Under the Dome podcast: Goings-on at UNC, elections bills, and Oscar noms

Avi Bajpai
·2 min read

Start your week in North Carolina politics with our Under the Dome podcast. I’m Avi Bajpai, a state politics reporter here at The News & Observer, and your host this week, filling in for Dawn Vaughan.

On this latest episode for the week of Jan. 29, 2024, my colleagues Korie Dean and Kyle Ingram join the podcast to talk about Lee Roberts, the new interim chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, and some important discussions that took place at last week’s meeting of the UNC System’s Board of Governors.

We also talk about recent developments in a legal challenge against one of the two major elections bills GOP lawmakers passed over Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto at the end of last year’s legislative session.

Dean recaps what the first few weeks on the job have been like for Roberts, and tells us about what came out of the BOG’s discussions on a possible new athletic conference realignment policy that would apply to all UNC schools.

We also discuss a potential move by the system to adopt some of the instruction requirements contained in the REACH Act, a bill filed by Republicans last year to mandate the teaching of certain historical and civic texts including:

▪ The Declaration of Independence;

▪ The Emancipation Proclamation;

▪ Essays from the Federalist Papers

▪ Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”;

▪ The Gettysburg Address;

Headliner of the Week

After the break, Ingram talks about new developments in a lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 747, an omnibus elections bill Republicans passed last year, and discusses the other major elections bill, Senate Bill 749, which overhauls the structure of state and local elections boards.

Stay tuned until the end for an all-Oscars edition of Headliner of the Week, where we switch things up and share our thoughts on the Academy Award nominations that were announced last week.

And finally, as a reminder, The N&O is preparing our voter guide that will be published early next month. If you’re a candidate running in a contested primary and have received a candidate questionnaire from our team, please fill those out soon.

Listen to our latest episode below and catch up on previous episodes. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Audible, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon Music and Stitcher.