FORMER MISS NORTH CAROLINA,
CARRIE EVERETT, DIES OF CANCER
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The first Miss North Carolina winner to ever attend an HBCU, Carrie Everett, died Monday morning after a courageous battle with a rare form of cancer.
She was just 22.
Ms. Everett won the crown in June 2024 during her sophomore year at North Carolina Central University in Durham. As a vocal performance major known for her “vibrant spirit and dedication to her dreams,” the Seattle native had planned to graduate NCCU in 2027.
It was while visiting family in Seattle in July 2025 that Ms. Everett was diagnosed with metastatic signet ring cell carcinoma, a rare but aggressive form of gastric cancer. “This is happening for a reason, and God has allowed me to use my voice to give a voice to others,” she said will undergoing chemotherapy and other treatments, vowing to fight the cancer as hard as she could, while also continuing to give back to the community.
Early on April 6th in Seattle, Ms. Everett gave up her battle against the cancer that was robbing her of her young life of promise.
In 2024 when she first won the Miss North Carolina title, Miss Everett said, “I can be the first but not the last,” referencing being the first contestant from an HBCU crowned. “I want young women from all over the state and throughout the country attending HBCUs to know that this opportunity is for them.”
When the former Miss North Carolina won in 2024 as Miss Johnston County, a statement from the pageant read, “It is easy to see how the judges fell in love with Carrie. “…she is dynamically confident, kind, witty, talented and has the kind of superstar personality one can only wish for in a titleholder and sister.”
Ms. Everett took the pageant by storm with her stirring rendition of Jennifer Holiday’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from the awardwinning hit Broadway musical “Dreamgirls.”
But Carrie Everett was more than just a captivating singer. As a rising sophomore in 2024, she promoted her “We Need Equity to Build Communities” community service imitative during the Miss NC competition.
“When I registered to compete this year, I only had $40 in my pocket,” she said then. “That is the reality of many young women in this country. I believe in the Miss America Opportunity, what it has done and what it continues to do for many young women like me. With this title, I am empowered and ready to facilitate a new culture of equity within this brand.”
Carrie Everett never was crowned Miss America as she once dreamed, yet her family and friends say her legacy of empowerment and equity continues to inspire.
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WHAT HAPPENS NOW AFTER NC
SUPREME COURT REVERSED
LEANDRO RULING?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Does the state of North Carolina have a constitutional duty to ensure that every child is provided with a “sound, basic education,” and does the state Supreme Court have the authority to order the state legislature on how to spend funds if the court has determined that lawmakers have been derelict in their constitutional duty?
Those two questions were answered last week by the Republican-majority NC Supreme Court when it reversed a ruling by what was then a Democratic-led state Supreme Court in 2022 that held that the state historically had not ensured the “sound, basic education” of every school student in North Carolina, and ordered the NC General Assembly to enact a comprehensive remedial plan by making required eight-year phased-in expenditures that would amount to billions to fix the problem.
In what has become known for more than thirty years as the Leandro case - named after the first plaintiff family to join with the Hoke County Board of Education to file suit against the state in 1994 - Republican Chief Justice Paul Newby led the mostly party-line 4-3 split decision to reverse the 2022 ruling, writing for the Republican majority, “What began as modest, as-applied challenges to the allocation of educational resources in the named school districts became a full-scale, facial assault on the entire educational system enacted by the General Assembly. When this case ceased to be about the as-applied claims raised in the complaints and refined by this Court’s decisions, the trial court’s authority to hear the case likewise ceased.”
TRANSLATION - because of separation of powers, state courts have no authority telling the state legislature how to spend taxpayer money, and thus, should not have directed lawmakers to spend billions of dollars to improve the state’s poorest schools, even if it was to ensure a constitutionally guaranteed “sound, basic education ” for poor children.
A spokesperson for Republican House Speaker Destin Hall (R - Caldwell) said in a statement, “Today’s decision rightly recognizes the constitutional role of the North Carolina General Assembly, since the state Constitution entrusts sole appropriations authority to the legislature.”
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger (R - Rockingham) also celebrated the ruling.
"For decades, liberal education special interests have improperly tried to hijack North Carolina's constitutional funding process in order to impose their policy preferences via judicial fiat.”
But Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, was not pleased with the state Supreme Court decision, and vowed to continue to fight for better teachers’ pay and more education improvements to help especially poor students learn.
"Education opens doors of opportunity for children, but today the Court slammed them in the face of students who deserve the right to a sound basic public education,” Stein said in a statement. “The Supreme Court simply ignored its own established precedent, enabling the General Assembly to continue to deprive another generation of North Carolina students of the education promised by our Constitution.”
Last week’s ruling - in which one Republican justice joined the two Democratic justices in dissenting - means the public schools across the state will not receive an additional hundreds of millions in education funding from the state. And since a Union County Democratic judge ruled in 2021 that the state transfer $1.7 billion to public schools, thanks to subsequent litigation, not a dime of that $1.7 billion was ever distributed.
As a matter of law, experts say, the Leandro case is now considered dead, and cannot be resurrected.
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NC JOINS LAWSUIT
AGAINST TRUMP’S
ORDER AGAINST
MAIL-IN BALLOTS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
In the African-American community, the ability to cast a mail-in ballot is important to those who cannot make it to the voting polls on Election Day, like many of the elderly, those who suffer from an affliction that limits their ability to travel, those who are struggling in the aftermath of a natural disaster, those who will be out of town, as well as active duty personnel who serve in the military.
But if Pres. Trump has his way, mail-in ballots for future elections will no longer be an option, even though that is the mode of voting he admittedly uses.
“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary. It's horrible what's going on,” Trump said, though no such widespread “cheating” has ever been proven. “I think this will help a lot with elections.”
The president wants a nationwide list of verifiable eligible voters, and wants the mail-in voting restrictions in place before this fall’s midterm elections.
Trump is threatening the withholding of federal funding from Democratic states that don’t comply.
More than 20 states don’t agree with the Republican president, and have filed suit in federal court to stop an executive order Trump has issued outlawing mail-in ballots, calling it an “unconstitutional power grab.”
“The president’s latest attempt to interfere with the states’ administration of their elections is as unprecedented as it is unconstitutional,” the suit, filed last week, states.. “Under our Constitution, the president has no authority to restrict voter eligibility or mail voting to lists of voters pre-authorized by the federal government.”
North Carolina State General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, has joined those states in telling the courts that Trump has no constitutional authority over the election process, and thus, cannot stop mail-in ballots. Only the states can.
Saying that he’s acting in particular to safeguard the voting rights of active duty military personnel, AG Jackson said in a statement, “Under current law, we can request and receive absentee ballots up until the day before the election, which matters because deployments can happen fast. Under this executive order, our absentee ballots would run a very high risk of being rejected by the post office — essentially thrown in the trash — if we deploy within 60 days of the election. That is unacceptable.”
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