July 1 will mark one year since North Carolina’s state budget was due. 

Passing a budget is arguably the top responsibility of the state legislature, and Republican leadership just cannot get the job done. They made us the only state in the country to fail to pass a budget in 2025, and now they’re expected to miss the deadline for 2026 as well. 

Because of the delay, hard-working public school teachers have had to go through an entire academic year without meaningful raises– worsening a growing staffing crisis in our school system. There continues to be a Medicaid funding gap, threatening health care access and rural hospitals. And other necessities, from child care to law enforcement, remain underfunded. 

To their credit, NCGA Republicans have churned out a lot of bills over the past 12 months. It’s just that very, very few of them have been meant to actually help everyday North Carolinians. 

So what have Republican leaders pushed through instead of a budget? Here are some highlights: 

1. Enabling Duke Energy’s Rate Increases (July 2025)– Those infamously high rate hikes on our electric bills didn’t have to happen. Those were actually the result of some legislation passed last year, legislation that Gov. Stein vetoed, but the NCGA came back to force through anyways. The bill will ultimately cost North Carolina $23 billion, with an 11.6% rate increase expected to hit families’ bills soon. Duke Energy is one of the most profitable energy utilities in the country. The NCGA didn’t do this out of necessity. They did this as a gift to one of the wealthiest corporations in our state– all at the expense of working people.  

2. Gerrymandering (October 2025)– At the request of Trump, Republicans rushed to redraw North Carolina’s Congressional maps for the 7th time in 10 years, this time taking aim at Black voters in Eastern North Carolina. The goal was to deliver Trump an 11-3 congressional delegation, and they got it done in about a week’s time. And the way they got there was by diluting the voting power of Black communities, splitting them up into multiple electoral districts. Their reasoning for selling out North Carolina voters for Trump? “He is a divinely changed man who loves this nation,” said one GOP legislator. Appeasing a power hungry leader is not worth sacrificing the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of people, but that’s exactly what the NCGA did.  

3. Arming Teens, Eliminating DEI, and Booze (June 2026)– The NCGA’s priorities this month have been wild. They’re trying to push through a bill that would eliminate concealed carry training for 18 year olds. They successfully overrode two vetoes in order to ban DEI in schools and state agencies. And they’re currently negotiating an agreement on a bill to give over $300 million to a developer to build a new liquor warehouse. It’s like they’re playing mad libs with the legislative agenda. 

There are so many other examples. They’re pushing a bill to restrict voting access and grant the State Auditor immense power to shape election outcomes. And they’ve also tossed a bunch of misleading constitutional amendments on the ballot, amendments that would drain billions of dollars from the state budget– leading to a funding gap for everything from education to public infrastructure. But I guess if you never write a budget, what difference does a few billion dollars make? 

When NCGA Republicans want to get something done, they get it done. They proved that when they gerrymandered our maps for Trump in about a week. With all their power, they’ve chosen to prioritize corporations over communities and politics over problem-solving. When will they begin to prioritize us?