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Standing at Asheville Regional Airport last month, President Trump suggested eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has so far contributed $316 million to recovery from last fall’s devastating Hurricane Helene.
It had already been an exasperating month for the thousands of mountain residents still displaced by the storm. Now, residents and local officials say they are confused and frustrated, wondering who will pay for Western North Carolina’s likely long recovery from Helene.
FEMA offers several programs for people seeking housing aid after a disaster, including the Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, or TSA, which pays for hotel lodging for renters and owners whose homes became uninhabitable due to the storm.
At the end of January, about 6,000 people were in TSA-funded housing in North Carolina. And while recipients have appreciated the multiple extensions to the program, that has also generated confusion about who was receiving extensions and for how long, Jessica Wakeman reports.
FEMA Extends Temporary Hotel Stays, But Not Without Widespread Confusion
Some people impacted by Hurricane Helene have been granted several more months in hotels, but concerns abound about messaging, access—and what the Trump administration plans to do with FEMA.
This Is Getting Out of Hans
The head of the University of North Carolina System told UNC-Chapel Hill trustees last month to stay in their lane—and out of negotiations around Tar Heel athletics.
“Instances continue to occur where members of the board appear to act independently of their campus’s administration in matters squarely within the responsibility of the chancellor,” UNC System President Peter Hans wrote in a memo to UNC-CH Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer and Chancellor Lee Roberts.
Such actions “create substantial legal risk to the University—jeopardizing the North Carolina taxpayers’ money by blurring the lines of actual and apparent authority when these athletic departments negotiate business transactions with third parties,” Hans said in the January 16 memo that The Assembly obtained through a records request.
Have a news tip for our team? You can reach us at scoops@theassemblync.com.
A Set Back for Griffin’s Election Challenge
Wake County Special Superior Court Judge William Pittman rejected Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to overturn his 734-vote loss to Justice Allison Riggs in last year’s state Supreme Court race on Friday, ruling that the State Board of Elections had not erred when it dismissed his challenge in December.
The decision followed arguments earlier in the day. Griffin, who declined to comment after the hearing, is certain to appeal.
The State Board of Elections maintains that it followed the law–and Griffin is trying to change the rules after the game is over. After the elections board dismissed Griffin’s protests, the case ping-ponged between state and federal courts. On January 22, the state Supreme Court denied Griffin’s request to directly intervene—though four Republican justices kept in place a stay forbidding the elections board from certifying the incumbent Democrat’s victory.
That ruling sent the case to Wake County’s superior court, where state law says election challenges should begin. Friday’s hearing kicked off what is likely to be a months-long process of hearings and appeals in state and federal courts.
Jeffrey Billman has more from Friday’s hearing.
What We’re Reading
TBD: Tuberculosis cases are on the rise, WRAL reports. “We are on pace for two consecutive years of increases in our tuberculosis after 30 years of decline,” said Dr. Nicholas Turner, an infectious disease specialist at Duke Health.
Gold Digger: NC Rabbit Hole recounts the time he got to see the billions of dollars in the Federal Reserve’s underground vault in Uptown Charlotte, which sadly did not feature a single sack with a dollar sign on it.
AG Gag: A bill Republicans filed last week in the state Senate would prevent Attorney General Jeff Jackson from joining lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s executive orders, NC Newsline reports.
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