- [Kelly] The State Supreme Court weighs in on the lawsuit between two State Supreme Court candidates.

And, Attorney General Jeff Jackson joins the lawsuit to fight President Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship.

This is "State Lines."

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[upbeat music] ♪ - Hello again, welcome back to "State Lines."

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Joining me today a great group of guests, Skye David of New Frame joins us.

Beside her, WUNC Radio's Colin Campbell, Kimberly Reynolds of Maven Strategies debuts.

Welcome to the show.

- Good to have you.

- Thank you for having me.

- Jeff Moore, Carolina Journal, good to have you, as well.

- Glad to be back.

- Second or third time on, - I think.

- I think so.

Yeah.

- An old hand on "State Lines."

Well, got, you know, four or five really good topics.

A lot of it's, I hate this, most of our show's not federal, but Donald Trump is affecting North Carolina in big ways.

Before we get to President Trump, we start in North Carolina in court.

The state court battle between Supreme Court candidates, Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin.

At least part of this case appears headed to Wake County Superior Court.

The State Supreme Court unanimously ruled this week that Mr. Griffin's challenge of those voter registrations must be heard in Wake County Superior Court, and go through the process, before reaching the state's Supreme Court consideration.

The Supremes have halted any certification by the State Board of Elections, and they do say they want lower courts to act in a speedy fashion.

Jeff, I have easily confused a court case a time or two, but this one, this part of this lawsuit goes back to Superior Court.

Now what?

- Yeah, this seems to be the antithesis of an open and shut case.

Even in the opinion here, kicking it back to the Superior Court.

You've got five different, kind of, nuanced opinions from the justices there.

Some that want to see the Supreme Court actually take it, and go ahead and settle the matter.

Some that wanna see it go back, and go through it in a slightly different role, but we've got a lot of moving parts.

It's not exactly one of those cases where you can hang like a clear direction on.

It's gonna take a lot longer.

There have been some cases like that going back years ago, where you've had these elections being decided months later.

But, this one is getting particularly messy.

It doesn't seem like it's gonna fall out in the direction of the Republican candidate here, when it all is said and done, but the process is working, and that's what Chief Justice Newby mentioned in his opinion is that this is just the process of filling out all of the different options that they have to make through, I'm sorry, to make it actually through to the end to see that the voters have confidence in the whole process, whether a judiciary can actually settle it.

- Kimberly, it's complex.

There's a federal court element.

The federal courts may decide there are federal questions that need federal court trials, and then we have the state court.

Are North Carolinians paying that close attention?

Or if you're a Republican, you're rooting for Jefferson Griffin.

If you're a Democrat, you want Allison Riggs to hold on, and just keep declaring victory.

- Well, I mean, I think she's declaring victory, because she won, and she won by 734 votes.

And, I think you're talking about the process, and the process was going to the ballot box and voting, and then the process was within the margin you could call for a recount.

And, I think you saw that.

it went through the first recount, she was still up.

It went through the second recount, she was still ahead.

You know, her predecessors, McCory, Beasley went through recounts, their elections were over by December 5th, and by December 12th.

So this is really unprecedented, and I think voters see that.

They see someone who lost, went through the process, and is just continuing to try to disenfranchise voters.

He's cherry picking voters out of the 60,000, and now they've shrunk to 5,500, he's focusing on, so I do think you've got Republicans, you've got Democrats, you had some senior military officials come out and write an op-ed earlier this week and just say, it's time for him to concede and enough is enough, and let's move on and stop wasting time and taxpayer resources on this.

- Colin Jefferson Griffin certainly doesn't think he's wasting time.

He thinks, I guess he's doing the right thing, trying to find every legal voter cast away, all illegal or improperly cast ballots.

But I expect the democratic strategist to have that opinion.

But what are people saying in your, on the beat, if you will, about this court case?

If they're saying anything at all?

- Yeah, a lot of the legislative leaders, like I think we asked Senate Leader Phil Berger about it a few weeks ago.

He said, "Leave it to the courts."

He didn't really comment.

Well, you've seen some prominent Republicans basically say they think that this is not the right approach, that the election's over, and we need to accept the election results under the rules that we have here.

I mean, I think the big difference between this, I look at the similarities between this and 2016 after Pat McCrery lost, it was a month or so where there was legal challenges of did these people vote illegally?

Would those votes enough to potentially change the outcome?

And pretty quickly it appeared that those were not, you know, once you took out the people who were voting when they'd committed a felony or they were non-citizens or they'd voted twice, it wasn't that much to make a difference.

This one's interesting because the people who are being challenged, most of them voted under the rules that were in place.

The beef is with the State Board of Elections and did they apply the law appropriately?

But typically, that's something that gets decided in the courts, either before the election or if it's after the election, you're deciding what the rules are gonna be the next time around.

Not, you know, did these people who thought they were following the rules this time have their ballots thrown out even though no one's really accusing them of being ineligible voters?

- What does this do for our society if voters cast a vote they think's legal and they're following the rules, but maybe the State Board of Education get- ah education, State Board of Elections, you know, it's ruled that they didn't follow processes the right way to handle these ballots or to have them counted officially, what does that do to us?

- Yeah, I think you run the risk of having people feel like maybe our elections aren't all that clean.

Maybe there are some things that are going on and I don't think you want to pursue different challenges to run that risk in the future.

You've already seen it in the last couple of years and it could continue if these types of challenges continue.

- By this being in the courts, and you work the legislative offices quite a bit, does that allow all legislators to stand back and watch it?

And as to Phil Berger's point, not say much about it, say, let the courts handle it, we don't really wanna speak on it.

- Yeah, I think that is the right strategy for them and I think that there is another component to this and that it's costing a lot of money for both Jefferson Griffin and Justice Riggs to be pouring into that.

You've got candidates that are supporting them, trying to give them some legal funds.

So, you're draining both from the GOP and the Democratic Party.

- We've got another Supreme Court race in 2026.

- And still federal issues to handle that may come down this weekend but after we've held this conversation.

President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship was met rapidly with a multi-state lawsuit this week.

The executive order is currently halted for 14 days by a federal judge.

But the plaintiffs in some of those, well at least one of those lawsuits is North Carolina Attorney General, Jeff Jackson.

Mr. Jackson says the Trump order calling to end birthright citizenship is blatantly unconstitutional and that our US constitutional is crystal clear on the issue and has been since what, the mid 1800s?

- Yeah, I mean this is a case where there's gonna be a lot of legal challenges to Trump's various executive orders around immigration.

This one's probably the most of a slam dunk case of, well it says here in the Constitution, if you're born in the US you get to be a citizen and barring any changes to the Constitution, there's not really any power to affect that.

It's interesting to see Jeff Jackson involved in this.

It seems like he's following the mold of Josh Stein when he was AG for the last eight years of anytime there's a big federal legal controversy, it's the State Attorney's general who get together and form these coalitions and file these legal briefs and sort of insert themselves into these legal battles that are taking place at the federal level.

- On issues that are grabbing headlines all across the country, and this is clearly a top tier headline for, the national audience of this particular executive order.

- Sky, legally, Jeff Jackson is not supposed to involve himself in any issue that may impact current North Carolina state law.

I mean, so now we can look at what if the legislature passes a law this spring and it makes some sort of statement on birthright citizenship, do you see this being the first battle between Berger and Hall versus Mr. Jackson?

- I mean, it definitely could be, and he is getting his name out there quickly.

I think he is good at that, putting himself out in front and saying, "Hey, this is what I stand for."

This could definitely be something that begins a long four years of battling.

- Jeff, I'm not a lawyer, but I've talked to people about this issue.

Even the lay people say, if Donald Trump does this, it's gonna go straight to court day one, it went straight to court day one.

So is this part of the plan to let the Supreme Court revisit precedent?

Or is there not a precedent?

There's some new wrinkle in the interpretation of birthright citizenship?

- Yeah, I'm not a lawyer either, but I remember learning about the, some of the nuances of this issue, about some of the interpretations of the words in the Constitution and exactly what they mean.

It does not mean that they have much of a case going forward, a lot of this has been settled, but I think long term, it may actually lead to some impetus to actually file for an amendment to the Constitution.

You've got a lot of popular support around the illegal immigration and border security issue.

So down the road, if the Supreme Court were to rule on this and it came the wrong way, this just not in the Constitution, then you may have some motivation to actually file some amendment to put it on a ballot, add that to the Constitution so you can get this issue cleared up.

Because immigration is one of those top issues that so many people are concerned about right now, and it cut across party lines in a lot of ways that you may have the support finally, whereas before, this may be a distinction that people weren't paying enough attention to, to rise to that level, do we really want to add this to the Constitution as an amendment?

Now, immigration, legal immigration in particular is, is such a pressing issue that you may actually have that political capital to do that.

- Kimberly, politics is a game where you have to be visual, you have to make a name for yourself.

Jeff Jackson had a name as a congressman, now he's attorney general.

This is a big case and he signed onto it nearly immediately.

So from the political standpoint, how does Jeff Jackson come across doing this to Democratic voters, to Republican voters and all those independents out there that they say outnumber everyone?

- Well, I mean, I think from his standpoint, I can't speak for him, but this was ratified in 1868.

It has been on the books for over a hundred years, there's hundreds of cases and precedent to show that birthright citizenship meant for anybody born in the United States became a citizen.

So I think it was probably a no-brainer to sign onto this one.

I think you've seen the judge out of Washington state say this was blatantly, this is blatantly unconstitutional.

He's been on the bench 40 years and he's never seen anything like this before, and he's a Nixon appointee.

So I think at the end of the day, Donald Trump was trying to show the border was important to him.

He set a lot of things in place, he made a lot of promises, he put his border czar in, and this was a political move to sort of pomp and circumstance that he knew probably wouldn't go anywhere and was unconstitutional.

I mean, you can use executive orders for a lot of things, he's undone the executive orders of Joe Biden, but you don't use an executive order to undo the Constitution of the United States.

- What if you wanna issue a press release and do it in the form of executive order, it's gonna get more attention that way.

- It sure is, but I don't know that it, I don't know that it's gonna do.

- Kimberly, what do you make of, what do you make of the president's approach to the public spectacle of signing the executive orders and in a way, in one day, showing that I'm doing what I'm, what I said I would do.

I can see future presidents copying this model of being very open and approachable or was Mr. Biden just introverted and, and we're just seeing something that's new, always new again?

- You just called him open and approachable and that is not the way- - Well, he says... No I'm saying, I'm saying I've not seen...

I've not seen the microphones up around the Oval Office desk, and he's just sitting there talking to whomever he's talking to.

- I mean, I think that's- - It looks like a conversation.

- The showmanship of him, right?

- Well yeah.

- I mean, this is a TV personality.

This is not a politician, this is a man who got famous by saying, "You're fired."

On television and so that, it means a lot to him.

He, more than anything, is about Donald Trump and how he looks and what he's doing.

And I think that serves him well to put cameras in his face.

And he counts cameras probably, and he probably counts how many mics are sitting there.

And I don't think that a lot of other people have been driven by those same factors.

- As far as a campaign strategy though, I think it's really smart.

You have all these people that just voted for you, everybody is watching, everybody is off of work on Monday to sit down and sign these executive orders and say, "Promises made, promises kept."

- And before I get emailed 50 emails about...

I'm not judging the quality or the quantity of the executive orders, Colin, I'm talking about just you get an opportunity to sit, whether it's a Governor or whether it's a House Speaker, or a Senate Pro Tem, or President, he's sitting there talking and answering questions seemingly on the fly.

Could that be a model for North Carolina politicians?

At least the ones with the ego and the mojo to pull off such a thing?

- Yeah, I mean, I think that you wanna see more accessibility to the press.

A lot of politicians and I think Joe Biden probably was one of these, Roy Cooper, was to some extent, are fairly reserved.

They wanna sort of control their message and when you have kind of a freewheeling press conference that goes on for 30 minutes and covers all kinds of topics that maybe you didn't wanna cover that day, then that... You lose control over what headlines you're gonna make out of it.

So I think that's why you see some politicians take a different approach, but certainly as a member of the media, I like when I've got access to whether it's a Phil Berger, a Governor or somebody and can throw any topic at him and find out what someone in a position of power thinks about whatever the big issue of the day is.

- Yeah I mean, Roy Cooper, Governor Cooper back in the day, like he would put the people behind him that the executive order impacted and I think that's the difference.

And I think from your point, it was probably a good political move for him because to him it, is about him.

But for others signing it, it might be about the folks that are actually impacted by the executive order, whether it's women or children or educators, or whatever that topic may be.

- The modern day press conference is very interesting.

I notice it is, it has dawned on me after all these years, like wow, this kind of, this guy's doing this a totally different way.

At least for one day, can't say to last for four years.

But speaking of executive orders, President Trump's pardon of the January 6th protesters earned the attention of North Carolina's US Senator Thom Tillis.

Mr. Tillis said he's been preparing federal legislation to penalize or at least increase penalties against... You know, for if you attack a law enforcement officer, so the pardons this week caught him by surprise.

- What I'm trying to do is figure out there are some commutations.

To me I just can't agree, I'm about to file two bills that will increase the penalties up to and including the death penalty for the murder of a police officer and increasing the penalties and creating federal crimes for assaulting a police officer, that should give you everything you need to know about my position.

Look it is...

It was surprising to me that it was a blanket pardon.

Now I'm going through the details.

- He's going through the details, Jeff, Senator Thom Tillis and is he gonna be that guy?

Is he positioning himself as the McCain-esque senator out there, just the mild?

- I think he's already positioned that way.

I think for years, Tillis has actually walked that line.

He said to me in conversation, "Don't let the the perfect be the enemy of the good."

And when he is talking about conservative kind of rabble rousers on the side of the partisan side of things.

And so he's always trying to be that centrist player.

He's worked on some of these issues.

He's publicly opposed some of the things Trump was doing in his first administration.

He's done things that have gotten him censured by the Republican Party of North Carolina.

So he's not afraid to step out and say there's things where he thinks it's wrong.

I think a lot of people were surprised by the blanket pardon.

It goes against a lot of the political narratives of the last several years and the back the blue.

Kind of supporting police officers during the defund, the police movements.

So this caught a lot of people off guard.

I think it speaks to the amount of political capital and momentum that president, now president Trump had going into this.

And with the flurry of activity we saw in the first week, this being one of those things, it's not terribly surprising that he reached for that.

But you would think that a lot of Republicans and conservatives around the country looking at this, anybody that was...

Perpetrated violence against police officers, they would want to hold accountable.

We've got our own Republican politicians in North Carolina saying the same.

So we'll see this as a little bit of a battle setting up, but I think it'll probably get lost in the mix because there's gonna be such a torrent of activity just in this first week, but then going forward, too.

- Skye, I'm worried about North Carolina voters.

They will decide if Mr. Tillis is making good policy choices.

How do you think state GOP voters and independents are gonna see the January 6th pardons, but then the North Carolina senator going, on top of that, "I still want to increase penalties for violence against law enforcement, increase federal penalties to really put some, you know, teeth into that punishment?"

- I think that GOP voters are gonna be happy with this executive order and pardons.

They are pretty out there on not liking Senator Tillis.

And that is just a faction of the party, I do understand that.

For independent voters, I think it's a good way for Tillis to distance himself from some of the Trump actions and get those independent voters that he needs.

But he's already seen a primary challenger in the last week.

I think it's gonna be a long road.

- Must we tie any proposal by Senator Tillis to protect law enforcement officers?

Should we pair that with January 6th now that that's done?

Those folks are out of jail, are onto to new things, new crimes, new events will happen in the future.

- Yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of his way of threading the needle, of recognizing that once you've pardoned somebody, there's no going back.

These people aren't gonna get charged again.

But you can send a signal to somebody who, whatever their agenda may be, is wanting to attack the capitol, that this won't be tolerated, at least unless you get someone to be the president who wants to pardon you, but that there are laws in place to sort of deter people from doing this kind of thing in the future.

- Kimberly, what do you make of the pardons?

Joe Biden took care of the family for him, and, in a way, Trump took care of the family for him at the first, within what?

A week or two days of each other.

So now, the Democrats don't have anything to go after January 6th Republicans.

I than they can, but they're not gonna go after Fauci, you can't prosecute, and can't prosecute the Biden family.

What do we do now?

Do we dare govern?

- Well, I just think these pardons in particular are just alarming because people died on that day and you sort of remember these images of people hanging from the capitol, and these members that aren't saying anything, or agreeing with Trump on these blanket pardons were cowering in their office, frightened for their lives.

And it's just the memory, and the quickness in which they have forgotten that is, I think, a different set of pardons than just some of the ones that Biden did on his way out.

But I do think these violent, pardons for violent criminals, and people that assaulted police officers, I think one woman cracked her head and has a brain injury, and that just let them out of prison.

I mean, it's shocking, and I think it sends the wrong signal for the future of folks who want to do these things knowing they have a president like Trump in office.

- You run campaigns.

What does it say about voters out there?

Are we changing as voters that we're willing to accept pardons on behalf of our team no matter what may have happened?

- I think voters historically probably haven't paid a lot of attention to pardons.

Pardons usually come at the end of presidents' terms, at the end of governors' terms.

And so it is not something that gets this much attention.

It sort of goes quietly into the night.

I think you saw Trump do a lot, I think he pardoned, fifty... You know, a lot of people right at the end.

Biden's pardons are getting a lot of attention because of who he pardoned and why he.

- He pardoned them, but I don't think the regular voter pays that much attention.

It's just he did it on the what, second day or first day?

It's just it's newsworthy.

- That's right.

The pardons did kick off the administration, - Yes.

- not end it.

The Biden Administration unlocked a couple 100 million dollars for Interstate 40 reconstruction last week before Mr. Biden rode off into retirement.

Well, President Trump visited Western North Carolina on Friday, and earlier this week, he commented on the federal response in Western North Carolina as part of his Inaugural Day comments.

- Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina who've been treated so badly.

[audience clapping] Who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago.

- All right, Kimberly, Mr. Trump, he's put us on the map.

First stop of his presidency is in Western North Carolina.

I wanna go back to Josh Stein.

He welcomed President Trump, and Mr. Trump's flying to California, where he may not be as welcome.

His money's welcome.

He may not be.

So tell us to contrast a North Carolina Governor against what else he may face with, say, wildfire recovery.

- Well, I don't think, I can't speak to California's governor, but I can speak- - Sure, you can.

[Kimberly laughs] - But I mean, I think you saw with Governor Stein, one of the first executive orders he did, the first five, were about Hurricane Helene and making sure that that moved the progress to help those people move forward.

And I think so that dedication from him was there from day one.

So I think recovery is about a partnership.

You can't do it with only the state government, and you can't do it with only the federal government.

And that partnership shouldn't be partisan.

And I do think it's really disappointing that he came in, President Trump came in in October on the campaign trail and said, you know, "Democrats are abandoning you.

FEMA is corrupt."

I mean, that was not helpful.

It wasn't helpful to the people who had lost everything, including the people that had lost 100 lives or more.

And so I think we need to put partisan politics aside, and I think that's exactly what Governor Stein is trying to do by putting that olive branch out there and saying, "We're happy to have him here.

We need to work together."

There are a lot of people.

I think this was the seventh largest disaster in history of the country.

Like, we cannot do it just the state.

We have got to have a partnership with the federal government.

And so I'm disappointed in the rhetoric because I think it's time to stop that rhetoric and stop talking about Republicans and Democrats and start talking about citizens who have lost everything and need these folks to come together and help them.

- Colin, what does President Trump and his administration face?

Yes, they're very vocal, very critical of the response.

The people who live out there are very vocal and critical of the response.

Now, Mr. Trump, does he own it as of today?

- Yeah.

I mean he's, I think, replacing the head of FEMA.

Now, if you criticize FEMA, you're criticizing the Trump Administration.

And so there's gonna be a challenge.

I mean, any new administration that comes in, it takes a little while to ramp up state agents or federal agencies, get the right people in place, get the policies moving.

And Western North Carolina, they need help right now, so any delays are gonna face a lot of criticism.

You at the same time as you have Trump there, Congress has passed its Disaster Relief Bill, how fast does that federal money get down to the state level?

How fast does the state legislature figure out how to do dole out, get that money on out to the ground?

All of this takes time.

And understandably, people out there who've lost their home or lost their business don't have a lot of patience for all of these different layers of government passing money around before they actually write the check to the people who need it.

- If you're the new FEMA leadership, are you under the gun by Mr. Trump to get money out?

Because it is government.

Government moves slowly by design and by reality.

And you want your relief right now.

I saw it on Twitter, "I want it tonight."

It's not gonna happen, so what's the expectation?

What should it be?

- I don't know what the expectation is, but I think if you are FEMA, yeah, you are under the gun because it's been months since this happened, and now there is a new disaster, the wildfires in California, and you're looking at that thinking, "Are they gonna get the money, or are we gonna get the money?

We've been homeless for months and months."

The time is now.

- Jeff, Mr. Trump stopping in North Carolina first, you could come from the party.

What does that say about North Carolina?

Or does it say more about the tragedy that was Helene?

- Yeah, it's a little bit of both, but I think this is a continuation of some of the focus on North Carolina.

This is a region that supported President Trump in the election, and so he's very big on loyalty and gonna go back to those places that support him the most.

It's also an opportunity for him to continue with the rhetoric and the narrative of the kind of "Biden bad management" narrative during that response.

And he's gonna rile up his base a little bit more with that and get some more political capital.

But also it kind of pivots now to actually getting something done, because we've seen, even with the money being distributed and voted on, appropriated, it's the problem of the money actually getting into the hands.

We've had some unfortunate experiences in North Carolina with disaster recovery funds, like not actually getting to where they need to be, taking months or years to actually get there.

So I think Governor Stein did a very smart thing actually in setting up a new apparatus to get some of this handled for Western North Carolina so we don't repeat the same experiences that we had with Hurricane Matthew and Florence in the East.

- Republicans have been silent about Josh Stein's early moves, or slightly positive at least, you know, even some think tanks said, "Hey, Josh Stein took some of our ideas."

John Locke said that he took some of your ideas.

Whether he'll give you credit or not is a different story.

- Yeah, no, we view this as a very pragmatic approach, and so in the opening weeks of the Stein administration, I think this is a very appropriate governance, it's smart politically too, because then you're putting on this hat that you are representing all North Carolinians.

You're willing to work with the other side to get the solutions that you need.

- Last word to you, Kimberly, about 30 seconds.

He brought up a point.

Trump will reward North Carolina for rewarding him.

There is an appearance Biden cared more about California than North Carolina.

Do you believe that to be true?

- No- - Even for Trump coming to North Carolina and then Biden of course, promising everything about, you know, recovery for the wildfires.

- I don't think it's true.

I mean, it might be true for Trump, but I just think these natural disasters are horrible and people need help and that's the bottom line.

And we need to get them as many resources as we can and put politics aside.

- No one's gonna be against that.

This is a good conversation this week.

I have to admit, all these wildfires and disasters, I'm ready for some legislation coming out of Raleigh on some other things.

I mean, we wanna feel good and move ahead.

Thank you so much, Skye, Colin, Kimberly, Jeff, and you, always you're number one for us.

Thanks for watching us.

Email your thoughts and opinions to statelines@pbsnc.org.

I'll check out every email.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thank you so much for watching.

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