Hello Justice Barrett, Goodbye Roe, Obamacare, LGBTQ Rights, Voting Rights, Environmental Regulations …
Everything you need to know for Tuesday, Oct. 27: Ending HB2's last vestiges + teh unintended consequences of voter suppression + water on the moon
Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020
7️⃣ days until the election.
TODAY is the deadline for absentee ballot requests.
4️⃣ days until early voting ends (you can register when you vote at EV sites). Find your EV site here. Find out how long you’ll have to vote early in Wake County here and Durham County here.
8️⃣5️⃣ days until the inauguration.
Today’s Number: $2,050,000
The amount the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund just dropped to help Representative Richard Hudson in the 8th Congressional District, which Trump won by nine in 2016, the N&O reports. The seat was redrawn after court recent court rulings, and Democrats have a solid candidate this time out in Pat Timmons-Goodson.
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> Barrett Confirmed, Sworn In
Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, 2016. Mitch McConnell immediately declared that 216 days before a presidential election was simply too close to even countenance a new Supreme Court justice.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Sept. 18, 2020, 45 days before the next election. A mere 37 days later, in a 52-48 vote (the only time a nominee has been confirmed without any support from the opposing party), McConnell’s Republicans installed RBG’s replacement, the least-experienced Supreme Court nominee in modern history—and the most radical nominee since Robert Bork.
Sworn in by Clarence Thomas Monday night, Amy Coney Barrett cemented the far-right’s 6–3 majority for a generation. (Unless, that is, Democrats stop being hand-wringing ninnies and pack the damn court.)
The day before the election, the Court will hear arguments in a case seeking to overturn Philadelphia’s anti-discrimination ordinance, which banned a foster care provider from discriminating against same-sex couples. A week after the election, the Court will hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. It also just agreed to review Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. Before that, there is Trump’s bid to block the Manhattan DA from reviewing his financial records and at least four election cases.
Among them, the NCGOP’s continuing effort to disqualify absentee ballots.
Under state law, an absentee ballot must be postmarked by Election Day and received within three days after that—Nov. 6 this year—to count. But the state board agreed to push that deadline back to Nov. 12 after voting rights groups argued that an avalanche of mailed ballots this year could lead to slower deliveries by the U.S. Postal Service.
Republican state lawmakers have intervened in the lawsuit and asked the Supreme Court to rule on it.
Republicans obviously have very legitimate reasons for wanting to toss ballots that were postmarked on Election Day but the Trumpified dumpster fire of a Postal Service can’t deliver on time … just kidding, they know Democrats are voting by mail, and that’s where this begins and ends.
PET PEEVE: Can we stop please calling Barrett, Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Gorsuch “originalists,” like that’s anything more than an incoherent ideology designed to give them cover for enacting a right-wing agenda under the guise of divining the framers’ “original intent”?
LOCAL & STATE
—> NC Cities Will Begin Passing LGBTQ Anti-Discrimination Laws Next Year, Probably
When they kinda-sorta repealed HB 2 in 2017, the General Assembly kept in place a moratorium on local anti-discrimination laws through December 1, 2020—which, you may notice, is but weeks away. The thinking back then was that culture warrior Dan Forest could its expiration to scare up votes ahead of the election. But if there was any juice left in that squeeze, COVID-19 saw to it that it never became an issue.
So now the moratorium is about to end, Forest is (almost certainly) about to lose, Republicans are desperately clinging to their legislative majorities, and the state’s metros are gearing up to pass non-discrimination ordinances once and for all.
The City of Charlotte is working with Equality NC, the North Carolina Metro Mayors Coalition, and leaders from cities across the state to draft a new nondiscrimination ordinance.…
Documents obtained from the City of Charlotte show the Metro Mayors Coalition hosted a call on Oct. 16 to discuss the creation and implementation of new nondiscrimination ordinances in cities across the state.
A few things about what these ordinances would and would not do:
In June, the (pre-Barrett) Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in employment. However, that decision does not apply to small businesses, gig workers, or independent contractors.
The expiring moratorium does not include a separate provision preempting local regulation of bathrooms—in other words, cities still can’t include bathroom access in their ordinances.
Equality NC seems to want cities to model their legislation off of that of Charleston, South Carolina. (See its slideshow here.)
Even with the moratorium expiring, cities seem worried about poking the bear, per WBTV:
According to notes from the call, … the goal of passing these nondiscrimination ordinances would be to prompt the North Carolina General Assembly to pass comprehensive nondiscrimination legislation that would cover the entire state. …
“All of this is contingent upon the outcome of the elections,” the notes say.
The notes outlining the call also make clear organizers are working to broaden the ordinances with no specific reference to bathrooms.
“Need slow and measured approach. Only take action after a new NCGA is seated.”
In other words: If by some … what’s the opposite of miracle? … Dan Forest wins, shut it down, or at least tread lightly. If the status quo prevails, make good on your promises but don’t expect anything out of Jones Street. If next week is a Dem blowout, go big.
—> The Kids Are Alright
The N&O’s data is a few days old, but it’s worth exploring: As of Oct. 21, after six days of early voting, 205,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 had already voted in North Carolina. That’s nearly a third of the under-30s who voted in 2016.
Four years ago, 45% of under-30s turned out and backed Hillary Clinton by 22 points. This time around, that cohort favors Biden by about as much, according to the most recent NYT/Sienna College poll (another is due later this week). That poll, which had Biden up 4, estimates them at 13% of the electorate. If they surprise us, next Tuesday will prove to be a long night for the NCGOP.
As of last night:
3.17 million people have voted
That’s 43.3% of registered voters
51.8% in Durham County
51.8% in Orange County
46.4% in Wake County
—> Wake Launched a New Program to Help Parents Pay for Child Care
On Monday, Wake County announced a new program, WakeSUPPORTS, to help some parents pay for child care for kids in remote learning.
Board of Commissioners Chairman Greg Ford: “COVID-19 has already stretched household budgets thin, and we don’t want parents to have to choose between earning a living and giving their children the care they need. That’s why today we’re launching a new program called WakeSUPPORTS—to make it easier to afford child care and remote learning supervision.”
Here’s how it works, from the N&O:
The program uses $5 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to help cover child care associated with remote learning from Aug. 17—the first day of school—through Sept. 30, and again during the month of December. … About 2,000 children are expected to be covered by the program.
To qualify for WakeSupports, people must live in Wake County, have a child in kindergarten through sixth grade, meet certain income requirements and been hurt financially by the coronavirus. Those income requirements differ by family size: a family of two can’t make more than $45,180 while a family of four can’t make more than $56,460.
RELATED: Yesterday, some Wake elementary schoolchildren returned to the classroom.
ALSO RELATED (AND NOT SHOCKING): Private schools, many of which opened for in-person classes this fall, are seeing lots and lots of COVID cases.
“As of Friday, there were 14 active coronavirus clusters reported at private K-12 schools across the state with 138 confirmed cases, according to data from the state Department of Health and Human Services.”
—> The North Carolina Roundup
Bayer is buying the local gene-therapy company AskBio—technically, Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, founded by UNC professor Jude Samulski in 2001—for between $2 billion and $4 billion. (Jude, my man, if you ever want to blow some coin on a scrappy local newsletter, hit me up.)
Some scientists are questioning whether North Carolina’s COVID tests are causing too many people to quarantine. The state health lab says they’re missing the point.
A GoFundMe has been started for NC State’s live mascot Tuffy II, who was diagnosed with canine dilated cardiomyopathy.
Congrats to NC Policy Watch for landing the great Lynn Bonner, who recently left the N&O after 26 years.
I am very curious and mildly disturbed about how the N&O’s sponsored content is generated.
—> Weather
Partly sunny, high of 76 ⛅️
NATION & WORLD
—> Is the GOP’s Voter Suppression Backfiring?
In Texas, with an assist from the Supreme Court, Republican state officials have gone out of their way to make absentee voting as difficult as possible—especially in large, Democratic counties populated by voters of color.
Residents have responded by voting in unprecedented droves.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s top executive and a 29-year-old Latina, says that “voters in Texas are used to the steady drumbeat of suppression,” which has often kept turnout among voters of color and young voters low. But she called [Governor] Abbott’s declaration limiting mail drop-off locations “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“It was so transparently about suppression,” she said. “We’re seeing folks who are fired up specifically because they want to stand up against suppression attempts.”
Georgia Republicans have made voter suppression an art form—the state’s governor wouldn’t be governor without it.
This year, that’s led to historic Black turnout.
Voters interviewed by POLITICO said anger over perceived voter suppression tactics is fueling their eagerness to cast early ballots. And indeed, Georgians are voting in numbers never seen before in the state’s history. Since Oct. 12, the first day of early voting, a staggering 2.7 million voters have cast a ballot—a nearly 110 percent increase from 2016. …
Georgia Democrats are building their hopes for a blue Georgia on record early voting numbers and turnout. Early voting among Georgians under 40 is more than three times what it was in 2016, as nearly 600,000 young voters in the state have cast a ballot, according to the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan group that registers new voters.
From Mother Jones:
The record level of early voting in Harris County [Texas] could be a microcosm of what’s happening across the county. … Fifty-one million Americans have already voted, exceeding the total number of early votes cast in 2016, and Democrats have returned nearly twice as many ballots as Republicans in the 19 states that release voting data by party, according to Michael McDonald of the University of Florida. A quarter of ballots have been cast by people who didn’t vote in 2016, and these voters lean Democratic by 16 points, according to Tom Bonier, CEO of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm. “The surge of new voters is benefitting Democrats by fairly large margins,” Bonier says.
—> The Brief: 5 Stories to Read Today
The Dow collapsed as COVID cases rose. “U.S. markets slumped Monday as investors grappled with uncertainty about economic stimulus negotiations and soaring coronavirus cases around the country. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 650 points, or 2.3 percent, to 27,686. … The United States hit a record high in new coronavirus cases Friday, with more than 83,700 reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins.”
It was probably inevitable that the Trump era would lead to Christian nationalist “Patriot Churches,” but here we are. “The new congregation is gathered in a barn in Lenoir City, Tenn., with a roof that has a 60-foot American flag painted on it. And they are praying for a Trump landslide. Standing in a circle, the dozen or so men and women, young and old, lay their hands on their pastor, Ken Peters, as he raises their requests to God. He prays that ‘communism and socialism and transgenderism and homosexuality and abortion will not have their way in this land.’”
The New Yorker published an excerpt of Barack Obama’s forthcoming memoir detailing the battle over the Affordable Care Act. “It’s no wonder, then, that by the time I took office there were very few people ready to defend the existing system. More than forty-three million Americans were now uninsured, premiums for family coverage had risen ninety-seven per cent since 2000, and costs were only continuing to climb. And yet the prospect of trying to get a big health-care-reform bill through Congress at the height of a historic recession made my team nervous. Even my adviser David Axelrod—who had experienced the challenges of getting specialized care for a daughter with severe epilepsy and had left journalism to become a political consultant in part to pay for her treatment—had his doubts.”
Facing life in prison, weirdo sex cult leader Keith Raniere says he regrets nothing and is approaching sentencing with a strategy that always pays off. “Mr. Raniere, 60, is now sitting in jail, convicted at trial as a con man who was exploiting Nxivm to enrich himself financially and recruit sexual partners, leading to its current reputation as a ‘sex cult.’ He will return to court on Tuesday for his sentencing, facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. … Still, Mr. Raniere carries no remorse and will not be seeking forgiveness, his lawyers said. He has accused the judge of corruption and demanded a new trial.” (Emphasis mine.)
Studies confirm that there is water on the moon. “There is water on the moon’s surface, and ice may be widespread in its many shadows, according to a pair of studies published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research confirms long-standing theories about the existence of lunar water that could someday enable astronauts to live there for extended periods”
—> The Roundup
This past week has been the worst seven-day period for COVID cases so far. Here are the details.
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb argues for a “limited and temporary” mask mandate this winter.
Jared Kushner, hard-working lunchpail fella, thinks Black protesters are lazy.
Prince Harry says living with Meghan made him aware of unconscious racial bias.
Local police agencies in Michigan might not enforce the state’s voter intimidation laws.
Robert Murray, a coal CEO who championed Trump’s climate rollbacks and preposterously sued John Oliver for defamation, died of black lung disease.
50 Cent emphatically retracted his Trump endorsement.
Pope Francis has named the first African American cardinal.
Japan has set a goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you tomorrow.