Magnet Factory
The North Carolina Utilities Commission on Monday cleared the way for faster construction of a transmission line in Johnston County — a move expected to help power a $920 million plant expected to employ up to 1,000 workers.
The 1.31-mile, 230-kilovolt line is expected to serve Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina-based maker of rare-earth magnets used in drones, submarines, aircraft, satellites, electric vehicles and other products. There’s currently not enough transmission service available at the site to meet the plant's needs, according to Vulcan. The line would go from Highway 301 to the factory on Morgan Road in Benson.
Construction is expected to wrap up by the end of March.
“The criticality of this project cannot be understated,” Jake Bowles, Vulcan’s chief operating officer, told commissioners Monday.
To get the transmission line built faster, the commission waived the usual publication-of-notice and hearing requirements. State law allows regulators to waive those steps when an urgent need for electric service requires immediate construction.
Vulcan cited the federal Defense Production Act, which gives the federal government authority to prioritize materials and services needed for national defense, in seeking to meet its timeline. Regulators agreed that the expedited process was justified.
South River Electric Membership Corp., the electric cooperative building the line, estimates the project will cost about $7.25 million. Vulcan has agreed to cover the cost.
South River is now designing the line, securing the remaining right-of-way and easements and ordering equipment at the same time to meet the accelerated schedule.
Commissioners said going through the standard process could jeopardize the date the line needs to be operating to support national defense objectives.
Bridge Replacement
The N.C. Department of Transportation has completed the long-awaited environmental assessment of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge replacement. The 66-page document details impacts of two potential options: Alternative A, which is a 65-foot drawbridge with a 135-foot clearance, and Alternative B, a 135-foot fixed span bridge. Alternative A’s projected cost is $1,110,700,000, while Alternative B is anticipated to cost $1,029,800,000. NCDOT has scheduled two hearings for the public to make formal comments on the assessment. While a final decision has not yet been made regarding whether the new bridge will have a toll, the assessment notes that average weekday traffic diverted to the Isabel Holmes Bridge will increase by 43% in 2030. Other routes including Interstate 140, U.S. 74, U.S. 421 and South Third Street will also see increased traffic. Travel impacts are anticipated throughout the duration of construction.
North Carolina plans to send ballots this week following latest court ruling
North Carolina elections officials are planning to move ahead with absentee voting as planned, sending out mail-in ballots this week, following a new federal court ruling in a case focused in part on who has the constitutional right to write election rules. A federal judge Thursday once again temporarily prohibited the U.S. Postal Service from implementing a plan to restrict mail-in voting, put in place after a directive from President Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani had cleared the way for the Postal Service to move forward just the day before. On Thursday, though, she issued a new order concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could lead to chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election.
A group of Democratic-led states had sued, saying the president’s order infringed on states’ rights to administer elections. Those states “face irreparable harm where they are required to comply with a likely unconstitutional regulation for which compliance is practically impossible as to the 2026 midterm elections, now little more than two months away,” the judge wrote.
“Most plaintiff states have already ordered their mail ballots, and some are required by state law to send them to eligible voters as early as next week,” she added.
Talwani wrote that while the Supreme Court had “admonished” her Monday that the Postal Service had not finalized any changes when the groups sued initially, making court action premature, the stakes had changed since then because of the step the agency took late last week to formalized its plan.
The Trump administration filed a notice of appeal Friday. The White House calls the plan a set of “commonsense measures” aimed at protecting ballot security.
North Carolina was among the states suing to stop the Postal Service from being allowed to decide who should or shouldn’t be allowed to receive or turn in mail-in ballots. The ongoing lawsuit has raised questions about whether the state would be able to send out mail-in ballots by Sept. 4 as planned. “It would have caused chaos in our election,” Jeff Jackson, North Carolina’s attorney general said in a statement on social media late Thursday. “We stopped it for now, and we'll keep defending free and fair elections.”
The U.S. Supreme Court could still step in to undo the ruling and empower Trump and the Postal Service to block ballots from being delivered in certain states. For now, the North Carolina State Board of Elections is still planning to move forward with its plans, absent any additional court rulings ordering it to stop or delay its efforts to mail out ballots.
“It appears right now like the rule will likely not be in place for the midterms, and so we plan to proceed on as business as usual,” Jason Tyson, a spokesman for the state elections board, said in a statement. “If anything changes, we plan to follow the law as settled.”
There’s a longstanding legal principle that no one — judges, politicians nor government bureaucrats — can change the rules of an election once it’s started. And since the 2026 midterm elections are set to start next week with North Carolina’s first round of ballot mailings, time is running out for Trump to be able to implement these plans.
There’s precedent for court fights delaying the start of mail-in voting in North Carolina. In the 2024 elections it was put on hold due to a legal fight over whether to include Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot. He had been a presidential candidate that year but later dropped out and endorsed Trump, who made him the country’s top health official in return. Kennedy dropped out past the deadline to do so, but a Republican majority on the state Supreme Court ordered the state to reprint ballots anyway to take Kennedy’s name off them, delaying the start of mail-in voting by weeks.
There are other legal battles playing out at the state and federal levels, and there’s a chance those could also change the rules for mail-in voting.
The North Carolina Rules Review Commission on Thursday gave its approval to proposed rules that could determine whether some ballots are ultimately counted. The rules could make it easier to throw out some ballots — including by creating new procedures for mail-in ballots and for voters who lack photo identification — and give poll workers new powers to eject people from polling places.
Those rules — which previously passed the State Board of Elections in a series of 3-2 votes, with the Republican majority in favor and Democrats opposed — are now expected to undergo a final legislative review, raising questions about whether they could be implemented before the election. Legislators adjourned weeks ago with plans to return to business after the election.
Spokespeople for legislative leaders didn’t respond to questions about whether lawmakers would change their schedule to conduct the review ahead of the election.
Meanwhile, an early-voting focused law proposed by the legislature — which would purge more voters and make it easier to throw out certain ballots — is also uncertain. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, vetoed the bill. Leaders in the Republican-led legislature have vowed to override Stein’s veto.
Stricter election rules are appoved, but paused
A regulatory commission gave final approval to a series of new rules targeting mail-in ballots and voter ID on Thursday, but at least some of them appear to have been blocked from taking effect in North Carolina’s elections this year. The rules, which were passed by the Republican-majority State Board of Elections last month, would make it easier to disqualify ballots cast by voters who don’t provide ID and would set new standards for accepting or discarding mail-in ballots.
The Rules Review Commission (the final step for any agency rule) unanimously approved the proposals on Thursday, but noted that it had received enough public objections on some of the rules to trigger a delay to their adoption.
State law dictates that if the commission receives 10 or more written objections to a rule, it must be delayed pending review by the state legislature. Lawmakers have adjourned and said they do not plan to return until after the November elections. A spokesperson for House Speaker Destin Hall confirmed to The News & Observer on Thursday that this remains the plan for the House.
Brian LiVecchi, the chief of staff for the State Board of Elections, told The N&O that the board may consider adopting some of the proposed rules as numbered memos — a less permanent form of policymaking — ahead of the election.
“We probably will discuss that if anything’s deemed critical,” he said. “That’s kind of the irony of it: this guidance all used to be in numbered memo anyway, without any opportunity for public comment or public involvement … By putting it in rules, we’re making it more transparent and giving the public an opportunity to have a say.
One of the objections to the proposed rules came from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who wrote that they would “undermine voters’ trust that their ballot will be counted” in a letter sent to the commission on Wednesday.