- [Narrator] House Republicans release a first option of new possible North Carolina congressional district maps, and free speech climbs the agenda as the Hamas-Israeli conflict sparks public demonstrations at UNC Chapel Hill.

This is State Lines.

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[music continues] ♪ - Hi there, welcome to State Lines.

I'm Kelly McCullen and we have a great panel today, an expert panel, I dare say.

Mitch Kokai to my right, from the John Locke Foundation.

Former North Carolina attorney general Rufus Edmisten, a C2 political strategist Morgan Jackson, and holding it down for the Capitol Press Corps, Lucille Sherman, Axios Raleigh.

Well, we usually have more reporters.

You're outnumbered, Lucille, my apologies.

[Lucille chuckles] Busy week.

Let's start with redistricting in North Carolina.

Morgan, we'll pass it to you first, but North Carolina's House leaders have released some versions of new congressional and legislative House districts this week.

North Carolina Supreme Court made redistricting possible by overturning a late 2022 court ruling that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional.

Read the court case if you wanna know why they changed their mind.

Attention is on the state House's possible maps for Congress, though, that would seem to give Republicans a 10:4 or 11:3 majority of US House seats after the 2024 election.

North Carolina's currently served by seven Republicans and seven Democrats.

Morgan, I know you're paying attention to it.

Complicated topic, most folks aren't really paying attention.

Can you make it simple?

- Absolutely.

I'll start by saying this is probably the most egregious gerrymander that we've seen on the federal level in North Carolina ever, which says a lot.

That is a mouthful given what the gerrymanders we've seen over the last several years.

I mean, this is truly a gerrymander on steroids.

You have to break it down like this: North Carolina, if you look at the 2022 election, Democrats received about 50% of the vote for federal office for members of Congress, and Republicans received about 50% of the vote.

Under these maps, Republicans would elect 80%, 80% of voters in North Carolina would elect a Republican to Congress in a non-competitive seat.

As you said, it goes from 7:7 today to likely an 11:3 map.

Now, for a state that is 50/50, any reasonable person can say that's a egregious gerrymander.

I think that the final thing I'll say about it is Republicans do- there's a reason we have new maps again, are gonna have new maps again this year, Republicans do this time and time again where they overreach and the courts slap their hands and send them back and what we see again and again is it's like the old adage goes, right, "pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered," and I fully expect the appeals court, or, excuse me, the federal court, to shoot these maps down, too.

- Lucille, in Raleigh, they have the Public Terminal where we can all book a time and have our own maps and give them to the House leaders, but then these come out of I guess confidential conversations among House leaders.

What's the tone in Raleigh and did you see it coming when it came, these maps?

- There had been some discussions for a few weeks that maps were sort of in the works, so if you're sort of deep in it, you saw it coming a little bit.

But if you're not deep in it, absolutely not.

It is completely different process than we've seen in previous years.

Part of that is because of the Supreme Court, state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.

There's just a different tone from Republicans.

They're sort of able to throw out a lot of the criteria that they used in previous redistricting last year and the year before and that's really sort of changed just their entire approach to this.

- Mitch, how do normal folks, how should they interpret redistricting because, you know, they'll say, "we didn't use race as a criteria," "we did this, we did that," if Republicans drew these maps?

The criteria, what is it, and then second, do they hire experts to draw the maps for them or is this a bunch of folks from back home just getting together in a room and drawing a map?

- No, they did hire an expert.

They actually in the House committee they talked about the name of the fella, something like Spurlin Getty, who had worked on redistricting in Ohio.

Several things to point out here.

Yes, North Carolina is about a 50/50 state.

Thereabouts, some would say may 50/49 Republican in some years, maybe a little bit favoring Democrats in other years, but the political geography favors the Republicans.

When we had the last round of court fights about this, even the Democrats' expert suggested that in a 14-member congressional seat, congressional layout of the maps, the most likely outcome for maps would be 9:5 in favor of Republicans, maybe 8:6 in favor of Republicans.

11:3 is certainly a gerrymander, that's certainly true, but it's not as if the maps drawn in a normal way would normally produce 7:7.

7:7 is basically a gerrymander that the courts inspire to help the Democrats out.

The other thing I'd point out is when we're talking about this, there are two different sets of questions.

One is: "what should the general assembly do?"

And "what can the general assembly do?"

What should they do, they should probably put in a process that's fair to all that doesn't make it bad for the minority party and when the majority party gets to draw the districts, that's not what either side has done.

What can they do?

The courts, both the federal and state level have now said they could use as much partisanship as they want.

The courts are not gonna deal with it.

The only thing they really have to worry about from the courts now is racial gerrymandering, which is why a lot of the questions that came out at that first meeting from the House were about what happened on the racial front and use of racial data and why weren't Voting Rights Act districts drawn first before anything else?

- Mr. Edmisten, you've been here since the '70s.

There were very few Republicans around in the legislature in those days- - I thought you would say I've been here since the beginning of time.

[Kelly laughs] Well, I'd say, "here we go again."

We're getting ready, court cases, as Morgan said, and Mitch has got it right.

It's what they could do and what they're going to do and what they're able to do.

When I hear all this talk about redistricting, I think I'm listening to a police scanner.

10:4, 11:3.

More than likely, 10:4 because if you've got it and you wanna sound like you're giving a little bit, do a 10:4.

If you wanna be greedy, do 11:3.

And I still, nobody wants to listen to it anymore, I still believe that you could have non-partisan redistricting commissions.

I believe in that.

Red states do it, they get along with it, but nobody wants to give up power.

I would say that if the Democrats were in right now they probably wouldn't want to do that, they haven't before, and until something's done about that and something's done... Now I do say that there might be a little bit of a narrow passageway here because the Supreme Court in the Alabama case did say that Alabama had ignored racial considerations and they did order them in essence to do a second district.

So I think there's something still to play on that and let's wait for the lawyers to start ringing up the cha-ching and being representatives for both clients on both sides.

- And one thing I think we need to add is one of the reasons that you see all these court cases over and over again is that the courts have not been particularly clear about what is fine and what isn't.

Basically every time there's a dispute, there's a new decision and the court says, "well, this is what we think this time."

And so whoever's drawing the maps has to kind of guess about what the courts will say is going to work and what won't work.

- Morgan, looking across who's currently sitting in the House, you'd figure most of the Republicans would feel pretty safe, so let's look at the Democrats.

Jeff Jackson released a video in the last day or two.

His words were, "they drew me in a district where I am toast," doing this TikTok thing.

Who's toast?

Or, as someone who coaches, leads campaigns, how do you get messaging so Republicans might consider a Democratic House member?

'Cause to your credit, Roy Cooper won twice during Trump years.

- That's right.

Now, that was statewide.

They were not in gerrymandered districts.

- [Kelly] Fair enough.

- To be fair.

I think the challenge for Democrats is not only do these districts favor Republicans, they greatly favor Republicans.

The closest district, depending on, they released two maps this weekend, and depending on which map you look at, it's either an 11-3, where in order for Democrats to win a fourth seat, you'd have to win a district that hasn't favored a Democrat by more than 45%.

It's a pretty tough slog.

The other map is a sort of 10-3-1, where you've got Don Davis's district in the northeast that is really a 50/50 district but likely leans Republican, and so you'd end up with 11-3.

And so it is not just that Republicans are favored, it's that most of these are favored by 10 points.

And, y'know, that's how we end up in this place where we are in the United States House of Representatives right now, is when the only voters you have to convince to vote for you are primary voters, you end up deadlocked in DC and that's why they can't even find a Speaker.

- And that's among Republicans!

The Cooper administration is trying to stop an upcoming election law from taking effect that would strip the Governor's position, future Governors too, of appointments to the State Board of Elections.

The Governor's team is arguing that prior state Supreme Court rulings are backing their argument, that removing such executive power is blatantly unconstitutional.

They also point to a failed 2018 referendum where state voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would've reformed the Elections Board and how its members are appointed, Lucille.

This really is in the weeds as a state topic.

Once again, we're into that era of just before an election, people want to learn about candidates, they don't want to learn about policy, but why is this issue important?

- This issue is super important because the Board of Elections makes so many decisions about how our elections are run.

We have state laws that determine how our elections are run, but the Board of Elections makes a lot of nitty gritty decisions that can really change sort of how our elections function.

And this law, if it makes it, if it stands through the courts, will make it so there's an even split of Republicans and Democrats.

And Democrats have argued that that's pretty much gonna gridlock the State Board of Elections and make it really hard for them to get anything done and then basically kick decisions that they can't agree on to the State Legislature, which is currently run by Republicans.

So it sort of presents an interesting, I think, dilemma of a possibility of gridlock and then sort of kicking power back to Republicans for some things, is what Democrats say.

- Mitch, in this case, it is perfect partisan balance.

They'll say that's sort of an independent-type thing.

You know, one side can't take an advantage structurally on this board.

Your take?

- Well, that is the argument on the other side though, is that the two camps will come to opposite decisions, there will be no decision, there will be a gridlock, and then it would be kicked back to the legislature, which we've already heard a lot of complaints that the legislature wants to take all of the government decisions for its own.

- Do they?

- No, but I think there a number of cases in which they would rather have the decision than the Governor, especially this current Governor.

And looking at the polls, perhaps, who might be the next Governor, the General Assembly would like to have that power.

But I think it is interesting, we don't know how this board would operate 'cause we haven't seen it.

It could be the case, as Republicans have said, that you would have four Democrats, four Republicans, and they would have to find compromise and you wouldn't end up with partisan decisions, but the result could be that both sides would go to their corners and say, "we want this."

The other side would say, "we want that."

No decision, and so you end up with whatever is the default position, which, in case of, like, early voting sites, will tend to be one for the entire county.

Or you may have decisions made by the General Assembly.

- Rufus, what happens when, and if, we go to a balanced State Board of Elections?

Looking forward, is it going to be gridlock or might we be pleasantly surprised that in this case Republicans and Democrats can, in fact, get along and run an election?

- I have never seen one yet.

Don't expect to.

Most things will be, Mitch, most things will be my way or your way or the highway.

And what I keep thinking about is the legislature to make a decision, who will make that?

And it will boil down to this and boil down to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tem of the Senate, which I've often said now, and I'm not making any judgements, we've got three Governors right now if you continue the legislative usurpation of executive power.

I remember in 1982, I gave a ruling that for the legislature to even put membership on something called the Advisory Budget Commission was against the Separation of Powers Doctrine, and the courts upheld me.

Well, since that time, we've had a global shift.

And what you have to remember is that nobody's paying attention to a very, very stark provision of the Constitution which says the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branch of government in North Carolina shall remain forever separate.

That seems to have been forgotten.

And I don't see any way around this except the legislature deciding who won and who won the fights between elections boards.

And what do you do when you've got over over 100 elections boards?

Where do they get the time to do that?

- You make the time, Rufus, you make it.

- Oh, boy.

- Morgan, we know where you stand, you're with Team Cooper on this.

However, let's look forward and Republicans will look at you as a democratic king and queen maker and say, "Ah, yeah, yeah, we win.

"Let's put a Republican in that governor's seat "and he or she can't appoint."

What happens?

- So, listen, this is about power and control.

This is about the legislature believing that they are the only form of government in North Carolina and that they have the full authority to run everything.

They've tried this same scheme three times and what we've seen, listen, what we've seen in the past, North Carolina is one of the best run elections boards in the country.

Don't forget that it was a Republican appointed majority by Pat McCrory that declared Roy Cooper the winner in 2016 in a tight election.

These boards have made fair decisions and have run really clean, good elections time and time again and especially some of the challenges we saw in 2020 around the country, North Carolina was lauded as one of the best run.

And so this is about power and control.

This is about the legislatures wanting to determine who wins and who loses elections and as several folks who have mentioned, one of the biggest concerns is what's gonna limit your right to early vote in North Carolina.

If you end up in a place like Wake County or Mecklenburg County and Republicans decide they want gridlock and so they're not gonna offer sites, you end up, instead of having 20 early vote sites for a million people, you have one.

And almost 3 million people voted early in North Carolina last time and this is putting that at risk and the thing, as Lucille mentioned, I think, that should scare every voter in this state, is that when you get to a contested election, instead of actual elections board members determining the criteria of who won that, it gets kicked over to the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore to determine, the same people who are just drawing a map that make sure they win 80% of elections.

Let's be real people.

- All right, the US Supreme Court has chosen not to intervene in a lower federal court ruling that overturns a state law that would ban recording, there's hidden recordings and leaking documents related to farming and animal operations.

The US Appeals Court ruled two to one, that legitimate, "News gathering activities "cannot be criminalized."

The animal rights group, PETA, sued because it hopes or hoped to go undercover over at UNC Chapel Hill Roof as some of the labs there where animals might be tested.

But it feared its team once it got in there, would face criminal charges if it released anything that it found or took.

It's called AG gag laws.

The Attorney General's office is reviewing the state's next steps in this suit.

It involves Chapel Hill now.

I remember this bill going through and it was all about keeping people off of hog and chicken farms doing those videos and putting 'em on YouTube.

This involves a university and a laboratory, PETA going in there to expose or to see what's going on.

What do you think of this AG gag thrown out?

- I grew up on a farm.

I can understand the farmer's dilemma.

They do worry about people infiltrating, messing up their hiring practices.

But you've gotta look at it this way, when it comes to free speech, the courts, even the Supreme Court has constituted now, has said, "No, we are not going to interfere "where you've got free speech issues."

And I think that farmers and labs are gonna have to find a way to do what they're doing in a legitimate way to allow the public to know because the Supreme Court of the United States, in refusing to take this case up, has said, "We believe there's a very strong right to news gathering."

Lucille should like that one and most other people should like it.

And we've gotta learn to live with it and I think that the farmers in North Carolina are going to have to find a way to say that, "We are not going to do things that will bring on PETA."

Now, they, you say the word PETA to a farmers and you are just scaring them plumb to death.

I think it's in intriguing that the Supreme Court's refused this because it does show what a strong, strong belief we have in First Amendment rights in America.

- Mitch, PETA, a news gathering operation, I would say they're advocates and they're gonna look for a certain situation on animal farms and in animal laboratories.

How do you interpret the ruling as someone who has a journalistic background in your past?

- The thing that's interesting to me about this case that has been a bit under-reported is that when the court of appeals had its two/one ruling in this case, it actually scaled back what the district court did.

The trial court in this case actually threw out much more of this law that came out in 2015.

The law was basically designed on its face to prevent someone from lying about why they're coming to work for some agricultural operation.

So they could get in there and then get these videos or get some sort of evidence of wrongdoing and then expose it.

The original district court ruling throughout much of the law, the Court of Appeals came back and said, "Well, you know, a lot of these things "that have been argued by PETA "and these other groups are speculative, "we're not gonna ban this, "but we are gonna ban anything "that deals with legitimate news gathering operations."

And I think one of the reasons why this case was appealed to the US Supreme Court, not only by the Farm Bureau, which you'd expect, but also by Attorney General Josh Stein, is because they wanted to see some more clarity.

It's not gonna be clear, PETA, obviously, is not seen normally as a news gathering operation, but some judge somewhere is gonna have to decide in the future whether what was taken from one of these places is news or not and I think it's still kind of muddy now that the Supreme Court has decided not to take it.

- I don't know how to frame this question for you, Lucille, advocacy, animal rights groups, news gathering operations, you're clearly with Axios, that's not an advocacy group from anything I've ever seen, what does it say when these groups are coming in, making arguments on behalf of journalists?

- Yeah, my initial reaction is that's so worrisome.

We're in an age where people already have a really hard time determining what's news and what's sort of opinion.

We see this on Facebook, we see this with blogs.

Anyone can sort of represent themselves as someone who gathers news and that is what sort of concerns me.

Of course, it's great that we're going to err on the side of news gathering is worthy, but it's worrisome that we're gonna lump a group that's advocacy, no matter what site it's on, with news.

- What's the balance like at the legislative building?

Does traditional media that Capitol Press Corps, I was a member of it for so long, and there was a resistance to bloggers and people who did vlogs, videos and YouTube.

They weren't reporters, even if they were reporting some pretty good articles and good issues.

Does this change anything?

I mean, this is related to farming, but it raises a bigger discussion.

- No, I mean, in terms of the legislature and sort of how the press corps operates, I don't think it changes anything.

What's interesting about how the press corps operates is the press corps and journalists who are in charge of the press corps decide who gets to be in the press corps.

And that means that organizations that have any kind of tilt are often left out, which is a big argument that we're really having every year.

And so in terms of he legislature, it doesn't change anything, but I still think this is a conversation we're gonna keep having over and over and over, sort of in this day and age, whenever it's hard to determine, who is legitimate news, who are legitimate journalists, and who are people that are sorta just not held to the same standard.

- Morgan, this is an interesting coalition, trying to get clarity on this law you got Josh Stein, you got the farmers, you know, it seems, say nonpartisan in a certain way to fight, to figure out.

How do you handle free speech on a farm or in an animal laboratory, when someone may have gotten in there own false pretenses?

- Listen, I think the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech is one of, it is the First Amendment for a reason.

It is an important tenement in this country.

And I think you see all sides or most sides saying this is something that we need to protect.

But I also believe, I agree with Mitch.

I'm not sure all of this is that clear.

Even with the ruling, I think you're gonna see this is a complex issue that is gonna be debated over time, and I think probably on a case by case basis, based on whatever the lawsuit is about, whatever the alleged violation is and who was the person doing the recording and the fact finding.

And so I think honestly, we'll see.

I don't think any of it's black and white at this point.

- You're working with Executive Branch, you're working with Stein's team in a different manner, a campaign manner.

Can the state not get distracted by so many lawsuits?

Is there enough bureaucracy there to handle a lawsuit on all these controversial bills and then here comes Peter with another, with a federal lawsuit?

We got the capacity for this?

- Oh Lord, yes.

I mean, people don't realize that the state's in a thousand lawsuits, Rufus'll tell you, a day, for highway right of ways to massive major Supreme Court battles.

I mean, this is the way government functions.

- There's one difference though.

It used to be the Attorney General was the main lawyer, had all the attorneys, no longer, chipping away at the Attorney General's Office until sooner or later it's only gonna have the Consumer Protection Division, which I hope will stay around.

But yeah, hundreds of lawsuits a day.

Looking out for people.

When they allege something's wrong, it's the Attorney General's duty.

And if you can't do the Attorney General, hire your own attorney.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I only got a couple minutes left.

Public demonstrations over at UNC Chapel Hill's campus last week, sparked a real discussion among the academics on campus, this week.

You had two groups confronting each other over the Hamas-Israeli conflict or war.

It happened on the Chapel Hill campus, A little tussle there.

So Carolina's new committee on Academic Freedom and Free speech convened.

They just discussed or reinforced institutional neutrality.

And what might be the campus's responsibilities when students choose to enter the public scare, both pro and con on a certain issue.

This Israeli-Hamas thing, Mitch, is really tough to articulate in the media.

If you don't say the right thing on either way, you could bring a lot of heat on yourself.

What should be the campus's role when students come together and it gets testy, if just verbally?

- Yeah, well, certainly the campus is in a tough position and the law has changed in recent years, because the General Assembly decided that it didn't want campuses to be taking stances on these political issues.

I don't think they were thinking about Israel being attacked by Hamas when they came up with it.

It was more, don't take positions that would be seen as woke or overly progressive in the attitude of the General Assembly.

But laws have unintended consequences.

And that means the UNC Chapel Hill folks wanted to be very tight-lipped about Israel and Hamas.

- Rufus tell 'em.

- Encourage free speech.

Have places for students and other people can assemble, but don't start taking sides, unless you're talking about something academic.

- Alright, Morgan on this one, interesting, a lot of Carolina fans out there and alumni and I wouldn't wanna touch this this issue if I was a politician or anybody.

It's keep it- - Listen, I think everybody, this country is very worried about what's happening in Israel.

The terrorist attack, the loss of innocent lives.

But I also think it stokes a lot of opinions around, and you saw that at Chapel Hill this past week, but I think Rufus is right.

Listen, this is about provide people a place for free speech.

Be able to articulate whatever your position is.

That's what campuses really are about.

That is the heart of being an academic institution.

And so they should provide spaces for folks with differing opinions, but they should also keep it civil.

- Yeah.

Lucille, last 30 seconds.

- Yeah, I think world issues.

Usually we see things happening across the world, fights playing out on campus.

That's where we see such heated discussions playing out.

It feels sort of just how these things play out.

Is on college campuses it's a place where people can feel safe to debate it.

And I think that's what we've really seen on UNCs campus this week, although it's gotten more tense.

- Yeah, okay.

Thank you so much, panel.

This has been a great discussion on some very complex topics.

I appreciate all of you and I appreciate you watching.

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

We'll read every email.

I'm Kelly McCullen.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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