As the cost of living continues to soar across the country and worsen the growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else, a major contributor to this troubling trend is the cost of energy and public utilities. Indeed, as North Carolina State Senator Natalie Murdock of Durham and Chatham counties has recently highlighted in […]
NC Newsline · Clayton Henkel · September 8, 2026
Senator Natalie Murdock (Photo: NCGA)
As the cost of living continues to soar across the country and worsen the growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else, a major contributor to this troubling trend is the cost of energy and public utilities. Indeed, as North Carolina State Senator Natalie Murdock of Durham and Chatham counties has recently highlighted in several forums, the situation has grown so dire that many households one might even think of as middle or working class are finding themselves facing utility shutoffs.
And as Murdock also highlighted, this trend took a deadly and tragic turn recently when a Rocky Mount family that was trying to rely on a generator to provide electricity after having their power shut off, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. And this past week as another climate change-fueled heat wave baked our state, Newsline caught up with the senator for an extended conversation about the tragedy and some of the ways in which our state’s public policies are leaving average residents without basic protections that ought to be basic human rights.
In Part Two of our conversation, we examined another area in which our warming climate is causing suffering – the workplace – as well as two other policy issues that are front and center right now in the public sphere: the growing movement to curb the development of energy-sucking data centers, and the ongoing debate over voting rights and election administration in light of controversial recent actions by North Carolina Republican lawmakers and regulators.
Click here for the full interview with Senator Natalie Murdock.