Tea Time Meeting is Thursday, June 18th at Noon at Bay Breeze Restaurant, 1830 Asheville Hwy, Hendersonville, NC 28792 View the entire newsletter in your browser here. Speaker: Jeff Groh for Hendersonville City Council: Town Hall. Q & A https://www.groh4council.com/ Agenda Ammo Raffle/250th Anniversary items Updates on Election Integrity strategies and H958 at the NC General Assembly Luncheon Fundraiser for Buncombe Sheriff Candidate, Gary Parris, Saturday, July 25th .Hosted by William and Delphine Noland. 5. Special Guests: Delphine Noland and Hilly from the Buncombe County Republican Women's Club will join us. Permanent Rulemaking by NCSBE- We are tackling the 15 Rules Need your citizen input: Action Alerts: Photo ID In-Person Voting. Revise the NC Administrative Code for Election Rules: Public Comment ends July 15th. Part II of the Epoch Times documentary: The Final War: The 100 Year Plot to Defeat America. Trailer

By Bill Moss, Published: June 5, 2026 https://www.hendersonvillelightning.com/four-seasons-politics/16122-the-cultural-mood-turns-against-data-centers.html If it’s new and made of steel and concrete, it must be a data center. Even if it’s old, it must be a data center, as long as it’s vacant. It can’t be a warehouse/distribution or a factory or simply a vacant former mill because, well, a data center is scarier. … Related Stories Ask Matt ... whether a data center could locate here Laurel Park approves zoning to allow more commercial use Petition seeks to block sewer permits until spills end Fence case ends suddenly when applicant walks out Don't miss this week's Hendersonville Lightning Meaning, that big building behind the Blue Ridge Commerce Center is a data center, right? And the old Coats America thread mill in Laurel Park is gonna be one, too, right? Wrong and wrong — and elected leaders are worn out from quashing the rumor. The Upward rumor got deep-sixed last week when local and state officials announced that BorgWarner is building a manufacturing plant off McMurray Road. So we asked county and Laurel Park leaders whether the Coats America building is an AI data center waiting to happen. “It is not,” County Manager John Mitchell said. “There are no current permits that have been pulled or that someone is attempting to pull for any data center projects in the county. The Henderson County commissioners passed a zoning change I want to say five years ago that addressed the possibility of data mining or data centers of large industrial uses that consume large amounts of power and water. The code makes those very difficult to accomplish in the county.” That preemptory strike against data centers, which came before opposition to data centers became a national NIMBY trend, hasn’t stopped worried residents from lighting up the county switchboard. “We’ve probably gotten 20 or 30 emails from citizens concerned about that, and the board is concerned about it too, and we’ve discussed with the county attorney what options we might have to stop it,” Board of Commissioners Chair Bill Lapsley said of the Coats America site, which is in unincorporated Henderson County but subject to Laurel Park’s extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction. Adopted in 2023 to guard against cryptocurrency mining operations, the county’s regulations are among the most restrictive in the state. The rules bar bitcoin mining facilities from locating within 2 miles of a home or residential zone, library, nursing facility, group care facility, day care center, park, church or school — and pile on a dozen more specific restrictions. Lapsley said commissioners may take a look at applying those restrictions and others to all data centers. Bitcoin mining is a close cousin of but not exactly the same as data centers, which are proliferating because of the need to feed the booming artificial intelligence industry. County Attorney Russ Burrell has been advising commissioners on their options, which are limited because of the law the Legislature enacted in late 2024 that barred cities and counties from making land-use zones more restrictive by downzoning. “If the commissioners take away a use from land, that’s a downzoning,” Burrell said. “What they can do is what five or six other counties and have done, issue a moratorium to study the things they can do — which is to persuade the Legislature to get rid of the downzoning (law) at least as far as data centers. Right now they’re bound by this issue of downzoning and they have to figure out what they can do around the downzoning.” In Laurel Park, the vacant Coats America mill is the most visible object of curiosity. Since the plant closed and was bought by Ingles, residents of the town and parts west have wondered about its status. Many hoped Ingles would build a new supermarket there. But in recent weeks, social media was all fizzed up with a new possibility: A data center was going in. “That was a bunch of bull--,” said Carey O’Cain, the usually mild-mannered Laurel Park mayor. When he looked into the rumor, O’Cain found the source. There was a growing frenzy about a new data center going up in Henderson, all right, which turned out to be the town in Vance County near Kerr Lake on the Virginia line. “Someone had picked that up and broadcast it around and the emails just wore my a-- out,” O’Cain said. “The first call I received was from Ingles: ‘What do you know about a data center going into our property?’ And I said, ‘That’s not true.’” As for the hoped-for supermarket, that's highly unlikely, too, on the site penned in between the Ecusta Trail and the upcoming roundabout project on U.S. 64. "That property is not big enough to build new Ingles on. They know that," O'Cain said, adding it's possible that Ingles could try to acquire property to the east to make it work. ‘We don’t have the sites’ Suffice it to say, elected leaders are in tune with the growing anxiety over the centers filled with acres of powerful computers firing out AI answers at the speed of light. The plants are energy hogs, water hogs, big noise polluters. Lapsley, the county commission who is also a retired civil engineer, says land availability may be a greater impediment than zoning. “My middle son works for a construction contractor in Chicago,” Lapsley said. “He tells me that he's working on a number of these data centers in the Midwest, and he said, ‘Dad, you know these places are requiring 5-600 acres or more of flat land.’ If that's what they need to build a site, plus huge amounts of power, we just don't have the sites here. They're not going to pay $100,000 an acre for that kind of place, not around here. I don't think the likelihood of one coming here is very high now. Maybe South Carolina has some property, but I don't think we've got sites for that.” Just this week, the Hendersonville City Council signaled that it’s interested in doing what it can to block a data center. During the council comments segment at the tail end of Thursday night’s meeting, Gina Baxter raised the idea of a moratorium on the facilities. “It's not as simple as just adopting a moratorium,” cautioned City Attorney Angela Beeker. “You've got to do some work, some study, and a little process before you do it, but we could certainly map out the steps and bring that back to you for consideration.” Beeker noted that the state House had just passed a bill earlier that day regulating data centers as the political mood in Raleigh tilts away from data centers. Gov. Josh Stein and some legislators are calling for an end to economic development incentives to encourage the increasingly unpopular facilities.

Click to RSVP here. View this in your browser https://parrisforsafety.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=2faf81c4753429f1034e5a9c9&id=5b72cbffeb&e=3d84511acd More about Gary and why we need him to clean up the mess in Buncombe https://www.ashevilleteaparty.org/post/gary-parris-for-buncombe-county-sheriff

There are lobbies in NC devoted to this drug. https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/the-legal-drug-that-is-destroying-lives-and-the-community-thats-providing-hope-6025850 After Decima Davis started taking kratom, a tropical plant often billed as a healthy pick-me-up, she couldn’t stop. Whenever she tried to pry herself loose from kratom’s grip, her torment only intensified. “Every morning, I’d wake up drenched in sweat, already in agony, knowing relief was just two minutes away at the local gas station” that sold the products, Davis, 51, of Mississippi, told The Epoch Times. “I spent my mornings throwing up, desperately redosing just to be functional enough for work. That desperation is what led to three overdoses and grand mal seizures. “I reached a point where I couldn’t even look in the mirror; I didn’t recognize the person looking back. I felt completely gone, just a hollow shell of myself living a daily nightmare. “It was a relentless, soul-crushing cycle.” After many failed efforts, something finally clicked for Davis after she and two fellow kratom addicts formed the online community “Quitting Kratom Support—There Is A Way Out.” Since its inception in 2017, the peer-guided group has drawn upward of 15,000 unique online visitors, said Davis, its president. “The group replaced my isolation with accountability. In the past, I was surrounded by negative messages and self-loathing, but this community drowned that out,” she said. “We use a ‘collective tools’ approach—people bring what they’ve learned from various programs and share it. Peer support is backed by the ‘helper therapy principle,’ which suggests that when we help others, we heal ourselves.” Now, at least three times a day, dozens of people quietly tap into a reservoir of hope at KratomQuitters.com. In the past two months, online attendance has grown 17 percent, Davis said. Many group members, including Davis, credit the online community with saving their lives. “We want people to know: Hope is out there; there’s help,” Davis said, noting that she and a handful of other volunteers—all unpaid—keep the group running. They often absorb website costs and other expenses themselves, defrayed by some contributions. Davis said being around others “who actually understand the specific pull of kratom” is key. “Being surrounded by people who truly want to see me win changed my internal narrative from ‘I’m a failure’ to ‘I am part of a family that cares about my well-being and loves me,’” she said. “This community is the family I chose. It didn’t just help me manage the withdrawals; it gave me my soul back.” Increased interest in groups such as Davis’s parallels the rise of kratom use in the United States, along with higher numbers of reported adverse effects among users—and additional legal restrictions. Last year, a Journal of Psychoactive Drugs survey found that about 9 percent of Americans were using kratom. That’s a ninefold increase over the 1 percent that an American Journal of Preventive Medicine survey estimated in 2019.

The eyesore of Hendersonville! https://www.hendersonvillelightning.com/business/16107-in-lawsuit-seeking-receivership-lender-calls-cedars-developer-insolvent.html By Bill Moss, Published: June 1, 2026 The lender of a $32 million construction loan for the building of the Cedars condominium project in downtown Hendersonville has filed a lawsuit seeking the appointment of a receiver to take control of the property, declaring in the suit that the loan was in default as of Dec. 31 and asserting that the developer is insolvent or “in imminent danger of insolvency.” The court action by Fuse 10 LLC comes as the site of the grandly planned development sits idle. The general contractor, pulled off the job in March and has sued the Cedars Lodge & Spa for $7 million in unpaid invoices for work and materials. Fuse 10 is part of Fort Lauderdale-based Fuse Group Investment Companies, a bridge and construction lender. In a 13-page complaint filed on Friday in Henderson County Civil Superior Court, Fuse’s Charlotte-based attorney, William L. Esser IV, sets forth the timeline of the project and the failure by the developer, the Cedars and managing partner Greggory Covin, to repay the construction loan. The Cedars Lodge & Spa was formed in April 2020 to buy land and construct a high-end residential/hotel condominium in downtown Hendersonville. The Cedars and another corporation Covin and investors formed, 719NoMain, bought eight parcels of land valued on the tax books at $11,662,500. The land contained the historic Cedars building, plus the Chariot and the Autobell carwash, which were razed to make way for the new construction. The land and buildings bounded by North Church Street, U.S. 64 and Buncombe Street were bought by Hendersonville businessman Clifton Shipman in the 1950s and passed on to his son, Thomas W. “Tom” Shipman, the well-known operator of the Cedars and Chariot as event venues. An exhibit in the Fuse lawsuit lists the corporation's owners as Tom Shipman, Clifton's daughter Barbara Shipman Huntley and his widow, Delores Shipman, each with a 10 percent stake, and LBM Enterprises LLC and Greggory Covin, with 35 percent apiece. Covin, the builder of several successful high-end developments in Miami, is married to Shelley Shipman, the daughter of Fran and Tom Shipman.Covin did not immediately respond to a request from the Lightning for an interview or statement in response to the Fuse 10 lawsuit. The condo development, unveiled amid much fanfare as the Fairmont Heritage Place The Cedars, was marketed as “the Finest Residences in Western North Carolina.” The Cedars obtained the $32 million construction loan from Fuse in October 2022, secured by a deed of trust. In May 2025, the Cedars and Fuse agreed to extend the maturity date to Dec. 31, 2025. Covin and the Cedars had also secured junior construction loans — subordinate to the Fuse loan — through the EB-5 financing instrument. Covin announced plans in early 2025 to raise of $23.5 million through EB5, a U.S. immigration program that allows foreign investors to obtain a green card by investing capital in American businesses that create jobs. Construction on the luxury condos stalled in early 2026 as Turner demobilized and a contractor removed the crane that had towered over the city for more than a year. Fuse incorporates as an exhibit the lawsuit by Turner Construction Co. seeking $6,988,473 for breach of contract and asking the court to foreclose on a lien on the real property. Turner says in its lawsuit that it began work on the project in February 2024 and last performed work on Feb. 28 of this year. Multiple subcontractors have also filed mechanics’ liens against the Cedars, Fuse noted. Despite the lender’s notice of default, delivered to Covin’s office in North Miami on May 5, “the loan remains unpaid and in default,” Esser, the Fuse attorney wrote. “Defendants have failed to come up with additional funding for the project or a new lender to refinance the loan.”The attorney asserts that “the defendants are insolvent,” holding debts of $50 million against the tax value of the property of around $10 million. The first of two planned residential wings, the Church Street-facing Pisgah Tower, is “partially completed and is presently exposed to the elements,” raising concerns that the property will “continue to deteriorate,” the lender said. Citing the North Carolina General Receivership Act, Esser argues that a receivership is warranted when a person or corporation is insolvent, not paying its debts, unable to pay its debts or is in imminent danger of insolvency. The court’s authority to grant a receivership “is particularly applicable when corporate entities have agreed to the appointment of a receiver in their loan documents with a lender,” Esser said. If the Cedars is not insolvent, the Turner Construction lawsuit and potential for foreclosure of Turner’s lien claim “further evidences an imminent danger of insolvency.” If no receiver is appointed to manage, protect and maintain the building and grounds, the property is in danger of “waste, loss, dissipation and impairment,” the lawsuit asserts. THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY. RETURN TO THE LIGHTNING FOR MORE COVERAGE.

https://amac.us/newsline/politics/rnc-wins-major-election-integrity-lawsuit-in-north-carolina/?utm_objective=website_traffic&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=amac&utm_medium=daily_news_am&utm_content=rwm052926&dderh=aa085185c24d38098bf9b36bbb2af211 The Republican National Committee (RNC) celebrated a significant victory this week after the Wake County Superior Court ruled on Tuesday that non-residents cannot vote in North Carolina’s elections. North Carolina previously allowed adults who were born outside of the United States to vote in state elections if their “parents or guardians last lived in this state before moving overseas,” according to The Carolina Journal. The state’s Uniform Military and Overseas Voter Act allowed these individuals who had never lived in North Carolina – so-called “never-residents” – to vote in the state’s elections. The issue played a significant role in the 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election, in which Democrat candidate Allison Riggs defeated Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin by fewer than 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. Riggs was not certified as the winner until May 2025 because Griffin challenged the results in both state and federal court. Griffin specifically challenged the legality of 65,000 votes, including some from voters who never lived in the state. As the Journal reported, most of those votes “were cast by voters with registration records that appeared to lack federally required driver’s license or Social Security numbers.” Additionally, Griffin’s challenges focused on “overseas voters who provided no photo identification and ‘never residents,’ voters who checked a box on a voter form indicating they had never lived in North Carolina.” As conservatives pointed out at the time, it is absurd to allow individuals who do not and have never lived in North Carolina to help decide the outcome of North Carolina elections. In this case, the “never-resident” voters were voting for judges who made decisions that the voters themselves would not be subject to. The RNC explained in a statement that the North Carolina Supreme Court last year ruled in Griffin’s case that “people who have never lived in the state cannot vote in state elections.” But while the North Carolina Board of Elections did stop allowing non-residents to vote in elections for state-specific offices, they continued to allow these non-residents to vote in federal elections. As a result, the RNC sued the North Carolina Board of Elections to ensure that only North Carolina residents can vote state as well as federal elections moving forward. The RNC explained that Wake County Superior Court’s ruling this week confirmed the state’s Supreme Court decision that “the North Carolina Board of Elections violated the state constitution by allowing individuals who were born overseas and have never lived in North Carolina to vote in federal elections in the state.” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters praised the decision as a victory for fair elections. “This is a clear win for fair and lawful elections,” Gruters said. “The court upheld the North Carolina Constitution and made clear that only North Carolina residents can vote in the state. The RNC will keep fighting to ensure only eligible citizens can vote.” North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons agreed with that sentiment. “This ruling confirms the state constitution forbids voting by individuals who have never lived in North Carolina,” Simmons said. “The Court of Appeals and Supreme Court decisively ruled on this previously and the decision reaffirms the common-sense principle only North Carolina citizens can vote in North Carolina elections.” The RNC also confirmed that this ruling does not impact any federal law. The committee explained that the ruling “does not affect voters who qualify under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which applies to U.S. citizens who have previously lived in a state or who are currently serving overseas.” Alan Jamison is the pen name of a political writer with extensive experience writing for several notable politicians and news outlets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftp-6tjywOw None of the blessings we enjoy as Americans would endure without the men & women who dedicate their lives to defending them. On Memorial Day, we remember that our freedom has been secured at a great cost, & every day we strive to live in a way that honors that sacrifice. SUBSCRIBE to get the latest from Senator Ted Budd: https://sen.gov/budd/V275 Visit Senator Budd's official website → https://www.budd.senate.gov Like Senator Budd on Facebook → / sentedbudd Follow Senator Budd on Twitter → / sentedbuddnc Follow for behind-the-scenes updates on Instagram → / sentedbudd Ask

President Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump was targeted in an ASSASSINATION plot by an Iranian IRGC-trained terrorist — NYP Mohammad Al-Saadi, an Iraq national who was recently caught by federal law enforcement, "pledged" to take out Ivanka and had a BLUEPRINT of her house in Florida The plot was part of revenge against Trump for the killing of Gen. Soleimani Absolutely terrifying. A former deputy military attaché told the NYP: “After Qasem was killed, he [Al-Saadi] went around telling people ‘we need to kill Ivanka to burn down the house of Trump the way he burned down our house.'" “We heard that he had a plan of Ivanka’s house in Florida." Thank God she's safe, and this terrorist is in custody! Video: https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2057976081844465982?s=20

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250th Anniversary Items We've sold quite a few items but we still have Patriotic Jewelry: (1) for $10 or (2) for $15 Garden Flags: (2 styles) $15.00 Lg Car Window Stickers: $10.00 Lapel Pins $5.00 Coin Medallions: $10.00 Hats: Red/Blue/Black: $15 Table Runners: $5 Contact Jane at 209 986 3845 to ship. Items Available at Tea Time. third Thursday of the month at Bay Breeze Restaurant in Hendersonville. at the Land of Sky Gun and Knife Show. https://mkshows.com/cgi-bin/shows.asp

Turn up your sound! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e8c9K6wB71g

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