North Carolina’s opportunity to break free

The state’s future shouldn’t depend on Washington. Now’s our chance to prove it

Every time the General Assembly sits down to craft a budget, the same question hangs in the air: What’s Washington going to do?

Will the feds keep the Medicaid match? Will FEMA send more money? And so on and so forth.

Over time, Washington has worked itself into nearly every corner of state government. That’s obviously not how federalism is supposed to work, but for the most part, we’ve stopped even noticing.

Two recent moments snapped all this back into focus for me.

First, the Hurricane Helene relief bill, the first signed piece of legislation of the new session. It’s a great achievement, but I still don’t understand what the state is actually responsible for in disaster recovery and what we’re expecting the federal government to handle. The whole conversation continues to hinge on about whether Congress will approve another pot of money.

Then came President Trump’s executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Most of the discussion focuses on fear of disruption, not th…