FIRST ON FOX: Betsy DeVos – who served as head of the Education Department under former President Donald Trump – remains undecided on whom she will support in the 2024 race for the White House.

‘She’s watching the race closely but has not yet made a decision on an endorsement,’ Nate Bailey, DeVos’ chief of staff, told Fox News Digital. ‘She’s very encouraged to see all of the candidates talking seriously about expanding education freedom and empowering parents.’

DeVos, the 11th person to serve as the U.S. secretary of education from 2017 to 2021, was one of few Trump-era Cabinet members to maintain her post for his entire term in office.

As education secretary, the Michigan native championed school choice, arguing that parents should have the power to take tax dollars allocated for their child to different schools if their local public school doesn’t meet their needs.

DeVos touted Trump’s 1776 Commission as an alternative to the historically inaccurate 1619 Project, which pegs slavery as the foundation of American history.

But the former education secretary, now 65, has shown warmth to a number of other 2024 Republican candidates.

On May 31, DeVos appeared with former Vice President Mike Pence in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a conversation on what conservatives believe.

The DeVos family financially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaigns. According to state campaign finance records, DeVos personally contributed $5,500 to a super PAC that backed DeSantis’ reelection bid in April 2022.

DeVos continues to be an influential voice about American education. Last year, she released her best-selling book, ‘Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child,’ which covers critical race theory in education, COVID-19 pandemic school lockdowns and how to fix America’s schools.

Before serving as education secretary for the Trump administration, DeVos advocated for school choice, charter schools and free speech on campuses.

She and her husband started All Children Matter in 2003 in support of voucher programs. In 2010, she helped found the school choice advocacy organization American Federation for Children.

DeVos and her husband founded the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation in 1989, which donated to charter and Christian schools, organizations supporting school choice, and various universities and arts foundations.

The Biden administration is facing pressure from lawmakers and experts who are calling for an immediate moratorium on offshore wind development until its effects, including on military operations, navigation and radar systems, are studied.

Earlier this week, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., industry stakeholders and experts met with officials from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a top federal watchdog agency, to discuss their concerns about offshore wind development. According to Smith — who represents a district along the Atlantic coast home to a naval weapons depot and where offshore wind projects have been proposed — more than an hour of the three-hour meeting was devoted to military impacts.

The GAO recently agreed to investigate the wide-ranging effects of offshore wind development after Smith, fellow New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., and several other lawmakers called for a probe. The investigation will look, in part, into wind turbines’ impact on military operations and radar.

‘It will impact marine radar through sonic interference. It causes disruptions, shadowing,’ Smith told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘There’s going to be nothing but disruption. Radar will not be credible. So, you’ll have ships of every size and variety — military ships, ocean and cargo ships, including carrying oil coming into my state for refineries — that potentially could run into other ships or into even some of these windmills themselves.’

‘The Coast Guard, too, will not be able to do search and rescue, particularly in bad weather, because of the gross interference that will happen,’ he continued. ‘There’s also an impact on the Navy’s … Integrated Undersea Surveillance System, and it will interfere with that.’

Smith added that wind turbines could ultimately have the effect of blocking detection of U.S. adversaries’ movement via submarine.

He blasted the Department of Defense for its handling of the issue and lack of transparency, noting he has spoken with anonymous defense officials who have told him wind development is being prioritized over national security.

Smith’s meeting with the GAO, meanwhile, comes months after the Navy and Air Force assembled a report in early October with maps showing large swaths of acreage blocked off in federal waters near North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. The report characterizes four offshore wind lease areas proposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) as ‘highly problematic’ and two others as ‘requiring further study.’

In addition, various studies and analyses have been published in recent years, suggesting wind turbines could pose a significant effect on radar. A 2022 study from the National Academy of Sciences concluded wind development would create ‘interference with marine vessel radar, which is a critical instrument for navigation, collision avoidance, and use in search and rescue missions.’

Finnish and Taiwanese military brass have also expressed concerns about the effects offshore wind farms could have on their defense capabilities.

‘They’re willing to sacrifice anything for green energy,’ Meghan Lapp, the fisheries liaison for Rhode Island-based fishing company Seafreeze and one of the participants in Smith’s meeting with the GAO, told Fox News Digital. ‘I have seen national security overridden. I’ve seen maritime safety overridden. I’ve seen domestic food production overridden. I’ve seen concerns of coastal businesses and communities overridden.’

‘Every single entity and every single concern — valid concerns, not made up, not hyperbole or anything — are just overridden. And the answer is what? ‘Well, we need to do this because of climate change.’’

In 2011, Congress established the so-called Military Aviation and Installation Assurance Siting Clearinghouse, which created a central authority within the Department of Defense to oversee alternative energy projects’ compatibility with military activities.

According to Lapp and Smith, the entity has ultimately overridden base commanders’ concerns and consistently backed green energy development.

‘Now, we have an entire coast that’s going to be weakened by this terrible decision,’ Smith said. ‘I’ve never been more angry and disappointed in the military’s acquiescence and silence.’

As part of its climate agenda, the Biden administration has aggressively moved forward with rapid offshore wind development across millions of acres of federal waters, primarily along the East Coast. Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden outlined goals to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, the most ambitious goal of its kind worldwide.

In May 2021, BOEM approved the 800 megawatt Vineyard Wind project 12 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, marking the first-ever large-scale offshore wind approval. Then, in November 2021, the agency approved the 130-megawatt Southfork Wind project off the coast of Long Island, New York, the second commercial-scale offshore project.

A number of other proposed offshore wind projects along the Atlantic coast are under development and in the federal permitting stage. The Biden administration has also leased hundreds of thousands of acres to energy corporations and plans future lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California.

‘The Department of Defense is committed to protecting American national security interests, which includes reducing reliance on foreign energy sources and expanding domestic offshore wind energy development,’ Pentagon spokesperson Kelly Flynn told Fox News Digital. ‘The DoD continues to work with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, industry and other stakeholders to identify the best locations for offshore development, as we have done in every call area in the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.’

‘This discussion includes impacts to the environment, shipping, fishing, viewshed and more and includes mitigation strategies to overcome the impacts,’ Flynn continued. ‘This is one step in the process and DoD will continue to collaborate with the stakeholders in order to promote compatible offshore wind energy development.’

‘The Department has been an active participant in similar leasing plans off the coasts of New York/New Jersey, the Gulf of Mexico, California and Oregon,’ she said. ‘In each case, we’ve been able to find suitable areas for development, and we expect to do the same in the central Atlantic.’

Members of an internal White House council President Biden established shortly after taking office are at odds with the administration over carbon capture technology which the president’s climate agenda largely hinges upon.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology — which involves separating CO2 emissions at fossil fuel-fired power plants and industrial factories before transporting that gas via pipeline into a deep underground cavern where it is stored forever — is at the center of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent proposal regulating power sector emissions.

The EPA’s plan — proposed in May and which the agency expects to slash emissions by about 617 million metric tons through 2042 — forces electric power providers to slash pollution by about 90% over the next two decades. To achieve such emissions reductions, power plants must either adopt carbon capture or shut down. The EPA projects there will be no coal plants without the technology by 2035.

However, members and leaders of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), tasked with providing policy recommendations, have loudly opposed CCS technology and characterized it as a false climate solution. And the council issued a report in May 2021 listing CCS and direct air capture as projects that won’t help communities.

‘President Joe Biden has been vocal about his commitment to environmental justice, but the administration must be willing to listen to those who will be most affected by potential solutions — or false solutions,’ Beverly Wright, a member of the WHEJAC and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, wrote in a op-ed last year.

‘No matter how they tout the benefits of CCS, oil and gas companies are looking for another method to boost profits without consideration for the human or environmental cost,’ she continued. ‘Carbon capture is not a safe, sustainable solution. It will encourage growth of fossil fuel industries and continue the injustice of sacrificing communities of color for profits.’

Earlier this month, Wright issued a joint statement criticizing CCS alongside other environmental activists including WHEJAC co-Chair Peggy Shepard and fellow council members Maria Lopez-Nunez and Nicky Sheats. They said the EPA proposal would be ineffective at combating climate change and would only encourage continued reliance on fossilf fuels.

‘What is being proposed at the federal level is undermining wins achieved at the local and state levels to transition away from fossil fuels and harmful co-pollutants like particulate matter to a just and equitable energy economy,’ the joint statement said.

In addition, NDN Collective, whose climate justice campaign director Jade Begay sits on the WHEJAC, and the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, whose environmental health and justice program director Vi Waghiyi is on the WHEJAC, have also expressed skepticism about CCS adoption.

Also, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, whose senior strategist Miya Yoshitani is a member of the WHEJAC, signed onto a letter blasting CCS with more than 80 other eco groups in October.

‘CCS regularly fails to meet its promises, requires high use of electricity and water, puts communities at real risk of harm, and would prolong the production and use of fossil fuels that are driving the climate emergency and polluting communities,’ the letter stated.

The debate over carbon capture has recently come to a head in Louisiana where state officials are requesting federal approval to assume primacy in regulating CCS projects. Proponents of the request argue it would streamline permitting for such projects and help overcome the backlog of billions-of-dollar CCS projects that have been held up.

In May, the EPA proposed a rule approving the state’s request and has since accepted public feedback during online webinars. The rule would specifically enable the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources to monitor permitting for Class VI wells which inject carbon underground.

‘Is it utterly without risk? Nothing is. But we recognize what the primary risks are and anybody who’s trying to get a permit through our office, they’re going to have to address those to our satisfaction,’ Patrick Courreges, a spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, told Fox News Digital.

Courreges added that the state’s regulations are actually more restrictive than the EPA’s and would better protect the environment. But because the state can devote more people to review each proposed project, he said it was in a position to green-light projects quicker.

Mark Zappi, the executive director of the Energy Institute of Louisiana at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, lauded CCS technology for its effectiveness and pushed back on criticism.

‘Many of the technologies or the processes that are going to be used have been around since the 1970s, even before. So, the engineering community the energy community has a lot of experience with it,’ Zappi told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘The pipelines — there are well over 5,000 miles of carbon dioxide pipeline in the United States.’

‘When you get to the far, far right, they don’t believe in global warming. They don’t think any CO2 ought to be taken out. So, they’re not a fan of any of this,’ Zappi continued. ‘When you go to the far, far left, they want to eliminate fossil fuels. In my opinion, the heart of a lot of what you hear about ‘greenwashing’ is they feel that CCS, and it will in many ways, will extend the life of fossil fuels.’

‘The reality, to maintain society, we’re not going to get rid of fossil fuels. It’s not a switch. There’s no magical group that’s holding off on a green technology that’s viable. Most of these green technologies just are too expensive or have some other flaws.’

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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The Maine House voted Tuesday night to enact a bill to expand access to abortions, putting the proposal one final vote away from going to the governor for her signature.

The Senate, which supported the bill in an initial vote Tuesday, must cast a final vote on the legislation that’d give the state one of the least restrictive abortion laws in the country.

The House vote, 73-69, capped an emotional day that included demonstrators against the bill holding signs, singing hymns and chanting ‘kill the bill!’ in the State House hallways.

Current state law bans abortions after a fetus becomes viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks, but allows an exception if a mother’s life is at risk. The bill would allow later abortions if deemed medically necessary by a doctor.

Opponents said the proposal goes too far.

‘This bill is so extreme that the very thought of it being enacted crushes my soul,’ said Rep. Tracy Quint, R-Hodgdon, one of about 30 lawmakers to speak on the House floor.

Rep. Katrina J. Smith, R-Palmero, who became the mother of a healthy daughter after being told her baby wouldn’t live, warned of the consequences of putting ‘blind trust in doctors.’

Supporters, meanwhile, said the change was necessary to give mothers a choice in heartbreakingly rare circumstances when fatal anomalies are discovered later in a pregnancy.

‘How do we legislate the unimaginable?’ Sen. Jill Dusan, D-Portland, said Tuesday on the Senate floor. ‘We do so by making sure that those who face the unimaginable have the freedom they need to make the decision that is right for them.’

But Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, said changes were unnecessary to the current law that he co-sponsored years ago and was signed into law by then-Republican Gov. John McKernan. ‘This bill represents a fundamental shift from the uneasy consensus we’ve had in Maine for the past 30 years,’ he said.

The votes just came days after the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that concluded women don’t have a constitutional right to an abortion, returning authority to the states.

The 21-13 Senate vote and the later vote in the House lacked the 11th-hour drama when Democrats hustled to ensure support before the bill was narrowly approved late last week in the House, passing 74-72 after the chamber took an hourslong break and the vote was held open for about 45 minutes.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said during her reelection campaign that she was content with the existing abortion law, but she unveiled a proposal to expand abortion access in January in response to the case of a woman who had to travel to Colorado for an abortion after discovering 32 weeks into her pregnancy that her baby would not survive outside the womb.

Opponents feared that the governor’s bill would allow abortions to become rampant and that healthy babies that were viable outside the womb would be aborted.

Bishop Robert Deeley of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland called the bill ‘immoral’ and said it went against the wishes of hundreds of Mainers who testified against it at a 19-hour public hearing. He accused supporters of the bill of bowing to ‘whispers of special interests.’

House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, sponsor of the governor’s bill, was targeted over the weekend with anti-abortion flyers calling her a ‘baby killer’ and chalk messages left outside her Portland home.

Portland police launched an investigation and the Christian Civic League of Maine condemned the tactics.

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Zeneta Everhart defeated India Walton, a prominent activist, in the Democratic primary for a seat on the Buffalo city council. Everhart has been speaking out against gun violence and racism in the country ever since her son survived the racist supermarket mass shooting that killed 10 people.The politician says that she most likely would have run for city council if the attack hadn’t happened, but it still influenced her decision to run.

Zeneta Everhart, who became a voice against racism and gun violence last year after her son survived a mass shooting, won a Democratic primary on Tuesday to represent a Buffalo neighborhood near the supermarket where the massacre happened.

Everhart defeated India Walton, another prominent activist who in 2021 upset Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in a Democratic primary, only to lose to him in the general election.

The two Black women had vied for a seat on Buffalo’s Common Council, representing an area of the Rust Belt city still healing from a white supremacist’s attack that killed 10 people at a neighborhood supermarket just over a year ago. That mass shooting was followed by a punishing December blizzard that killed 47 people in the city and its suburbs, with a disproportionate number of the victims coming from Buffalo’s Black neighborhoods.

‘This is for y’all. It is for the community. This is for my community mommas. This is for everybody,’ Everhart told supporters in her victory speech.

‘This is about fixing our community and just showing people that there is hope,’ Everhart said. ‘I don’t want people to lose hope.’

Walton was gracious in her concession speech, saying that she would be ‘graceful in defeat.’

‘I think Zeneta is going to do a great job,’ Walton said of Everhart.

But Walton said she would continue her activism. ‘My intention is to keep doing what I’ve been doing: speak truth to power, to continue organizing,’ she said.

Everhart is no newcomer to politics. She had been on the staff of state Democratic Sen. Tim Kennedy for five years when she received a call on May 14, 2022, from her son Zaire Goodman, then 19, telling her he had been shot while working at the Tops Friendly Market near their home.

Ten Black people died in the attack by a white supremacist gunman. Goodman, hit in the neck, was one of three victims who survived.

Weeks after the shooting, Everhart testified before Congress and has continued to speak publicly in the months since about racism and gun violence in the U.S.

Running for a seat in Buffalo’s Masten District, Everhart campaigned on the need for affordable housing, education and elevating the East Buffalo community whose social and economic challenges took on new urgency after the supermarket shooting.

Walton, 41, was trying to make a comeback after a rollercoaster defeat in the city’s mayoral race in 2021. In that contest, she stunned the political establishment by scoring an upset win over the longtime incumbent, Byron Brown, in a primary where she ran far to his left as a democratic socialist.

With no Republican on the ballot, Walton briefly looked like a sure winner in the general election, too, but Brown came back as a write-in candidate and won with the support of centrist Democrats, Buffalo’s business community and Republicans who said Walton, a former nurse and labor organizer, was too liberal.

While Walton remained a political outsider in Buffalo, Everhart, a former television producer, had been quietly building a more conventional career in politics as an aide to a state senator when tragedy thrust her into the spotlight.

Everhart, 42, said she probably would have run for city council, even if the attack never happened, but that it influenced her decision.

‘Part of me wanting to run for Masten is about paying it forward because of the love that was shown to my son,’ Everhart said during a phone interview Monday. ‘People are still dropping off gifts, leaving things on my doorstep for Zaire. And that, to me, means that I have to give back to my community.’

The supermarket targeted by an 18-year-old white supremacist now lies just outside the district the two women are running to represent.

In interviews and on the campaign trail, the two candidates highlighted their different approaches to governing, with Everhart citing her abilities as a coalition-builder and Walton stressing that she’s willing to fight a political establishment she says hasn’t done enough.

‘The Democratic party here in Buffalo and a lot of people in power know that I’m going to bring something different,’ Walton had said in a phone interview Tuesday. ‘I’m not beholden to anyone. I have no political allies or enemies.’

Everhart had been endorsed by the county Democratic Party while Walton was endorsed by the left-leaning Working Families Party.

The two women have known each other for years and Walton said they hug every time they see each other.

‘We’re not adversaries, in my book,’ Everhart said.

Buffalo’s 9-person council hasn’t had a female member since 2014.

Primaries held across the state Tuesday were selecting party nominees for a variety of local offices, including some county legislators, town supervisors, district attorneys, mayors and members of the New York City Council.

There are no statewide offices on the ballot in 2023.

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Pennsylvania’s state Senate on Tuesday approved legislation that is designed to reduce the number of people on probation and in jail, by limiting the length of probation and preventing people from being sent back to jail for minor violations.

The bill passed on a 45-4 vote and now goes to the House of Representatives, where two similar Senate bills have died without votes in previous legislative sessions. However, with the House now controlled by Democrats, the bill’s backers said they were optimistic that it will reach Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s desk.

Sen. Anthony Williams, D-Philadelphia, said the state’s probation system is in urgent need of reform.

‘I can’t tell you how many generations of people have been lost to the probation process,’ he said during floor debate.

The bill, which has the backing of the Senate’s Republican and Democratic leaders, has emerged as part of a nationwide reconsideration of probation and parole measures, as states try to find alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders and the mentally ill.

Pennsylvania is among the states with the highest rates of people under community supervision, according to federal statistics.

The case of rapper Meek Mill helped shine a light on it after he spent most of his adult life on probation — including stints in jail for technical violations — before a court overturned his conviction in a drug and gun case in Philadelphia.’

The bill aims to limit the length of probation sentences and the circumstances under which a non-violent offender on probation can be sent to jail. It does not, however, put a cap on the length of a probation sentence.

Under it, a judge can order an end to probation, regardless of any agreement on a sentence between a prosecutor and the defendant. Judges would also no longer have wide latitude to extend probation.

State law currently does not limit the length of probation sentences and critics say non-violent offenders are often incarcerated for technical violations that aren’t crimes, disrupting their families and employment. It also disproportionately affects racial minorities, they say.

Under the bill, probation review conferences would be required within certain periods of time, including two years for someone who committed a misdemeanor and four years for someone who committed a felony. Probation review cases can be held earlier for good behavior.

Probation would be required to end unless the defendant commits a crime that demonstrates that they are a threat to public safety, has not completed certain treatment or has not paid restitution under some circumstances.

The bill also prohibits courts from extending someone’s probation for not paying fines or court costs if they are found to be unable to afford it.s or court costs if they are found to be unable to afford it.

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Non-U.S. citizens would be able to teach in Pennsylvania classrooms in a measure passed by the state House of Representatives on Monday.

The bill passed 110-93. It now goes on to the state Senate, which is considering its own version of the measure.

The legislation would allow teachers with a valid immigrant visa, work visa or employment authorization documentation to be eligible for certification to teach in Pennsylvania schools.

Currently, the state prohibits non-U.S. citizens from teaching unless they are applying to teach a foreign language or have a green card and have documented their intent to become a citizen. Additionally, young immigrants, who are living in the country undocumented and are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and can legally work, are not eligible for teacher certification in the state.

Sponsors for the bill say it will help offset the decline in teachers — with fewer new teachers certifying and higher teacher attrition in the state. It also would help chip away at the gap between the percentage of students of color and teachers of color, sponsors said.

‘Let’s as a collective tackle this growing problem and let’s continue to eliminate some of these barriers that don’t apply to most careers in the Commonwealth, let alone in the United States,’ said the bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz, a Democrat from Berks County. ‘We have so many people that are qualified.’

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The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ignored a ‘massive amount’ of intelligence indicating the true scope of protests planned for Jan. 6, 2021, according to a new report.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a report on the issue Tuesday, finding that both organizations had downplayed or ignored plans by certain right-wing groups prior to the pro-Trump storming of the U.S. Capitol.

Panel Chairman Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said the issue was ‘largely a failure of imagination to see threats that the Capitol could be breached as credible.’ For instance, law enforcement received one tip claiming that the Proud Boys were planning to ‘literally kill people.’

Officials took most threats leading up to the event, such as calls for Trump supporters to ‘come armed,’ and prepare to ‘burn the place to the ground’ as internet hyperbole. That proved to be the case only some of the time, however.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., reacted to the release of the report in a Tuesday appearance on Fox News, saying what is truly needed is an investigation by an independent third party.

‘We haven’t had an opportunity to have a real objective analysis of what happened on January 6, before and after. What the Democrats in the House did was basically a partisan car wreck. We only got half of the information. Republicans were excluded. There have been no attempts in the Senate, by Senator Schumer. I think what we need is an objective look, if necessary, by some nonpartisan outside experts. The American people would like to know. But it’s gotten so politicized,’ he said.

‘I was there on the 6th. It was an abomination. I’m sorry that it happened. I wish it hadn’t happened, but we’re entitled to know, the American people are, why it happened. And if [the] federal government had advance notice and if so, why wasn’t it better prepared? I just don’t think any of that’s reasonable. But it’s all shot through with politics now,’ he continued. ‘I just don’t know why the Justice Department and the leadership in the House and Senate and the FBI won’t just tell the American people the truth. The institutions in Washington are not going to regain their integrity in the eyes of the American people until they start telling the truth, and I’m afraid the problem is that all these people think the American people are morons.’

READ THE SENATE REPORT – APP USERS, CLICK HERE:

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Republicans in the state legislature on Monday began efforts to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the General Assembly’s annual farm bill, with the Senate successfully voting to enact the legislation despite his objections about how it would treat wetlands.

Cooper had blocked the measure last Friday, citing criticisms that also came from environmental groups about a provision that they said would increase risks of pollution and flooding when combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision and existing state law.

But Republicans downplayed the threat, saying the changes would align the state’s scrutiny of wetlands with federal law and regulation and largely affect isolated terrain that rarely floods.

‘It is obvious that we have a huge divide in our philosophies of what wetlands are … in the state of North Carolina, as well as some discrepancy on how many acres will be affected,’ said Sen. Brent Jackson, a Sampson County Republican and the bill’s chief sponsor, before the 29-17 vote.

Cooper’s administration has said it would leave about half of the state’s wetlands unprotected.

‘This will be a matter of difference of impact when we have a hurricane that drops millions of gallons of water on us and then it has nowhere to go,’ said Democratic Sen. Graig Meyer of Orange County, who opposed the provision. ‘That will be so damaging to our people, including the farmers of North Carolina.’

The measure now goes to the GOP-held House and would become law if that body also votes to override the veto by a margin similar to that in the Senate. The House set votes on Tuesday on the farm measure and on override motions on four other vetoed measures for which overrides were passed by the Senate last week.

The North Carolina Farm Act of 2023 also contains provisions on more than 30 other agriculture-related topics. They include limits on monetary penalties for cutting down timber in certain areas near bodies of water and telling veterinarians at least a week in advance before state regulators inspect their offices.

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