News
Meet the Rural Voters Who Could Swing North Carolina’s Election
The most rural of the battleground states this year is North Carolina. About 3.4 million people, or roughly a third of the state’s population, reside in a rural area, more than in any other state besides Texas.
Democrats have seen their support slip in rural areas, ceding ground to Republicans. As such, rural voters in North Carolina could determine which way the state goes on Election Day, as Democrats hope to curb their losses in these communities and Republicans seek to solidify their grip.
But in interviews with more than 30 people in Wilson County, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, where backcountry roads weave in and out of tobacco fields, many residents told us that they felt both parties often overlooked their concerns, about high prices, underfunded schools and rapid growth from the state capital that is stretching into town.
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The ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee has excited many Democrats in Wilson County, which narrowly voted for President Biden in 2020 and has about 78,000 residents, 40 percent of whom are Black. But voters across the county say that the animus that has plagued national politics feels draining, especially in a small place where people value being able to get along.
The Struggle for Rural Votes
The new chair of the state Democratic Party, Anderson Clayton, has prioritized reconnecting with rural voters since taking office in 2023, arguing that Democrats cannot rely only on cities and suburbs to win.
David Sherrod, a conservative in Wilson who worked at a farm most of his life and is now a mechanic, said that “the politics of both parties have flaws,” including not engaging enough with voters outside major cities. His support, though, is fully behind former President Donald J. Trump.
“I don’t agree with everything he does,” Mr. Sherrod said. “But I feel listened to.”
Even a Democratic voter like Jamar Jones, 29, said he sympathized with neighbors who felt fed up with both camps.
“You should be able to get an abortion and you can own a gun,” Mr. Jones said. “If the two parties are going to be polar opposites on every issue, then it’s just a scam.”
Mr. Sherrod, however, is the kind of voter that North Carolina Democrats have struggled to persuade. Since the ’90s, Republicans have mostly won the state’s rural counties, partly through a message about being left behind. Mr. Trump has continued that trend, even though many voters we spoke to in Wilson acknowledged his flaws.
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Voters in Wilson described feeling alienated and worn down by the emphasis on race and identity in politics. Some white, conservative-leaning voters said they were tired of the Democrats’ focus on race. Mr. Trump has tried to appeal to those voters by stoking resentments about their economic fortunes, at times using racially charged language.
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But many Black and Hispanic voters in Wilson said that addressing racial inequality was important for the country, and that Ms. Harris represented a more racially inclusive America.
“It matters to me that there’s a woman of color with an immigrant background running for president,” said Flor Herrera-Picasso, 33, who remembers her Mexican American family encountering racism while she was growing up in Wilson.
“Obviously it’s not going to mean equality for all yet,” she said, “but it’s a step in the right direction.”
L.G.B.T.Q. Issues and Abortion Stir Debate
Some Democrats we talked to said they worried about preserving gay rights. Many conservatives voiced concerns about the acceptance of transgender people in schools and sports, an issue that has resonated with large swaths of the Republican base.
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Across the political spectrum, however, voters expressed divergent views on one of the top issues in this election: abortion.
Morris Worelds, 72, said he was voting for Ms. Harris because of his support for abortion rights, and dedicating his vote to his four granddaughters.
“To me, Wilson is still a country town, but some things like abortion are irrelevant to country or city,” Mr. Worelds said.
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Despite their differing opinions, many Wilson residents said they valued getting along with their neighbors, in part because there was no political bubble to hide in. Cecilia Coleman and her sister, Megan Coleman, said that at Sylvia’s Family Restaurant, which their parents own, the salesmen who deliver them products were Republicans and their clientele were mostly Democrats.
“Never any problems,” Cecilia Coleman said.
Cecilia and Megan Coleman
This month, hundreds gathered at the Wilson County Fair Truck and Tractor Pull, where drivers in modified vehicles compete to see who can drag a heavy metal sled the farthest on a dirt field.
Watching it all was Kimberly Wade, 46, an independent who said her thoughts about the presidential race could be summarized in one word: “Iffy.”
Ms. Wade, who is undecided, says she has long grown tired of the hyperpartisan attacks clawing away at the country. Ms. Wade’s husband is disabled, and her biggest concern is increasing disability benefits.
But she said one overarching thought would guide her through November: “I just want my community to be OK.”
Additional work by Jana Tauschinski
Oil and gas tanker location and destination data are from Kpler. The map shows the latest position for vessels with an active AIS signal on April 19–20, filtered by minimum capacity thresholds: crude tankers of at least 50,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT); oil product tankers of at least 55,000 DWT; oil/chemical tankers of at least 40,000 DWT; LNG carriers of at least 150,000 cubic metres; and LPG carriers of at least 50,000 cubic metres. Net fossil fuel import data by country are based on Ember analysis of the IEA World Energy Balances 2023.
A 26-year-old man is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two University of South Florida doctoral students who went missing last week, local authorities said Saturday.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said that evidence presented to the state attorney’s office resulted in the charges against Hisham Abugharbieh, the roommate of Zamil Limon, one of the doctoral students.
Abugharbieh is accused of premediated murder with a weapon. He was arrested on Friday, the same day Limon was found dead.
The family of Nahida Bristy, the other doctoral student, told CBS News that police said she is also likely dead. That is based on the volume of blood discovered at Abugharbieh’s residence, which he shared with Limon.
“Police told us she is no longer with us,” Bristy’s brother, Zahid Prato, said early Saturday.
The family was told her body may never be found and police believe she may have been dismembered, according to Prato.
CBS News has reached out to police for more information.
Authorities said in a statement Saturday they were still searching for Bristy.
Limon’s remains were found on the Howard Franklin Bridge in Tampa Friday morning, Chief Deputy Joseph Maurer with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said. His cause of death was pending autopsy results.
Deputies with the sheriff’s office took Abugharbieh into custody on Friday after responding to a domestic violence call at a home in the Lake Forest Community, a neighborhood near USF’s Tampa campus, officials said. He also faces charges of domestic violence and evidence tampering, as well as a charge of failing to report a death to law enforcement.
Limon and Bristy, both 27, had last been seen in the Tampa area on April 16.
Limon was studying the use of AI in environmental science and was set to present his doctoral thesis this week, his family said. Bristy is studying chemical engineering.
When President Barack Obama negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran more than a decade ago, his point man was Secretary of State John Kerry. Over 20 months of talks, Mr. Kerry met with his Iranian counterpart on at least 18 different days, often several times per day.
High-level nuclear diplomacy was a natural role for the top U.S. diplomat. Secretaries of state traditionally take the lead on the country’s biggest diplomatic tasks, from arms control treaties to Israeli-Palestinian agreements.
But as President Trump prepares to send a delegation to the latest round of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan this weekend, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will remain where he often does: at home.
Mr. Rubio did not attend the last U.S. meeting with Iran earlier this month. Nor did he join several meetings held over the past year in Geneva and Doha. Mr. Rubio has also been absent from U.S. delegations abroad working to settle the war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza. Despite a long period of crisis and war in the region, he has not visited the Middle East since a brief stop in Israel last October.
In recent months, Mr. Rubio — consumed with his second role, as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser — has not traveled much at all.
During the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken made 11 foreign trips from January 2024 to late April 2024, stopping in roughly three dozen cities, according to the State Department. So far this year, Mr. Rubio has visited six foreign cities, including a stop in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Mr. Trump has outsourced much of his diplomacy to others, including his friend Steve Witkoff, a wealthy associate from the world of Manhattan real estate, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner have spearheaded diplomacy with Israel, Ukraine and Russia, as well as Iran, whose delegation they will meet for the second time this month in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
Mr. Rubio’s distance from the trenches of diplomacy reflects his dual role on Mr. Trump’s national security team. For the past year, he has served as the White House national security adviser even while leading the State Department — the first person to do so since Henry A. Kissinger in the mid-1970s.
The secretary of state runs the State Department, overseeing U.S. diplomats and embassies worldwide, as well as Washington-based policymakers. Working from the White House, the national security adviser coordinates departments and agencies, including the State Department, to develop policy advice for the president.
The twin roles reflect Mr. Rubio’s influence with Mr. Trump, and offer him a way to maintain it. For Mr. Rubio, less time abroad means more time at the side of an impulsive president prone to making critical national security decisions at any moment.
As Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Kushner and Vice President JD Vance met with Iranian officials in Pakistan earlier this month, Mr. Rubio was at Mr. Trump’s side at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, noted Emma Ashford, an analyst of U.S. diplomacy at the nonpartisan Stimson Center in Washington. “Rubio clearly prefers to stay close to Trump,” Ms. Ashford said.
Mr. Rubio accepted the national security adviser job on an acting basis last May after Mr. Trump reassigned the job’s previous occupant, Michael Waltz. But officials say that Mr. Rubio is expected to keep it indefinitely.
That arrangement is not inherently bad, Ms. Ashford added. And she noted that previous presidents had entrusted major diplomatic tasks to people other than the secretary of state. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delegated his C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to handle diplomacy with Russia and cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, for instance.
But she echoed the complaints by many current and former diplomats that Mr. Rubio seems less like someone performing both jobs than a national security adviser who sometimes shows up at the State Department. “I do think it’s to the detriment of the whole department of State and to America’s ability to conduct diplomacy in general that we effectively have the secretary of state position sitting vacant,” she said.
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, contested such claims. “Anyone trying to paint Secretary Rubio’s close coordination with the White House and other agencies as a negative could not be more wrong,” he said. “We now have an N.S.C. and State Department that are totally in sync, a goal that has eluded past administrations for decades.”
Mr. Rubio divides his time between the State Department and the White House, often spending time at both in the same day. In an interview with Politico last June, Mr. Rubio said he visited the State Department “almost every day.”
While there, he often meets with visiting dignitaries before returning to the White House. Last week, Mr. Rubio presided over a meeting at the State Department between Lebanese and Israeli officials that set the stage for a cease-fire in Lebanon.
His twin jobs “really do overlap in many cases,” he said. “In many cases you end up being in the same meetings or in the same places; there’s just one less person in there, if you think about it,” Mr. Rubio added. “A lot of people would come to Washington, for example, for meetings, and they’d want to meet with the national security adviser and then meet with me as secretary of state. Now they can do both in one meeting.”
Asked about his travel schedule during a news conference last December, Mr. Rubio said he had less reason to travel abroad because “we have a lot of leaders constantly coming here” to visit Mr. Trump at the White House. Mr. Rubio also joins Mr. Trump’s foreign trips in his capacity as national security adviser.
Many national security veterans call the arrangement unwise, saying that both jobs are extremely demanding and incompatible with one another.
It was not easy even for Mr. Kissinger, who had firmly established himself over more than four years as national security adviser before convincing President Richard M. Nixon to let him take on an additional role as secretary of state in 1973. (In a reversal of Mr. Rubio’s approach, Mr. Kissinger was in constant motion, including a round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy that kept him on the road for 33 straight days.)
“In general, it’s a mistake to combine those roles,” said Matthew Waxman, who held senior roles at the National Security Council, State Department and the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration.
“That said, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that a dual-hatted Rubio is so offscreen right now,” Mr. Waxman added. “Especially while so much attention is focused on high-wire diplomacy with Iran, someone needs to manage foreign policy around the rest of the world.”
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