Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Three days before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated he told his wife and a small circle of friends a story: How one night he’d stayed up late waiting for dispatches from the front – when he finally got to bed, weary, he quickly fell asleep. In a dream a deathlike silence surrounded him. He heard distant…
Do any “Freedom Conservatives” in the Republican Party have qualms about masked government agents snatching people off the street and locking them up? The only Republican I’ve heard pipe up is lame-duck Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who said at a Senate hearing yesterday: “I want to make sure that Homeland Security can provide…
For months I’ve been wondering about tariffs: Are they good? Bad? Do they make a cup of coffee cost more? Who pays them? Are they taxes? Back in Reagan days almost all my Republican friends said, Yes, absolutely, they’re taxes. But today we’re marching down a different road. Trump says absolutely not, tariffs aren’t taxes.…
We know about the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. We may know that the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 elevated “that damned cowboy,” Theodore Roosevelt, to the Presidency. But who knows about the fourth President to be assassinated, James A. Garfield? A new Netflix series, Death by Lightning, reintroduces us to…
Allies for years, erupting, Trump called Marjorie Taylor Greene ‘a traitor.’ Greene, looking frazzled, posturing herself, shot back that standing up for women who’d been raped didn’t make her a traitor – said she never expected fighting to release the Epstein files would come to this. Insult hurling rolled on – Trump said Greene was…
I missed that Jeffrey Epstein, in one of his emails, mentioned this Sherlock Holmes story: Back in 1892, a famous racehorse was stolen in the middle of the night and the horse’s trainer was found dead. To Dr. Watson’s surprise, Holmes pointed out a curious fact: The night the man was killed the dog that…
Federal agents – and fear – have descended on North Carolina. I’m old enough to remember when President Kennedy sent federal agents to protect Black Americans from racist cops and masked Klansmen. Trump sends masked agents – why the masks? – to terrorize people who look Hispanic. As Governor Josh Stein said, “This is not…
The four of us – from four political generations – fell into talking about when we first got hooked on politics. The oldest, in his 80s, remembered his father letting him stay up and watch the national conventions in 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower and Robert Taft battled for the Republican nomination and Adlai Stevenson and…
Jim Hunt finished his fourth term as Governor 25 years ago this coming January, and many North Carolinians today don’t know the enormous impact he had on our state. Colin Campbell at WUNC Radio – seeking “to better understand what he accomplished and what lessons his political career offers for today’s landscape in state politics”…
How do you get your news? Our statewide poll asked North Carolina voters what their primary…
Thom Tillis and Phil Berger fed the MAGA alligator. Then it ate them. Thomas Mills wrote…
Exactly 80 years ago, in 1946, Republicans took control of Congress with a simple message: “Had…