Why We’ll Never Have Legal Weed
Everything you need to know for Friday, Nov. 13: NC’s unemployed + Billy Graham’s sullied legacy + Biden’s first day
Friday, Nov. 13, 2020
13 days until Thanksgiving
27 days until Hanukkah
42 days until Christmas
49 days until this cursed year ends
68 days until this cursed presidency is over
Friday the 13th in the Year of Our Lord Twenty Twenty. Sounds fun.
Today’s Number: 21,157,111
The number of people relying on government unemployment assistance in the wake of the pandemic, according to the Department of Labor’s weekly jobs report. This week last year, 1,449,519 people claimed benefits.
Also from the jobs report:
709,000 people filed new initial jobless claims last week, and the previous week’s total was revised upward to 757,000.
298,000 people filed initial Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims, which help contractors and gig workers.
In North Carolina:
7,656 people filed initial unemployment insurance claims last week, down from 8,338 the week prior. 91,510 people are currently receiving state unemployment benefits.
20,693 people filed initial Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims, an increase from 12,524 the week before.
As of late October, 120,732 people received pandemic emergency unemployment compensation, the federally backed unemployment assistance for those who have exhausted their state benefits. It runs through the end of the year.
—> HELP: There’s probably a simple explanation that’s eluding me, but if someone out there knows why North Carolina’s PUA claims are so much higher than its UI claims eight months into the pandemic, please email me.
ABOVE THE FOLD
—> What Would North Carolina Look Like if Voters Got Their Way?
For Democrats, the elections proved something of a letdown. Sure, Joe Biden won—Donald Trump’s performative tantrum notwithstanding—but they vastly underperformed in congressional races and failed to recapture targeted statehouses, casting a pall over what was supposed to be a blue wave.
Looking beyond the horseraces, however, the elections offered progressives evidence that even in red states, voters share their policy goals.
In Florida, 61% of voters approved a constitutional amendment to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour by 2026.
Arizona passed a 3.5% income tax on high earners to fund public schools.
Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved a 12-week paid family and medical leave program.
New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana voted to legalize recreational marijuana.
Oregon decriminalized the possession of all drugs, and Washington, D.C., voters made possession of mushrooms and other psychedelics the lowest possible enforcement priority.
Mississippi—Mississippi!—legalized medical marijuana.
This wasn’t a universal trend.
Illinois voters declined to replace their flat income tax with a progressive tax.
California voters rejected all sorts of progressive initiatives, including a commercial property tax hike, a ballot measure to permit affirmative action in college admissions, and efforts to expand local-government rent-control authority, abolish cash bail, and allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries. Meanwhile, the “gig worker” initiative passed easily.
North Carolina voters can’t place initiatives on the ballot. Article XIII of the state Constitution delegates that power only to the General Assembly, which has to approve a proposed constitutional amendment by a three-fifths majority before sending it to voters, who almost always pass it. In fact, from 1996–2016, voters approved all 16 amendments that came their way.
That changed in 2018, when the GOP legislature, about to lose its supermajorities, crammed six amendments onto the ballot, and voters spiked two blatant power grabs.
Two others—voter ID and lowering the income tax cap to 7% from 10%—passed but were struck down by a state court, which ruled that an illegally gerrymandered General Assembly had no right to put them on the ballot. They’re headed to the state Supreme Court.
But I was wondering what they state might look like if they could. (FWIW, I promise you I had written this entire section before I saw this story in the N&O.) Let’s look at the polling:
72.5% support medical marijuana, and 48% support legalizing recreational marijuana.
59% support having an independent commission create legislative and congressional districts, rather than having the General Assembly gerrymander, according to a 2018 poll; only 15% oppose such a commission.
94% support increasing the state’s minimum wage, and 59% support raising it to at least $10/hour.
69% believe the government should take action to support affordable housing.
77% support expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (as Oklahoma and Missouri voters did via referendum this summer).
69% believe teacher salaries are too low.
52% support raising taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents to improve teacher pay.
71% support a $15/hour minimum wage for all public school employees.
The General Assembly voters elected last week, however, will do almost none of those things (maybe a small raise for teachers). Nor will the General Assembly put them on the ballot.
So while Mississippi—Mississippi!—has medical marijuana, and Arizona taxes the rich to fund public schools, we’re stuck with the whims of Phil Berger.
LOCAL & STATE
—> Is Trump Killing Billy Graham’s Legacy?
Franklin Graham’s ardent support of Donald Trump—the kind of sleazy rich man the red-letter Jesus despised, and, of course, a guy who couldn’t locate the Beatitudes if you gave him an hour and promised him 15 minutes alone with Vlad if he succeeded—is causing a rift in the Graham family, just like it is in wider evangelical circles, the Charlotte Observer reports.
For those who hadn’t followed the insular world of evangelical Christianity, this exchange [over whether Billy Graham voted for Trump in 2016] blew into full view a rip in the Graham family’s fabric that mirrors a larger split within the entire evangelical community—a split likely to be accelerated by Trump’s defeat for re-election. [Graham grandson Aram] Tchividjian and his more outspoken sister, Jerushah Duford, whose mother, Gigi Graham Tchividijian, is Billy Graham’s oldest daughter, have emerged as the family’s most visible critics of their uncle and of Trump. …
Although they are not the first among evangelicals to publicly charge Franklin Graham with undermining the memory of his father, the fact that they are bringing the charge from within the family brings powerful momentum to it.
—> REALITY CHECK: As much as we think of Graham as an apolitical, ecumenical guy, until his later years, he unapologetically comingled right-wing politics and right-wing religion. He openly supported Eisenhower and Nixon. He supported the wars in Korea and Vietnam. He hated government intervention in the economy, not to mention organized labor.
“The Garden of Eden, he told a rally in 1952, had been a paradise with ‘no union dues, no labor leaders, no snakes, no disease.’ A Christian worker ‘would not stoop to take unfair advantage’ of his employer by joining a union.”
He only swore off politics when his close association with Richard Nixon revealed him making anti-Semitic comments on the Watergate tapes, diminishing his prestige.
The Charlotte Observer says the evangelical community is taking a long, hard look in the mirror:
“Suddenly, in the wake of Trump’s re-election defeat, it appears possible—perhaps probable—that this ‘disquiet’ will force a reckoning within the evangelical leadership. It comes at a time when evangelicalism is at an existential inflection point weakened by declining membership and threatened by a younger generation that is indifferent, if not hostile, to it, according to numerous surveys and the anti-Trump protests of high-profile dissidents.”
Let’s run the numbers:
Exit polls show 76% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, compared to 77% in 2016.
While church membership has declined, the number of Americans who identify as evangelical has remained between 22% and 25% for more than a decade.
61% of white evangelicals age 18–44 have a favorable view of Trump.
Worth noting: “In 2018, 81 percent of evangelicals were white, compared to 72.4 percent of the population overall. More than 4 in 10 Americans under 25 are people of color. For evangelicals to keep offsetting losses in future generations, they will need to become more racially diverse.”
In a visual:
—> Every Vote Counts
At 4:30 p.m. yesterday, the final day that absentee ballots could arrive, Paul Newby was leading Cheri Beasley by 825 votes out of about 5.3 million cast in the contest for chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. By 7:45, Beasley was ahead by 672 votes.
In North Carolina, statewide candidates can seek a recount in races where they are behind 0.5% or less. This and the race for attorney general race are the only ones that qualify.
In the AG’s race, Josh Stein is up by nearly 18,000 votes. While a 0.26-point lead isn’t what you’d call a comfortable win, recounts generally don’t overturn that big a deficit.
Even 672 seems like a stretch.
Today, elections boards around the state will canvass their votes, and we’ll get the final tallies. Candidates have until Tuesday to ask for a recount.
—> The North Carolina Roundup
Two Duke University professors have joined Joe Biden’s agency review teams: Law professor emeritus Christopher Schroeder is part of the group reviewing the shitshow Justice Department, and Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions executive-in-residence Robert Bonnie is leading the team reviewing the Agriculture Department.
“Policing itself, even excellent policing, which we have, is not enough,” Durham Mayor Steve Schewel said in response to his city’s spike in gun violence.
UNC-Chapel Hill won’t raise tuition and fees for in-state students next year.
A Rolesville child died in yesterday’s flooding.
Garner is seeking a developer to bring some mixed-use sexiness to its downtown.
—> Weather
Partly cloudy, high of 70. This weekend: Basically perfect.
NATION & WORLD
—> The Lede: Biden, Day 1
Want to know how much is riding on those two Georgia Senate runoffs?
If Democrats win both races, close aides to [Joe] Biden and economists who helped advise his campaign say the president-elect will try to push through a large stimulus plan for the flagging economic recovery—most likely along the lines of the $2.2 trillion that House Democrats approved this fall. …
His team is also developing a government employment program—called the Public Health Jobs Corps—that would put 100,000 Americans to work on virus testing and contact tracing.
If Mitch McConnell is running the Senate, none of this happens.
The second Joe Biden takes the oath, the same Republicans who just ran up trillion-dollar deficits will decide that federal spending is the country’s greatest threat.
And that’s to say nothing of judges and Cabinet appointments, whom McConnell might block just for the hell of it.
However, because the Trump team wasn’t great at passing legislation, most of what the president “accomplished” was done via executive order or federal rulemaking. All of that can be reversed by the new guy. The Biden team is already signaling that, Senate or not, they’re ready to go.
Immigration: Biden says he’ll stop building the border wall, reinstate the DREAMER program, end the travel ban, implement a 100-day deportation freeze and then limit deportations to people with “serious criminal records,” end Trump’s anti-asylum policies, end the public charge rule, reinstate the Central American Minors program, increase refugee admissions, and grant Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelan exiles and possibly others who lost it during the Trump administration.
Climate change: Biden says he’ll immediately rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and roll back Trump policies that relaxed oil and gas drilling rules and pollution limits. Beyond that: create a White House National Climate Council, establish a carbon bank, electrify cars and trucks through the Transportation Department, and promote carbon reductions through tax, budget, and regulatory policies.
COVID: The US recorded an all-time high of more than 150,000 cases on Thursday, but the Trump administration has already checked out. Into this vacuum will step chief of staff Ron Klain, who guided the Obama administration through the Ebola crisis. Biden’s put together an all-star task force, but things might spin out of control before he takes office.
—> LIZ HAS PLANS: In an op-ed, Senator Elizabeth Warren offered some ideas:
Cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt, giving tens of millions of Americans an immediate financial boost and helping to close the racial wealth gap. This is the single most effective executive action available to provide massive consumer-driver stimulus.
Lower drug prices for millions by producing key drugs like insulin, naloxone, hepatitis C drugs and EpiPens at low costs using existing compulsory licensing authority that allows the federal government to bypass patents for pressing public health needs.
Issue enforceable OSHA health and safety standards for covid-19 so giant companies don’t escape accountability for workplace conditions that expose workers to serious harm and even death.
Raise the minimum wage for all federal contractors to $15 an hour.
—> RELATED: Want to know how problematic Trump’s refusal to concede—thus delaying the transition—could be?
The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000. … The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.
—> The Brief: 4 Stories to Read Today
Federal unemployment assistance will expire at year’s end if Congress doesn’t get on the ball. “Two critical unemployment programs are set to expire at the end of the year, potentially leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to eviction and hunger and threatening to short-circuit an economic recovery that has already lost momentum. As many as 13 million people are receiving payments under the programs, which Congress created last spring to expand and extend the regular unemployment system during the coronavirus pandemic.”
The DOJ says former labor secretary Alex Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in Epstein’s plea deal. “The Justice Department’s internal disciplinary arm concluded that then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta exhibited ‘poor judgment’ in signing off on a generous deal for politically connected millionaire Jeffrey Epstein to resolve allegations he molested dozens of young girls but did not commit ‘professional misconduct,’ a mild conclusion that disappointed those who say Epstein abused them and escaped justice.”
Republicans are pressuring state officials not to certify Biden’s wins. “Pressure mounted on state and local officials in battleground states to accept claims of ballot-counting irregularities and voter fraud in the election despite a lack of evidence, as Republicans sought new ways to block certification of Joe Biden’s clear victory in the presidential race. In Michigan, Republican lawyers lobbied the Wayne County canvassing board to consider evidence of alleged improprieties before certifying the vote. In Pennsylvania, GOP lawmakers were the target of social media campaigns demanding the appointment of electors who favor President Trump.”
The GOP’s coup flirtation is part of a longer dalliance with authoritarianism. “Taking a cue from President Trump, several leading Republican lawmakers and officials have refused to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential contest and indulge Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud. … It’s the latest sign of the party’s lurch away from democratic ideals and practices, a shift that predates Trump but one that has accelerated precipitously since. Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the Nov. 3 election, it’s possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to such principles as the commitment to free and fair elections with multiple parties, the respectful treatment of political opponents, and the avoidance of violent rhetoric.”
—> Et Cetera
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hired an Uber-driving, COVID-conspiracy-theorist sports blogger from Ohio to be part of his data team.
A California Trump supporter took out a restraining order against his neighbors for celebrating Biden’s win.
The Electoral College was more anti-democratic in 2020 than in 2016.
Thanks for reading, everyone. Have a good weekend.