Shame on Thom Tillis for pretending the buck stops anywhere but the Oval Office | Opinion
Thom Tillis is enraged that staffers did not stop their commander-in-chief from pretending to be Jesus. What? Who’s in charge here? Twenty-somethings? Are you admitting our commander in chief is unable to tell right from wrong?
Shame on you, Senator Tillis, for pretending the buck stops anywhere but the Oval Office. So much for the party of leadership, accountability, and responsibility. If he really needs handlers, he’s unfit to be president … and you know it.
Jeff Braden, Raleigh
Misleading Berger
Sen. Phil Berger is being misleading when he argues former Gov. Roy Cooper initiated the release of 3,500 prisoners during COVID. The release was actually in consequence of a successful suit brought AGAINST then Gov. Cooper by the ACLU, and thus a legal rather than a political matter.
Sarah Packard, Durham
Phones and cars
It is mind-boggling that NC and some other states still allow phone use while driving. And holding the phone is not the issue. Hands-free phone use is known to be every bit as dangerous. The distraction of talking and listening takes attention away from driving even with eyes forward and hands on the wheel. The impairment of phone use is equal or worse than having a blood alcohol level of 0.08, the legal limit in most states. Drunk drivers are quite rightly vilified and prosecuted, but phone users remain free to cause hundreds of deaths and untold injuries each year. It’s time for this to stop.
Peter Aitken, Chapel Hill
Raleigh tree canopy
Regarding the citywide planting of 24,000 trees: New canopy is always good news, but even better would have been preservation in Raleigh going back about 20 years. The city council must hold themselves accountable for the damage that pro-developer policies have wrought on the City of Oaks biome.
Builders have clear-cut and paved vast tracts here. Much of Raleigh is now Potterville, and George Bailey isn’t going to save us.
Randall Rickman, Raleigh
Protecting vulnerable people
We may not all agree on politics or policy, but we should agree on this: every person deserves the chance to live safely, with dignity, and with access to the basic necessities of life.
LGBTQ+ individuals, especially transgender people, are increasingly at risk of losing access to healthcare, housing, and protection from discrimination. These are not abstract issues—they determine whether people can live stable, healthy lives.
For LGBTQ+ youth, the consequences are especially serious. When young people are denied support and protection, rates of homelessness, depression, and suicide rise. When they are supported, those risks drop significantly. This is well-documented and widely understood.
We do not need to agree on every issue to recognize that no child should be pushed toward harm. Protecting vulnerable people is not political—it is a shared human responsibility.
Rachel Alayna Coe-Weir, Greenville
Teacher march
Let us hope that the fact that thousands of teachers are expected to march in Raleigh on May 1 will sound the alarm for Republican members of the legislature. They should translate these numbers into actual votes in the mid-term elections. These teachers will not vote for legislators who do not support public education, including decent salaries for teachers, now ranking near the bottom of the fifty states.
Teachers are already angry with Republican legislators for investing millions of dollars in tuition vouchers for students in private and religious schools while starving the public schools. These marching teachers have family members and sympathetic friends who will vote the same way. One and a half million students are currently enrolled in public schools in the state. Their families are likely to unseat Republican candidates who are not supporting our teachers in the public schools. This will be a decisive issue in the mid-terms. Republican candidates, you have been warned.
Thomas K. Spence, Jr., Sanford
This story was originally published April 26, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Shame on Thom Tillis for pretending the buck stops anywhere but the Oval Office | Opinion."