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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 3h

More than 660,000 North Carolinians are projected to lose their healthcare coverage under the Trump GOP's "One Big" federal budget, which Congress passed earlier this year. The bill effectively kills North Carolina's historic Medicaid expansion, which just passed in 2023.

Map: t.co/oPxNzOay76

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 1d

We invite you - yes, you! - to join the Carolina Forward community.

When you make just a $10/month sustaining commitment, you become a partner this movement to build a better, stronger and fairer North Carolina for all of us. Will you join us?

Start here: secure.actblue.com/donate/carol...

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 1d

JetZero has announced plans to invest $4.7 billion and create nearly 15,000 jobs in Greensboro. This is a massive project - and it seems to have legs.

NC was the birthplace of American aviation. Could we also become the aviation manufacturing hub of the future?

carolinaforward.org/blog/jetzero...

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 3d

North Carolina is one of 27 states in the U.S. that still has the death penalty on its books. There are a lot of moral arguments to be made about the death penalty, but setting those aside, there are also a lot of really practical nuts-and-bolts issues with how the system actually works in NC.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 4d

Every single one of these North Carolina politicians voted to shut down the federal government rather than allow the Affordable Care Act to continue operating, which will result in a doubling of everyone's health insurance premiums.

Of course, their healthcare will remain unaffected.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 4d

The "One, Big Beautiful Budget" that Republicans in Congress passed earlier this year massively cut taxes for high earners, while making deep cuts to healthcare coverage for the needy.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 5d

Housing is the single biggest expenditure for the average American household, followed by transportation and food.

To bring down the cost of living, the biggest "bang for your buck" is zeroing in on those three - especially housing.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 6d

Here's what happened this week in North Carolina politics.

Somehow, we're talking about maps - again! 🗺️

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 7d

Yesterday, Duke Energy released its new long-term investment plans. North Carolina's monopoly power corporation says it's going to:
👉 Ramp up fossil fuels use
👉Scale back investment in solar energy
👉Extend the life of dirty coal plants and cancel planned retirements
www.wral.com/business/duk...

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 8d

Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House, and are still unable (or unwilling) to pass a federal budget to fund the government that they lead. Just like here at the state level in North Carolina, the lack of an operating budget has serious consequences for the rest of us.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 9d

Because North Carolina's state lawmakers refuse to pass a basic state budget, teacher pay is still stuck at near the bottom in the entire southeast.

North Carolina is one of only 3 states in the entire nation that still hasn't passed a state budget this year.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 10d

If you want to know where crime is worst in North Carolina, don't rely on social media - look at the actual data instead. 📊

The places where rates of violent crime are the worst are all low-income, mostly rural counties where law enforcement is stretched thin and a lot of people are desperate.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 11d

Something that a lot of people don't know is that the number of all immigrants in the United States, regardless of legal category, is just pretty small.

Credit: @statisticurban.bsky.social

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 11d

🚑 Thursday's healthcare panel was a huge success! We dove into Medicaid expansion cuts, the VA, foster care, and vaccine rollouts. Thank you to our panelists, facilitator Hannah Preston, + everyone who joined us for an honest, hopeful conversation in Durham.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 12d

Yes, let's absolutely talk more about the North Carolina state budget.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 13d

Here's what happened this week in North Carolina politics.

Our legislature is disgraceful, but we're keeping our mountains in our hearts. ❤️⛰️

(Shout out to Good Company Pizza in Swannanoa, btw 🍕)

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 14d

Repeated polling shows that support for same-sex marriage has become the centrist, consensus position for most Americans. Only a minority of Republican base voters today want to ban it.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 15d

One way to make lots of money in politics is to find two special interest groups with directly opposed priorities - and then play them off each other for campaign cash. 🏧

This is exactly what politicians and lobbyists are doing today in our state legislature between the nurses and the doctors.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 16d

In the 2024 election, Donald Trump became the second Republican to win the national popular vote in more than three decades of American political history. His final margin was +1.5 points.

That is roughly 70% of Hillary Clinton's popular vote win in 2016, and one-third of Biden's in 2020.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 16d

For our friends celebrating today, Shana Tovah! 🍎 🍯 ✡️

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 17d

The leaders of North Carolina's state legislature are months late now in coming up with a budget for our state government - and they're not even actively working on it anymore. This is a big, flashing sign of incompetent and corrupt governance - and it has one fundamental root cause.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 18d

Most of us are actually pretty moderate! Some lean left, some lean right, but most people's politics are more of a hodgepodge that don't fit any neat axis and depend on the issue and situation.

But that kind of content doesn't get engagement.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 18d

Social media platforms amplify the most extreme voices on both the right and the left. That kind of content gets the most views and engagement.

And as more people now rely on social media to tell them about the world, this has skewed their ideas of what the people around them actually believe.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 18d

One reason our politics seem to have gone totally off-kilter is because everyone thinks more extreme views are getting more common.

But they're actually not.

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Carolina Forward @carolinaforward.bsky.social · 18d

This is insane - Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar," was caught on video accepting $50,000 in cash by undercover FBI agents, in an open-and-shut bribery case.

But once they took power, Trump's FBI and DOJ dropped the case.
www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/t...

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