Welcome to Red Wine & Blue North Carolina

After the fall of Roe v. Wade, the Republican supermajority in our state legislature passed an extreme abortion ban, drastically restricting access to abortion care in our state. And we know they aren’t stopping there. We will continue to work with other reproductive rights activists across NC to help elect candidates who will fight for our bodily autonomy..

At the national level, Republicans continue to try to restrict access to birth control and IVF, and NC Republicans are using the same playbook. In fact, right now, NC Democrats have reintroduced a Right to Contraception Act, but Republicans won’t even let it come up for a vote! Make no mistake, birth control will be on the ballot in 2026. They’re coming for our rights, so we’re coming for their jobs!

In North Carolina, millions of women don’t have easy access to an OB/GYN. Close to 30% of our counties don’t even have an obstetrician and only 60% have hospitals that offer labor and delivery services, leaving maternal healthcare deserts in huge portions of our state. North Carolina’s maternal death rate is higher than the national average and it’s doubled in recent years. U.S. maternal deaths are at their highest in 60 years. Indigenous women’s maternal mortality rate is 4.5 times that of white women, and Black women’s rate is 2.6 times that of white women.

To improve women’s healthcare and protect reproductive rights in our state, we must continue to diminish Republican power in the state legislature, and hold them accountable for trying to take away power from Gov. Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson. Along with this, we must vote in every race on our ballots for candidates that will protect our reproductive rights.

To make matters worse, at the same time, they are using private school vouchers to funnel billions (yep, that’s billions with a “B”) of taxpayer dollars away from public schools and into private ones over the next decade, with zero accountability.

There’s also a national movement against public education trying to take over school boards. Extremist groups like Moms for Liberty are targeting North Carolina schools and spending millions of dollars on advertising for candidates who support their book-banning, anti-LGBTQ+, pro-bullying, anti-public-education policies.

We were able to help defeat Michele Morrow, the extremist candidate for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2024 and elect Mo Green who has been a staunch supporter of public education for decades. We can’t stop there.

State legislators are busy introducing bills to ban books in schools, block the teaching of honest history, and to deny the existence of trans kids. Our communities and our kids need us to elect commonsense, pro-public education candidates to school boards and the state legislature. Voting is not enough. We also need to talk to our friends and family and make sure they vote, too. Learn how here.

We all want safe communities. We want to be able to go to the grocery store, a movie theater, and to send our kids to school without worrying about being shot. But an average of 1,714 people die by guns every year in North Carolina, and our Everytown for Gun Safety rating for Gun Law Strength is slipping. Gun violence costs our state $19.5 billion every year.

Guns are the leading cause of death for youth in the U.S. Our college campuses — UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Charlotte, and N.C. Central — have been terrorized by shootings in recent years. Our elementary, middle, and high school students are traumatized by school shooting drills. Parents will never numb to the fear of lockdown alerts coming through on our phones.

So what are our state legislators doing about it in Raleigh? Democrats in both the House and Senate have been filing bills to strengthen gun safety laws in our state for years, like promoting secure storage of guns and extreme risk protection orders commonly known as red flag laws, but the Republican supermajority won’t even let the bills be heard in committee. Instead, as soon as they gained their veto-proof supermajority last year, Republicans made it easier to get a gun in our state by removing the century-old law that required a permit to purchase a gun. And now they’ve passed SB50, a bill that would allow anyone over 18 to carry a gun in public without a permit.

The best way to reduce gun violence in our state and to stop Republicans from further weakening our gun laws is to elect “gun sense” candidates who are committed to keeping our communities safe through common-sense gun legislation.

Extremists in North Carolina:

• Are trying to disenfranchise 65K voters in NC to steal a NC Supreme Court seat.
• Defunded and removed all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives within the University of North Carolina system, and now they want to prohibit Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs and related concepts in North Carolina’s public schools and state agencies.
• Passed a slate of hateful anti-LGBTQ+ bills including bans on health care for LGBTQ+ youth, a ban on trans youth from participating in sports, and a “Don’t Say Gay” bill for our schools.
• Are working to transform state agencies from service providers into potential instruments of immigration enforcement.
• Want to make it a Class 2 Misdemeanor for residents of NC to use the official voter registration form to help register other voters.

None of this is okay! We’re showing up in 2025 and 2026 to stop these extremists from taking over our communities and to rally for candidates who reject discrimination and respect our democracy.