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      Thom Tillis won’t seek re-election after clash with Trump over ‘big beautiful bill’

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      Thom Tillis announced on Sunday that he will not run for re-election to the US Senate next year, one day after the North Carolina Republican’s vote against Donald Trump’s signature piece of domestic legislation prompted the president to launch a barrage of threats and insults – as well as promise to support a primary challenger to defeat him in their party’s 2026 primary.“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis said in a statement sent to reporters.“As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term”, he added. “It’s not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election.”Shortly after Tillis refused to support the massive package of tax and spending cuts, called the “one big beautiful bill”, in a procedural vote in the Senate on Saturday, Trump attacked the senator on his social media platform, Truth Social.The president accused Tillis of grandstanding “in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult re-election”. He also wrote that Tillis is making a “BIG MISTAKE for America, and the Wonderful People of North Carolina!”In a subsequent post on Truth Social, Trump threatened Tillis by saying he would meet with potential candidates to challenge him in a Republican primary in the battleground state.“Numerous people have come forward wanting to run” against Tillis, Trump wrote Saturday night. “I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America.”Before Tillis announced his decision Sunday to retire from the Senate, Trump continued to attack him on social media, writing: “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!”Tillis was one of two Senate Republicans, along with Rand Paul of Kentucky, to vote against the bill championed by the president. Dr Anthony Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during Trump’s first presidency, and once a key adviser on the Covid-19 pandemic whose support of lockdowns and vaccines made him a hate figure for Trump’s base.Trump’s attacks came hours after Tillis said in a statement that he “cannot support” the current form of the president’s spending bill. He pointed to expected cuts to Medicaid that he said would “result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities”.With Tillis out of the 2026 Republican Senate primary, a source “close to the Trump family” told an NBC News reporter that the president’s daughter-in-law, North Carolina native Lara Trump, is “strongly considering jumping in the race”.The retirement of Tillis, a swing state moderate, could make it easier for Democrats to flip the seat in 2026, with some in the party hoping to encourage former governor Roy Cooper to enter the race.A similar dynamic could be at play next year in Omaha, Nebraska, where the sitting Republican congressman and frequent Trump critic Don Bacon has reportedly decided that he will not run for re-election to the House.Trump has backed primary challenges against Republicans who clashed with him. Notably, he endorsed Harriet Hageman’s successful push to unseat Wyoming’s former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who served on a House congressional committee that investigated Trump supporters’ deadly US Capitol attack after he lost the 2020 presidential election.Trump’s team also recently launched a group to unseat Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, who opposed the US’s 22 June strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. Massie also formed an alliance with the California Democratic congressman Ro Khanna to introduce a war powers resolution meant to “prohibit involvement in Iran” as well as Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”.Chris LaCivita, senior Trump political adviser, has confirmed that he and Tony Fabrizio, another Trump adviser, would run an anti-Massie Super political action committee (Pac).Trump’s criticism of Tillis came as the Senate voted 51-49 in favor of passing a motion to advance the budget bill. It must now clear a formal Senate vote and be returned to the lower House for approval – which Trump wants done before the July 4th holiday.The legislation is a stuffed hamper of Republican priorities – making tax breaks from Trump’s first presidency permanent, and removing taxes on tips, to be paid for in part with cutbacks to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy investments. The bill also includes $175bn in additional funding for immigration enforcement, to implement the president’s mass deportation project. More

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      An Atmospheric River Brings Flooding Risks to the Mid-Atlantic

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      Forecasters warned of flash flooding through midweek, including areas of North Carolina still battered by Hurricane Helene.A slow-moving storm system that’s been called an atmospheric river is poised to deliver bouts of heavy rain across the Mid-Atlantic over the next few days, increasing the risk of flash floods.Forecasters expressed concern for areas where the ground is especially vulnerable in North Carolina. David Roth, a meteorologist at the Weather Prediction Center, said the state has been particularly at risk since Hurricane Helene.“Helene just made everything worse,” he said. “There were some landslides in western North Carolina from it. It takes a while to recover from a tropical cyclone. So their ground is more sensitive.”Mr. Roth said North Carolina’s complex terrain was another factor of concern.“They have a lot of up and down variation,” he said. “Even without Helene, almost every time it rains moderately, to have the mountains, basically you get these small waterfalls.”The Weather Prediction Center has issued a Level 2 out of 4 risk for excessive rainfall, potentially leading to flash flooding across eastern North Carolina, eastern Virginia, Maryland, eastern West Virginia and extending into central and southern Pennsylvania through Wednesday.Flood watches have been issued across these areas through late Tuesday.Rainfall totals were expected to range between one and three inches, and rain may fall at a rate of one to two inches an hour. Forecasters anticipated the intense rain to develop by late Tuesday morning, fueled by daytime warming.The Weather Prediction Center also noted that the hills and mountains stretching from southern Pennsylvania through Virginia could receive additional rainfall because of the way the air is being pushed up the slopes. Recent rainfall has saturated the ground in this region, further elevating the risk of flash flooding.The storm has brought repeated rounds of heavy rain to the Southeast since last week. Its slow-moving nature and a continuous feed of moisture from the Gulf and Atlantic are the main risk factors for flash floods.Forecasters have called this an atmospheric river, a term more commonly associated with the steady streams of moisture that soak the West Coast but that also describes patterns responsible for rain in the East.“You can call any warm conveyor belt circulation around a nontropical low an atmospheric river,” said Mr. Roth, adding that such systems are especially concerning when they stall.“This at least will show some progression,” he said. “It won’t be as bad as some of the multiday heavy rain events that the mountains of California can sometimes get.”The system is expected to reach the Great Lakes by Wednesday, when thunderstorms will most likely become more scattered and less intense. However, a lower-level risk for flash flooding, 1 out of 4, was expected across parts of the Carolinas and into southern Pennsylvania through Thursday. More

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      Face to Face With an Alligator? Here’s What to Do

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      On May 6, an alligator thrashed and tipped over a couple’s canoe in Central Florida where it attacked a woman and killed her.The death on May 6 of a Florida woman who was attacked by an 11-foot alligator that tipped over her canoe served as a reminder that, while alligator attacks on humans are “extremely rare,” as a state wildlife official said, they do happen, sometimes with fatal results.“This serves as a somber reminder of the powerful wildlife that share our natural spaces,” said Roger Young, the executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.Florida had an average of eight unprovoked alligator bites a year over the 10-year period that ended in 2022, according to the commission. Many of them were serious enough to require medical attention.The commission has been urging people to exercise caution in or near the water during alligator mating season, which runs from early April to June. The risk of an attack is higher, it said, because alligators tend to be more aggressive, active and visible during this time.The agency and other wildlife commissions offered these tips for avoiding or staying safe around the reptiles, which can grow up to 15 feet long.Where are they?Alligators can be found from central Texas eastward to North Carolina, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Will a disputed North Carolina race push defeated candidates to contest results?

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      A disputed North Carolina state supreme court race that took nearly six months to resolve revealed a playbook for future candidates who lose elections to retroactively challenge votes, observers warn, but its ultimate resolution sent a signal that federal courts are unlikely to support an effort to overturn the results of an election.Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last November out of about 5.5m cast. But for months afterwards, Griffin waged an aggressive legal fight to get 65,000 votes thrown out after the election, even though those voters followed all of the rules election officials had set in advance.The effort was largely seen as a long shot until the North Carolina court of appeals accepted the challenge and said more than 60,000 voters had to prove their eligibility, months after the election, or have their votes thrown out. The Republican-controlled North Carolina supreme court significantly narrowed the number of people who had to prove their eligibility, but still left the door open to more than 1,000 votes being tossed.However, Judge Richard Myers II, a conservative federal judge appointed by Donald Trump, halted that effort on 5 May and ordered the North Carolina state board of elections to certify the race. “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” he wrote in his ruling. Griffin shortly after said he would not appeal against the election and conceded the race.The North Carolina episode marked the most aggressive push by a Republican to overturn an election since Donald Trump’s blunt push to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race. While both efforts were unsuccessful, the North Carolina state court’s embrace of such a brazen effort to disenfranchise voters after an election could set the stage for another candidate to try the same thing.“The damage to future North Carolina elections has already been done,” Bryan Anderson, a North Carolina reporter who authors the Substack newsletter Anderson Alerts, warned.View image in fullscreenThe North Carolina judges who had ruled in favor of Griffin, Anderson wrote, “have issued decisions paving the way for retroactive voter challenges. It’s a view that can’t be put back in a box and stands to create little incentive for candidates to concede defeat in close elections going forward.“There’s now also precedent for wrongly challenging voters who followed all rules in place at the time of an election and leaving them without any means to address concerns with their ballots,” he added.Although the North Carolina state board of elections was not willing to entertain Griffin’s challenges in the future this time around, North Carolina Republicans wrestled control of the state elections board from Democrats, and might be more willing to entertain efforts to disenfranchise voters.Richard Hasen, an election law scholar at the University of California Los Angeles said the episode sent “two conflicting signals, and it’s hard to know which one is going to dominate”.On the one hand, he said Donald Trump has created an atmosphere in which Republicans are “increasingly willing to believe” elections are being stolen and embrace efforts to overturn them.“On the other hand, the fact that you have pushback, at least from the federal courts, should give some people pause,” he said.Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said he believed the saga “closed the door” to similar challenges in the future.“Certainly it is a shame that it took six months to get here, but the end result here is a reaffirmation of the fact that the federal courts aren’t going to stand for changing the rules for an election after it’s been run,” he said. “Will other people try this? Maybe. But I think the lesson that should be learned from this is actually this won’t work.”But Griffin’s efforts may have “only failed because the federal courts that oversee North Carolina happen to be free of partisan corruption”, Mark Stern, a legal reporter, wrote in Slate.“But what if a Republican candidate loses by a hair in, say, Texas, where state and federal courts are badly tainted by GOP bias,” he wrote. “Griffin has laid out the blueprint for an election heist in such a scenario, with Scotus standing as the lone bulwark against an assault on democracy.”Although Republicans have been responsible for bringing election denialism into the mainstream in recent years, Benjamin Ginsberg, a well-respected Republican election lawyer who worked on George W Bush’s team during the Florida recount in 2000, said the legal strategy Griffin deployed was essentially what Al Gore tried to do.“That strategy has not worked, which is not to say somebody won’t try it again. Because history would teach you that candidates who lose narrow races, try everything. Throw it on the wall and see what sticks,” he said. More

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      Head Start avoids Trump’s cuts, but advocates are ready to defend it: ‘There’s too much good in this’

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      Tanya Stanton felt a sense of relief when she heard last week that the Trump administration seems to have reversed course on eliminating the Head Start early education program. She directs early learning programs at You Thrive, a Florida non-profit that provides Head Start services to approximately 1,100 children in the central part of the state.On Friday, the Trump administration released an updated “skinny budget”, which lays out the executive office’s discretionary spending priorities. It doesn’t contain a proposal to shut down Head Start, as mentioned in an administration memo obtained by the Associated Press in April. And that means thousands of families can breathe easier; the program served 833,000 low-income students nationwide in fiscal year 2022.Relief, however, does not mean that Stanton wants to lessen the pace of the advocacy that followed the announcement. “If anything, this has taught us that you can’t sit idle,” she said. Too much is at stake.Florida currently has over 45,000 children enrolled in 860 Head Start sites, the third highest number of students in the country behind California and Texas. In 2024, it received over $544m in federal funds. The budget may no longer target Head Start funding, but the administration closed half of the program’s 10 regional offices and federal funding freezes have affected its programs, and it does propose eliminating other programs that Head Start families rely upon, including preschool development grants and community block grants.“Until Congress passes and the president signs a final funding bill, we urge all Head Start supporters to continue advocating for the preservation of this vital program,” said Wanda Minick, Florida Head Start Association’s executive director.View image in fullscreenFor You Thrive’s Stanton, it has been a surprise to realize how little many Americans understand the full impact and scope of the program. Head Start has served 39 million children and families since its inception in 1965, according to government statistics. At its most basic level, Head Start provides free childcare in a nation where households can pay more on average for childcare than on their housing. Access to childcare has a major economic impact on families and communities, since a US Chamber of Commerce study finds that states can lose up to $1bn a year when parents and guardians can’t find or afford childcare. That is not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Head Start employees, whose possible job losses would also have ripple effects on their households and communities.Head Start is actually multiple programs that do much more than education and childcare. Early Head Start is for infants to three-year-olds, and its staff work on parenting skills with families one-on-one. Children also receive medical care such as dental, vision and mental health screenings. Head Start serves kids from ages three to five, and there’s also a Migrant Head Start for children of agricultural workers.Building stronger familiesDoing away with Head Start would have immediate effects for affected families and their greater communities, but could also have long-term – even generational – consequences, said child and family policy expert Elliot Haspel, author of Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It. He noted a 2022 study showing that the children of Head Start participants were more likely to graduate high school and enter college; less likely to be teen parents and enter the criminal justice system; and had higher self-esteem – all of which translated to a 6% to 11% increase in wages.In her book A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi’s Black Freedom Struggle, Emory University historian Crystal R Sanders examined the impact Head Start had on economic opportunity in civil rights-era Mississippi. Through the Child Development Grant of Mississippi (CDGM), which ran from 1965-68, “federal money was going directly into the hands of working-class black people, something that had never happened in the state of Mississippi”, Sanders said.CDGM parents had the opportunity to work and go back to school. Many earned a GED or high-school equivalency, and some pursued college degrees, which resulted in better-paying jobs and even home ownership. “Head Start gave them a leg-up, too,” Sanders said. “That’s still true today.”For Lee Ann Vega, education manager at You Thrive, threats to Head Start are not just devastating – they’re personal. “It makes me sad for not only my families, but it makes me so sad for the children,” she said.Vega, 51, has Head Start to thank not only for a job but also for setting her on the right path in life. She and her brother were enrolled in Head Start after her mother abandoned the family due to substance abuse, and her father was working three jobs. The support she received inspires her passion for helping other children.“There’s so many days that I wake up and I thank God for allowing me to be a part of this process. Because Head Start works,” she said.Stanton of You Thrive said: “We are here to help the families achieve self-sufficiency.” To achieve this, staff work one-on-one with families to establish personalized goals. For some families, it means locating temporary or permanent housing. For some, it means entering higher education or learning new technical skills.View image in fullscreen“Some of them may not even know how to navigate on a laptop or computer,” Stanton said.Sometimes this leads to a job at Head Start itself, where former parents make up more than 20% of the program’s workforce. And while childcare as a whole pays low wages, Stanton noted that Head Start’s regulations, in a change made under the Biden administration, require that teachers earn as much as local public preschool or kindergarten teachers.“Head Start is an economic boon for communities, whether it’s the jobs it creates at those centers or the jobs that allow Head Start parents to work,” said Sanders, the Emory historian.The Trump administration budget proposal from April stated that eliminating Head Start aligned with its “goals of returning control of education to the states and increasing parental control”. That argument, Sanders said, “would suggest that they are actually not familiar with Head Start because Head Start prioritizes parental involvement”. Head Start standards require each agency to include parents on policy councils that decide or approve everything from enrollment and curriculum criteria to staffing.Tocra Waters is co-president of the policy council at Verner Early Learning Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where her three-year-old son Sincere has been enrolled in the county’s only Early Head Start program since the summer of 2023.The program provided crucial support at an unsettled time in her life. Waters and her two children had transitioned to a new home after spending time in a shelter, where Waters had gone after leaving an abusive partner. Sincere was “closed off” around people he didn’t know, she said.In home-based visits, Waters learned how to set boundaries and rules for Sincere, while he learned colors and improved his motor skills. Now in a classroom at Verner, Sincere has made friends and interacts more with others in all settings. “He’ll say, ‘Hi, morning, have a nice day,’ and it just melts my heart,” Waters, 32, said.Waters has seen her own confidence increase through her participation in the policy council. She values “that opportunity to be able to bring suggestions to the table … being an African American or a Black woman, in spaces, it seemed like we were not heard at times,” she said. She trusts Verner to care for her son and said its services “allowed me to be able to provide for my kids and still chase my dreams”.A future without funding?Verner, a non-profit center, received $3.2m, or 60% of its $5.3 operating budget this year from Head Start funding to support 139 children. Although the administration’s plans to eliminate Head Start funding gave CEO Marcia Whitney “heart palpitations”, she noted that “we as an organization would not cease to exist” if funding disappeared.However, they would start charging tuition for many of its programs, a move that would price out most of their Early Head Start families and force some to leave their jobs to stay at home with their children.The situation is far more critical for centers like those run by You Thrive Florida, where 98% of their funding comes from Head Start; the rest comes from the United Way and the state.While the Trump administration said eliminating Head Start would allow state and local governments to have control over education, Haspel said “states are absolutely not prepared to make that kind of shift”. He pointed out that states struggled to distribute pandemic stabilization grants to childcare programs because they lacked the staff and technological infrastructure to transfer funds as quickly and easily as the federal government.According to Minick, Florida would need to invest $688m to replace Head Start services. Florida already has its own version of Early Head Start, the School Readiness program. But it has stricter eligibility requirements; parents must work up to 20 hours a week and contribute co-pays. Minick estimates that those rules mean that only 13,000 of the more than 40,000 students in Head Start could now enroll (the state’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program currently has no waiting list). And Florida’s legislature is considering slashing its funding for state-run early learning programs by up to 8%.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreenFor Sanders, the question is less whether the state governments can administer these programs but whether they are willing to do so, especially in states with a history of educational and racial segregation. “Historically, when we have left complete control of education to states, that has created inequality,” she said. When the CDGM received federal funding as one of the nation’s first Head Start programs, she noted, “the segregationist governor of Mississippi could not take away money from working-class Black people”.Even with an annual budget of $12bn, Head Start at best serves half of eligible children. “I don’t envision Americans truly saving any money by doing away with Head Start,” because it is so underfunded, Sanders said.Because the program has enjoyed bipartisan support since its inception, Haspel “would be somewhat surprised” if Congress agreed to the administration’s initial request to eliminate it completely. The American Civil Liberties Union sued the government on 28 April on behalf of a coalition of Head Start providers and parents, alleging that the executive branch does not have the power to impact Head Start’s funding without congressional approval.Stanton, for one, is hopeful. Longtime Head Start staff across the nation – people who have worked for the program for 30 or 40 years – told her that they have experienced tough moments like this before, though perhaps not of this magnitude.“I’m just a believer. I’m like, there’s too much good in this,” she said. More

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      Jefferson Griffin in N.C. Supreme Court Race Concedes Defeat

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      Three counts had showed that the incumbent, a Democrat, won the election last fall. But for months, Judge Jefferson Griffin tried to reverse his loss through the courts.A six-month battle over a North Carolina Supreme Court seat ended on Wednesday when the Republican challenger, who had embarked on an extraordinary effort to throw out thousands of votes, conceded the race.The challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, said in a statement that he would not appeal a federal court ruling issued on Monday that ordered the state elections board to certify the victory for the Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs.Justice Allison Riggs spoke at a rally with voters to protest efforts by her opponent, Judge Jefferson Griffin, to overturn the election results, in Raleigh, N.C., last month.Cornell Watson for The New York Times“While I do not fully agree with the District Court’s analysis, I respect the court’s holding — just as I have respected every judicial tribunal that has heard this case,” Mr. Griffin said. “I will not appeal the court’s decision.”Two recounts had affirmed that Justice Riggs won the race by a margin of 734 votes out of the more than 5.5 million ballots that were cast. The results of the race are the last in the nation to be certified from the 2024 election.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      North Carolina helps kids earn college degrees in high school. It’s a lifeline for immigrant families

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      Daniel is a high school senior in rural North Carolina. Soon, he will graduate with a high school diploma, an associate degree and a paralegal certification from a local community college. He’s just 17, but he’ll be able to apply for positions at law firms and begin earning an almost $50,000 salary straight out of high school.“The early college program really set me up for success because even though I’m young, I’ll be able to help financially support my family,” said Daniel, a first-generation Salvadorian American who is only using his first name to protect undocumented family members. “I’ve done all of this because of support from my mother and family. I owe everything I’ve accomplished to them and I want to give back.”It’s been a long road for Daniel, who was accepted into a competitive Cooperative Innovative high school while still in middle school. These small, public high schools are located on North Carolina community college campuses, and they enable teens to simultaneously work toward completion of a high school diploma and an associate degree. It’s one of three paths that eligible North Carolina high school students can take as part of Career and College Promise (CCP): a free, statewide dual enrollment program established by the North Carolina state legislature in 2011, and that also facilitates college transfer or further technical education. The program helped Daniel get ahead of the curve, and so far it’s paid off. The teenager was just accepted into Vanderbilt University.According to North Carolina educators who spoke to the Guardian, dual enrollment is one of the state’s best kept secrets – especially for first-generation Latino students like Daniel.And because CCP is open to all qualified high school students, the program offers an extraordinary benefit to undocumented young people. As college students, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most financial aid and otherwise considered “non-residents”, requiring them to pay out-of-state tuition at more than double the cost to residents. However, undocumented high school students participating in dual enrollment can attend up to four years of community college free of charge.But thanks to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant vision for the US, students from immigrant families are now afraid – and so too are North Carolina community college educators and administrators, who fear their schools will be targeted for their efforts to extend educational opportunities to Latino communities. For safety reasons, most of the students, educators and administrators who spoke to the Guardian chose to remain anonymous.Engines of equity and accessLatinos have been the fastest growing demographic in North Carolina since the 1990s, with young Latino citizens in particular accounting for much of the growth. Many of these young people are the US citizen children of immigrants or come from mixed-status families where only some family members have authorization to be in the US.But even with 30 years to adjust to shifting demographics, the education system in North Carolina was largely ill-equipped to serve Latino students – especially in rural communities where a large percentage of the state’s Latino population resides.One rural community college staff administrator responsible for Latino engagement has worked tirelessly over the last few years to reach students like Daniel, whom they helped usher through College and Career Promise. They see it as part of their job to spearhead efforts to bring bilingual programs and classes to their community college, hire members of the immigrant community to teach, and perform outreach at local Latino community events. They also work closely to problem-solve with individual students, whether that means referring an undocumented student to scholarship opportunities or walking a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) recipient through the process of obtaining employer-sponsored in-state tuition. Just a few short months ago, these were efforts the staff administrator would have trumpeted – but times have changed.“I am afraid it might call attention to us in a negative way,” they said. “I saw how parents were too scared to drive to schools in [North Carolina] … and how people knew which roads not to take due to the police presence. I don’t want to widely call attention to us as being immigrant-friendly when the goal of this administration is to quash that.”There are valid reasons to be fearful. The Trump administration’s targeting and defunding of institutions with DEI policies have led many to preemptively comply out of fear of losing federal funding, and now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) rescinded a previous policy warning against carrying out immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations”, schools are fair game for immigration raids. In recent weeks, hundreds of foreign college students have also had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, though it changed course and restored some students’ status after widespread media attention and court challenges.It was because of “serious concerns for the safety of students and the entire campus community” that officials from another North Carolina community college located in a mid-sized city initially spoke on the record, but later decided to remain anonymous. An administrator responsible for Latino student engagement there told the Guardian that when community colleges are forced to hide their efforts to make education more accessible, it also means hiding services from students and community members who need them the most.Alice Dolbow, a senior adviser at the North Carolina non-profit LatinxEd, issued an important reminder to schools now afraid to make these efforts public: helping immigrant and first generation students access higher education is “not against the law”. Her organization focuses on developing Latino education leaders in higher education.“I think many districts found themselves unexpectedly transformed by the increase in immigration,” Dolbow said. “Interestingly, community colleges are catching up at a much faster rate than our K-12 schools and our four-year universities. Programs like CCP are great for all students; they are engines of equity and access for all North Carolinians, including undocumented students. I want to be clear that any programs that happen to also help undocumented students access higher education are not ‘loopholes’. We are not ‘taking advantage of the system’. We are operating within the system and under the laws we have, and we are doing what the laws and system allow.”Latino students in the state – many of whom come from mixed-status families – are also a lifeline for North Carolina community colleges. Before 2020, community college enrollment in the state was on a slow decline. Then, 69,000 CCP students participated in dual enrollment during the pandemic. While community colleges don’t track the immigration status of students in the CCP program, it’s clear that more targeted outreach to the state’s young, growing Latino population can transform community college enrollment and the trajectory of Latino and immigrant families in the state.In many ways, community colleges are primed to serve immigrant communities. They offer flexible schedules; English classes for adults; continuing education; and curriculum programs that can lead to certificates, diplomas and degrees. In recent years, North Carolina has made considerable leeway to recruit Latino students of all kinds, in part, by hiring Latino educators to oversee Latino student engagement and outreach.“It is our job as community colleges to respond to the economic needs of the region, and it’s our job to educate the workforce that responds to those local economic needs,” explained the administrator from the mid-sized city. “If you have this growing population, it’s your job to serve them and by doing that, you are better serving your state.”There’s data to support the assertion. In 2018, the statewide network of 58 public community colleges that make up the North Carolina community college system partnered with population scientists to examine demographic shifts in the state. Latino student outreach was identified as a primary tool to increase community college enrollment and thus, help North Carolina remain competitive in the changing economy.The state has only three “Hispanic-serving Institutions” (HSI), defined in federal legislation as accredited, degree-granting public or private nonprofit institutions of higher education with 25% or more total undergraduate Hispanic full-time equivalent student enrollment. But that’s enough to rank North Carolina among the top 10 states in emerging HSIs, and each of North Carolina’s three existing HSIs are community colleges.‘College is … starting to feel impossible’Still, gaps in community colleges’ outreach, engagement and investment in Latino students become starkly visible when considering the experiences of undocumented students.Olivia, who is also using a pseudonym, is a North Carolina 18-year-old who benefited from dual enrollment as a high school student. After graduation, she’s struggled to pay the exorbitant cost of community college tuition as an undocumented student. Well-meaning community college administrators instructed her to apply for federal student aid, not understanding that her immigration status bars her from receiving it. Others referred her to scholarships she spent hours applying for, only to later learn the scholarships were only available to US citizens.“I feel like every year, I’ve learned about something different that I can’t do,” said Olivia, who came to the US when she was six months old. “I can’t legally work. I can’t get a driver’s license. I can’t leave the country. College is starting to feel like another thing that’s impossible. I’m starting to really worry that I have to give up on school.”Olivia’s dream is to be a pediatrician, but currently she can only afford one community college class a semester. To her parents, it appears as if she’s not working hard enough on her education.“But I’m working myself to the bone,” Olivia insisted. “I just feel like I’m not getting anywhere, and there’s a lot of pain in wanting to be something greater than you’re allowed to be.”Gabriela (also using a pseudonym) understands how hard it is to plan for the future when options are limited. When she was 14, she moved from El Salvador to North Carolina, where she became the first in her family to graduate from high school.CCP would have gone a long way to help the now 21-year-old toward her ultimate goal of becoming an elementary school teacher, but no one ever informed her of the program.Community college administrators who spoke to the Guardian said there are many challenges to getting the word on CCP out. Many high schools don’t have bilingual staff to inform parents of these opportunities. High school counselors tend to focus on advanced learning and programs for students who are headed to traditional four-year colleges instead of CCP.“As an adult, I’ve heard about all of these opportunities that would have made such a difference in my life. I’m 21 and starting from scratch,” said Gabriela. She is legally able to work in the US and has a job as a teacher’s assistant at an elementary school. Like Olivia, Gabriela has encountered administrators who were confused about why she didn’t qualify for in-state tuition. She told another administrator she was undocumented and that person later asked for her social security number.Working at a school only reinforces exactly what she wants to do professionally – and how that career path seems increasingly out of reach. Gabriela works at a school with many undocumented and mixed-status families. Under the Trump administration, many parents are afraid of participating in school life, fearful that something as innocuous as going on a field trip will require government-issued identification that they can’t provide and thus, potentially getting them on Ice’s radar.“I want to comfort them, but at any moment I know that I can be the one who is deported,” Gabriela said. “My work permit can be taken away at any moment, and what happens if I’ve enrolled in school? There are no good options. I want to remain hopeful, but I also feel like: do I really want to go back to school now? Putting myself through school will be such a sacrifice. What if I can’t do anything with my education?”North Carolina organizations such as UndocuCarolina and Pupusas for Education work to fill information and financial gaps in the state for undocumented students, Daca recipients and young people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). But according to Glenda Polanco, too many North Carolina students are forced to make “decisions about their future out of desperation”.Polanco is the program director of Pupusas for Education, which started in 2016 to provide scholarships to undocumented students through food sales and has since turned into a non-profit organization to support Latino students. Polanco, now 32, was able to take advantage of early college as a North Carolina high school student, but she didn’t understand at the time that college classes would no longer be free after she graduated high school. If not for an extraordinary act of kindness in the form of a North Carolina couple who paid Polanco’s way through university, college would have been out of the realm of possibility.Polanco acknowledges that she was “lucky”. but says she can still remember moments of sheer panic about the cost of school and her future as an immigrant with a temporary status.“With the young people we work with … there is this daunting, insanity-provoking question: why does it have to be this hard?” Polanco said. “I don’t really have a good answer for them, and the anxiety and depression that comes with that uncertainty takes a toll. There is a psychological impact on the immigrant community – including on our parents. They want to give us the world, but none of us can really say what’s going to happen tomorrow.” More

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      in Elections

      What to Know About the Legal Battle Over a North Carolina Supreme Court Race

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      The Republican challenger has embarked on an extraordinary effort to reverse his election loss that critics say is testing the boundaries of post-election litigation.In North Carolina, the Republican candidate for a State Supreme Court seat has refused to concede to the Democratic incumbent, even though two recounts by a state elections board confirmed that he lost the November election by a few hundred votes.The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, who currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has instead embarked on an extraordinary monthslong effort to toss out scores of ballots. The race is the last in the nation to be uncertified.Judge Griffin’s challenge has ping-ponged through federal and state courts. The Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs, appealed a recent State Supreme Court decision that could lead to thousands of military and overseas ballots being tossed. On Tuesday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit temporarily blocked the ballot verification process that had been ordered by the State Supreme Court. Many of the ballots in question come from Democratic-leaning counties, so their removal could lead to the election being overturned.As the case continues through the court system, Judge Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party have drawn criticism from democracy watchdog groups, liberals and even some conservatives who worry about a dangerous precedent being set for future elections.Here’s what to know about the case.What happened after the November election?Justice Riggs was declared the winner of the State Supreme Court race by 734 votes, an unusually small margin. Judge Griffin sought to verify that margin by requesting recounts. After the State Board of Elections reaffirmed Justice Riggs’s victory twice, Judge Griffin filed a protest with the board, which has a Democratic majority.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More