| Dear Jack,
Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top five articles, stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your friends and church families.
We would be very grateful if you could make a donation of $100, $50, $25, or $10 today towards our work producing these Friday Fives and fighting for your values on the public square! |
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| 1. Politics for Happy People Episode 40 -How Big Tech Keeps Kids Hooked
In this episode of Politics For Happy People, Joseph Backholm sits down with Michael Toscano, director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, to discuss the fight for child safety in the digital age and what a major Meta settlement could mean for families. Michael explains how features like likes, algorithmic feeds, push notifications, and other design choices can drive comparison and keep young people attached to social media platforms. They also discuss age verification, parental consent, privacy concerns, AI chatbots, and why state policymakers may have an important role in pushing stronger protections for children. Michael argues that this moment represents meaningful progress, but not the end of the fight, and calls for technology to be shaped toward the good of children and families rather than against them.
Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5TKrx6QKUk |
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| 2. NCVC & NCVI: Individual tickets for our Raleigh Celebration will be released soon!
Individual tickets for our Raleigh Celebration will be released soon! Keep an eye on your inbox; we’ll send an email as soon as tickets become available.
We’re excited to welcome nationally recognized conservative radio host Steve Deace, executive producer of the supernatural Christian thriller Nefarious, based on his novel A Nefarious Plot. We’ll also hear from Payton McNabb, a North Carolina women’s sports advocate who now courageously champions fairness and safety in women’s sports after suffering career-ending injuries while competing against a male athlete in 2022.
The evening will also feature a live auction, with proceeds supporting our mission to advance life, family, and religious freedom across North Carolina.
Join us Thursday, September 24, at 6 p.m. at the Angus Barn in Raleigh as we celebrate 15 years of NC Values Coalition and America’s 250th birthday!
Learn More About the Celebration: https://ncvalues.org/event/raleigh-celebration-2026/ |
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| 3. Ashley Vaughan for CAROLINA JOURNAL: Unregulated abortion pills create public health risk in NC
“Earlier this summer, a young woman in Durham ordered a package of abortion pills from Virginia. According to court documents, 18-year-old Syeisha Johnson learned from a doctor in June that she was approximately 20 weeks pregnant. She later ordered mifepristone and misoprostol and, according to investigators, took the drugs several weeks later when she was about 31 weeks pregnant, shortly before July 29.
That day, Durham police and firefighters were called to a home. Johnson had given birth, and first responders reportedly found the newborn in a toilet with a pulse and transported the baby to a hospital. Johnson, along with 19-year-old boyfriend Elijah Speight, was subsequently arrested and charged in connection with the incident. Johnson faces charges for child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, and assault inflicting serious bodily injury on an unborn child weighing less than 2,500 grams. Speight is charged with child abuse. These allegations will ultimately be resolved in court, but the known facts of this case are disturbing.
One fact that should shock North Carolinians is that a young woman who was reportedly 20 weeks pregnant was able to order abortion drugs from another state and take them weeks later. This case exposes a growing problem in North Carolina: an online abortion-pill industry that can operate across state lines, outside the practical reach of our state’s laws and without the kind of direct medical oversight that those laws were designed to provide. Reports indicate that over 2,000 illegal abortion drugs are shipped into our state like this every month.”
Read more: https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion/unregulated-abortion-pills-create-public-health-risk-in-nc/ |
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| | | 4. Joseph Backholm for THE FEDERALIST: Roy Cooper is the Latest Dem to Campaign Like a Moderate and Govern Like a Socialist
“Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign is trying to convince North Carolinians that he is conservative. His first ad begins with his father and mother — “a teacher” and “small-town lawyer and farmer” — then moves through images of church and high school football. The message echoes the “faith, family, and community” language he used as governor.
His launch event took place at a Raleigh brewery behind a podium sign that read “Make Stuff Cost Less,” with a Wilson County tobacco farmer speaking on his behalf. Cooper says he is running “to do something,” not “to be something.” Roll Call says he has “burnished an image as a mainstream Southern Democrat.” The xxxxxx describes his style as a “‘folksy’ demeanor.” A Democrat strategist put it plainly: Cooper built “a North Carolina Democratic brand, and that brand is not a national Democratic brand.”
It’s a good strategy. But is any of it true?
We know who Cooper is as a politician. In 2023 he vetoed legislation that would have protected children from sex-denying medications and surgeries. When the ACLU sued over COVID-era prison conditions, his administration released thousands of inmates. Eighteen of them, according to a New York Post investigation, were later charged with murder. If he governed to the left in Raleigh, why would anyone believe he’ll govern to the center in Washington?”
Read more: https://thefederalist.com/2026/09/04/roy-cooper-is-the-latest-dem-to-campaign-like-a-moderate-and-govern-like-a-socialist/ |
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| 5. NCVC: Roy Cooper Said Protecting Our Daughters Was a Price Too High to Pay
During his time as governor, Roy Cooper repeatedly used his veto power to oppose legislation to protect women and girls’ rights. In 2023, he vetoed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which would have prohibited males from participating on female sports teams in middle school, high school, and college; the General Assembly subsequently overrode his veto and enacted the law. But while Cooper was wringing his hands over politics, girls like Payton McNabb were being harmed.
At just 17 years old, Payton was knocked unconscious by a volleyball spike from a male athlete on the opposing girls’ team in 2022. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, neck injury, impaired vision, and partial paralysis—injuries that ended her athletic career and changed her life forever. Today, Payton courageously advocates for fairness and safety in women’s sports.
Watch more: https://www.facebook.com/reel/933986983101713 |
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Anita Leis has twin daughters – Ruby and June – in Buncombe County Schools. When Ruby was in 9th grade, she encountered a boy in the girls’ bathroom at her public high school. She asked him why he was in the bathroom, and he intimidated her into leaving. With no time left before class, she had to wait another 90 minutes to go to the bathroom in safety and privacy.
School administrators sympathized with Ruby, but said they could do nothing since allowing boys to use the girls’ bathroom was the official policy of Buncombe County Schools’ Board of Education. Anita is asking legislators to do what the local school board will not: protect her daughters in bathrooms and locker rooms. |
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Weekly Prayer: Officials
LORD, you also have instructed us to pray for our governing officials, and we come to you in the spirit of this petition. We pray for our state government and its executive, legislative, and judicial servants. May they indeed be servants unto the people, and govern in a manner that protects liberty and virtue. In the same spirit, we pray for public servants across our local governments. May they all heed your mandate in Romans 13:4 to be in positions of authority as “God’s servant” and for the “good” of the public. They govern in what we confess are difficult times. May they plead with you to give them wisdom, and may your grace to govern wisely be poured out on them.
Protect us from the oppression and loss of freedoms that other countries have experienced, and help us to value and preserve freedom, which we know comes only from You.
“I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free.” Acts 7:34
Amen |
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| | Sincerely,
Tami & Team NC Values |
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