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    The North Carolina Senate has approved legislation to set aside roughly $500 million more for now for programs that provide taxpayer money to help K-12 students attend private schools. The majority-Republican Senate voted Thursday along party lines to spend the money, almost all of which will cover a surge in demand for Opportunity Scholarship grants since income caps to receive them were eliminated. The demand has resulted in a waiting list of nearly 55,000 students. The measure could go to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper next week if the House votes to affirm the legislation. Cooper opposes these vouchers, but Republicans hold narrow veto-proof majorities.

      A candidate seeking the Republican nomination for a central North Carolina congressional seat has announced she’s suspending her campaign days before her primary runoff election.  Johnston County attorney Kelly Daughtry released her decision on Thursday and endorsed her runoff rival Brad Knott in the 13th District race. In a social media post, Daughtry cited Knott's endorsement by Donald Trump for her decision, saying that with ex-president's backing it had become “clear that a pathway to victory is no longer feasible.” She remains an official candidate and her name will remain on the ballot. Early voting is already happening.

        For the past 52 years, the United Methodist Church had officially declared “the practice of homosexuality ... incompatible with Christian teaching.” But that has ended now that church delegates removed that phrase from their official social teachings at their legislative General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The action comes a day after delegates removed a ban on LGBTQ clergy. The delegates have replaced the denomination's non-binding Social Principles with a new document. It defines marriage as a covenant between “two people of faith,” without specifying gender. The progressive shift follows the departure of a quarter of U.S. congregations in the United Methodist Church amid disputes over LGBTQ issues.

          President Joe Biden has spent several hours in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the families of law enforcement officers shot to death on the job. The visit Thursday came just a week after he sat down with the grieving relatives of two cops killed in upstate New York. His Charlotte visit took place with little fanfare behind closed doors. The White House wanted Biden to be seen as respecting the privacy of grieving families. He also met officers wounded in this week's shooting. Four officers died when a wanted man opened fire on a joint agency task force that had come to arrest him on a warrant.

            The fate of a decades-old Tennessee policy that does not allow transgender people to change the sex designation on their birth certificates is in the hands of a federal appeals court. A group of four transgender women born in Tennessee wants the policy declared unconstitutional. A federal judge dismissed their case last year. On Thursday, they asked a panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn that ruling. Their attorney argues that a birth certificate is a “critical and foundational” identity document. Attorneys for the state say there is nothing in the Constitution that requires them to amend birth certificates to include gender identity.

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            About a week after legislators brushed off his amendments to bills ensuring the right to contraception and requiring insurance coverage, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he’s still thinking about what do.

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