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BY GARY D. ROBERTSON RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A final North Carolina state budget won't be enacted until September, the House's top leader said Monday. That could scuttle efforts by Gov. Roy Cooper's administration for Medicaid expansion to begin in early fall. House and Senate Republicans are whittling down dozens of outstanding spending and policy issues within a two-year spending plan that was supposed to take effect July 1. While some

BY MIKE SCHNEIDER Officials in the city of Lebanon worried that the amount of state money distributed from Tennessee agencies based on 2020 census figures wasn't keeping pace with their explosive growth. So they reached out to the U.S. Census Bureau to ask about conducting another head count, or "special census," for the city on the edge of metro Nashville. But Lebanon officials balked at the $880,000 price tag and decided

BY GARY D. ROBERTSON RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop, a vocal member of the Freedom Caucus that's become a foil to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announced on Thursday that he would run for state attorney general next year rather than seek to remain in Congress. The Republican lawyer revealed his decision in a radio interview in his hometown of Charlotte. Bishop joined Congress in 2019 by narrowly

BY WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS NEW YORK (AP) - Drivers are in for another headache at the pump as U.S. gas prices continue to rise. The national average for gas prices stood at about $3.78 a gallon on Tuesday - about 25 cents higher than that seen one month ago, according to motor club AAA. While today's prices at the pump remain far lower than they were last year, when energy costs soared

BY SEUNG MIN KIM, WILL WEISSERT, AND STEVE PEOPLES WASHINGTON (AP) - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, facing heavy criticism for defending "anti-woke" teaching in Florida, this week teed up an unusual proposal to the nation's first Black vice president: Come debate the merits of the state's new curriculum on African-American history. Less than 24 hours later, Kamala Harris was in an African Methodist Episcopal church in Orlando, firing back. "I'm here

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BY MARC LEVY Rhonda Hicks could have kept working into her 60s. She loved teaching and her students in Philadelphia's public schools. As a Black woman, she took pride in being a role model for many children of color. However other aspects of the job deteriorated, such as growing demands from administrators over what and how to teach. And when she retires in a few weeks, she will join a disproportionately

BY CHRISTOPHER RUGABER WASHINGTON (AP) - Fitch Ratings has downgraded the United States government's credit rating, citing rising debt at the federal, state, and local levels and a "steady deterioration in standards of governance" over the past two decades. The rating was cut Tuesday one notch to AA+ from AAA, the highest possible rating. The new rating is still well into investment grade. The decision illustrates one way that growing political

BY ERIC TUCKER AND MICHAEL KUNZELMAN WASHINGTON (AP) - Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, with the Justice Department acting to hold him accountable for an unprecedented effort to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power and threaten American democracy. The four-count indictment, the third

Most of what North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate and State Treasurer Dale Folwell raised during the first half of the year for his campaign committee has come from $1 million that he loaned it, according to a new campaign finance report. Folwell's campaign, like others whose candidates are on ballots in 2024, had until late Friday to send in reports to the State Board of Elections covering activities through June 30.