The Caucus: Voters Fight Trump Suit

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What We’re Reading

Shrimping Ban: A bill that includes a provision to ban inland shrimp trawling is making its way through the state House. Originally, the bill focused on flounder and red trapper. Proponents say it will help protect certain marine wildlife, while opponents say it has the potential to decimate the shrimping industry. Read the full story from WUNC. And read more on the shrimp business from The Assembly.

Raising Kids: A bill moving through the state House would provide legal protections for parents who wish to raise their children “consistent with the juvenile’s biological sex.” The bill says that parents who refuse gender-affirming care for their children cannot be charged with abuse, and that “a parent raising a child consistent with the child’s biological sex does not constitute serious mental injury.” Read the full story from Carolina Journal.

Litigation Financing: The U.S. Senate Finance Committee has proposed a tax on litigation financing, which is the practice of investing in lawsuits with the hope of earning a cut of the settlement. In a statement, Sen. Thom Tillis said, “Predatory litigation financing allows outside funders, including foreign entities, to profit off our legal system, driving up costs and delaying justice.” Read the full story from NOTUS. 

Workplace Raids: President Donald Trump has waffled on whether ICE should target farms for immigration raids. For North Carolina’s agricultural workers, there might not be a clear answer any time soon—and Republicans don’t seem concerned with that. Read the full story from NOTUS.

Offshore Drilling: Gov. Josh Stein is joining forces with South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster in calling on the Trump administration to keep an offshore drilling ban in place. Both governors cited their seaside economies as well as military operations near the coast. Read the full story from The News & Observer.

— Grace McFadden

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Thanks for reading The Caucus, a politics newsletter anchored by Bryan Anderson. Reach us with tips or ideas at politics@theassemblync.com.

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Voters Fight Trump Suit

A group of voters whose ballots Jefferson Griffin challenged last fall have teamed up with the state NAACP and League of Women Voters in North Carolina to fight a Trump administration lawsuit.

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state Board of Elections last month, contending that records for nearly a quarter million voters lack either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number, violating federal law.

That lawsuit was filed weeks after a federal judge rejected Griffin’s six-month quest to toss out the ballots of some of those voters in his effort to defeat Allison Riggs in the state Supreme Court race. The DOJ wants a judge to order a process that requires those voters to resubmit personal information within a short timeframe to remain on the rolls.

Citing “a seemingly endless loop of scrutiny” over the past 18 months “to confirm that they were (or currently are) properly registered,” eight voters and the two voting rights organizations filed a motion in federal court on Tuesday seeking to intervene in the case. 

Those voters “followed all the rules for registration,” the motion to intervene states, but their voices “are critically absent from this case.”

The DOJ has made similar arguments to both Griffin’s and what the Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party made in a separate effort last year challenging the registration records of 225,000 voters.

Those challenges built on a complaint lodged against the state elections board in 2023 about a voter application form and unproven allegations of double-voting. The state board acknowledged that some registration applications had been confusing about whether registrants needed to include a driver’s license number or the last four Social Security digits, and agreed to change the form. But the board—three Democrats and two Republicans at the time—decided not to purge the voter rolls based on that complaint.

Elections boards regularly remove ineligible registrants as part of routine updates. From the beginning of 2023 through August 2024, almost 750,000 registrants were removed from county lists for a variety of reasons including death, relocation, or a felony conviction. 

The DOJ contends that the recent update of the registration application forms wasn’t sufficient. The board “only took limited actions to prevent future violations from reoccurring,” and it believes there are still “a significant number of voters” whose records lack the information.

Some of that information could have been gathered during the 2024 elections, however. North Carolina has a law that requires voters in most situations to show an ID or cast a provisional ballot. And in late 2024, the Republican-led General Assembly adopted a law that moves appointment power for the elections board from the governor to Republican state Auditor Dave Boliek. He has since appointed three Republicans to the board that had previously had a Democratic majority, and then the board fired its director.

Sam Hayes, the board’s new executive director, told media outlets after the DOJ suit that they “will work diligently to ensure all voters are properly registered and have provided the necessary personal information to comply with state and federal laws.” Hayes also said he plans to ask Boliek to do a comprehensive audit of the agency.

The motion to intervene cites concerns that Hayes “has already stated that he supports the lawsuit” and plans to contact the DOJ to work toward a resolution. The voters and organizations seeking to intervene argue that ““any out-of-court resolution” could disenfranchise voters who through no fault of their own ended up on the “supposed ‘fix-it’ list.” 

“Instead of helping people vote, this administration is trying to block North Carolinians from having their say at the ballot box,” said Deborah Maxwell, president of the NAACP North Carolina State Conference.

— Anne Blythe

Let us know what’s on your radar at politics@theassemblync.com.

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