WHQR's Sunday Edition is a free weekly newsletter delivered every Sunday morning. You can sign up for Sunday Edition here and find past editions here.
This week, much of the national media was focused on the Trump White House’s executive orders and a slew of new policy directives from his administration. Here in the WHQR newsroom, we spent a lot of time tracking down the local impacts of Trump’s efforts to rapidly reshape the federal government.
We looked at how the new administration’s actions would impact local infrastructure, ICE’s relationship with schools, trans healthcare, refugee resettlements, and even how the local history of WWII’s women pilots was nearly scrubbed from Air Force training curriculum.
One of the most sweeping orders came from Trump’s Office of Budget and Management on Monday, ordering a freeze on all federal loans and grants, effectively so the administration could root out and cull programs tied to DEI and climate-change initiatives. The memo was rescinded two days later, but — confusingly — the administration insisted it was still in effect.
Here in the Cape Fear Region, that sparked concern over everything from student aid and loans to educational grants to the infrastructure — including the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge and proposed wind-power projects.
Last summer, officials on both sides of the aisle celebrated the award of a federal grant to cover roughly half of the estimated $485 million cost of replacing the bridge through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The law itself took plenty of political wrangling — and cost Republican Senator Thom Tillis more than a few arrows in the back from his own party members — and getting the grant for the CFMB took a lot more aisle-crossing compromise.
Then came a memo from the United States Department of Transportation, which ordered (among other things) that projects give a "preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average." As Colorado Public Radio reported, that puts low-birth rate communities at risk of losing out on public funding. (A spokesperson for Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, called the memo "ludicrous.")
I asked Mike Kozlosky and Hank Miller — executive director and board chair, respectively, of the WMPO, our regional transportation planning agency — about it.
Miller said he believed a lot of the dust from the Trump administration’s first two weeks would settle before there was much of an impact on the CFMB project. Kozlosky agreed, noting that the bridge is only partially funded — and there’s still much work left to do before the project can move forward.
As for the birthrate memo, Kozlosky said they hadn’t had a chance to “thoroughly review and understand any impacts.”
Meanwhile, when it came to wind power, my colleague Johanna Still at The Assembly tackled the impact in this week’s The Dive. Trump’s order stopping leases and permitting for offshore wind puts him, curiously, at odds with Republican Congressman David Rouzer, a die-hard Trump fan – but also a supporter of wind power who pushed Congress to approve more leases, framing it as an economic booster. It’s not totally clear how things will play out, although in the past, wind-power companies have simply waited Trump out.
The ‘wait and see’ approach is rarely comforting, but it’s been particularly unsoothing for education advocates concerned about the newest policy from the Department of Homeland Security. The directive, announced last week, rolls back a Biden-era policy that prohibited ICE detentions at schools, houses of worship, and medical facilities. DHS said they now expect local law enforcement to “use common sense” to aid in deportations, as the Trump administration is pushing ICE to hit new daily quotas.
My colleagues Rachel Keith and Nikolai Mather checked in with local school districts, many of whom are still scrambling for guidance from authorities, attorneys, and the ‘Big 12’ (the state’s largest school districts, who often help set policy). Districts have to balance compliance with two sets of laws — those protecting student privacy and those outlining ICE’s police powers.
Many advocates have noted that, of all the local school districts, Columbus County was the bluntest, saying its guidelines on law enforcement activity on school grounds hadn’t changed, and that ICE and other authorities “must present a judicial warrant before detaining a student on school grounds or accessing student records.”
Setting aside the legal wrangling that will no doubt unfold in the coming months, there’s also a human side: teachers, staff, and administrators have deep relationships with students and their families. Even in those cases where families — even students — are in the country illegally, there’s certainly a level of empathy for the fear they must be feeling. And for families and students who are legal migrants, or native-born citizens, the specter of intimidation by ICE looms over much of this conversation.
Some of those same concerns haunt legal refugees, Wes Magruder, director of the local Church World Service, told Rachel Keith. Magruder said he’s heard concern and fear, even though many refugees have all the necessary documentation to stay in the country. The uncertainty has spread rapidly — as have stories of racial profiling. (You can listen to their full interview here.)
Magruder and his team work to resettle about 100 people every year, including refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine. Trump’s executive orders have cut off the process, in some cases for people who were prepared to step on a plane to the United States.
“It's a terrible situation to be in, to have gotten so close and then find it taken away,” Magruder said.
We also looked at the Trump administration’s orders regarding trans healthcare. The White House has banned the use of federal funding for medical transition, taking a page from the approach to regulating abortion. While it’s not a ban on trans healthcare itself, many advocates are concerned about knock-on effects. Nikolai Mather spoke with Molly Rivera from Planned Parenthood South Atlantic about what the orders mean and what some of the knock-on effects could be.
From an editorial perspective, it is difficult to simply treat this – and Trump's other 'protecting women' initiatives – as a policy shift. What's at stake, essentially, is whether trans people exist. Trump's promises of mass deportations have been criticized as cruel, expensive, and impractical, but there's no underlying disagreement about whether or not migrants exist.
The order repeatedly refers to gender-affirming care as “mutilation” and “maiming and sterilizing” children. Anecdotally, that’s certainly not what I’ve heard when I’ve spoken with trans people, many of whom described hormone therapy and surgery as one of the most important, and ultimately positive, experiences of their lives.
In reporting on the issue, we linked to The Conversation, an independent, non-profit news organization that brings experts and academics into public conversation (it’s free to read and to republish, which is pretty remarkable). Specifically, we cited an interview with Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, an independent research center at the UCLA School of Law dedicated to studying sexual orientation and gender identity law.
Redfield noted that Trump’s order, “rejects the idea that gender-affirming care has health benefits, even though there’s robust, extensive evidence supporting access to gender-affirming care. Self-reporting by transgender individuals is overwhelmingly positive: 98% of trans people who had hormone therapy said it made their lives better, according to the 2022 U.S. Transgender Survey.”
Another of Trump’s main campaign promises — ending DEI and similar programs — also made local news. Last week, Republican New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise made a public point of voting against a resolution recognizing a day of “racial healing.” Scalise made it clear he was taking a cue from Trump’s inaugural address (and subsequent orders) and said he would seek to shut down the county’s DEI department. Scalise has since taken to X to suggest the county’s efforts to increase the diversity of its workforce may have violated the law.
On social media, reactions were mixed. There was a lot of support for Scalise’s focus on merit (and to a lesser extent, shrinking government), but there were plenty of critics, many of whom suggested Scalise’s attack on DEI was a veneer for actual racism.
This week the county kicked off its budget cycle, but the DEI department didn’t come up. It remains to be seen if Scalise gets traction with other commissioners going forward — or if the issue is raised by other elected officials in our region. While UNCW recently shuttered many of its DEI efforts as part of a controversial state-wide policy shift, many other local governments — including the City of Wilmington — have diversity and inclusivity efforts.
Trump’s efforts to strip DEI out of the government also extended to a little-known piece of Cape Fear history: the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs. These were civilian contractors who helped train servicemen — incredibly dangerous work that involved, among other things, towing canvas targets that servicemen would practice shooting at, with live ammunition
Initially, the U.S. Airforce had planned to scrub the history of the WASPs from its boot camp curriculum, along with information on the more well-known Tuskegee Airmen. But public outcry, from service members and the public, pressured the Airforce to backtrack.
Perhaps ironically, the attempt to mute the WASP’s history ended up highlighting it.
The WASPs operated out of Camp Davis in Onslow County, and there are museum exhibits honoring them in Southport and Topsail Beach — and so we thought it would be fitting to do a story on them. My colleague Kelly Kenoyer drove down to Southport and spent some time with John Moseley, manager of the North Carolina Maritime Museum. She was really moved by the WASP’s history and filed this piece about them.
I can say, on a personal note, I was happy to have a story that — while it has its own tragedies — was on the whole more hopeful and more positive than some of the grimmer pieces we did this week. If you know me, you know I’m not one for schmaltz, but the story of the WASPs is truly inspiring.
When I reported on the WASPs for Port City Daily back in 2017, I had never heard of them and, like Kelly, I was blown away by what I learned. I was lucky enough to speak to Lucile Doll Wise, who graduated from a WASP class in 1943. She told me that over seventy years after their service, the WASP’s story was still largely unknown. (Wise passed away peacefully at her home in Colorado less than a year later, one day after her 98th birthday.)
