Roy Cooper News and In-Depth Reporting

Cooper’s Veto Predicament

Gov. Roy Cooper delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the N.C. General Assembly on March 6.

A younger Roy Cooper was the architect of a bill that gave the governor veto power. He’s now experiencing the limits of that authority.

A Prescription for Rural Hospitals

Adam O'Neal speaks after finishing his walk from Belhaven to Raleigh in 2015.

Legislators are lurching toward expanding Medicaid, which would boost the state’s ailing rural hospitals.

Tangled Up In Blue

Anderson Clayton is running to become the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party.

North Carolina Democrats are tired of losing, and some blame Gov. Roy Cooper’s hand-picked party leader. Will they risk their future on an untested 25-year-old, or hope that staying the course yields better results?

The Paradox of Power

North Carolina Legislative Building in Raleigh.

As the U.S. House struggled to elect a speaker, some former N.C. legislators recalled a dramatic coalition that overthrew an entrenched leader and created a memorable moment of bipartisanship.

North Carolina’s Not-Quite-Dead Death Penalty

The execution chamber at Central Prison in Raleigh.

New data The Assembly obtained shows that having capital punishment on the books—even if it’s not used—is giving prosecutors more conviction-prone juries.

Roy Cooper’s Wager

Val Applewhite, the Democratic candidate for state Senate in District 19.

When the governor endorsed a challenger to an incumbent Democrat, he waded into a complicated Senate race—and risked his veto.

The Making of a Mask Mandate

Photo by Cornell Watson

A fight over school mask mandates in a GOP county lauded for its high vaccination rate shows just how tough it is to lead a public institution in the midst of a fast-changing pandemic.