Local News

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — If you find yourself sipping a cold brew with a piece of watermelon in your hand this summer, you can thank the bees for making that snack possible.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina mountain city is asking for the public's help as it works on a plan to incorporate a famous author's cabin into its park system. 

Buncombe County’s Democratic commissioners plan to speak out Tues. against a measure that would force sheriffs to comply with federal immigration agents.

Board Chair Brownie Newman, Vice Chair Jasmine Beach-Ferrara and Commissioners Amanda Edwards and Al Whitesides penned a letter to the Governor supporting his condemnation of House Bill 370. The measure would require sheriffs departments to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and honor detainers to hold individuals in local detention facilities.

The commissioners say the bill is “unconstitutional” and would erode trust in local law enforcement. Commissioner Beach Ferrara says it’s about defending all residents of the county. 

“To be very proactive and vocal and vigilant about standing up for the rights and the dignity of our immigrant community when there are such attacks happening at the state and federal level,” Beach-Ferrara said. 

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has indicated that if HB 370 makes it to his desk, he plans to veto it. The three Republican commissioners on the County Board are not included in the letters of support to the governor. Commisioners Mike Fryar, Joe Belcher and Robert Pressley did not return BPR's requests for comment.  

(NPR) Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts can't intervene in cases where state lawmakers have aggressively drawn political boundaries to benefit one political party over another, a new front in the nation's redistricting battles opens Monday in a North Carolina courtroom.

Raleigh -- U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of North CarolinaDepartment of Justice - Former Buncombe County Commissioner Indicted On Federal Charges
The Defendant Allegedly Conspired with Former Buncombe County Manager to Use $575,000 in County Funds to Sponsor Equestrian Activities in North Carolina and Florida

NC -- (AP) A North Carolina man charged with anonymously threatening to lynch a Muslim-American political candidate in Virginia also is accused of posting an anti-Semitic threat on a Florida synagogue’s Facebook page.

An FBI agent outlined those allegations against Joseph Cecil Vandevere, 52, in an affidavit unsealed before Vandevere’s initial court appearance Wednesday in Asheville, North Carolina.

Investigators linked Vandevere to a threatening comment posted in February 2018 on the website of a synagogue in Plantation, Florida, the affidavit said. A rabbi at Ramat Shalom Synagogue contacted the FBI after somebody using the name Bob Smith posted a “disturbing” comment in response to the rabbi’s post showing support for the Parkland, Florida, high school where a gunman killed 17 people earlier that month, the agent wrote.

Vandevere is charged with interstate communication of a threat to injure a person in connection with a tweet directed at Virginia state Senate candidate Qasim Rashid. The tweet included a picture of a lynching and read, “VIEW YOUR DESTINY.”

Rashid posted a screenshot of the threatening tweet in March 2018 and reported it to the FBI.

The FBI subpoenaed Facebook records associated with the “Bob Smith” account after the Florida rabbi reported the anti-Semitic comment, which called for “public arrests and executions” of “dual citizen Jews.” Responses to the Facebook subpoena and a separate subpoena to telecommunications company Charter Communications linked the account to Vandevere, the agent wrote.

“The review of the Facebook search warrant results disclosed that the Facebook account was used by Vandevere mainly to harass other people,” the affidavit said, noting that Vandevere called it his “attack dog” account.

An “open source search” using Vandevere’s telephone number linked him to the same Twitter account — with the handle “DaDUTCHMAN5″ — that posted the threat against Rashid, according to the affidavit. The post was accompanied by a black-and-white photograph of the infamous 1915 lynching of a Jewish man, Leo Frank, in Marietta, Georgia.

The FBI obtained a warrant to search Vandevere’s apartment in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and seize records related to the Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Rashid, a 36-year-old attorney who works on immigrant rights cases, told The Associated Press on Monday that he is pleased law enforcement officials are treating the tweet as an act of “extremism.”

“I think this is how you protect free speech and a genuine exchange of ideas,” he said.

The FBI arranged for Vandevere to be taken into custody Wednesday at the Asheville courthouse. He didn’t enter a plea during his initial court appearance. He was freed on $25,000 bond and is scheduled to be arraigned on July 15, according to online court records.

A magistrate judge ordered Vandevere to refrain from using social media during his pretrial release, said Lia Bantavani, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Western District of North Carolina.

There is no indication that Vandevere has been charged in connection with the threat posted on the synagogue’s Facebook page.

The charge against Vandevere is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Neither Vandevere nor his attorney, Andrew Banzhoff, immediately responded Wednesday to phone messages and emails seeking comment.

Twitter has suspended the “DaDUTCHMAN5” account.

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — A preliminary report by federal investigators says a single-engine plane was seen flying erratically before it crashed in a cow pasture in North Carolina, killing two licensed flight instructors onboard.

News outlets report the initial findings from the National Transportation Safety Board show a private pilot watching the plane from his truck saw it enter two stalls and a spin before it disappeared from view.

According to the NTSB report, flight tracking data showed the airplane completed “a series of spiral descending turns” before it landed at an airport at 10:22 a.m. on June 26. The plane took off again at 10:26 a.m. and crashed about two and a half minutes later.

The Federal Aviation Administration says the plane was a Rans S-6 Coyote II light sport aircraft.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Receiving and casting mail-in absentee ballots in North Carolina could take longer but be more secure in legislation that’s cleared one General Assembly chamber.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina legislators took an initial step Tuesday toward expanding Medicaid coverage to more working families after nearly a decade of Republican opposition when a GOP-designed plan easily passed a committee with bipartisan support.

But Republicans who initially seemed ready to fast-track the measure later made clear that Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s chief goal would be sidetracked until enough Democrats turned their backs on Cooper and backed the GOP budget he vetoed last month. Expansion legislation that suddenly passed a state House committee Tuesday morning and scheduled for House approval later in the day was again sidelined.

“I’ve made it clear that once the (budget) votes are there and the commitments are there, that we’ll take the vote up on it (Medicaid),” State House Speaker Tim Moore said.

The expansion legislation approved by the House Health Committee requires participants to work and pay up to 2% of their annual household income for coverage. That, along with an estimated $2 billion from hospitals hoping to cut the volume of poor people who can’t pay, would cover the state’s share without costing taxpayers, said state Rep. Donny Lambeth, a Forsyth County Republican and former hospital executive.

“We have a problem with health care in North Carolina” that includes more than 1 million residents without insurance coverage, struggling rural hospitals and small communities unable to attract doctors as an aging population increases demand, Lambeth said. The plan assumes about 300,000 would qualify for expanded Medicaid coverage, he said.

North Carolina is one of 14 states that have resisted Medicaid expansion covering roughly 12 million people despite the federal government paying 90% of Medicaid expansion costs under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare.

That law faced a legal challenge Tuesday in a federal appeals court in New Orleans from Republican-led states arguing that all facets of the law must be voided because Congress dropped tax penalties for people who don’t buy health insurance coverage. Any decision by three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Republican House leaders allowed the North Carolina legislation, building on proposals first advanced in 2017, to get a committee vote amid a budget fight in which Medicaid expansion looms large.

Cooper wants Medicaid expansion without work requirements or premiums and he vetoed the state budget plan adopted by the Legislature because Republicans didn’t include it.

Senate leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican, said he won’t negotiate with Cooper over the budget unless the governor drops his Medicaid demand.

“We’re willing to have a conversation about health care. It’s just that for the governor to hold up the entire budget on that one issue strikes me as something that’s just totally inappropriate,” Berger said Tuesday.

Berger said the Medicaid expansion bill being considered by the House lacked the votes to pass in the Senate.

Cooper called the Republican decision to begin consideration of Medicaid expansion “a good step forward” but short of his proposal that would expand Medicaid to between 500,000 and 600,000 working North Carolinians.

“Clearly if they’re discussing it, they realize that it’s an important part of this process, but it has to go through two chambers in order to pass,” he told reporters Tuesday.

The expansion proposal advanced Tuesday was opposed by advocacy groups on the left, which argued work and reporting requirements are expensive and complicated, and the right, which said accepting more federal funding for Medicaid would add to the national deficit.

But supporters addressing legislators included the owner of daycare centers who said her poorly paid teachers suffered without affordable health care and former Republican gubernatorial candidate George Little, who said North Carolina businesses couldn’t remain competitive without financially stable hospitals.

Cassandra Brooks, who owns two daycare centers near Raleigh, said two of her teachers died prematurely from heart ailments that went untreated because they couldn’t afford medical costs, a problem Medicaid expansion could address.

“They died from something so simple that could have been prevented,” she said.