🗞️ Could Major League Baseball be coming to North Carolina by 2029?

🗞️ A lawsuit over a teen's unwanted COVID shot is headed back to court

🗞️ Forsyth Tech is a finalist for a $1 million national prize

🗞️ A proposed asphalt plant has Clemmons neighbors worried, with few ways to stop it

🌡 Humid, afternoon storms possible | High: 89°F | Low: 68°F

A muggy start to the week with a high near 89 and a good chance of showers and a thunderstorm after about 2 p.m. Keep an umbrella handy if you are out in the afternoon.

Fresh off the Carolina Hurricanes' 2026 Stanley Cup championship, there is a new push to land another major league team for the state, and this time it is baseball. FOX8 reports that lawmakers are discussing a possible state budget provision that would set aside money for a stadium to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to Raleigh. North Carolina is the most populous state in the country without an MLB team.

The timing matters. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has said he wants two expansion cities chosen before he steps down in 2029, with Nashville widely seen as a favorite. Gov. Josh Stein and state Sen. Phil Berger have both voiced support, and Stein called the Triangle "a lucrative and potential market" while speaking in Charlotte. Two billionaires are circling as well, including Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, who has long argued a big-league team "sort of feels obvious" given the state's size and fan support.

There is a Triad footnote worth remembering: Major League Baseball nearly came here years ago. This time the momentum is in the Triangle, where the total cost of bringing baseball to Raleigh is pegged at "at least" $4 billion. Nothing is settled, and a team could come through expansion or relocation, but for North Carolina baseball fans it is the most serious conversation in years.

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A closely watched case out of Guilford County is getting another day in court. A lawsuit against Guilford County Schools, over a teenager who was vaccinated against COVID-19 without consent, is headed back to Guilford County Superior Court. The N.C. Supreme Court revived the case in March, finding that lower courts had misread the scope of immunity under a federal health emergency law, and the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled last week that a judge must now hold a hearing on a narrow set of issues.

The facts go back to 2021. Emily Happel sued the school board and the Old North State Medical Society in August 2022, a year after her then-14-year-old son, Tanner, was vaccinated at a clinic set up at Northwest Guilford High School. His stepfather had taken him only for a COVID-19 test, which the school district required before athletes could return to the team.

According to the suit, the stepfather did not go inside, and a clinic worker could not reach Emily Happel by phone. Tanner told workers he wanted only a test, not a shot, but he was vaccinated anyway. The coming hearing will weigh, among other things, whether there is an adequate state remedy for the family's claims.

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Forsyth Technical Community College has landed on a very short national list. The college is one of just 10 finalists for the 2027 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, the country's top recognition for community colleges, after advancing from a field of 25 semifinalists named in April. The winner takes home a share of $1 million.

What got Forsyth Tech here is six years of real improvement in student outcomes. The college's graduation rate more than doubled, climbing from 19% to 45%. Completion among minority students jumped from 12% to 45%, effectively erasing a gap that used to hold those students back.

"Student outcomes like those we see at the 10 finalists cannot be achieved without major reforms," said Josh Wyner of the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, adding that the goal is to learn from these colleges and help 1,000 others nationwide do the same. An independent jury will name the winner in April 2027.

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Opposition is building to a proposed asphalt plant in southwest Forsyth County, but a Clemmons councilman is warning residents there is little local officials can do about it. Maymead Inc., a family-owned paving company from Mountain City, Tennessee, has applied for an air-quality permit for a plant on a 5.49-acre site at 6010 Gun Club Road. The land sits inside Clemmons limits and is already zoned general industrial.

In a lengthy Nextdoor post, councilman Randy Wooden said asphalt manufacturing is a "use by right" on industrial land, so there is no rezoning, no public hearing and no council vote to fight. "Organizing a petition, writing letters, voicing opposition at Council meetings, none of that affects the outcome," he wrote. He pointed to a 2024 state law that bars towns from downzoning property without every owner's consent, which he said freezes local land-use rules in place. Village officials stressed the post was Wooden's personal opinion, not the council's position.

The company says it picked the site to better serve the growing Triad from a spot near Interstate 40, with production projected to begin by late spring 2027. For Kernersville readers, it is a reminder of how this works close to home: the area already has asphalt plants, including a Thompson-Arthur Paving operation on N.C. 66 South in Kernersville. State environmental regulators, not the town, hold the permitting authority.

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