Free Republic

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Mayor Vi Lyles announced Monday that Better.com is now calling Charlotte home. The digital mortgage lender said it plans to hire 1,000 people over the next five years, with 100 employees hired by the end of 2019. Digital mortgage lender to bring 1,000 jobs to Charlotte over 5 years CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Mayor Vi Lyles announced Monday that Better.com is now calling Charlotte home. The digital mortgage lender said it plans to hire 1,000 people over the next five years, with 100 employees hired by the end of 2019. [ALSO READ: Fortune 100 company Honeywell bringing HQ,...

A customer-care outsourcing company says it will expand into Charlotte, hiring hundreds within the next month. Chime Solutions — based in Morrow, Georgia, near Atlanta — expects to hire 400 employees by early October and 1,000 by the end of 2020, according to the city of Charlotte. The local call center will include jobs like operations managers, help desk support, service delivery managers, real-time analysts and customer service representatives. A spokeswoman for Chime Solutions confirmed the local office is leasing about 75,000 square feet at 7201 University Oaks Drive, which is part of Innovation Park in University City. Outside of...

Democrats are headed back to court to challenge the validity of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts, just weeks after the state’s highest court ruled that the Republican-controlled legislature unconstitutionally gerrymandered state-level maps. A new lawsuit filed Friday on behalf of 14 North Carolina voters challenges Republican-drawn maps that first went into effect ahead of the 2016 elections, after a court threw out a previous set of maps that were drawn after the 2010 Census. The 2010 maps, the court found, improperly divided minority communities or concentrated them into certain districts to dilute their political power, a practice known as cracking...

FULL TITLE: That Was Quick! State Department Already Refutes Partisan Anti-Trump Whistleblower’s Report – Says Senior Counselor Brechbuhl Was Not on Ukrainian Call (VIDEO) Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) joined Lou Dobbs on Thursday following the release of the partisan CIA whistleblower report. Mark Meadows told Lou the foundation of the whistleblower’s complaint is already starting to fall apart. Rep. Mark Meadows: Here’s what we do know. There’s reports out just minutes ago that on page three where the whistleblower said that he heard a counselor for the State Department was actually on the call, well the State Department says, no...

Business operator Stephanie Braswell will be joined at 10 a.m. today by officials of the Town of Tarboro and Carolinas Gateway Partnership to announce the opening of NBSF Consulting Inc. and the creation of 225 jobs. Norris Tolson, CEO and president of Carolinas Gateway Partnership, said NBSF Consulting will operate a call center in downtown Tarboro in the former Headway Corporate Resources facility at 115 E. Church St. A ribbon-cutting will be held at 10 a.m. Braswell, who is actively interviewing to fill her jobs, is a Rocky Mount native. “I am excited to be starting my business in Edgecombe...

The Trump administration is threatening to cut funding for a Middle East studies program run by the University of North Carolina and Duke University, arguing that it's misusing a federal grant to advance "ideological priorities" and unfairly promote "the positive aspects of Islam" but not Christianity or Judaism.

NEW LONDON, N.C. — The North Stanly High School cheerleading squad has been placed on probation by the N.C. High School Athletic Association after members of the team held up a Trump 2020 sign at a school event last week, and 8th District Congressman Richard Hudson is calling foul. Hudson, a Republican, sent a letter to NCHSAA Commissioner Que Tucker on Tuesday questioning why the the association placed the cheerleading squad on probation. "As the representative of Stanly County, I am appalled these students are being punished for exercising their First Amendment right to free speech," Hudson said in the...

High school cheerleaders on probation for posing with pro-Trump banner A high school cheerleading squad in North Carolina was put on probation Monday for posing with a pro-President Trump banner at a football game. Members of the North Stanly High School squad posed for photos with the “Trump 2020: Make America Great Again” flag at an Aug. 30 game on “American Night” — in which students were encouraged to dress patriotically, the Stanly News & Press reported. One photo — depicting seven girls in red, white and blue cheer uniforms and two boys in red “MAGA” caps with the banner...

California announced last week that it has added Iowa to the list of states on its ever-expanding “travel ban” list because of that state’s new prohibition against funding gender-transition surgeries under Medicaid. The announcement by state Attorney General Xavier Becerra means that as of Oct. 4, California will no longer offer taxpayer-funded trips to Iowa for any public employee or student at a state-run university. Becerra’s authority came from a 2016 California law signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown that bars state-funded travel to other states that undercut LGBT rights. The blacklist already included Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma and...

A high school teacher in Union County, North Carolina is in hot water after allegedly telling a class that Vice President Mike Pence should “be shot in the head.” Information about the Cuthbertson High School teacher’s remarks has been referred to the Secret Service, the Union County Sheriff’s Office said. According to FOX-46, the comments reportedly were made in reference to the veep’s trip to the state in support of recently elected US Representative Dan Bishop. Cuthbertson parent Firas Obeid, who’s “not necessarily” a Pence supporter, said it was “ridiculous” to make such a statement about the second-highest ranking official...

After weighing options in Pittsburgh, Detroit and several cities in Florida, Egnyte, a cloud storage company from Silicon Valley, opened a Raleigh office on Thursday with plans to eventually hire 120 people. The office, on the 18th floor of the PNC Plaza building, will serve as the lead sales office for the company’s East Coast operations, a geographic area that includes everything east of the Rocky Mountains. However, despite the sales focus, the office is hiring across all positions, including engineering, product and customer success teams. “I don’t think there will be any position that we will shy away from”...

On Aug. 30 some cheerleaders at North Stanly High School in New London, N.C., posted for a pre-game photo of themselves holding a banner that read, “Trump 2020 Make America Great Again.” The Stanly News & Press reported that it was “American Night” at the football game and students were encouraged to wear red, white and blue. The newspaper reports that the photo was posted on social media and “caused people to feel uncomfortable.” Apparently, there are some perpetually offended snowflakes who live in that part of North Carolina. It’s not quite clear who complained about that banner, but all you-know-what...

Documents Reveal State Department Efforts to Undermine Trump Revealed: DOJ Discussions on Rosenstein Wearing Wire to Get Trump North Carolina Frees Hundreds of Illegal Immigrants Wanted by Feds Don’t Miss “On Watch With Chris Farrell” Documents Reveal State Department Efforts to Undermine Trump We have made public 90 pages of heavily redacted U.S. Department of State documents showing Obama State Department officials’ efforts to disseminate classified information to multiple U.S. Senators immediately prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The information, which included raw intelligence, purported to show “ malign ” Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Among the...

The Washington Post could have spared themselves a lot of embarrassment on Wednesday if only they had done some basic fact checking instead of acting as robotic stenographers for Democrat talking points. And the talking point in question was the fake news that Republicans legislators in North Carolina broke rules to vote for a budget override while their Democrat colleagues were nobly attending a 911 ceremony.

Portsmouth Island is an 18 mile stretch of undeveloped barrier island south of Ocracocke. There is a private ferry that carries 4x4 vehicles over to a primitive fish camp. Most people fish and camp along the beach. All 18 miles were driveable. The link shows before and after views of the storm damage. Dozens of new inlets were created. It's a sad day for those of us who loved camping and fishing the entire island. Those days are gone for the foreseeable future. Link to photos

Fayetteville police are investigating after a person was shot to death by a homeowner during a home invasion. Officers with the Fayetteville Police Department were dispatched at 6:48 p.m. Thursday to the 400 block of Lands End Road in reference to a report of a shooting, according to a news release. At the scene, officers found a man with apparent gunshot wounds who was unresponsive and later pronounced dead by medical personnel on scene, the release said. A preliminary investigation revealed that two men forced open the front door of the residence and entered the home, the release said. One...

Dan McCready lost to his Republican challenger Dan Bishop Wednesday night in North Carolina's 9th district election. Bishop won by two percent of the vote, despite McCready having a two-year head start and millions of dollars in donations. So, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi congratulated...the latter. The Hill ✔@thehill Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "I'm very proud of Dan McCready... He won the campaign. He didn't win the election, but he won the campaign." 168 7:31 PM - Sep 12, 2019 “I’m very proud of Dan McCready,” she said glowingly. “He’s a patriot, he’s an independent voice for the district he would have...

The result of Tuesday’s special election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District didn’t take many political analysts by surprise. Republican Dan Bishop was predicted to win the district, which had been in Republican hands since 1963. But it may surprise analysts to know that my people, the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, proved crucial to Bishop’s victory. They shouldn’t be surprised. The Lumbee are culturally conservative, church-going and entrepreneurial. And more and more of us are distressed by the leftward lurch of the Democratic Party. SNIP Lumbee are educators, ministers, business owners, farmers, soldiers, doctors, engineers, professional athletes and still...

Last week the Democrats were touting the special election in North Carolina’s 9th District as the first major contest of the 2020 cycle, and the polls indicated that Democrat Dan McCready might win what should be a pretty safe GOP seat. By Wednesday morning, after Republican Dan Bishop had won, their focus had shifted and much commentary was devoted to his “thin margin of victory.” Little notice was taken of certain voting patterns that should frighten the Democrats. Specifically, McCready did far worse than expected in every county but one, and many of those counties are dominated by minority voters....

Republican Dan Bishop’s narrow win in Tuesday’s redo election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District isn’t just good news for House Republicans. Despite Bishop’s small, two-percentage-point margin of victory, it’s a rare bit of positive news for President Trump’s reelection chances. It’s no secret that Trump had a bad August. His job approval rating has slumped to only 43.1 percent in Wednesday’s RealClearPolitics average, about two points down from mid-July. Polls generally show him trailing Democratic front-runner Joe Biden by more than 10 percentage points, and they show him behind other potential nominees such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and...