Welcome. This is a weekly feature of North Carolina Blue. The platform gives readers interested in North Carolina politics a place to share their knowledge, insight and inspiration as we take back our state from some of the most extreme Republicans in the nation. Please stop by each week. You can also join the discussion in four other weekly State Open Threads. If you are interested in starting your own state blog, weekly to occasionally, I will list your work below.
Colorado: Mondays, 7:00 PM Mountain Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern Missouri: Wednesday Evenings Kansas: Monday Evenings
Please jump the fold for links to a few North Carolina stories I found useful and interesting this week. Please excuse the brevity of today’s post.
North Carolina’s top politicians are speaking out and condemning Saturday’s violence at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania that ended with the former president being whisked off stage. Secret Service agents say that Trump is “fine” though the suspected shooter is dead.
Here’s some initial reaction from across North Carolina.
U.S. Senator Thom Tillis:
“This was a heinous assassination attempt and thank God that President Trump is safe. Keep praying for those who were shot. Violence in our political system can never be tolerated.”
Governor Roy Cooper:
“Violence has no place in our politics or communities. I am grateful for the quick response by law enforcement today and hope former President Trump is not seriously injured.”
Lt. Governor Mark Robinson:
“In America right now, passions are inflamed on both sides of the aisle, but please let’s all remember who we are. We are Americans unless unified in the fact that violence has no place in political discourse. We must remain calm, we must remain steadfast, and we must remain
unified on at least that point.
For the safety of our country and our citizens and for our republic as a whole, we need calm, we need peace, and we need to realize again, violence has no place in political discourse. I’m praying for the entire country, I’m praying for North Carolina, I’m praying for President Trump.”
Attorney General Josh Stein:
“I am outraged by what happened tonight at President Trump’s rally. Political violence is abhorrent and has no place in America.
I pray for his health and am grateful he was able to walk off the stage tonight. I appreciate the secret service and law enforcement for their immediate response.
I am also praying for our deeply divided country. People should be able to have differing opinions without fear of violence or threats.”
After a wet start to the weekend and a triple-digit heat index on Saturday, temperatures will get even higher on Sunday.
Prepare for a scorching afternoon on Sunday. While Saturday's heat index reached 101, Sunday and Monday's heat is about to feel even worse. It could feel as hot as 107 degrees each day.
A Heat Advisory is in effect Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. There's also a chance for spotty storms in the afternoon.
New polling indicates that President Joe Biden’s reelection chances may not have been damaged by his poor presidential debate performance on June 27 as much as many members of his own party originally thought or, in some cases, continue to believe.
In an interview recorded on Tuesday for the NC Newsline radio show/podcast News & Views, veteran pollster Tom Jensen of the Raleigh-based national polling firm Public Policy Polling said that while the immediate impact of his widely panned performance on poll numbers “looked pretty bad for Biden,” the president has since rebounded. This, said Jensen, is a fairly typical and unsurprising development.
This is from the interview:
“Well, a lot of the time with something like Biden’s poor debate performance, you’ll see sort of an immediate impact in the polls, and I think that was reflected in that the first week or so after the debate; there were some polls that looked pretty bad for Biden. But most of the time, episodes like this, the impact of them wears off pretty quickly, and that’s really what we’re seeing as we sort of get back from the Fourth of July holiday and a couple weeks have passed. We’re now seeing a race that looks very similar to where it was before the debate — which is basically a toss-up, nationally.”
Thanks for reading, see you next week.
