‘What keeps me up at night’: Stein reflects on Helene, immigration and collaboration with Trump

During his first year in office, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein has had to work across the aisle to encourage state lawmakers to pass a state budget, and to push federal officials to help fund Hurricane Helene recovery efforts.

In a wide-ranging interview Tuesday with WRAL anchor Ashley Rowe, the Democrat talked through challenges at the state and federal level — and highlighted areas of collaboration with Republican President Donald Trump. He also said he fears abandonment by the federal government on hurricane recovery efforts, which is underfunded by billions of dollars.

The White House has said Helene recovery remains a priority. “President Trump cares deeply about all those impacted by Hurricane Helene,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told WRAL News in a written statement this week. “That’s why one of his first priorities as president was taking action to help individuals impacted that had been ignored for far too long.”

Stein also weighed in on requests to deploy the North Carolina National Guard and federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe.

Here are highlights from the conversation. The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

WRAL: North Carolina is the only state in the country operating without a newly approved budget. You have been praised for your efforts to reach across the aisle work with Republican lawmakers. What has been your biggest struggle to get the budget over the finish line?

STEIN: Well, here's the thing: The difference is between the House and the Senate. The difference isn't between the General Assembly and me. There are issues that they're negotiating about. The House has a more fiscally responsible budget because they're not engaging in reckless tax cuts the way the Senate has. The Senate is investing in a new children's hospital, which I think offers incredible promise, not only to sick kids, but to the economic health of the region. So to me, I could solve their budget disputes pretty quickly, but they have to solve it with each other.

WRAL: How do you get in the middle and try to get to an agreement, though? You're the governor.

STEIN: I talk to them regularly and we flesh out what the differences are. I wish that I could create the same level of urgency in them that is necessary. I think they're each willing to wait each other out. That's not good.

It's not good for our public school teachers who have not gotten a raise. We have among the lowest paid teachers in the whole country. It's not good for law enforcement, where we have a lot of vacancies. We need to raise pay for our state law enforcement. We need to help local law enforcement agencies fill their vacancies. It's not good for our public servants who do all the incredible work serving the people of North Carolina. It's not good for our health care system. They've not fully funded Medicaid, which creates real risk to the entirety of our health care system, not only for those people who are on Medicaid, but for anybody — because if a doctor shuts their door, it's not only the Medicaid patients who suffer, it's also their patients who are private payer.

So there's true urgency that the legislature pass a budget. I called them into session last month to tell them to focus on Medicaid. They refused. They had a session this week. They didn't come to work. I will keep urging them to do their jobs. The most important bill the General Assembly passes any year is the budget. And so I will keep urging them to do that.

WRAL: A lot of people don't look at the minutia, the inner workings. They look to you, the governor. And so if they don't see teacher raises, for example, do you fear that that's going to be a stain on your record?

STEIN: I trust voters will be able to figure out and apportion blame and credit as appropriate. But the thing is, we've got to focus on what's important to North Carolina, and as long as we do that, then the voters will reward anybody. The average voter doesn't care if it's a Democrat or Republican. They just don't. Of course, there are partisans in each corner, but the typical voter just wants somebody who cares about the issues they care about and has a plan to address them. And I've been able to work with this legislature constructively on issues that do matter, things like Hurricane Helene relief or creating jobs across the state, or promoting public safety fixing the DMV.

WRAL: Let's talk about Hurricane Helene relief. I know it’s a huge priority for you. You have been in conversation with President Donald Trump about the federal government's support for Helene relief. When was the last time you spoke with President Trump about this?

STEIN: I’ve spoken with his administration as recently as a week or two ago.

WRAL: How did that conversation go? Take us behind the scenes.

STEIN: Didn't get the response necessarily that I wanted. It was with the former FEMA director. There are a couple of programs that FEMA funds. There's something called public assistance. That's when local governments spend money on approved things, whether it's cleaning debris or fixing a water system. And FEMA says, “Yes, go ahead and do that.” Local government spends the money and then has to wait for months and months and months, which a lot of these governments are very little. And if you have a $2 million project that you don't get reimbursed, that creates real fiscal stress in that local government's budget. So helping to get that money loosened up has been a real priority. We've had some success with public assistance.

There's another program which is called hazard mitigation, which is about trying to make it more resilient. Maybe it's a house that's in a flood zone where the government will buy out the homeowner so they don't rebuild and the homeowner can move on with their life and go do something else. We have some 560 applications from homeowners who have said, “I want to sell my property so that I can restart my life somewhere else.” Not a single one of those have had action by the federal government. So there have been times where I'm grateful for what the government is doing, and there are times when I'm immensely frustrated.

WRAL: I know you reached out to the White House when Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Border Patrol came to Charlotte and Raleigh. You didn't hear back from them at the time. Have you had any success getting in touch with the White House or Secretary Kristi Noem regarding what has happened? There are so many people who are concerned. Could ICE or Border Patrol come back?

STEIN: I've not heard from the White House. I've not heard from the Secretary of Homeland Security. Obviously, I feel like they should tell the people of North Carolina what happened if they were coming to North Carolina, finding people who are dangerous, who have committed crimes and need to be held accountable, put into our jails or prisons or deported. I 100% support those efforts, because we all deserve to be safe in our communities. But that is not what Border Patrol and ICE have been doing. If you look at the data in aggregate, we haven't seen the North Carolina-specific data yet, but we've seen them operate in a lot of other places. About three-quarters of the people that they've detained have no criminal convictions whatsoever, and only a fraction of those who do have serious criminal records. So this idea of going for the worst of the worst, it's just not accurate. And what we saw in Charlotte was them going down the street and taking brown people off the street, or going to construction sites or someone's home and taking landscapers off the lawn. They were racially profiling people. That's not how it should happen.

WRAL: What's your relationship with the White House? It's quite clear that relationships are what drives a lot of the president’s decision making. What relationship do you have with the president and the White House at this time?

STEIN: We focus on what we can work on together. They were helpful on Hurricane Helene, focusing energy on debris removal. I will credit the president on this. He came to western North Carolina in January, and he saw the debris that was there, and he charged his administration with really attacking that problem. We've removed 15.5 million cubic yards of debris. That's just a phenomenal amount of stuff. He helped with that. The governor of South Carolina and I were very concerned about the possibility of putting oil rigs off of the Outer Banks. That would be a disaster for the economy of the coast. So he and I wrote a bipartisan letter to the president, urging him not to do that. I was very gratified last month when he took the Atlantic seaboard off the list of where they're going to try to put oil rigs. So we've had some constructive interactions. Obviously, there are other times he does things that I think are not helpful to the people of North Carolina. And I make it clear when those happen what my views are. I want nothing more than for the people of North Carolina to have every chance to succeed, and I will work with anybody who shares that goal. And when people do things that I think are contrary to the interest of the state, I will not hesitate to stand up and speak.

WRAL: Has the president or the White House asked you to deploy the North Carolina National Guard for border or crime-fighting efforts?

STEIN: They have not.

WRAL: Is it something that you would consider?

STEIN: It all depends on what the request was. The Biden White House asked for National Guard to go up and provide some specialized assistance to ensure the safety of the inaugural process. Obviously, we were happy to do that. President Trump did ask me to chair a council of governors along with Governor Youngkin of Virginia. It's a bipartisan group of 10 governors, five of each party, and I'm one of the co-chairs. And so I was honored to do that. We interact with the National Guard, we interact with the Department of Defense, we interact with Homeland Security, and we raise issues that are of common interest of states as it relates to the federal relationship with our National Guard.

WRAL: When it comes to the letter that you received from various federal representatives asking you to deploy the North Carolina National Guard to help with crime-fighting efforts in Charlotte. Is that something that you would consider?

STEIN: What we should do is focus law enforcement assets on keeping people safe. The best people to be in a community are those who have training to do that work experience. And so there's a new chief of police. She used to be here in Raleigh, Stella Patterson. She's now the police chief in Charlotte. She asked the state to help her with a surge, what she's calling Operation Safe Season, to put more people on the streets in Charlotte, to give people a greater sense of safety and to keep people safer. We were happy to have the Highway Patrol and the State Bureau of Investigation and the Alcohol Law Enforcement to assist in that enterprise. When we will achieve the greatest public safety is when trained law enforcement do this work, not soldiers.

WRAL: The Senate is expected to pass full federal recognition for the Lumbee tribe. Anything you'd like to say?

STEIN: It's exciting.The Lumbee predated the state. The state recognized them well over 100 years ago. However, they were never recognized by the federal government. They're the largest tribe east of the Mississippi. They're focused predominantly in Robeson County, but they're also in Hoke and Cumberland and a couple others. And the federal recognition will trigger for them all kinds of federal resources — for housing, for health care, for disaster recovery when they've had floods in the past. This is going to be immensely helpful to them and their economic health and well being, and it's going to be good for the state of North Carolina.

WRAL: When you look back on the year, how much time would you say has been dedicated to Helene relief in your governorship?

STEIN: I probably can't answer with that degree of specificity, but what I can say is I start my every daily call with an update on Hurricane Helene. Every agency that I oversee in all the various departments are focused on what their role is in the recovery. I'm really proud of how hard this team has worked. I've spent a lot of time in western North Carolina. I've been out there dozens and dozens of times, and every time I go, I'm inspired again by the grit and the determination of those folks. Whether it's getting a restaurant reopened in Chimney Rock, or getting a hotel and bar reopened in Marshall, or any of dozens of dozens of other small businesses, it makes me want the state government to have the same level of urgency. We were the first state to start our federally funded housing program in the country of states impacted by Helene. We just announced this week about $280 million in grants to western North Carolina towns and water systems to shore up and make them more resilient in the future, the first state impacted by Helene to do that. We have a state funded program through our Office of State Management and Budget that will put $50 million in local government from the day the application opened to the money being dispersed within seven weeks. So my mantra to my team is urgency. The people of western North Carolina are working hard with urgency. We have to match that urgency to the best of our ability.

WRAL: What keeps you up at night with this Helene relief looking into 2026. What will be your big priority to make sure that that ball continues to go?

STEIN: It's an abandonment by the federal government. That's what keeps me up at night. It has not yet happened. They obviously have the chance to fix it, because they can pass a bill. There has not been special funding for western North Carolina since December 2024, the previous administration. So the state has received about $6 billion from the federal government, maybe a little bit more at this point. That sounds like a lot, but it's only 10% or 11% of the overall damage. I am grateful for every dollar the federal government has sent our way, but it is typical after a storm like this that a state will get 40% or 50% of the damage back in terms of federal assistance. We are tens of millions of dollars away from that. I have a $13.5 billion appropriation request before Congress today. I met with the OMB director when I was in Washington not long ago. I met with our congressional delegation. They have a chance to address this the next time they appropriate money for FEMA. And so I hope they will, they certainly should, I expect them to. But if you ask me, what gives me pause? What gives me fear? It's that they don't and that they abandon the state. I do not want them to do that.