RALEIGH — The Senate passed its version of a $23.9 billion 2019-20 budget amid sharp rhetoric that broke along partisan and regional divides.

RALEIGH — A move to ease restrictions for N.C. craft brewers who want to distribute their own beer is on the verge of becoming law.

STAR — A Montgomery County Republican is trying for another shot at a seat in the N.C. House of Representatives.

Joey Davis,47, announced his candidacy for the 66th House District on Thursday.

RALEIGH — If the state budget process seems polarized now, just wait. It could get even more quarrelsome as lawmakers contemplate how their votes might affect 2020 political prospects.

Although the North Carolina House has approved its version of a biennial budget, there’s a lot that North Carolinians can’t yet know about how much will be spent, and on what, over the next two years. But here’s something we can assume with near-certainty: Gov. Roy Cooper will veto it.

RALEIGH — Top-ranking senators have introduced an omnibus health-care bill that would add severely disabled people to the Medicaid rolls and abolish restrictive certificate of need laws.

RALEIGH — The Senate has overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 86, which could make high-quality, affordable health care insurance available to tens of thousands of North Carolina residents lacking coverage.

HAMLET — Richmond County’s two elected members of the North Carolina General Assembly gave local government and business leaders a breakdown of the goings on in Raleigh early Monday during the Chamber of Commerce’s annual Legislative Breakfast.

RALEIGH — This isn’t "Taken."

Unlike the portrayals popularized by Liam Neeson’s 2008 film thriller, human trafficking victims are rarely snatched during vacation getaways or from coffee shops, and they are rarely sympathetic characters with squeaky clean backgrounds, Libby Coles, chairwoman of the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission, told Carolina Journal.

RALEIGH — A Wake County Superior Court judge signed a consent order giving the state more time to pay a nearly $730 million judgment in a lawsuit over school technology funds.