Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments.

The title says "Require ICE Cooperation & Budget Adjustments." The ICE part is real... it mandates local sheriffs investigate immigration status and comply with ICE detainer requests. You can agree or disagree with that policy, but at least the title tells you it's in there.

The "Budget Adjustments" part is where it gets interesting. Those two words are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The budget adjustments include a massive expansion of private school voucher funding... $4 billion diverted from public education over the next decade, according to Governor Cooper's veto message. The bill also modifies school funding formulas, adjusts community college appropriations, and makes changes to broadband infrastructure funding.

The title makes it sound like the budget stuff is a minor technical add-on. "Oh, and some budget adjustments." The actual appropriation in the bill is $735 million. For context, that's more than the entire annual budget of most NC state agencies.

Governor Cooper vetoed it specifically because of the school voucher provisions, not the ICE cooperation. The override happened in November 2024... during a lame-duck session after the election, with the outgoing supermajority using its last weeks of power. The ACLU described it as the legislature's "latest attack on public education and immigrants" combined into one package so you can't vote for one without voting for the other.