, for example. And I think all that stems from the attacks that he's been getting from the Wattley campaign and others over that settlement that he had during the COVID era where they essentially allowed thirty five hundred I believe prisoners to get out early. And you know Cooper had been claiming while I was required to do that, it wasn't a quarter order, this was an agreement. Now, the judge signed off on the settlement, but you know other states actually fought this thing in court. Cooper did not. So it's going to be harder for him to deny that. Whatley of course has his own vulnerabilities, and so you know, Cooper still has the advantage. Most of the odd makers still state it's about an eighty twenty percentage point advantages, not in polling but in odds of who will win. So it's still Cooper's race to win. But it looks like it's tightening up and we might have a bit of excitement. Well, very interesting. Andy Jackson from the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, Thanks so much for your time today. Hi, it's a pleasure. Thanks. So if you are a state employee or you love someone, know someone family is a state employee. Some big news this week about the state health Plan and some changes. So the North Carolina State Health Plan and Duke Health have reached an agreement that will keep Duke Health as an access provider under the plan's new provider tiers system. So this agreement means the state health plan members will continue to have access to Duke's Health statewide network. They're hospitals, physician practices, and specialty care. The state health plan serves about seven hundred and fifty thousand members across the state. The new provider tier system will take effect on January first, twenty twenty seven, but now providers will be classified as preferred access, non preferred or out of network. You and see Health and No were included in the preferred category, but most WAKEMD services will now be classified as non preferred, although the current primary care providers associated with make medi will be preferred. It really addresses emergency worm services and those kind of services for members of the state health plan. Officials say that the emergency rooms still will be covered at wake MEAD across all the tiers, but they say transition protections will be in place for those like maternity, NICICU, cancer, and transplant care. Overall, state Health Pan plemiums are expected to increase by five percent in twenty twenty seven, and North Carolina continues to deal with some drought conditions. The Charlotte area remains under mostly severe and extreme drought conditions. High temperatures, limited rainfall, and increased water demand are putting some pressure on our reservoirs and rivers. Local water supplies officials say recent isolated storms not really made an impact because all the rainfall has been pretty scattered. The Charlotte area and Eastern North Carolina are in particularly hit hard. Officials say that we would need seventeen to twenty inches of rain in one month to eliminate our drought conditions, and the likelihood of that is less than point one percent. There's also a new lawsuit happening in North Carolina. A federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina's foster care system is now before the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs are thirteen foster children. They're asking appellate judges to revive the case after a federal judge dismissed it. The lawsuit involving the foster children argues that the state's foster care system is in crisis. Plaintiffs say the children are experiencing plate placement instability, they're staffing shortages, high case loads and delays, and receiving care like medical and mental health and education services. But the case was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that the adults who filed the lawsuit did not have a close enough relationship with the thirteen kids to represent them in court, so that issue is known as next friend standing. So now, the plaintiffs argue that the standard prevents foster children from accessing the courts because children in state custody often can't bring legal action on their own. The Fourth Circuit will now review whether the lower court was correct to dismiss the case, and a key piece of child welfare reform is included in our new state budget to The budget provides six hundred and fifty thousand dollars for provisions connected to the Dominic Moody Safety Act. The legislation follows the death of Dominique Moody, a six year old in Mecklinberg County who died in December after alleged abuse and neglect. Three caretakers have been charged in connection with her death. A Department of Health and Human Services review found that Mecklinberg County child welfare officials missed opportunities to intervene in her case. The review found four of five reports involving Dominique's household were screened out but should have been accepted for investigation. The new budget funds creating a child welfare Case Escalation Team within our state DHHS. The funding includes five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in recurring money for six full time employees and one hundred thousand dollars in one time funding for training child protective service employees, encounter and county social workers so that team will provide additional state review when a county receives a new abuse or neglect report involving a child in a home that already has significant child welfare history, County social services directors will now be required to notify the state Escalation team within two business days after receiving a report like that from a high risk home. The state specialist will review previous reports, safety plans, service providers, and county decisions. There are some other proposals in the House version of that bill that were not included in the final budget. We may be seeing more of those at the end of the month or perhaps next session. The lawmakers are expected to come back at the end of the month they're scheduled to complete some business. But these versions did not get into the final budget, we may see them bubble back up, including a public dashboard comparing county child welfare performance, predictive risk modeling, and explanded disclosure requirements after child fatalities. An additional documentation would be required for some houses. So when those. Lawmakers do come back at the end of the month. We could also see a veto override. You may have been following this. A North Carolina bill it dealt with homelessness and public safety could be overridden. That's what lawmakers are saying today. House Built four thirty seven, known as the Drug Free Zone and Authorized Public Camping Bill, was vetoed and it could be overridden. We'll be tracking that story very closely. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.