LONG POND, Pa. (AP) — Dale Earnhardt Jr. might already be NASCAR’s most popular crew chief.
He’s certainly an undefeated one.
Pressed into unexpected service, Earnhardt called the shots for 18-year-old prospect Connor Zilisch in the No. 88 Chevrolet and they landed in victory lane Saturday in the second-tier Xfinity Series race at Pocono Raceway.
“It felt good to have some input and decision-making power,” Earnhardt said. “And then helping Connor understand what our plan was so he knew when to push and what he was expected to do.”
Earnhardt — who won NASCAR’s most-popular driver award 15 times — made a pit stop from his day job as team owner at JR Motorsports with normal crew chief Mardy Lindley suspended one race because of a lug nut infraction this month at Nashville.
Aside from his duties as team owner, Earnhardt also was at Pocono for his role on the Prime broadcast for the NASCAR Cup Series race Sunday.
“Lot of fun for me today,” Earnhardt said. “I missed the thrill of competition. I love broadcast, don’t get me wrong. But nothing compares to driving or just being part of the team. Being an owner doesn’t really deliver like this. This is a lot of fun.”
Earnhardt had his wife and two young daughters in tow with him as he made the celebratory walk to victory lane. Oldest daughter Isla Rose clutched the checkered flag while youngest Nicole Lorraine soaked in the scene from her dad’s arms.
“I love that they just get to experience things about NASCAR,” Earnhardt said. “I had such a great time growing up as a kid in this sport, just running around here. I want them to have that opportunity and understand that this is a place where they could create opportunities for themselves down the road.”
The win continued a banner season for the NASCAR Hall of Fame driver — who swept two races at Pocono as a driver in 2014 — after JR Motorsports and reigning Xfinity Series champion Justin Allgaier qualified for the season-opening Daytona 500 and secured their Cup Series debut.
Earnhardt won two Daytona 500s, in 2004 and 2014, and 26 races overall.
His side hustle Saturday was made a bit easier with Zilisch behind the wheel. Zilisch, who turns 19 in July, raced to his second Xfinity victory of the season and third of his young career. He won his Xfinity debut last year at Watkins Glen International.
Earnhardt even pitched in during the race and tossed tires over the wall during pit stops.
“Midway through the race man, I was feeling it,” Earnhardt said.
Zilisch took the win down to the wire and finally passed Jesse Love with five laps left in the race. Love finished second.
“Dale Junior, not too bad on the box,” Zilisch said. “Pretty cool to have him up there. Getting him a 1-for-1 win as crew chief is pretty awesome.”
Even with the victory, it just might be one-and-done on the pit box for Earnhardt.
“I don’t know that I see myself doing it again,” he said.
Wagyu Steak with Japanese Steak Sauce Recipe from No Recipes
Prep time: 7 minutes
Cooking time: 7 minutes
Serving size: 2 servings
Ingredients
1A5 Wagyu beef steak (200-300 grams)
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 clove garlic (peeled)
1 tablespoon onion puree
2 tablespoons mirin
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Directions
Take 1 A5 Wagyu beef steak from the refrigerator and season both sides with ¼ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper. Let this rest at room temperature while you prepare the other ingredients (5-10 minutes).
Slice 1 clove garlic into thin, even chips using a mandoline. Peel half an onion and grate it to make 1 tablespoon onion puree. Heat a cast iron skillet over medium heat until it’s lightly smoking.
Place the steak in the pan and allow some fat to render out. Once some fat renders out, you can optionally add a few vegetables to the pan, such as bell peppers, onions, or carrots. This not only gives you a side dish, but it also keeps the rendered fat from smoking.
Flip the steak every 1 ½ minutes until it reaches your desired internal temperature. I recommend cooking an A5 steak with deep marbling to at least 130°F (55°C), which is medium-rare. My ¾-inch thick steak took about 5 minutes.
When the steak is done, transfer it to a cutting board to rest.
Return the pan to the stove and use the rendered beef fat to fry the garlic chips until they’re golden brown and crisp. Tipping the pan to one side will help create a pool of fat you can use to fry the garlic. Transfer them to a paper towel-lined plate and set aside.
To make the Japanese steak sauce, add the onion puree to the pan and stir until it starts to caramelize.
Add 2 tablespoons mirin and 1 tablespoon soy sauce and boil until a lightly thickened, shiny sauce forms.
Slice the beef and serve topped with the Japanese steak sauce, garlic chips, and some additional cracked black pepper.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Kade Anderson made his final start in an LSU uniform on Saturday night, and it was a masterpiece that put the Tigers on the cusp of their second national championship in three years.
Anderson pitched a three-hitter and struck out 10 in a 1-0 victory over Coastal Carolina in Game 1 of the College World Series finals, his second straight dominant performance in Omaha.
“That’s what we’ve seen all year,” LSU coach Jay Johnson said. “He’s the best pitcher in the country. And did it again tonight. That’s been on the regular every game one of the entire season. Everybody got to see what we’ve seen and known for an entire season.”
The Chanticleers (56-12) lost for the first time in 27 games and must win Sunday to force a third and deciding game Monday night.
LSU (52-15) made Steven Milam’s RBI single in the first inning stand up with Anderson getting stronger as the game progressed against a Coastal Carolina team that had won its first three CWS games by a combined 24-9.
“If it was going to be easy, there would be more than one national champion,” Chanticleers coach Kevin Schnall said. “We’ve got to regroup. We’ve won 26 in a row. Let’s just call it is what it is — the odds were not in our favor to go 28-0 and win this national championship.”
Anderson, a lefty projected to be a top-three pick in next month’s MLB amateur draft, threw 130 pitches and was just as good as he was in LSU’s CWS opener against Arkansas last weekend. He has allowed one run and six hits and struck out 17 in 16 innings in Omaha.
Anderson grew up in Madisonville, Louisiana, as a big fan of LSU baseball. Asked how often he dreamed of a CWS performance like Saturday’s and winning a title, he said, “Probably every night.”
“That wasn’t necessarily to end the College World Series,” he said. “We’ve got one more that we’re preparing for. We’ll go back to the hotel and start preparing for that one as well.”
Against the Chanticleers he had to deal with traffic on the basepaths after issuing three of his five walks in the first two innings and hitting two batters. He was up to the challenge. The Chanticleers were 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position.
“It’s the College World Series. You’re going to pitch with runners on base,” Johnson said. “It’s the best teams in the country, and that’s one of the best teams in the country. They do a great job of finding their way on base. And they did a few times tonight.”
Anderson (12-1) walked pinch-hitter Domenico Tozzi with two outs in the ninth, prompting a mound visit from pitching coach Nate Yeskie. Anderson then got Wells Sykes to fly out to end the game. Anderson and catcher Luis Hernandez embraced, and then their teammates mobbed them behind the mound to celebrate the first complete-game shutout in the CWS since 2022.
Anderson worked around two walks in the first inning, got out of the third when Sebastian Alexander was caught stealing third base, and he struck out three in a row after Blagen Pado’s double leading off the fourth.
After he gave up LSU’s early run, Coastal Carolina’s Cameron Flukey (8-2) matched zeroes with Anderson from the second to sixth inning. Flukey limited the Tigers to four hits, walked two and struck out nine before turning the ball over to Dominick Carbone to start the seventh.
The Tigers are 16-0 when they have a lead at any point when Anderson is pitching. It was Anderson’s second shutout of the season. He threw 135 pitches in a 2-0 win over Oklahoma on April 3.
Anderson said he wasn’t bothered by the conditions. The temperature was 97 degrees at first pitch with a gusty wind blowing out to left.
“I think that’s the real benefit of playing in Louisiana,” he said. “Growing up there, this was honestly not nearly as bad as it was in the super regional.”
LSU will try to lock up its eighth national title Sunday.
Coastal Carolina won the championship in its first trip to Omaha in 2016 and is seeking to become the fifth school to win the title in each of its first two trips to the CWS, but the first since Michigan in 1962.
Schnall reminded reporters that in 2016, Arizona left-hander JC Cloney threw a shutout in Game 1 of the finals and Coastal Carolina came back to win the next two.
“Again, we’ve got to respond, rebound, regroup,” Schnall said. “We’ve got Jacob Morrison pitching tomorrow. Answer the bell.”
By SAM MEDNICK, AAMER MADHANI and DAVID RISING Associated Press
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The U.S. military struck three sites in Iran early Sunday, inserting itself into Israel ’s war aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear program in a risky gambit to weaken a longtime foe amid Tehran’s threat of reprisals that could spark a wider regional conflict.
President Donald Trump said Iran’s key nuclear sites were “completely and fully obliterated,” and he warned Iran against carrying out retaliatory attacks, saying the U.S. could hit more targets “with precision, speed and skill.”
“There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,” Trump said in an address to the nation from the White House.
President Donald Trump says Iran’s key nuclear sites were “completely and fully obliterated” by US strikes. Trump made the comments at the White House hours after announcing the US military had carried out strikes against key nuclear facilities in Iran.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran confirmed that attacks took place on its Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz sites, but it insisted that its work will not be stopped.
The decision to directly involve the U.S. in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that aimed to systematically eradicate the country’s air defenses and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities. But U.S. and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and the 30,000-pound (13,500-kilogram) bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear program buried deep underground.
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,” Trump said in a post on social media. “All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.”
Trump added in a later post: “This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s decision to attack in a video message directed at the American president.
“Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the awesome and righteous might of the United States, will change history,” he said. Netanyahu said the U.S. “has done what no other country on earth could do.”
The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation. But Fox News host Sean Hannity said shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern that he had spoken with Trump and that six bunker buster bombs were used on the Fordo facility. Hannity said 30 Tomahawk missiles fired by U.S. submarines 400 miles away struck the Iranian nuclear sites of Natanz and Isfahan.
The strikes are a perilous decision, as Iran has pledged to retaliate if the U.S. joined the Israeli assault, and for Trump personally. He won the White House on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he was “gravely alarmed” by the “dangerous escalation” of American strikes.
“There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control — with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,” he said in a statement.
Trump told reporters Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran, saying it’s “the last thing you want to do.” He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the course of two weeks.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will “result in irreparable damage for them.” And Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared “any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region.”
Trump has vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country’s leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully.
The Israeli military said Saturday it was preparing for the possibility of a lengthy war, while Iran’s foreign minister warned before the U.S. attack that American military involvement “would be very, very dangerous for everyone.”
The prospect of a wider war loomed. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they would resume attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea if the Trump administration joined Israel’s military campaign. The Houthis paused such attacks in May under a deal with the U.S.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel announced that the U.S. had begun “assisted departure flights,” the first from Israel since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Trump planned to make his decision on the strikes within two weeks. Instead, he struck just two days later.
Trump appears to have made the calculation — at the prodding of Israeli officials and many Republican lawmakers — that Israel’s operation had softened the ground and presented a perhaps unparalleled opportunity to set back Iran’s nuclear program, perhaps permanently.
The Israelis say their offensive has already crippled Iran’s air defenses, allowing them to already significantly degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites.
But to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, Israel appealed to Trump for the bunker-busting American bomb known as the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode. The bomb is currently delivered only by the B-2 stealth bomber, which is only found in the American arsenal.
If deployed in the attack, it would be the first combat use of the weapon.
The bomb carries a conventional warhead, and is believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, raising the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility.
Previous Israeli strikes at another Iranian nuclear site, Natanz, on a centrifuge site have caused contamination only at the site itself, not the surrounding area, the IAEA has said.
Trump’s decision for direct U.S. military intervention comes after his administration made an unsuccessful two-month push — including with high-level, direct negotiations with the Iranians — aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear program.
For months, Trump said he was dedicated to a diplomatic push to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. And he twice — in April and again in late May — persuaded Netanyahu to hold off on military action against Iran and give diplomacy more time.
The U.S. in recent days has been shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel and U.S. bases from Iranian attacks.
All the while, Trump has gone from publicly expressing hope that the moment could be a “second chance” for Iran to make a deal to delivering explicit threats on Khamenei and making calls for Tehran’s unconditional surrender.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump said in a social media posting. “He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
The military showdown with Iran comes seven years after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-administration brokered agreement in 2018, calling it the “worst deal ever.”
The 2015 deal, signed by Iran, U.S. and other world powers, created a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Trump decried the Obama-era deal for giving Iran too much in return for too little, because the agreement did not cover Iran’s non-nuclear malign behavior.
Trump has bristled at criticism from some of his MAGA faithful, including conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who have suggested that further U.S. involvement would be a betrayal to supporters who were drawn to his promise to end U.S. involvement in expensive and endless wars.
___
Madhani reported from Washington. Rising reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Iran; Mehmet Guzel in Istanbul; Josef Federman in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Matthew Lee and Josh Boak in Washington; and Farnoush Amiri and Jon Gambrell in Dubai contributed to this report.
339 g (3 sticks) butter (NOTE: use a higher quality butter if possible for the butter block )
SUGAR MIX:
250 g (1 1/4 cup) sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Directions
Scale all the ingredients for the dough into the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on low speed for 2 minutes. The dough should come together at this time. Increase mixing speed to medium, and mix for another 15-20 minutes, until the dough has strong gluten development. (You should feel resistance when you pull on it.)
Remove dough from the bowl, and form into a flat, 8-inch x 8-inch square before wrapping in plastic wrap. Freeze for ~ 1 hour, until very cold, and slightly hardened. Flip the dough halfway through, so that it is evenly chilled.
In the meantime, combine sugar and salt; mix well, and set aside. In a folded over piece of parchment, use a rolling pin to shape the butter into an 8-inch x 8-inch square. Use a dough scraper to straighten the sides, as necessary. Refrigerate ~ 20 minutes, until firm but still pliable.
Once the dough and butter are both sufficiently chilled, roll out the dough as necessary to even out the thickness, and ensure that it has the same dimensions as the butter block. Then, place the butter inside the dough so that it forms a diamond within the square. Fold the edges of the dough into the middle, completely enclosing the butter. Pinch seams together.
Roll this square packet until it is three times as long, keeping roughly the same width. You will end up with an 8.5-inch x 24-inch rectangle. Fold the rectangle into thirds. This is called “the first turn.” Rotate 90 degrees, and repeat the process once more.
After the second turn, wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and chill in the freezer for ~ 10 minutes. Once cold, remove from the freezer and do one last fold, incorporating the sugar this time. (See video for details.)
Rotate 90 degrees, and roll out the dough into a rectangle, 10 inches wide x 16 inches. Cut dough into 2-inch strips, and roll each one up before placing in a greased muffin tin, or greased ring mold.
Let rise for 45-60 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 F. Bake for 45-60 minutes until golden brown. Check bottoms to make sure that dough is fully cooked; they should be golden brown as well. Remove from the oven, and use tongs to carefully remove the kouign-amanns from their muffin tin, or molds. This step should be done immediately, or else the sugar will harden into a caramel, making it impossible to extract the kouign-amanns later. Bon appetit!
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — LSU and Coastal Carolina have met only two times previously as they enter the College World Series finals Saturday night. Those games back in 2016 have not been forgotten.
Coastal Carolina swept the Tigers on their home field in super regionals on the way to their first national championship. The Chanticleers’ opponent in the CWS finals that year was Arizona. Jay Johnson, now at LSU, was Arizona’s coach.
Tigers outfielder Jake Brown was 11 years old and living in Sulphur, Louisiana, at the time, and he recalled Friday how the players on that LSU team were superheroes to him.
“A little bit of heartbreak,” he said Friday. “That was a great team, a team I think could have made a good run in the championship. Obviously, things didn’t go our way that time. Looking forward to turning it around and making something good happen for us this time.”
LSU (51-15) will be playing for its eighth national championship and second in three years. Coastal Carolina (56-11), which brings a 26-game win streak into the best-of-three series, is going for its second title in its second all-time CWS appearance.
“That would put Coastal Carolina baseball on a different planet,” Chanticleers coach Kevin Schnall said.
Cameron Flukey (8-1), who pitched four innings of relief against Arizona on June 13, will start for Coastal Carolina. Johnson has not named his starter. Ace Kade Anderson (11-1), who limited Arkansas to three hits and struck out seven in seven innings on June 14, is available.
The Tigers and Chanticleers each went 3-0 in bracket play. LSU had to beat SEC rival Arkansas twice, winning the bracket final 6-5 in walk-off fashion after a wild three-run ninth inning.
LSU’s Brown is 4 for 6 with four RBIs in three CWS games and Jared Jones is 5 for 9 with two homers and six RBIs in the last two games after striking out five times in the opener against Arkansas. Tigers pitchers have walked just four in 27 innings.
“I think if you’re at this point in the NCAA tournament, you’ve been battle-tested,” Johnson said. “I don’t believe there’s anything we have not seen. … I feel like we’re well-trained and well-prepared for, in my opinion, probably the best team that we’ve played this year in Coastal.”
The Chanticleers are yet to hit a home run at Charles Schwab Field. Colby Thorndyke has two bases-clearing doubles and is 5 for 12 with eight RBIs. Dean Mihos is 5 for 12 with a double and triple. Their pitchers have walked four in 25 innings.
Johnson, in his fourth year at LSU after six at Arizona, said his heart still aches for his 2016 Wildcats team. Arizona erased a 4-0 deficit against the Chanticleers in the third and final game of the CWS finals and stranded a runner at third base in the bottom of the ninth inning.
“We were one base hit away,” Johnson said, “and it took a couple of years to get past that. I think what I do remember about all of that is it has really helped me the next three times that we’ve been here in terms of knowing how to prepare for this.”
Scoring first is key
Fast starts are a distinguishing feature of Coastal Carolina’s offense. The Chanticleers have outscored their three CWS opponents by a combined 11-0 in the first inning and are a Division I-best 37-2 when they score first. LSU is 32-7 when it opens the scoring.
5 is magic number
LSU has won 16 straight CWS games when scoring at least five runs since losing 9-5 to Miami in 2004.
High expectations
Coastal Carolina’s Schnall makes it a point to remind the media that the Chanticleers are a national power, but that doesn’t mean in February he expected the 2025 team to play for a national championship.
“We were picked fourth in the Sun Belt,” he said. “No problem. We’ll move forward, keep our head down and keep grinding. That’s what this team did. But we clearly felt like this pitching staff was going to be the best pitching staff we ever had.”
The Chanticleers were 19-8 on March 29 and are 37-3 since.
Hit by pitch leaders
Coastal Carolina leads the country with a program record 176 hit-by-pitches this season, breaking UC Irvine’s single season-record 175 in 2024. The Chanticleers have been plunked six times in three CWS games.
“They don’t eat if they get out of the way,” Schnall said, drawing laughs. “No, it’s just something that our guys have bought into. Our guys are obsessed with getting on base. They understand the way you score runs is having guys on base. And any way you can get on base helps our team win.”
Line of the day
LSU’s Brown drew laughs at Friday’s news conference when he explained the straightforward and simple way Johnson prepares him and his teammates to play.
“We came here to play baseball,” he said. “We’re not really scholars.”
MOCKSVILLE, N.C. (AP) — The pilot of a small plane that crashed near a North Carolina airport this month had raised a wheel after landing to avoid hitting a turtle on the runway, according to a National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report.
The pilot of the Universal Stinson 108 and a passenger were killed in the June 3 crash near Sugar Valley Airport in Mocksville, officials said. A second passenger was seriously injured in the crash.
A communications operator looking out the airport office window advised the pilot that there was a turtle on the runway, according to the report released this week. The operator reported that the pilot landed about 1,400 feet (427 meters) down the 2,424-foot (739-meter) runway, then lifted the right main wheel to avoid the turtle. The operator heard the pilot advance the throttle after raising the wheel, but the airplane left her view after that.
A man cutting the grass at the end of the runway reported seeing the pilot raise the right wheel to avoid the turtle, then the wings rocked back and forth and the plane took off again, according to the report. The man lost sight of the plane and then he heard a crash and saw smoke.
The plane crashed in a heavily forested area about 255 feet (78 meters) from the runway and caught fire, officials said. The plane was wedged between several trees and remained in one piece except for a few pieces of fabric found in a nearby stream. It came to rest on its left side with the left wing folded underneath the fuselage and the right wing bent toward the tail.
Preliminary reports contain facts collected on scene, but don’t speculate on probable causes, according to the NTSB’s website. Those are included in final reports, which can take one to two years to complete.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The Green Party will remain an official party in North Carolina, able to field candidates statewide through the 2028 elections, even though their 2024 nominees for governor and president failed to get the votes required by state law.
The Republican-led State Board of Elections voted 3-2 on Thursday to continue recognizing the North Carolina Green Party, potentially affecting close contests for president, U.S. Senate and governor or other statewide and local offices.
Without Thursday’s action, the party would have joined four other small parties who also failed to reach the vote thresholds necessary and are thus no longer recognized — the Constitution, Justice for All, No Labels and We the People parties. None of their candidates received at least 2% of the total vote for governor or president to remain an official party.
That means voters who are registered with those four parties are moved to unaffiliated status on voter rolls starting next week. Those groups also would have to collect about 14,000 signatures to regain official party status — an effort that takes time and money.
But the North Carolina Green Party petitioned the board this spring to apply another standard. State law also says a group of voters can become a political party if they “had a candidate nominated by that group on the general election ballot” in at least 35 states in the prior presidential election.
The group presented a Federal Election Commission document showing Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, appeared on the November 2024 ballot in 38 states. In seven states, however, she was not the nominee of the party or of a Green Party affiliate, according to the commission document. For example, she was an independent candidate in three of the seven.
Democratic board member Jeff Carmon said he wasn’t convinced the standard was met because Stein failed to be nominated in 35 states by the Green Party or an affiliate.
Republican members decided otherwise. Although Stein may have been listed as the nominee for a different party or as independent, she was the national Green Party candidate, board Chairman Francis De Luca said.
The three Republican members agreed that the North Carolina Green Party could remain an official party. The two Democrats voted no. The board shifted from a Democratic majority to a Republican majority last month after a 2024 state law took appointment authority away from the governor and to the state auditor.
With Thursday’s action, there will be four recognized political parties in North Carolina — Democratic, Republican, Libertarian and Green. As of last week, the largest bloc of North Carolina’s 7.53 million registered voters are unaffiliated, at 2.85 million. About 4,000 voters are registered with the Green Party.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein vetoed his first bills on Friday, blocking for now Republican legislation that would let adults carry concealed handguns without a permit and make state agencies and local sheriffs more active in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Stein, who took office in January, issued his formal objections to three measures backed by the GOP-controlled General Assembly presented to him last week. The former attorney general also had the option to sign any of them into law, or let them become law if he hadn’t acted on the legislation soon.
The vetoed measures now return to the legislature, where Republicans are one House seat shy of holding a veto-proof majority. Its leaders will decide whether to attempt overrides as early as next week.
Voting so far followed party lines for one of the immigration measures, which in part would direct heads of several state law enforcement agencies, like the State Highway Patrol and State Bureau of Investigation, to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But one House Democrat ended up voting for the other immigration bill that Stein vetoed. It toughens a 2024 law that required sheriffs to help federal agents seeking criminal defendants.
GOP prospects for enacting the permitless concealed gun measure, a longtime aspiration for gun-rights advocates, appear dimmer, because two House Republicans voted against the bill and 10 others were absent.
Gun bill would let 18-year-olds carry concealed handgun
In one veto message, Stein said the gun legislation, which would allow eligible people at least 18 years old to carry a concealed handgun, “makes North Carolinians less safe and undermines responsible gun ownership.” Democratic lawmakers argued the same during legislative debate.
Current law requires a concealed weapons holder to be at least 21 to obtain a permit. The person must submit an application to the local sheriff, pass a firearms safety training course and cannot “suffer from a physical or mental infirmity that prevents the safe handling of a handgun” to obtain the permit. No safety training would be required if getting a permit is no longer necessary.
“Authorizing teenagers to carry a concealed weapon with no training whatsoever is dangerous,” Stein wrote.
Gun-control groups praised the veto.
Conservative advocates for the bill say removing the permit requirement would strengthen the safety of law-abiding citizens.
“Law-abiding North Carolinians shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to effectively exercise their Second Amendment rights,” Senate leader Phil Berger said in a press release criticizing the veto and planning for an override vote in his chamber.
Permitless carry is already lawful in 29 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. North Carolina would also be one of the last states in the Southeast to implement that legislation.
Immigration bills focus on state agencies, sheriffs
One vetoed immigration bill would require four state law enforcement agencies to officially participate in the 287(g) program, which trains officers to interrogate defendants and determine their immigration status. An executive order by President Donald Trump urged his administration to maximize the use of 287(g) agreements.
Stein wrote Friday the bill takes officers away from existing state duties at a time when law enforcement is already stretched thin. The measure also would direct state agencies to ensure noncitizens don’t access certain state-funded benefits. But Stein said that people without lawful immigration status already can’t receive them.
The other vetoed bill attempts to expand a 2024 law — enacted over then-Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto — that directed jails to hold temporarily certain defendants whom ICE believe are in the country illegally, allowing time for immigration agents to pick them up.
The vetoed bill would expand the list of crimes that a defendant is charged with that would require the jail administrator to attempt to determine the defendant’s legal status. A jail also would have to tell ICE promptly that it is holding someone and essentially extends the time agents have to pick up the person.
Stein said Friday while he supports sheriffs contacting federal immigration agents about defendants charged with dangerous crimes that they are holding, the law is unconstitutional because it directs sheriffs to keep defendants behind bars 48 hours beyond when they otherwise could be released for a suspected immigration violation.
With the veto of this bill, House Speaker Destin Hall said, Stein sided with the “most radical elements of his party’s base over the safety and security of North Carolinians.”
Latino advocates and other bill opponents had urged Stein to veto both immigration measures. They say the legislation would cause Hispanic residents to feel intimidated and fear law enforcement.
Stein’s vetoes help “ensure North Carolina remains a safe state for everyone, including immigrants, who deserve equal treatment under the law,” the group El Pueblo said in a news release.
Win tickets for Kali Uchis’s The Sincerely Tour at Lenovo Center on Monday, September 8th! Win by correctly answering MJ’s Question of the Day on weekdays just after 3 p.m.
