The Assembly

01/15/2026

A new lawsuit filed in a federal court in North Carolina accuses Kyrsten Sinema, the former U.S. senator from Arizona, of pursuing a romantic relationship with a member of her security team, leading him to dissolve his marriage.

Among other things, the lawsuit claims Sinema wooed Moore County resident Matthew Ammel by purchasing him a Theragun personal massager, drinking Dom Perignon with him in Cindy McCain’s suite at a U2 concert, suggesting he score M**A so she could “guide him through a psychedelic experience,” and taking him to a Taylor Swift concert.

The complaint was originally filed in Moore County Superior Court in September but went unreported until this week, when it was moved to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina because Sinema lives in Arizona.

Read more at the link in our comments.

01/15/2026

The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it will not review a North Carolina death penalty case in which a prosecutor admitted years later that he’d removed a potential juror from the pool because she was a woman.

Bryan Christopher Bell and Antwaun Kyral Sims were tried and convicted in the kidnapping, beating, and burning of the 89-year-old aunt of veteran state legislator Leo Daughtry in January 2000. The case was so high-profile that the trial was moved from Sampson County, where the crime took place, to Onslow County. Bell is on death row and Sims is currently serving a life sentence.

At the center of the appeal to SCOTUS was Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler’s decision to remove Viola Morrow as a potential juror.

A prosecutor had said he removed a potential juror because she was a woman who had children close in age to the defendants.

01/15/2026

BREAKING: UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees member John Preyer resigned Friday with a year left in his term. Preyer championed efforts to revamp the university's budget, but he may be remembered most for his role in hiring Bill Belichick.

Preyer championed efforts to revamp the university’s budget and launch a civics school, but he may be remembered most for his role in hiring Bill Belichick.

01/14/2026

Not long after midnight in late November 1974, 10 young men scattered down Avent Ferry Road in Raleigh wearing nothing but molasses and cornflakes. Their destination: the Pi Kappa Phi house on North Carolina State University’s Fraternity Court.

Some cut through neighboring yards as they fled the nearby woods where fraternity members left them as part of “hell week,” which leads to initiation. Witnesses called the police, who arrested a 19-year-old on a charge of indecent exposure. The others got away, N.C. State’s student newspaper, Technician, reported at the time.

Shortly after, the university’s fraternity standards commission found Pi Kappa Phi guilty of hazing. As punishment, the fraternity’s national office ordered the chapter to end hell week and “any traditional activities defined as hazing.”

Yet 48 years later, in November 2022, N.C. State administrators received an anonymous complaint that alleged Pi Kappa Phi members ditched pledges several miles from the fraternity house and forced them to find their way back in an “abandonment challenge.”

A review of more than 1,500 pages of records shows fraternity hazing rituals are deeply ingrained at NC colleges and universities.

01/12/2026

When Jerry Bledsoe died on New Year’s Eve at the age of 84, state and national publications lauded him as a brilliant journalist and author, a Southern raconteur in the tradition of Mark Twain.

Friends, former colleagues, and admirers recalled his decades of humorous and heartfelt newspaper columns of the 1970s and ’80s, which often championed underdogs and everyday North Carolinians. They remembered his triumphant leap to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list with 1988’s Bitter Blood, the first of a string of deeply reported true crime books that spawned TV movies and miniseries.

“He had every tool in the toolbox,” said Ned Cline, a veteran reporter and editor who worked with Bledsoe for decades at the Greensboro Daily News and News & Record, as well as The Charlotte Observer. “That was more common in reporters back then than it is today, but it was still pretty rare even then.”

Jerry Bledsoe leaves a legacy of both beloved books and persistent grudges. What do we make of a complicated figure after his death?

01/12/2026

Four-term Democratic governor and committed church-goer Jim Hunt politicked with evangelical fervor. But he still struggled to sway the Religious Right.

The four-term governor and committed church-goer politicked with evangelical fervor. But Jim Hunt still struggled to sway the Religious Right.

01/09/2026

Gov. Josh Stein lost the latest court battle in his effort to claw back appointment powers the Republican-led General Assembly stripped from him weeks before he took office.

In a split decision this week along party lines, the state Court of Appeals overturned a three-judge panel’s ruling that had restored the governor’s power to fill judicial vacancies in the appellate courts with appointments of his choice.

Now if a vacancy occurs at the state Supreme Court or Court of Appeals, Stein must choose from a list of candidates supplied to him by the political party of the departing judge or justice.

The state Court of Appeals overturned a ruling that had restored the governor’s power to fill appellate court vacancies with appointments of his choice.

01/09/2026

State prosecutors filed a petition this week asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to review a judge’s order exonerating four men convicted as teenagers of murdering NBA star Chris Paul’s grandfather.

Prosecutors concede they are asking the state’s highest court to do something out of the ordinary in bypassing the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which initially hears the majority of criminal appeals. Death penalty cases are the only ones that are appealed directly to the state Supreme Court.

A judge vacated the convictions of four men accused of killing Nathaniel Jones. Now, prosecutors want the state Supreme Court to step in.

01/08/2026

North Carolina is about to get its first Buc-ee’s, the massive, cult-classic gas station rapidly expanding across the southeast. I went to figure out what the hype is about.

Buc-ee’s, the mega-gas station taking over the Southeast, is a feast for the senses. If Walmart, Wawa, Cracker Barrel, and Bass Pro Shops jointly procreated, it still wouldn’t amount to a Buc-ee’s. It’s a rest stop that people drive hours to visit, just for fun. It’s a gas station with merch drops and famed brisket.

It was founded in Texas in 1982 as a normal convenience store, but in the ensuing decades it’s become anything but.

01/07/2026

Black people make up just 21% of North Carolina’s population, yet they account for nearly 60% of those serving life without parole.

01/06/2026

The data shows U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) techs are dying of illnesses at a rate higher than all other jobs in the Army.

Many EOD techs believe occupational hazards are contributing to high rates of behavioral health disorders and illnesses showing up among members of the military who work closely with explosives.

EOD techs have highs rates of su***de and death from illnesses. Despite increasing awareness, veterans say there’s been little progress.

01/05/2026

When UNC Greensboro Chancellor Frank Gilliam reached a decade in office last year, he had a lot to celebrate.

Enrollment for the fall semester was 18,682 students, an increase of nearly 4% and the most the campus has seen since 2021.

The school’s Light The Way fundraising campaign exceeded its $200 million goal.

U.S. News & World Report and the Wall Street Journal again ranked the campus first in the state for Social Mobility, Affordability, & Student Experience, highlighting that UNCG graduates more first-generation and lower-income students and students from underrepresented groups than any public university in the state.

UNC Greensboro Chancellor Frank Gilliam has steered the university through crisis and political sea changes. He may be an endangered species.