This morning there was a political earthquake in North Carolina.

A legislator in the state House announced she was switching parties from Democrat to Republican.

I want to make sure you understand how dramatic the impact of this one switch will be.

[thread] Until today, Democrats had enough votes to sustain the Governor’s veto - but only by a margin of one vote in the NC House.

With this switch, Republicans now have a supermajority in both chambers, which just gave them full control for the first time since 2017.

Yesterday I learned about an event that happened three weeks ago. It appears that someone - who has yet to be identified - fired a shot into the home of my opponent's parents.

It was absolutely an act of violence and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. At this point, we don't know who did this or why. Thankfully no one was hurt, but whoever did this should be held accountable.

Whoa - now my congressional opponent is running an ad saying that I *support domestic terrorism.*

He's saying I side with people who try to harm us.

That's a pretty harsh accusation.

If only I had some way to fight back.

Oh wait. What if I had enlisted because of 9/11 and deployed to Afghanistan with Army Special Operations.

BREAKING: My opponent appears to have voted in this district despite not actually living here.

That’s a serious problem. Voting in a district you don’t actually live in can be a crime.

And he says his top issue is "election integrity."

Here are the facts: My opponent and I are running for NC's new 14th congressional district. It's an open seat.

I live here. I've represented a big part of this district in the state Senate for the last eight years.

My opponent lives outside the district in a 5,000 sqft lake house with his family.

Ukrainian resistance has been remarkable and from a military standpoint we don’t know the outcome.

But we know this: When Russia invaded its neighbor, it set itself on a path to swift economic disaster.

Let’s tally up the cost from just the last three weeks:

/thread/ - The ruble recently traded at its lowest level ever and is now worth less than a penny. Russia has doubled its key interest rate to 20% and banned trading the ruble for dollars to try and prop it up. These are emergency measures and not expected to prevent a further collapse.

Pres. Biden just signed the infrastructure bill and folks, it’s a big deal.

We just held town halls in every county and repeatedly heard how these kinds of investments could change people’s lives.

Let’s break down what it means for NC: Billions of dollars are coming our way.

$7.2 billion is going to roads.

$450 million to bridges.

$910 million to mass transit.

Millions more for our airports.

When talking about climate change, there's a big piece we don't mention enough:

We *must* do a better job of enlisting our agricultural communities as allies in the climate coalition.

Here's why, and here's how:

/thread/ #ncpol #climate We've been to every county and so far I haven’t found any climate deniers among farmers, particularly in the Eastern part of our state — probably because they’ve been hit by two 500-year hurricanes in the last three years.

They know they're on the frontlines of climate change.

I’m in the state Senate chamber right now. We’re voting on new congressional maps.

They’re a brutal gerrymander. It’s obvious to everyone. GOP doesn’t care. Passing anyway.

Governor can’t veto maps. GOP knows only backstop is state courts.

Filing is December. Clock is ticking. Contrary to the propaganda of the Big Lie we hear so often, this is what rigging elections *actually* looks like:

A couple years ago I was sick for a few days so I used the time as productively as I could:

I watched every single haunted house movie on Netflix.

And now — strictly as a public service — here are my tips on surviving the ordeal:

/spookythread/ 1) First, HEED EARLY WARNINGS.

Some of this is easy. If you wake to find a living corpse hovering over your bed screaming, “Be gone from this house!”, you should say, “Got it. I’m out.”

But it really shouldn’t come to that. Chances are there were early warnings.

Amazed by the turnout for our town hall at UNC - 500 people!

We had a real conversation, one where anyone could ask anything for an hour - then we stayed for another 90 minutes to answer one-on-one questions.

This is the right way to campaign. Energy, transparency, outreach. A sincere thank you to our UNC student team who helped make this such a successful event. You worked incredibly hard and it absolutely paid off.

North Carolina's Lt. Governor, Mark Robinson, just angrily referred to the LGBTQ community as "filth."

Then he says, "Yes, I called it filth."

There's no debate here. This is open discrimination. It is completely unacceptable.

Mark Robinson should resign. This fits a pattern from him.

He's made many openly hateful and discriminatory comments about the LGBTQ community and Jewish people.

When asked about it, he always doubles down.

cardinalpine.com/story/im-not-a…

Earlier this week we went to Western Carolina University for a town hall and we heard from students about all kinds of things but the BIG topic was their concern about becoming teachers in our state.

/thread/ #ncpol It was a lively town hall. I started off using a microphone until an administrator tapped me on the shoulder and told me no amplification was allowed until after 4pm. So I switched to my army voice and did my best to project over the sound of the huge fountain crashing behind me.

Last Friday we took our college tour to UNC Greensboro and started with an open town hall.

Eli, our college captain, started us off with a great introduction. We’re lucky to have him leading our team on campus.

/thread/ One student asked where I stood on voting rights.

I told him that I believe we need a new Voting Rights Act. It should include key features like ending gerrymandering, combating the dark money unleashed by Citizens United, and implementing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Here’s why the government might shut down next week and why we could default on our debt:

The government is scheduled to run out of money to pay its bill sometime in the next few weeks.

We need to raise our debt ceiling or we'll default.

/thread/ #ncpol A default would lead to an instant recession.

Millions would lose their jobs.

Our global reputation would take a huge hit as our Treasury bills would go from the most trusted financial instrument on Earth to something that may or may not pay its interest payment.

Once we finished 100 town halls in 100 days, people asked, “What’s next?”

Here’s our answer:

Let’s bring a new generation of voices into this conversation - and give them a reason to be enthusiastic about voting in a midterm election.

*Let’s do a North Carolina college tour.* So we’re crossing the state - again - to meet with thousands of young people who care deeply about the future of our state and country but often see a Senate that just isn’t focused on the future the way it should be.

I don’t make a habit of talking about Rep. Madison Cawthorn, but this week he showed us a perfect example of what our campaign is trying to obsolete.

If you're on twitter, you probably saw what he said.

/thread/ He said, “[I]f our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place — and it’s bloodshed,” before adding that “there is nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American.”

Just after midnight, we received a disastrous 5-4 Supreme Court decision that refused to block Texas' six-week abortion ban.

This ruling immediately impacts Texas, but it also creates a roadmap for state legislatures across the country for rolling back reproductive rights. The decision is not a full reversal of Roe vs. Wade because its majority opinion claims not to be making a constitutional ruling, but rather a procedural ruling.

So this is technically a "narrow" ruling, but it has much broader implications.

The drinking water for at least 200,000 people along the Cape Fear River is polluted with industrial chemicals that a nearby plant discharged into the river for years.

If you don't live near the Cape Fear, you might not have heard - but it's a major issue.

/thread/ #ncpol When we went to New Hanover County to hold a town hall, it was the first question we got.

And when we went to Chatham County - 150 away from New Hanover, but also on the Cape Fear - it was the first question again.

A bill to ban the teaching of ‘critical race theory’ in our public schools just passed the state House.

Let me tell you what’s really going on here, because it doesn’t have anything to do with ‘critical race theory.’

/thread/ #ncpol This February - after input from hundreds of NC educators - our state’s official academic standards for social studies received an update.

Among the many revisions were the inclusion of terms like “racism” and “discrimination” as concepts that students should understand.

BREAKING: This morning, a bill (S636) passed a Senate committee which would take dark campaign money and make it even darker.

The title is “Donor Privacy,” which right off the bat raises a red flag because this is an area that needs more transparency, not more privacy.

#ncpol In short, the bill says that non-profits can now conceal who their donors are.

Sounds harmless? Here’s what’s really going on:

It turns out, there are a lot of non-profits that are actually “non-profits” in that they exist primarily to funnel dark money into elections.

Unexpectedly went viral last night from a speech that shows political corruption in our state Senate happening *in real time* and explains why NC hasn’t had a budget in two years.

The kicker: “We’ll call a vote at the right time. I hope you’ll miss it.”

Turns out people have a really strong negative reaction to overt corruption by politicians who seem to take pride in it - and the ones who laugh right along with them.