(Carolina Journal) – Eighth-term Democratic Secretary of State Elaine Marshall announced a record high 100,000 new business developments in North Carolina in the first half of 2026.
Also in Tuesday's Council of State meeting, state officials announced the pending receipt of 3 million eggs as part of a pricing collusion settlement, and the honoring of a recent Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War.
“I keep saying historic, and each month it is historic, it is escalating, and it is wonderful for the business community,” said Marshall. “For the first time in North Carolina history, we have created more than 100,000 new businesses in the first half of the year.”
The exact number is 103,866. The previous first-half record was set in 2021 at 96,000.
“We are on track to exceed 200,000 this year if everything in the second half of the year goes the way the first did,” said Marshall. “We did 19,300 new businesses in June.”
This breaks down to 877 new businesses per day.
“There are only two months in the history of the agency that 19,000 new businesses created in a month was surpassed,” said Marshall. “To put it succinctly, we are on fire when it comes to new business creation.”
Marshall reported to the governor that the state’s economic relationships with “Canada continue to be strong. Canada is North Carolina’s top trading partner," according to Marshall.
Labor Commissioner Luke Farley, a first-term Republican, reflected on what he described as an unforgettable experience in meeting Marine Corps Maj. James Capers Jr., one of only 22 Medal of Honor recipients in North Carolina.
Capers, awarded the Medal of Honor by President Donald Trump on June 18 for his service in the Vietnam War, was honored Saturday as grand marshal of Raleigh’s Fourth of July First in Freedom Parade. First-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein called him “truly a unique North Carolinian worthy of respect.”
Farley said he was struck not only by Capers’ heroism, including rescuing his men over four days before evacuating himself from battle, but also by the public’s reaction to him during the parade.
“It was just something to be in his presence,” Farley said. “My place in the parade was behind his float as grand marshal, and I just want to tell you it was incredible to see him go by the crowds. People would stand up, they would cheer, they would shout his name.”
Farley described the moment as “sort of a human wave” of appreciation, with paradegoers rising to their feet as Capers passed.
“It was just such a gratifying thing to see that up close,” he said.
Stein thanked first-term Republican state Treasurer Brad Briner for his willingness to lead the newly established Health Care Affordability Commission. Briner is cochairman with Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Dev Sangvai.
“Healthcare is rising at a much faster rate than general inflation; general inflation is rising too high as it is,” said Stein. “It’s unsustainable for the state budgets, it’s incredibly unsustainable for people’s household budgets, people are really struggling with the cost of living.”
He asserted that the cost of healthcare has to be lowered, otherwise “all other critical services are going to be pushed out.”
Briner described the task force as a “bipartisan and cross-sectional representation of all of healthcare, with an ambitious mission, and that is to see if we can actually constrain the accelerating cost increases in the healthcare system that we see every single year. That commission begins later this month and will deliver, hopefully, real findings next year.”
The treasurer also announced $8 billion in earnings in the pension system, reducing the pension deficit by almost 75% since Briner took office.
“That puts us in a position to stop asking so much of the taxpayers and to start granting cost-of-living adjustments, hopefully in 2027,” said Briner.
First-term Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson reported that North Carolina food banks would receive 3 million eggs as part of a settlement against three egg producers who were caught overcharging and breaking the law, as part of a larger national settlement totaling 53 million eggs.
Jackson said a lawsuit initiated against Meta is set to proceed to trial in the coming months after Meta’s motion for a summary judgment was denied by U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The trial is set to begin Aug. 18.
“The core of this case, as you recall, is that there were harms to children that were not fully disclosed, and there was information gathered on those children in violation of the law, very serious case, very high priority for us,” said Jackson.
Jackson said North Carolina is part of litigation initiated against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “because they reinterpreted something that Congress passed in the Big Beautiful Bill Act that we felt was more than a reinterpretation, was really a violation.”
New work requirements were added to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for recipients. Still, in doing so, Congress implemented a protection for people regarded as “medically frail,” those with serious illnesses such as cancer, renal failure, muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, ALS, and others that would qualify as “the most serious illnesses you can have,” said Jackson.
According to Jackson, CMS ignored this protection and created their own test, “in a way that would be much harsher, narrow that protection and probably result in a lot of these people losing their insurance.”
The attorney general's office estimated that this would affect between 70,000 and 100,000 people in North Carolina.
“These are the sickest low-income people in our state," Jackson said. "We anticipate this matter being heard via a request for preliminary injunction within the next couple of weeks; full resolution will take a matter of months, but we are very confident that we have a strong case here.”
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