Welcome to the COVID Curfew
Everything you need to know for Wednesday, Dec. 9: Raleigh planning commission rejects Downtown South + NC & Georgia’s political futures + SCOTUS tells Trump no
Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020
1 day until Hanukkah
5 days until the Electoral College votes
16 days until Christmas
22 days until this cursed year ends
42 days until this cursed presidency is over
Today’s Numbers:
404,032
Confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses in North Carolina through Tuesday. That’s roughly one case for every 26 people in the state—and those are just the ones we know about.
110,000
Restaurants that have closed in the US this year. Another 10,000 could close in the next three weeks, according to the National Restaurant Association.
+ ABOVE THE FOLD
—> We’ve Got a COVID Curfew
North Carolina will run out of ICU beds within a month, according to projections released on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the state’s color-coded COVID warning system puts 80% of counties in red or orange territory, even before the expected post-Thanksgiving surge. In response, Governor Cooper announced a new, modified stay-at-home order:
“All North Carolinians are required to stay at home and travel only for work or to obtain essential goods or services during the hours of 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM each day for the duration of this Executive Order.”
Cooper: “The stakes are dire. This is truly a matter of life and death.”
From the N&O: “The new order applies to businesses like restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, most retail stores and personal care businesses like salons. All on-site alcohol consumption sales are prohibited from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.”
Exceptions: grocery stores, health care facilities, pharmacies, gas stations, construction sites, manufacturing sites, childcare centers.
Enforcement will be left to local officials, which means some counties will take it more seriously than others.
The curfew starts Friday and runs through Jan. 8.
+ LOCAL & STATE
—> Planning Commission Rejects Downtown South
In a unanimous decision that may or may not mean anything, the Raleigh Planning Commission recommended Tuesday that the city council reject John Kane’s Downtown South mixed-use project. The planning commission’s vote is nonbinding, however, and its only practical effect was to trigger two special city council meetings next week to discuss the project’s fate.
Kane Realty says it needs the rezoning before the end of the year for the project to remain viable.
Planning commissioners worried the Black community will bear the brunt of the project’s negative impacts, the N&O reports.
Planning Commissioner Nicole Bennett: “That is not how we dismantle the systems that have allowed inequities in our city. I don’t want us to limit positive outcomes for south Raleigh.”
—> CHICKENS AND EGGS: Neighborhood advocates wanted to use Kane’s rezoning to secure commitments on living wages, workforce development, and other “community benefits.” Kane says it’s impossible to make those commitments now, though he agreed to designate rent-controlled units for people at 80% of the area median income for five years.
If the city approves the zoning request next week, the next step would be a novel (for Raleigh) tax-incremental grant.
—> COINCIDENTALLY: The night before the planning commission meeting, Downtown South announced a partnership with Raleigh Raised Development, a group of Black developers that includes NC Central basketball coach LeVelle Moton.
“Raleigh Raised Development, or RRD, ‘will be working with the project team to guarantee significant participation of local minority businesses throughout the entire development, beginning with the contracts and construction of the District,’ the partners said.”
—> As Georgia Goes, NC Might Not Follow
By the thinnest of margins, Georgia voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 28 years. By less than 2 percentage points, North Carolina did not. Yet a blue trend in Georgia might not materialize in North Carolina, historian Virginia Summey and political scientist Michael Bitzer write in the Washington Post.
“While pundits analyze what Georgia going blue means for the rest of the South, North Carolina’s complex electoral history shows that for the Old North State, the future is really anyone’s guess, thanks to the historical push and pull of reactive politics in the state.”
“At least at the federal level, the more entrenched partisanship of the era has produced smaller margins of victory but made it harder for Democrats to climb over the top. Conversely, Democrats have fared better in contests for state-level executive offices, winning 22 out of 40 such races in the same time frame.”
“If North Carolina follows Georgia’s lead, the strength of the state’s Black voters … along with the increasing generational replacement of boomers with millennials and Generation Z voters, could cast the state a deeper shade of purple. But as we saw with an explosive turnout … and Trump’s narrow victory in the state, the forces of reactionary politics remain strong in North Carolina—and predictions of the state following neighboring Virginia into the deep-blue category are, at the very least, premature.”
—> In Other News: NC
North Carolina’s insurance commissioner says firefighters should get access to the coronavirus vaccine earlier. (N&O)
About 20% of North Carolina students are skipping virtual classes. (CBS17)
—> In Other News: Triangle
The Eno River Association is opposing the construction of what it calls the world’s largest gas station, which would be built by Buc-ee’s on top of an Eno watershed. It goes before the Orange County Board of Commissioners on Dec. 15. (IG / Eno River Association)
A three-foot monolith—a smaller knock-off of the dumb marketing ploy that we’ll soon learn is “guerilla advertising” a Hulu show or whatever—appeared in downtown Fayetteville, as if aliens would care about Fayetteville. (WRAL)
UNC football coach Mack Brown’s daughter won nearly $23,000 on Jeopardy!—one of the show’s final episodes hosted by the late Alex Trebek. (ABC11)
Weather: Mostly clear, still cold. High of 51. (WRAL)
Behold: Nancy McFarlane, posing next to Nancy McFarlane’s mayoral portrait.
+ NATION & WORLD
—> The Lede: Civilian Control, How Quaint
A recurring theme in Barack Obama’s memoir is Joe Biden’s skepticism of Pentagon brass. His support for Iraq left him feeling betrayed, wary of military adventures, and annoyed by the prominence of defense officials. Perhaps that’s why, for secretary of defense, he bypassed Michele Flournoy, the natsec favorite who would have been the first woman in the role, as well as Jeh Johnson, an Obama alum, and selected retired Gen. Lloyd Austin.
If confirmed, Austin will be the first Black person to hold the position, which is a big deal.
“General Austin, who retired as a four-star general in 2016 after 41 years in the military, is respected across the Army, especially among African-American officers and enlisted soldiers, as one of the rare Black men to crack the glass ceiling that has kept the upper ranks of the military largely the domain of white men.”
“General Austin, 67, was for years a formidable figure at the Pentagon, and is the only African-American to have headed U.S. Central Command, the military’s marquee combat command, with responsibility for Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria—most of the places where the United States is at war.”
“It was unclear Monday night what tipped the scales for General Austin. People close to the transition noted that, during the Obama presidency, Mr. Biden was unhappy with the high profile of the Pentagon, with generals like David H. Petraeus gaining near rock-star status, and the belief that the Pentagon rolled President Barack Obama into increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan.”
There’s nothing about Lloyd himself that seems disqualifying—OK, working for Raytheon is gross—though he’s known more for battlefield command than bureaucratic management. The issue is that the Pentagon is supposed to be run by civilians.
“As it is, Mr. Biden will need a Congressional waiver; the National Security Act of 1947 requires a prospective secretary to wait seven years after ending active duty as a commissioned officer and General Austin retired only in 2016. It would be only the third time a president has requested a waiver—President Harry Truman for George Marshall in 1950, and President Trump for James Mattis.”
Mattis got a waiver because Trump needed adult supervision. Having two presidents in a row receive waivers would enshrine the practice as normal.
“The Pentagon now needs to re-establish traditional national security processes and return to a sense of normalcy. … Appointing another retired general to lead the Pentagon will not help return things to normal.”
What’s the big deal? The 1947 NSA was passed after World War II in keeping with America’s ambivalence about a large standing army.
Jessica Blankshain explains in the Texas National Security Review: “When the post-WWII drawdown was limited by the onset of the Cold War, the prospect of maintaining a substantial, permanent force for the foreseeable future raised hackles on the Hill and beyond. Congress viewed a civilian secretary of defense—without recent, close ties to the military—as one of the keys to maintaining civilian control in such an environment.”
“Most analysts who worry about a secretary of defense who is too closely tied to the military focus on the question of civilian control. As Peter Feaver points out, this is partially about symbolism: ‘The secretary of defense is the person in government who embodies civilian control 24-7 … That it is a civilian face, wearing civilian clothes, receiving salutes and courtesies from uniformed personnel, is a powerful visible symbol of civilian control.’”
“As a Cabinet-level political appointee, the secretary is supposed to be the president’s representative, overseeing the Department of Defense and the military, working to further administration policy objectives, and ensuring compliance with administration directives. A defense secretary who is too closely linked to the military might be susceptible to serving the military’s interests more than the president’s interests.”
—> DOES IT MATTER? Will any of this stop Austin from getting confirmed?
There was grumbling about Mattis getting a waiver. Democratic Sen. Jack Reed announced that it was a one-time deal.
But the optics for senators who backed Mattis and oppose the first Black SecDef might be less than stellar.
—> **SHOULD** IT MATTER? Regardless of Austin’s merits, what’s the point of having a law if successive administrations ignore it because they want to? Either we’re serious about a commitment to civilian control, or we’re not.
Austin will be eligible to be SecDef without a waiver in three years.
—> The Last-Ditch Effort to Save Trump’s Presidency
Yesterday was safe harbor day, or the day states had to formally certify the electors who will vote for president next week. Tl;dr: Biden wins again.
Unless there is outstanding litigation, Congress is legally bound to accept these electors.
Cue the last-ditch litigation.
See this thread for more, but here’s my favorite: In a transparent attempt to make the Kraken lady look sane—or, perhaps, to score a pardon when the FBI comes calling—Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a bonkers lawsuit directly to the Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan for having the temerity to elect Joe Biden.
Specifically, the problem appears to be that Democratic areas encouraged people to vote, which is a problem: “Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters—whether lawful or unlawful—in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States.”
His proposed solution: Install Trump. “These flaws affect an outcome-determinative number of popular votes in a group of States that cast outcome-determinative numbers of electoral votes. This Court should grant leave to file the complaint and, ultimately, enjoin the use of unlawful election results without review and ratification by the Defendant States’ legislatures and remand to the Defendant States’ respective legislatures to appoint Presidential Electors.”
All four states have GOP legislatures.
—> OH, WELL: “The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a last-minute attempt by President Trump’s allies to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania. The court’s brief order provided no reasoning, nor did it note any dissenting votes. It was the first request to delay or overturn the results of the presidential election to reach the court.”
—> Briefs: 4 Stories to Read Today
“You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public …. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. … By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial. This is—as the country and the world are rightly celebrating—the fastest timeline of development in the history of vaccines. It also means that for the entire span of the pandemic in this country, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans, we had the tools we needed to prevent it.” (NY Mag)
“More than three years ago, President Donald Trump announced that he would ‘lift restrictions and expand authorities’ for United States troops in Afghanistan—giving the military a freer hand to order airstrikes. Now the cost of that lax approach is becoming clear. Since 2017, the United States, its international allies, and the Afghan government have killed an average of 1,134 civilians per year, a nearly 95 percent increase from the average between 2007 and 2016, according to report released Monday from Brown University and Boston University’s Costs of War Project. The bulk of that increase has come from an aggressive escalation of the Defense Department’s air war and a greater handoff of responsibilities to the Afghan Air Force.” (MoJo)
“Charles E. ‘Chuck’ Yeager, a military test pilot who was the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound and live to tell about it, died Dec. 7. He was 97. … He became one of the greatest aviators of his generation, combining abundant confidence with an innate understanding of engineering mechanics—what an airplane could do under any form of stress. He first stepped into a cockpit during World War II after joining the Army Air Forces directly out of high school. By the end of the war, he was a fighter ace credited with shooting down at least 12 German planes, including five in one day. Making the military his career, he emerged in the late 1940s as one of the newly created Air Force’s most revered test pilots. His success in breaking the sound barrier launched America into the supersonic age. While airplanes had long had the power to achieve great speeds, changes in aerodynamic design allowed pilots such as Gen. Yeager to overcome the problems of supersonic air flow as they approached the speed of sound.” (WaPo)
“The woman at the center of the [Chinese political intelligence] operation, a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage. Through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors, Fang was able to gain proximity to political power, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and one former elected official.” (Axios)
—> The Rundown
Trump plans to pardon everyone, whether they want it or not. (Axios)
Judge Emmett Sullivan says pardon or no, Michael Flynn is guilty. (WaPo)
Mitch McConnell, R-Hell, is blocking a trimmed-down bipartisan COVID aid package because it doesn’t do enough to shield corporations from lawsuits. (Bloomberg)
The White House, apparently waking up from its post-election tantrum, wants the Senate to include $600 stimulus checks in any aid package. (WaPo)
New Los Angeles DA George Gascon announced that his office will no longer seek the death penalty, end cash bail, bar enhanced sentences, and no longer try juveniles as adults. (LA Times)
A 90-year-old Briton became the first person to receive a fully tested COVID vaccine. (NYT)
A man named William Shakespeare was the second. (NBC)
An FDA review confirmed that the Pfizer vaccine is safe and effective. (WaPo)
Trump coup lawyer Jenna Ellis has COVID, just like Rudy. (Axios)
Healthy democracy watch:
+ OUR SO-CALLED LIVES
—> Cultured: Israeli Space Chief Says Aliens Don’t Think We’re Ready
According to retired Israeli general and current professor Haim Eshed, aliens have been in contact with humans for “years.” But on account of humans being humans, they’re not ready to go public just yet.
“The 87-year-old former space security chief gave further descriptions about exactly what sort of agreements have been made between the aliens and the US, which ostensibly have been made because they wish to research and understand ‘the fabric of the universe.’ This cooperation includes a secret underground base on Mars, where there are American and alien representatives.”
“Eshed insists that [President] Trump is aware of them, and that he was ‘on the verge’ of disclosing their existence. However, the Galactic Federation reportedly stopped him from doing so, saying they wished to prevent mass hysteria since they felt humanity needed to ‘evolve and reach a stage where we will ... understand what space and spaceships are,’ Yediot Aharonot reported.”
The only part that sounds implausible is Donald Trump not taking credit for discovering aliens.
Courtesy of the internet: Your Galactic Federation entrance exam.
