Vacation is over for North Carolina state lawmakers, who came back to Raleigh for a whirlwind day of meetings and votes Wednesday after spending the last six weeks doing little public work.
Both the state House and Senate held committee hearings throughout the day, and their late-afternoon voting sessions stretched into the evening. A top priority for GOP leaders is to finally pass a number of controversial bills that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed earlier this year.
The timing is important since many of them deal with public school issues — including several new restrictions on how schools can interact with transgender children — and most schools are just about to start back up for the new school year.
But it wasn’t just veto overrides that brought lawmakers back on Wednesday.
A number of significant new policy changes also were scheduled for votes in the House or Senate. They deal with weighty issues ranging from energy policy to election law changes and a power grab shifting influence over numerous state boards and commissions away from the governor and toward the legislature or other Republican politicians.
SB 678 would pave the way for more nuclear power plants to be built in North Carolina. It does so by deleting references to “renewable energy” in existing laws and replacing them with “clean energy” — allowing nuclear plants to be considered in the same legal category as solar farms, wind turbines or hydroelectric dams.
A recent state law...
Actor-politician Ravi Kishan has filed a first information report (FIR) against an individual for allegedly making false and defamatory statements aimed at damaging his public image and reputation...