It's gone pretty under the radar with everything else going on, but the collapse of Republican State Senator @LisaStoneBarnes' agricorp in Nash county stinks like a hog farm in August.

(They grow sweet potatoes, not hogs, but you get it)

Barnes Family Farm is one of the biggest agricorps in North Carolina. "Family farm" is misleading - it's a sprawling agri-empire that spans 20,000 acres across 3 counties. The Barnes family are extremely wealthy. @LisaStoneBarnes is a Republican state senator representing Nash, Franklin and Vance counties, and chaired the Senate Agriculture committee.

The Barnes' have now defaulted on a series of loans they took out, totaling $40 million. A Nash county judge said in his court order that farm revenues “are either not being collected, or are not being paid to [Rabo Agrifinance] and are thus being lost, wasted, transferred, concealed or impaired.” (italics added)

Concealed? Transferred? You don't say? About ten years ago, the Barnes family agri-business was swept up in one of the biggest crop insurance fraud cases in decades.

Carson Barnes, the father of Johnny Barnes (current co-owner with @LisaStoneBarnes), agreed to work with law enforcement to get more lenient treatment. As a part of that investigation, they were still busted for massive tax fraud.

The Barnes family is just not on the level.
justice.gov/usao-ednc/pr/p…

This is Greg Lindberg. In 2018, he attempted to bribe NC's Republican Insurance Commissioner @MikeCauseyNC to kill investigations into Lindberg's insurance conglomerate. In the process, @NCGOP Chairman Robin Hayes was busted on tape as "more than happy to help" facilitate the bribe - and broke open the biggest bribery scandal in modern North Carolina political history.

Today, @business published a lengthy investigation into what happened right after Greg Lindberg went to jail - and this is absolutely bananas. It turns out that Lindberg was ALSO paying dozens of young, blonde models to undergo IVF treatment to have his babies, often under deceptive and coercive conditions. In 2019, Lindberg was indicted on bribery and wire fraud charges, and began serving time in federal prison in 2020. @ChairmanHayes was only sentenced to probation, and no other @NCGOP staff were ever officially charged.

The deal worked like this: Greg Lindberg proposed to give $1.5 million to @MikeCauseyNC in exchange for his official cooperation, and to use the @NCGOP as a pass-through to hide the transaction. That is illegal.

We are to believe that then-75 year old Robin Hayes was singlehandedly overseeing a massive bank transfer in and out of @NCGOP party accounts with no knowledge, involvement or assistance from anyone else - such as the party's then-executive director, @DallasWoodhouse. Take that for what you will.

🚨🚨NEW🚨🚨

Republican leaders in North Carolina's state legislature are preparing to vacate the recent election for the state supreme court duly won by @AllisonJRiggs, thwart the voters' will, and call for a new election.

Official announcement coming soon. And more... On top of the "sore loser" law further gutting the powers of NC's Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General and Supt. of Schools - all won by Democrats this year - Republican leadership in the legislature now plans to openly overturn the voters' will.

Would basically force a "re-do" of an election they lost, purely because a Democrat won. Really incredible escalation. And there's more...

We've confirmed that several Republican lawmakers are demanding to also vacate some, or perhaps all, of the recent Council of State elections.

🚨🚨Here we go🚨🚨

Tucked into a "recovery" bill for Western NC, Republicans in the state legislature are using the last days of their lame-duck supermajority to try passing some pretty crazy stuff that has nothing at all to do with Helene recovery.

Let's dive in. 🧵👇 #ncpol Today's bill moves the @NCSBE under the State Auditor's office - who, starting in January, is a Republican - revokes the Governor's authority to name its members, and gives it to the Auditor.

In 2023, Republicans in North Carolina's state legislature passed Senate Bill 20, a new 12-week abortion ban made possible by SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade.

Every single Republican voted for the bill, and overrode Gov. Cooper's veto. Let's revisit it. 🧵
ncleg.gov/Sessions/2023/… Facts:

SB 20 includes a 12-week ban, but it also severely restricts actual access to care even before 12 weeks.

The bill required 2-3 medically unnecessary, in-person visits weeks apart with a doctor to obtain abortion medication, just to limit access.
acluofnorthcarolina.org/en/sb20-key-fa…

Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have clear paths to victory in North Carolina.

Trump's problem is his is getting narrower, while Harris's is growing.

Let us show you what we mean. 🧵👇 It ain't just Wake and Mecklenburg. Every single one of NC's 20 biggest counties by population shifted towards Biden/away from Trump in 2020.

Even in GOP strongholds like Gaston, Davidson and Iredell, Trump lost significant ground in 2020.

Can he win it back? Maybe. Maybe not.

[NEW] INVESTMENT ACROSS NORTH CAROLINA

One of the pillars of the Biden-Harris administration's legacy is generational investments in American infrastructure. Tens of billions of dollars have gone into North Carolina, and we tracked them down.
#ncpol carolinaforward.org/blog/ira-in-no…
Through the Biden-Harris admin's Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, over $10 billion in public dollars have gone into rebuilding North Carolina roads, highways, bridges, ports and water systems.

Find your home county! 📍
carolinaforward.org/blog/ira-in-no…

Carolina Forward has obtained the public records from @ncdhhs citing the daycare run by @markrobinsonNC and his wife for not *only* major child safety violations, but a lot more...

It turns out the Robinsons were busted forging *two* official documents, not just one. #ncpol 😲👇 In November 2005, state inspectors found that @markrobinsonNC and Yolanda Robinson had forged a fake Basic School Age Care (BSAC) training certificate, in violation of state law.
carolinaforward.org/wp-content/upl…

With yesterday's surprise move by NC Republican politicians to effectively remove all limits on federal dark money campaign contributions, let's do a quick review of how Republicans in #ncpol have gradually demolished limits on campaign finance in North Carolina.

https://twitter.com/ForwardCarolina/status/1798751838184906831

Flashback: 2013. Republicans had their first full legislative supermajority (thanks to an egregious partisan gerrymander). One of their first acts was grabbing more cash for NC political campaigns.

They lifted the existing campaign contribution limit to $5k, but also...

Former GOP candidate @ScottRLassiter has accused Republican @NCHouseSpeaker Tim Moore of carrying on an adulterous relationship with his wife for 3+ years, naming him in a legal complaint.

This thing is... detailed. Yikes.
dailyhaymaker.com/complaint-spea… #ncpol ... wait, what?

It's difficult to discern which of #ncpol's Republican echo chamber have convinced themselves of such an eye-poppingly uninformed view like Frank's here, and which are simply repeating it due to partisan solidarity. Nevertheless, it crosses into the territory of fantasyland.

https://twitter.com/Telemachus111/status/1652632319352803330

What they never tell you (or perhaps don't even know) about this Democratic-drawn map was that it was highly competitive.

It was a 50/50 map, often 6D/7R. The party that won a majority of votes won the majority of Congressional seats.

https://twitter.com/brianonorio/status/1652357544680083456?s=20

#ncpol

The big difference between going to a movie or buying a beer (which require showing ID) and voting is that the latter is protected by the United States Constitution.

Citizens of the United States have the right to vote, as enshrined in the 14th Amendment. No qualifiers.

https://twitter.com/ForwardCarolina/status/1652281827736924160

Many of the same people who believe that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms with no qualifiers whatsoever (which ignores the entire first part of that amendment) curiously believe that the right to vote IS conditional.

Partisanship, hell of a drug, etc.

[NEW] The Political Geography of North Carolina

In a democracy, you have to go where the voters are. But what does that mean for leaders (and their challengers) in #ncpol?

To find out, you have to understand a few things about NC's "political geography."
carolinaforward.org/blog/political… North Carolina's voters are highly clustered in just a handful of metro areas.

For example: half of all voters in North Carolina live in just 12 of our 100 counties (highlighted). A THIRD of voters live in just the counties highlighted in blue.
carolinaforward.org/blog/political… #ncpol

Breaking: Based on evidence from Carolina Forward, the @NCSBE has launched formal investigations into two major #ncpol Republican politicians: @ECforNC and @RepMarkWalker.

Evidence shows major campaign finance violations by both in the 2022 cycle.
carolinaforward.org/blog/investiga… In his campaign, far-right fundamentalist @ECforNC partnered with the Christian nationalist org @ADFLegal, which provided him with personal media training to obscure his radical prohibitionist position on abortion. Sykes failed to report it - oops?
carolinaforward.org/blog/investiga… #ncpol

New survey data from @PRRIpoll shows how deeply infected the Republican Party has become with "Christian nationalist" ideology - the belief that America is rightfully a Christian "dominion" and that other faiths should be second-class citizens.
prri.org/research/a-chr… Adherents of Christian nationalist ideology are significantly more likely to hold anti-Black racist views.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of Christian nationalists are white, elderly, and unlikely to hold a college degree.
prri.org/research/a-chr…

This is a popular slogan on the Right. The problem? All the data says the opposite.

U-Chicago: "Total foot traffic fell by 60 percentage points [at the outset of COVID], but legal restrictions explain only around 7 percentage points of this decline."
bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/upl…

https://twitter.com/stephenehorn/status/1625547288058773527

Let's do more.

Here are researchers from the University of Washington who found that states "reopening" had variable and relatively little impact on consumer spending, because most people were choosing to lay low, because they were concerned about COVID.
arxiv.org/pdf/2012.08028…

[NEW] The Housing Bill North Carolina Needs

North Carolina has a worsening housing crisis that is hurting our urban, rural, and suburban areas and driving up the cost of living. Could our state lawmakers be ready to do something about it?

carolinaforward.org/blog/housing-b… #ncpol NC's housing supply has never recovered since the 2008 Great Recession. We are not building nearly enough housing stock to meet demand, leading to an increase in price.

Graph credit: @PolicyWithPaige
carolinaforward.org/blog/housing-b… #ncpol

NEW - Mark Martin, the Republican former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, was one of the core plotters of Trump's attempted coup. Now, @highpointu wants to make him dean of their new law school.

That isn't right.

Tell Mark No: tellmarkno.com #ncpol Mark Martin was an early and eager participant in the plot to overthrow the 2020 election and extralegally install Trump as president.

His efforts were outrageous, well-documented, and demonstrated pure contempt for the Constitution.

Tell Mark No: tellmarkno.com #ncpol

The abortion bans that anti-choice Republican politicians are pushing (and in many places passing) in many states, including #ncpol, directly threaten access not just to reproductive health services - but also to basic birth control.

Here are just a few examples. In Idaho: “IUDs, I’m not for certain yet on where I would be on that particular issue." - Republican House State Affairs Chairman Brent Crane

Another state where Rs have passed a total ban.
idahostatesman.com/news/politics-…

Vocal Charlotte city council Republican @FinTechInnov8r spent over a year recruiting this GOP slate, all of them have gotten crushed. Bokhari's race for the D6 seat is itself razor-thin: he's behind @hand4CLTdist6 by just 87 votes. #cltcc That's it! @FinTechInnov8r has hung on (barely) to his District 6 seat on the #cltcc, by just 377 votes.

Truly a remarkable feat of political survivorship. Bokhari won his 2019 race by ~3300 votes.

The rest of the Charlotte GOP slate crashes and burns.

It looks like the vendor the Green Party paid to collect signatures for its petition to get on NC's US Senate ballot, First Choice Consulting, is the same one implicated in the massive Republican signature forgery scandal unfolding in Michigan.
bridgemi.com/michigan-gover… #ncpol Basically, First Choice Consulting, which has a history of fraud, collected tens of thousands of fraudulent signatures for GOP candidates running for governor in Michigan. They got caught, and now 5 of those candidates have been disqualified.
axios.com/local/detroit/… #ncpol