Our most-read editorials of 2019

You might notice a pattern in the most popular editorials the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer published in 2019. Readers engaged with the editorial board’s content at record levels again this past year, and the stories that generated the most passion involved our elected leaders and upcoming elections.

That’s no accident. Our readers have long been interested in those topics, but extraordinarily so last year. We don’t know what that signals about outcomes this November, but we do know you care. So do we, and we’re grateful to be a part of the important conversations you’re having.

The gloriously growing irrelevance of Franklin Graham

April 25 - It’s been a little while since Franklin Graham offered up a shovel of moral manure, so let’s go over the drill when the reverend does his thing.

In a tweet Wednesday, Graham blasted presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg for having the nerve to be publicly gay. Homosexuality, said Graham, was not something to be “flaunted.” He called on Buttigieg, a Democrat from Indiana, to instead repent...

Used to be that when Graham told people to boycott Wells Fargo or not buy cookies from Girl Scouts because they treated gays and lesbians as real people, the reverend’s comments would be worthy of big headlines and cable TV crawls. This week, there were a few frowns, but mostly, America shrugged.

Why? Graham is not the Christian leader he once was. He’s a man whose organization does wonderful work, but he’s also one whose words have become increasingly and gloriously irrelevant. In part, that’s because Graham’s perspective on homosexuality has been pushed to the fringe, but it’s also because of how he has marginalized himself with his vocal support of Donald Trump...

And like Trump, Graham has abandoned any pretense of moderation. He’s happy to appeal to his base, because that’s the only group that can sustain him now. That base, however, is becoming as shallow as the reverend’s message, as narrow as his worldview, as antiquated as a tweet that criticizes a gay man for flaunting it. Franklin Graham’s words used to remind us how far the LGBTQ community and its supporters have to go. Now he shows us how far we’ve come.

A devastating report exposes an arrogant culture at UNC

May 30 - The University of North Carolina takes justifiable pride in being the nation’s first public university, but these days a tendency toward arrogance and self-protection causes it to often ignore its obligations to that public.

The latest case of UNC sealing itself from public scrutiny is documented in disturbing detail in Thursday’s New York Times report on troubles with pediatric heart surgeries at North Carolina Children’s Hospital, part of UNC Heath Care. In June 2016 and 2017, pediatric cardiologists there grew concerned about the poor outcomes experienced by children, including babies, undergoing what should have been low-risk surgeries. The Times obtained secret recordings of meetings in which the cardiologists — who diagnose heart problems, but don’t do the surgery — aired their concerns. They felt something was wrong with the treatment process, especially on the surgery end. They also wondered if the hospital was taking on cases it wasn’t equipped to treat well. At one meeting, the chief of pediatric cardiology, Dr. Timothy Hoffman, summarized the situation: “It’s a nightmare right now. We are in crisis, and everyone is aware of that.”

Dr. Kevin Kelly, who led the children’s hospital until retiring last year, told the cardiologists who had misgivings about referring children for heart surgery at UNC: “Do what your conscience says.” But he added that a drop in pediatric heart surgeries could cost some of them their jobs. Kelly also warned that suspending pediatric surgeries could badly damage the hospital’s image...

The Children’s Hospital operates under UNC Health Care and is affiliated with the UNC School of Medicine. Its mission should uphold the ideal of public service represented by the nation’s first public university, whose iconic Old Well appears in UNC Health Care’s logo.

Dr. Bill Roper, now the interim president of the UNC system, led UNC Health Care during the troubles with pediatric heart surgery. Now there’s a question of whether he was part of the problem or can be part of the solution.

In all likelihood, it will take leaders outside of the self-serving ranks of UNC’s leadership to crack its culture of arrogant denial and bring it back to being a servant of the people. To do less puts too much at risk, including the hearts of children.

Are you OK with a racist president, Republicans?

July 15 - We’re not big believers in public officials being responsible for all the bad things other public officials say or do. It’s become a too-common political weapon to ask lawmakers to condemn members of their own party, even for behavior that’s not representative of anything more than one person’s poor decision. But sometimes that behavior is so troubling that our leaders need to stand up and say something.

So it was Sunday when President Donald Trump tweeted a bigoted attack on four Democratic Congresswomen of color, telling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” This despite three of the four women being born in the United States, and the other, Omar, being a U.S. citizen.

“Go back where you came from” is among the worst of racist tropes. It divides us by ethnicity and skin color. It says that even if someone is a citizen or legal immigrant, they are not part of the rest of us. That runs contrary to who we should be as Americans, and if Donald Trump didn’t know it when he typed the words, he surely did later when people responded with appropriate outrage. But the same president who referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” and said African visitors would never “go back to their huts” once again doubled down on his racism.

It’s dangerous, destructive behavior, and at the least every Republican lawmaker in Congress should declare as much about their president’s outburst. That includes North Carolina’s most senior leaders, Sens. Richard Burr and Thom Tillis. We know this isn’t easy politically, especially for Tillis, who is running for reelection and faces a Republican primary challenger in a race to see who can embrace the president more fully. Tillis, of course, has a history of comically wavering on Trump — standing up then backing down on issues that include the Mueller investigation and the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.

North Carolina’s lawmakers, however, are far from the only Republicans to struggle with Trump’s troubling tendencies. A handful have dared to step forward and criticize the president, only to equivocate when everyone else takes a step back. Most have instead decided that any criticism of Trump — be it for policy or problematic behavior — is not worth the heat that follows.

The result is that the Republican Party is firmly Donald Trump’s party now. It’s the party where insults and other ugliness are just being “rough around the edges.” It’s the party where locking legal migrants in crowded, unhealthy cages is acceptable immigration policy. It’s the party where it’s OK to say racist things so long as the next jobs report is encouraging.

‘Send her back’: A dark reminder of who we are

July 18 - It happened in the first half of Wednesday’s speech. Donald Trump, our president, began to talk about Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota who was among the four women of color he had attacked Sunday in a racist tweet. Everyone knew Trump would speak about the women at some point to the Greenville, North Carolina, crowd. Did we know what would come next?

“Send her back.”

The chant rose quickly from a handful of voices to a chorus of bigotry. It was a chilling moment. It was “lock her up” in a white hood. It was despicable.

“Send her back.”

It could have happened at any Donald Trump rally. It might have happened in any state, north or south. But it happened in Greenville, in our state, and it was one of North Carolina’s darker moments.

“Send her back.”

Or perhaps not. Maybe the chant will be absorbed in the vortex that is Donald Trump. In a presidency of so many shameful moments, of so many new lows, the singularly awful ones tend to lose their significance. It’s possible that North Carolina might be forgotten when the chant inevitably spreads to the next rally. But North Carolina shouldn’t forget...

“Send her back,” Donald Trump’s supporters chanted, without seeing the irony that it was they who were moving backward. “Send her back,” they cried, and it was both a reminder and a warning that here in North Carolina, in America, going back is not that far of a journey.

Thom Tillis’ terrible, no good and totally predictable bad day

Sept. 5 - The trouble began — as trouble often does — with a tweet. It ended with an $80 million punch to the gut and a lesson that Thom Tillis never seems to learn.

North Carolina’s junior senator had a bad political day Wednesday. A really bad day, in fact, especially for an incumbent U.S. senator facing a semi-tough Republican primary challenge before a very tough general election race. But as with many Tillis difficulties, most of the blame is his.

First, the tweet. It came Tuesday evening, delivered from President Donald Trump as Hurricane Dorian turned toward the North Carolina coast: “At the request of Senator Thom Tillis, I am getting the North Carolina Emergency Declaration completed and signed tonight. Hope you won’t need it!”

The problem with the president’s announcement is that emergency declaration requests don’t come from U.S. senators. They come from governors, and North Carolina’s request came from Gov. Roy Cooper, who happens to be a Democrat...

Tillis could have been the big man here with a follow up tweet, something as simple as: “Thanks, Mr. President, for granting the governor’s request for an emergency declaration. I’m glad the conversation you and I had will bring comfort to the people of North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Dorian.” That would have allowed to Tillis to be the good guy for directing credit to the proper person while getting some cred for nudging the president to help North Carolina.

Instead, Tillis said nothing. By Wednesday morning, people had noticed. Twitter sizzled with disdain at the president’s and senator’s political cravenness. The Washington Post and others picked up the story. Instead of getting an easy political win, Tillis was left appearing both opportunistic and afraid to even gently correct Trump.

Then his day got worse. Late in the afternoon, news broke that $80 million worth of construction projects at North Carolina military bases were being cut to shift funds to building the president’s wall on the Mexican border... Trump’s wall already was the source of one of the senator’s weakest moments. As N.C. voters surely remember, Tillis announced in February that he would vote against the president’s effort to circumvent Congress and pay for the wall by declaring a national emergency at the southern border. Three weeks later, he backed down and gave his blessing and vote to the president’s overreach.

Now that decision will doubly haunt him.

NC Republicans shameless theft of democracy

Sept. 11 - The verdict is now plain. North Carolina’s Republican legislative leaders — not actually leaders, but connivers — are beyond shame.

In a stunning display of contempt for democracy, House Speaker Tim Moore, a Cleveland County Republican, called a surprise vote to overturn Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the state budget just after a session opened at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday. Democratic lawmakers and the media had been told by Republican leaders that there would be no vote in the morning.

Most Democrats were absent. Enough Republicans, aware of the secret plan, were there. When Rep. Jason Saine, a Lincolnton Republican, made the motion to reconsider the state budget, the handful of Democrats on hand objected strenuously.

“This is a travesty of the process and you know it,” said Rep. Deb Butler, D-New Hanover.

That it was, but with these Republicans a travesty of the process is just business as usual. With only 64 of the House’s 120 members present, the vote to override passed 55-9.

Now it’s up to Democrats in the Senate to follow their conscience — and perhaps for a few Senate Republicans to find theirs — and refuse to follow the theft in the House with the necessary three-fifths vote of those present in the Senate.

But this isn’t a case simply of hardball politics and sly legislative maneuvering. This is a case of breaking faith with the people of North Carolina and with all who strove and sacrificed over generations to protect and advance North Carolina’s political system as one based on a true representation of the people’s will, a true democracy.