If you blinked this week, you might have missed just how busy NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office has been. I like to check in on what our AG is actually doing every so often, because it is easy to only hear about statewide politics in the context of the next election. Jeff Jackson’s office put out three separate actions in the span of about 72 hours, so let’s walk through them together, plainly and without spin, so you can decide for yourself what you think.
A record settlement over Cape Fear River contamination
The headline item: on September 10, Attorney General Jackson announced a $590 million settlement with DuPont and Chemours over PFAS contamination, including the compound GenX, that came from the Fayetteville Works facility in Bladen County. The office is calling it the largest environmental damages recovery in state history.
Here’s how the money breaks down: about $455 million in direct payments spread over 10 to 15 years, plus a $135 million reserve fund from DuPont and Corteva for ongoing obligations. Of that, $75 million goes to the state (with roughly $55 million earmarked for an Emerging Contaminant Mitigation Fund), and $380 million is split among 11 local governments, including Cumberland, Bladen, Brunswick, and New Hanover counties. The Cape Fear River supplies drinking water to more than 500,000 North Carolinians, and the state says nearly 27,500 wells have been sampled since the contamination came to light, with about 10,500 homes offered replacement water systems.
Pushing the FCC on robocalls
Two days earlier, on September 9, Jackson led a bipartisan coalition of 49 state attorneys general asking the FCC to toughen its “Know Your Upstream Provider” rules, the regulations that govern how phone carriers track where robocalls originate. The coalition wants more frequent monitoring of upstream providers and stronger caller ID authentication, arguing current rules leave too many gaps for scammers to slip through. For context on why this matters: the office cites data showing Americans received over 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts last year, adding up to nearly $2 billion in losses. Jackson currently leads a multistate Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, and this request is bipartisan, meaning it has support from Republican and Democratic attorneys general alike.
Eggs actually reaching food banks
And on September 8, the follow-through on an earlier case: 270,000 eggs were delivered to Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina in Charlotte, the first of six planned deliveries across the state. This comes out of a settlement with three major egg producers, Cal-Maine, Hickman’s Family Farms, and Versova, who were accused of coordinating from 2022 to 2025 to manipulate price benchmarks. North Carolina joined 16 other states and the U.S. Department of Justice in that case, which commits the companies to donating roughly 50 million eggs to food banks nationwide.
Why NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s Actions Matter to You
None of these three actions are partisan wins or losses. They’re the kind of consumer protection and environmental enforcement work that attorneys general do regardless of who holds the office, and I think it’s worth knowing what your state government is actually up to, especially heading into a fall where you’ll be asked to decide who holds these jobs next. I’ll keep tracking the AG’s office here as part of our regular civic coverage.
Speaking of deciding who holds these jobs, now is a good time to make sure your own voter registration is current and to look up your polling location before Election Day sneaks up on us. You can check both in a couple of minutes using the state’s official voter lookup tool.
Sources
- NCDOJ: Attorney General Jeff Jackson Secures Nearly $600M from DuPont/Chemours in Largest State Environmental Damages Recovery
- NCDOJ: Attorney General Jeff Jackson Leads Bipartisan Coalition Pushing Federal Government to Strengthen ‘Know Your Upstream Provider’ Rules
- NCDOJ: Charlotte Food Bank Receives Nearly 300,000 Eggs Delivery Following Attorney General Jackson’s Settlement in Antitrust Case
- NC State Board of Elections: Voter Lookup Tool
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