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[dr-archeville]

In North Carolina, We’d Rather Not Talk About Racial Disparities. That’s Why They Persist.

Systemic racism marks every component of economic, social, and political life in North Carolina.

There’s been much in the news lately about the stunning racial disparities experienced in North Carolina as a result of the horrifying coronavirus.  African American Tar Heels have seen dramatically disproportionate rates of exposure, severe illness, death, access to health care, unemployment, job and family benefits, allowances to work at home, food insecurity, income, wealth, and misery.

The discordant numbers chill.  But they don’t surprise.

Racial disparity marks every component of economic, social, and political life in North Carolina.  Twice as many Blacks live in poverty as whites do.  Almost three times as many Black kids are poor.  The disparity is even higher for children under five.  Historically (even before the virus), twice as many African Americans here are unemployed, much higher percentages are uninsured, and three times as many families report negative net worth.

Black families possess, on average, an astonishing 8 percent of the wealth held by white families.  Black kids attend, very disproportionately, North Carolina’s highest-poverty schools.  Nearly 60 percent of the state’s prison inmates are Black, though African Americans make up only 22 percent of the population.  An unending cascade of irrefutable empirical studies also demonstrates massive and unexplainable racial disparities in policing, adjudication, employment, housing, and health care.

Poverty, race, and marginalization are constant and pervasive companions in the Tar Heel State.  Ever has it been so, from our first day of existence until this morning.

Without doubt, unless the term is to be drained of all meaning, North Carolina today experiences an intense, debilitating, and systemic (“of, or relating to, the entire body of an organism”) regime of racial subordination.  No thoughtful and fair-minded person familiar with our past undertakings and present circumstance could think we’re done with the challenges of equality, justice, and meaningful integration.

But we don’t talk much about this gaping and aspiration-negating chasm.  Not in our politics, in our public discourse, in our Rotary Clubs and chambers of commerce, on our campuses or in our pulpits.  I’m guessing if the racial roles were somehow reversed and white folks were disproportionately lodged at the bottom of our social and economic markers, we would regard it as a state emergency of the highest order.  Special sessions of the legislature would be triggered with dispatch.

As it is, colossal disparities between the conditions, circumstance, opportunity, and life chances of Blacks and whites in North Carolina are accepted as natural, expected, and unworrisome — like daybreak in the eastern sky.

This silence, in the face of such wrenching and historic discrimination, is surely a principal reason for the powerful demonstrations sweeping North Carolina and the nation in the wake of the brutal police-inflicted murder of George Floyd.

There is unsurpassed outrage over the cold, ruthlessly administered killing, of course.  Killing after barbarous killing.

But demonstrators also speak passionately of the world they see around them — the hardship, the cruelty, the denials of dignity and opportunity that torment their communities.  Protesters in the streets are, in effect, crying out, “Our leaders may find this tolerable, but we reject and despise such a hypocritical vision of life — we’re not helpless, and we will confront you at every turn.”

Still, the exception, as they say, demonstrates the rule.

Here’s something we also don’t discuss much, somewhere the disparity is even starker: The Republican Party has controlled both houses of the General Assembly since 2011.  It has often done so through very large majorities.  From 2011 until January 2019, Republicans enjoyed veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers.  Those margins were pared in the 2018 elections, but they remain large — 10 seats in the House and eight in the smaller Senate.

More alarming, all Republican legislators, in both chambers, are white.

As the surprisingly candid Republican Representative Holly Grange of Wilmington put it in 2019: “On my side, there’s not a lot of diversity; it’s a middle-age white man’s club.”

In 2020, there are 26 African American representatives in the state House.  There are 10 Black senators.  One Native American and two Indian Americans serve in the General Assembly.  No people of Latinx descent do.

The overall numbers, scant as they are, still mislead.  In the House, the 26 African Americans and one Native American are all Democrats.  All 65 Republicans are white.  In the Senate, the 10 African Americans and two Indian Americans are Democrats.  Every Republican (29) is white.  (Similar Republican tallies appeared in the 2011–12, 2013–14, 2015–16, and 2017–18 sessions.)  So when the majority caucuses in each chamber retire to their private deliberations to craft the laws of North Carolina, only white people attend.

One hundred and fifty years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, North Carolina is effectively ruled by a White People’s Caucus.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Over the last decade, what legacy has this White People’s Caucus delivered?

In a sentence, North Carolina Republican lawmakers have repeatedly, pervasively, intentionally, and invidiously used government power to diminish the electoral, representational, legal, educational, and dignitary rights of African Americans.  The Republican caucuses of the North Carolina General Assembly not only look like white conclaves; they govern like them.

A brief listing will illustrate the point.  (It’s impossible to explore the racialized Republican anti-equality work in detail in a 2,800-word essay.  I have, however, recently written a book on the subject, Indecent Assembly.)

First, to protect their electoral prospects, Republicans immediately redrew their own districts, as the federal courts later ruled, to deliver one of the “largest racial gerrymanders ever confronted by an [American] court.”  It represented a “widespread, serious, longstanding constitutional violation” — denying an ample percentage of North Carolinians “a constitutionally adequate voice in the state legislature.”  The racial violation was so pronounced, the court said, it defeated the legislature’s legitimacy in subsequent sessions, violating the foundational notion of “popular sovereignty.”  (I’ve been reading constitutional decisions for almost 45 years.  I’ve rarely seen such strong words of condemnation by a court.)

They didn’t stop there.  In 2013, they passed an array of voting restrictions, including a voter identification requirement aimed at limiting African American access to the ballot.  The provision ended same-day voter registration, shortened the early voting period, ended out-of-precinct voting, and restricted various early-registration practices.  Another federal court later concluded that Republican leaders had studied every mechanism that elevated Black turnout and then, with “almost surgical precision,” eliminated or restricted each practice.  The lawmakers’ talk about ballot integrity, the court said, was a lie.  The restrictions were about race, not fairness.  It was old-fashioned Jim Crow work.  The judges noted that “neither this legislature, nor, as far as we can tell, any other legislature in the country has ever done so much, so fast, to restrict access to the franchise.”

Republican lawmakers were again called on the carpet in 2015 for trying to crush the representational and voting rights of Black candidates and voters.  Unhappy with the outcome of Greensboro City Council elections, which produced a Democratic majority and four African American council members, the General Assembly used a “truncated process,” pushed by Republican Senator Trudy Wade, to simply overturn the unseemly results by creating new districts double-bunking incumbents.  Wade claimed legislative immunity in the ensuing lawsuit to avoid having to explain, or answer for, her discriminatory motives.   Judge Catherine Eagles saw through the ruse and held this to be yet another move by the General Assembly to disenfranchise Black Tar Heels.

The White People’s Caucus hasn’t limited its efforts to merely suppressing Black voter rights.  After several Black defendants, having received death sentences in their criminal trials, proved that their capital sentence had “been sought or obtained on the basis of race,” in violation of North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, the General Assembly simply repealed the statute.  Rather than opting to fix the discriminatory practices pled and proven, lawmakers shot the messenger.  They said, in effect, if prosecutors are seeking death sentences on racial grounds, we prefer not to know.  In North Carolina, that’s what we mean by “racial justice.”

The all-white Republican lawmakers also repaired to their closed meetings to significantly expand school charter and voucher programs in ways that would lead, as they did, to greater racial segregation in the schools.  Unlike the rest of the country, they responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by making it harder to obtain police-camera video.  And, famously, Republican lawmakers passed a new statute making it illegal for local authorities or state agencies to remove Confederate war memorials.

Governor Cooper tried to convince them to change course, saying, “We cannot continue to glorify a war against the United States of America fought in the defense of slavery.”

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Tommy Tucker, responded by noting that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery: “It was caused by the North and their tariffs over Southern goods.”

It’s almost hard to believe they struggle to win Black votes.

You would think that an all-white Republican governing majority in the statehouse, regularly and demonstrably passing statutes to burden, handicap, and harass Black citizens, would be an intense and heatedly contested focus of our political and social lives.  After all, this is not Mississippi or Alabama.  It’s North Carolina.

But many Tar Heels, maybe most, seem to think little or nothing of it.  As if someone here had quietly constructed a bridge to the 1950s.  

And this “hear no evil, see no evil” approach apparently includes an odd “speak no evil” component as well.  Not only is the heavily racialized agenda of the Republican General Assembly not to be witnessed or heard, but in a twisting of the aphorism, it is also not to be mentioned by critics of the crusade against people of color.  Somehow it is thought to be too rude or uncivil to characterize a legislative program as race-based.  That implies, the theory seems to go, that the folks carrying out the schemes to use state power to burden and handicap racial minorities are vile and reprehensible characters.  Even if their work is race-based, the label still shouldn’t be mentioned.  It’s too barbaric, too unseemly.  

It is the Voldemort of modern North Carolina politics.

I have at least a little experience on this front.  I speak across North Carolina a good deal and write regularly for three of its major newspapers.  For some years now, I’ve been sufficiently discourteous to mention, out loud and in print, the racial makeup of the Republican House and Senate caucuses as I described the elements of their potently racialized agenda.  I’m also a law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.  This has led more than one campus administrator to suggest to me that pointing out the all-white status of the Republican caucus infuriates state lawmakers — it is overtly playing of the race card — and it will lead, or has led, to retaliation.

It is vulgar to mention that our Republican lawmakers constitute a White People’s Caucus.

Apparently, it’s not vulgar to be a White People’s Caucus.

It’s just nasty to name it.

Governor Pat McCrory signed, as a first priority of his administration, a massive voter suppression law — later found, as I said earlier, to be directed specifically African Americans.  Election law scholars called it the most oppressive in the nation, and the attorney general of the United States sued North Carolina, saying the voter ID requirement was designed to do the same job as poll taxes had in the Jim Crow South: diminish the Black vote.  I wrote that McCrory might be a backslapping glad-hander, but he was also “a 21st-century successor to Maddox, Wallace, and Faubus.”

A couple of days later, the leaders of the Pope Center and Civitas Institute published a joint article saying I’d launched such a “nasty and unhinged attack … so detached from reality [that] it’s hard to imagine a more vicious and false comparison for McCrory.”  University administrators issued warnings that I might be fired.  Civitas filed a series of public records requests demanding my correspondence, calendar entries, phone logs, text messages, and emails by the thousands.  When I rebuffed legislators’ demands that I stop publishing in The News & Observer, the UNC Board of Governors closed the Poverty Center I ran.  Some months later, lawmakers cut the budget of the law school where I work by a half-million dollars by enacting what Democrats labeled “the Gene Nichol transfer amendment.”

When I wrote a subsequent newspaper article, in April 2019, outlining a long list of the General Assembly’s race-based constitutional violations and characterized the efforts as reflective of an agenda of “muscular racism,” Senator Vicki Sawyer published a response indicating that, “as a lifelong Republican and public servant,” she was “horrified to read Gene Nichol’s race-baiting diatribe.”  I had purportedly carried out “a crusade to sully the reputations of decent people … with horrible labels.”

A few months earlier, in September 2018, I had participated in a debate sponsored by the N&O with conservative columnist J. Peder Zane, whom I like and enjoy reading.  Zane made an analogous and more thoughtful point.  “When you say Republicans are being racist,” he said, it is “like the worst thing that can be said about somebody, the worst name someone can be called, at least in modern culture.”  You are saying “they are absolutely repugnant people, repugnant human beings.”

I suggested my goal was not to call names but to focus on what lawmakers do: “I say we’ve had this array of legislative enactments from Republicans in the statehouse with the decided purpose of making life more difficult and challenging for African Americans, and that is unacceptable.”  And it’s not just me saying that, I added, it’s “court after court, state and federal.”

Zane responded: “If you’re saying they intentionally used the power of state government to harm Black people, because they’re Black, you’re saying they’re racist.”

Therein, perhaps, lies the rub.  It’s not enough, apparently, to point out that our lawmakers purposefully harm Black Tar Heels.  You have to show they do it with the darkest of hearts.  For me, I don’t care much about their hearts one way or the other.

The disagreement modestly mirrors a point now made occasionally by the U.S. Supreme Court.  As Justice Samuel Alito explained in his dissent in the 2017 case Cooper v. Harris: “Courts are obliged to exercise extraordinary caution in adjudicating claims that a state has drawn districts on the basis of race.  The evidentiary burden is demanding.  When a federal court says that race was a legislature’s predominant purpose in drawing a district, it accuses the legislature of offensive and demeaning conduct.  That is a grave accusation to level against a state.”

So, the theory goes, stay away from race.  Don’t name it.

If you can show that lawmakers are using racial determinations to burden their adversaries, don’t mention the R-word.  Keep mum because saying they are using the power of government to constrain or wound Black Tar Heels sounds like you’re saying they are racist.  Civility demands that it goes unmentioned.  It sounds too grizzly.  It says something too dark.

After all, our lawmakers aren’t going around in white-robed lynching parties.  Black Tar Heels who try to vote aren’t being shot outside the polls.  It’s not Wilmington in 1898.  We’ve come far in North Carolina.  Saying our lawmakers are carrying out a racialized agenda in the statehouse in 2020, with our apparent consent, would be announcing something about ourselves, collectively, that we couldn’t bear.  It’s best to leave such odious landscapes unexplored.

But here’s what that means in North Carolina: All-white caucuses repair to closed-door meetings to decide our laws.  No persons of color are present to object.  The all-white assemblies routinely propose laws that disadvantage and are strongly opposed by African Americans and other racial minorities, making it tougher for them to vote, to get effective representation, to hold on to elections already won, to get access to the courts, to be free from a racially imposed sanctions, to enjoy an equal education, to escape police brutality.

The lawmakers regularly enact statutes that are invalidated by both state and federal courts as clear examples of intentional race discrimination.  They occasionally admit that they legislate to disadvantage Black people, but they claim they do so because the Black people are Democrats, not because they’re Black.

Despite all this, it is quite routine to say this portfolio cannot be characterized as “racialized” or “race-based” or reflective of “racism” — because that is too horrifying to the modern ear.

These wounds best go unmentioned.  Better for Black Tar Heels to suffer than for white folks to feel bad about themselves.

Gene Nichol is the Boyd-Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC-Chapel Hill.  His most recent book is Indecent Assembly: The North Carolina Legislature’s Blueprint for the War Against Democracy and Equality.

Comment on this story at [email protected].

DEAR READERS, WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER.  Support independent local journalism by joining the INDY Press Club today.   Your contributions will keep our fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle, coronavirus be damned.

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[dr-archeville]

While you were sleeping: North Carolina legislators restrict access to public records

In the early hours of Friday morning, NC legislators passed a bill that shrouds death investigation records

RALEIGH-- While North Carolinians were sleeping early Friday [2020-06-26] morning, the General Assembly swiftly passed a bill that would shield death-investigation records from the public.

State officials say the provision merely clarifies current public records law and makes it easier for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to obtain law enforcement investigation records.  But it could have much wider implications.

Senate Bill 168, which was requested by the Department of Health and Human Services and includes technical revisions to DHHS-related laws, passed the House and Senate nearly unanimously with little-to-no discussion.  It now awaits the governor’s signature.

Gov. Roy Cooper’s press office did not respond to an inquiry Friday on whether he would sign the bill.

The move, which was intended to shield death investigations by law enforcement from becoming public record, comes one month after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, killing him.

Under North Carolina state law, deaths that occur in law enforcement custody, prison or jail are among the unnatural or unexpected deaths that must be reported to a county medical examiner.

If the death is under medical examiner jurisdiction, an investigation is launched.  Any related records, including law enforcement investigations, are then passed to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.  When those investigative records, which are exempt from public records law, leave law enforcement hands they become public.

SB 168 would change that.

The bill would mandate death investigation records remain confidential when they reach the medical examiner.

“It’s just really important that the public knows — that everybody has the ability to know — what’s going on in our prisons and our jails just to ensure that everybody is doing the job that they’re supposed to be doing,” said Mary Pollard, executive director of North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services.  “What is the reasoning behind the bill?  What’s the problem they’re trying to solve with this?  Don’t we want to err on the side of transparency for the public and the press?”

The provision also maintains that records considered public remain accessible when passed to the medical examiner.  Death certificates, autopsies and toxicology reports, for example, are currently public under state law.  It’s unknown whether SB 168 could change that.

“I think a key piece of this is it’s really looking at situations where it’s a record that already has a level of confidentiality when it’s with another entity, and to my knowledge law enforcement is the only entity,” said Matt Gross, assistant secretary for government affairs for DHHS.

State officials maintain this language, which was originally included in a 2019 bill, was not meant to shroud death records, but merely clarify that confidential records remain so.  The 2019 bill stalled in the Senate and the language was moved to House Bill 1214 this year, which also stalled, until it was moved to SB 168.

“My understanding is it just streamlines what is confidential,” said Rep. Josh Dobson, a Republican from McDowell County, who was responsible for the language that was passed as part of SB 168.  “It doesn’t change the status of confidentiality.”

Change sparked by law enforcement  

North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner Michelle Aurelius said the provision will help make law enforcement feel more comfortable giving her office information.

“This isn’t anything new,” Aurelius said.  “The protection isn’t different, isn’t changed, but it’s a fail-safe protection that reassures our partners that once they provide us with information and records that they continue to be protected when they’re in our custody.”

Because of the current loophole, Aurelius said, law enforcement officials have been more hesitant to share the death records needed to determine cause of death with medical examiners.  Officials also said the reluctance to share records slows down the process.

“There have been barriers in the middle of the night to get information on the front lines for those who are working to try to determine cause and manner of death and medical examiner jurisdiction,” Aurelius said.

Aurelius could not cite one specific case in which her office was unable to obtain a record but, when pressed, Aurelius said this happens around 10 times a year.  Her office investigates thousands of deaths every year, and medical examiners have the power to subpoena law enforcement agencies for records.

“This is bad public policy for the public and the press to not get this kind of information,” said Forsyth County attorney Michael Grace.

Grace’s law firm represents the estate of John Elliott Neville, 57, who died in December three days after being admitted to the Forsyth County jail.  Law enforcement officials said he had a medical emergency within the jail and died at a hospital.

The State Bureau of Investigation has finished an investigation, The News & Observer reported, but officials are so far withholding most information about the details of Neville’s death.

Pollard, with NC Prisoner Legal Services, cited a case she worked on where an inmate died in state custody as another example of a potential obstacle the new law could raise in accessing information about in-custody deaths.

“Michael Kerr who died at Alexander Correctional in 2014, he died of thirst.  He’d been shackled in his cell for five days,” Pollard said.  “If the medical examiner’s records had been shielded from public view in that case, would it really have been investigated and come to light the way it needed to?”

This story was jointly reported and edited by Kate Martin, of Carolina Public Press; Lucille Sherman and Jordan Schrader, of The News & Observer; and Nick Ochsner, of WBTV.

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[dr-archeville]

The Good, the Bad & the Awful

ICE can't hold kids, Raleigh bars buck Covid regulations, Art Pope's dream comes true.

The Good: Immigration

On Friday [2020-06-26], a California federal judge ordered that all undocumented children in ICE custody for more than 20 days must be released from the family detention centers and shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.  There are over 100 children currently in the ICE detention centers and another 500 in the ORR's shelters.  These often close-quartered confinements that give Covid-19 a chance to thrive — especially since there hasn’t been comprehensive testing in these centers.  U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee wrote in her decision that the ICE facilities were “on fire” and that "there is no more time for half measures."  The children must be released by July 17.  While there’s still no word on whether adult family members will be released with their children, the measure is still a step in the right direction.

The Bad: Glenwood South Bars

We know, we know — everyone is getting antsy in quarantine, especially with phase 2 still in effect for another three weeks.  For some bars, this meant throwing caution to the wind.  On Friday night, two Raleigh bars — Cornerstone Tavern and Alchemy — on Glenwood South opened in defiance of a judicial order requiring bars to stay closed amid the pandemic, as well as a veto from Governor Cooper on a GOP-backed legislative attempt to reopen them.  Both bars were said to be operating as “private clubs” according to the NC Bar and Tavern Association and required masks inside the establishments, but videos on social media have shown that Raleigh bar-hoppers aren’t the best at following mask mandates and social distancing guidelines.

The Awful: The General Assembly

Last Friday was a busy one for the North Carolina General Assembly, and several of their decisions may haunt the state for years to come.  At 3:00 a.m. Friday morning, the state legislature passed a bill that keeps death-investigation records from falling under the Freedom of Information Act.  They say the idea is to make it easier for the state medical examiner to obtain records of unexpected deaths, including deaths while in custody or prison.  But in effect, it means the records will be kept from the press and families before they reach the medical examiner’s office.

If you thought that was disheartening, in a different kind of power play the GA approved Art Pope — a multimillionaire Republican power broker and Koch brothers associate — as the newest member of the UNC System Board of Governors.  While a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, he sued a Black Student Movement leader for interrupting KKK leader David Duke during a campus visit.

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[dr-archeville]

Service Workers Tell the NCGA They Need Help

“Workers on the front lines of the pandemic need more than gratitude."

Service workers demanded that state lawmakers better protect them from COVID-19 during a virtual lobbying event on Wednesday.

The workers said they risk their safety in low-paying jobs deemed essential by Governor Cooper’s stay-at-home order.

Safety topped their list of concerns.

“McDonald’s finally gave us masks after we spoke up about it,” said Rita Blalock, who works in Raleigh.  “But the masks they gave us are so thin I can blow right through it — they aren’t really protecting us from anything.  If McDonald’s won’t give us proper personal protective equipment, we need our elected officials to step in and help us.”

The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected people of color, many employed in places like fast foods, convenience stores, grocery stores, and big-box outlets like Walmart.  In North Carolina, African Americans account for about 22 percent of the population and 35 percent of COVID-19 deaths, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services.

The pandemic has revealed racial fault lines across the country, scholars from Duke and N.C. Central said earlier this month, including in Durham and the Triangle.

On Wednesday, the workers highlighted their long-running struggles for a living wage and affordable health care.  They also pointed out that they don't have the luxury of working from home and must now often interact with the public without proper protective equipment.  If they get sick, many don’t have access to reliable health care.

“People of all races and backgrounds are hurting,” said Sheree Allen a Durham childcare worker.  “We are demanding that the government track the impact of COVID-19 by race and come up with interventions to make sure resources are directed to highly impacted, under-served communities.”

The Digital Day of Action took place while members of Congress consider a fourth COVID-19 relief package and the General Assembly works on its own.

The big takeaway?  Invest in public services on behalf of workers, not corporations.

The workers want paid sick leave no matter where they work, the expansion of health care coverage for the uninsured, personal protective equipment, and access to COVID-19 relief benefits regardless of race or immigration status.

They were joined by elected officials, including Durham City Council member Jillian Johnson and former council member Vernetta Alston, who was recently appointed to the state House of Representatives.

“Workers on the front lines of the pandemic need more than gratitude,” Johnson said.  “They need comprehensive health care, paid sick leave, personal protective equipment, and hazard pay.  Their labor has always been essential, and worker health is public health.”

Alston told the workers that the state “cannot withstand this crisis and move forward without you.”

“Your rights, your safety, and your livelihoods deserve strong action,” Alston added.

Notably absent were U.S. senators Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, whom Fayetteville Burger King employee Wanda Coker called out for “ignoring the voices of essential workers at this critical moment.”

Simply thanking service workers isn't enough, said MaryBe McMillan, president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO.  They need paid sick leave, expanded health care, and protective equipment to ensure their safety.

“And we need to pay them more by providing hazard pay and raising the minimum wage so that all workers earn enough to provide their families with the essentials they work so hard to provide for the rest of us," McMillan said.

Contact staff writer Thomasi McDonald at [email protected].

DEAR READERS, WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW MORE THAN EVER. Support independent local journalism by joining the INDY Press Club today. Your contributions will keep our fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle, coronavirus be damned.

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[dr-archeville]

It’s Wednesday, April 29.  Thanks for joining us.  

Our best guess on the font-size issue: We think things go warbly when I write too much.  So I’ll try (and probably fail, sorry) to be more succinct from now on.

Daily reminders: Best of the Triangle voting is underway.  Votes for your favorites here. Please share this newsletter with your friends and ask them to join us.  

PRIMER is made possible by the INDY Press Club, which is 🎉🎉🎉 celebrating its first birthday next week!  If I get a bit used-car-salesman-y in the next 10 days, I apologize.  But I have a goal, and I want to hit it: Between now and next Friday, we want to raise $10,000 to end the Press Club’s first year strong.  But we also have lots of cool stuff to give out:

Lots of wonderful companies have offered killer goodies for us to give to Press Club members, which we’re going to do between Wednesday, April 29, and Friday, May 8.  Some we’ll raffle among our members, while larger packages will go to our daily champions: whichever contributor puts us over $1,000 for the day.

Even better: We’ve made some amazing limited-edition t-shirts for the occasion.  Contribute $20 a month or $100 or more, and it’s yours (while supplies last).  Contribute $12 a month or $30 or more, and you can get one of the few original INDY Press Club tees we have left.

Existing members: Buy yours with a $20 contribution; send an email to Susan Harper with your address and shirt size.  Also, we still have the original Press Club tees waiting for you; just tell Susan you want one, and we’ll send it.

—Jeffrey C. Billman, INDY editor. Follow me on Twitter @jeffreybillman.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY [2020-04-29]

Above the Fold

→   WHAT WOULD LIFE WITHOUT A LOCKDOWN LOOK LIKE?

Yesterday, a few hundred of the ReOpenNC crew folks did their weekly plea for media attention, and four of them, including leader Ashley Smith, got arrested for violating police instructions.  As the cops were driving Smith away, her husband yelled out, “This is how Nazi Germany started.”  I could spend an hour detailing how, to the degree there’s any sort of historical parallel here (not really), his side might not be the good guys, but what’s the point?  They’re already boring.  I’m more interested in this:

What would North Carolina look like right now if they’d gotten their way?

Imagine this: no stay-at-home orders; mostly open schools; open restaurants and bars; open retail shops and hair salons; work remotely if possible, but it’s not mandatory; social distancing is encouraged and residents are told to take “personal responsibility.”

You are imagining Sweden.  And according to a meme that’s made its way through conservative Facebook circles, Sweden is no worse off than its locked-down Nordic neighbors Finland and Norway.

The New York Times: “Sweden’s death rate of 22 per 100,000 people is the same as that of Ireland, which has earned accolades for its handling of the pandemic, and far better than in Britain or France.”

Conveniently, Sweden also has about the same population as North Carolina: 10.3 million to our 10.5 million.  Granted, they’re entirely different cultures, and North Carolina is about three times as densely populated as Sweden — which, in theory, would make us more prone to a virus that loves closely grouped people — but let’s dig in anyway.

THE STATS: Here’s a basic comparison of North Carolina, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, as of 10:00 p.m. last night.  

North Carolina: Pop., 10.5 million; Cases: 9,739; Deaths, 361; Deaths/1M ppl, 36.

Sweden: Pop., 10.3 million; Cases, 19,621; Deaths, 2,355; Deaths/1M ppl, 233.

Finland: Pop, 5.5 million; Cases, 4,740; Deaths, 199; Deaths/1M ppl, 36.

Norway: Pop, 5.4 million; Cases, 7,660; Deaths, 206; Deaths/1M ppl, 38.

WHAT HAPPENED: Swedish officials decided that a lockdown was pointless, so they told citizens to go about their lives with only minimal disruptions (no major sporting events) while encouraging them to practice social distancing.  Basically, what ReOpen wants to do here.

The experience: “As other nations in Europe begin to consider reopening their economies, Sweden’s experience would seem to argue for less caution, not more,” the NYT fawns.

On the other hand: “On March 28, a petition signed by 2,000 Swedish researchers, including Carl-Henrik Heldin, chairman of the Nobel Foundation, called for the nation's government to ‘immediately take steps to comply with the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommendations.’”

The results: The Swedish Public Health Agency Model says that a quarter of the entire country will be infected by Friday.  About 86 percent of the country’s deaths have been from people over the age of 70, the result of poor planning.

The projections: The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that by August, 15,625 Swedes will die of COVID-19.  For comparison, the IHME projects that 433 Fins and 559 Danes will die; it projects that only 375 North Carolinians will, with deaths ending in a week and a half.

ARE WE REALLY PAST OUR PEAK? The Durham-Chapel Hill MSA has the highest daily growth rate of deaths in the nation, with COVID-19 deaths doubling every 1.9 days, so maybe don’t spike the football just yet.

State & Local

→   REOPENING WATCH.

Last week, Governor Cooper and DHHS Secretary Mandy Cohen identified seven thresholds for lifting the stay-at-home order on May 8. Let’s see how we’re doing.

1.  A downward trajectory of COVID-like illnesses.

This report is updated weekly.  For the week ending on April 18, it found that:

Fewer people than normal went to the ED.

ED visits for COVID-like illnesses were higher than normal for this time of year but decreased across the state.

The percentage of people seen in the ED with COVID-like illnesses who stayed in the hospital went up, suggesting those with milder illnesses got help elsewhere or didn’t seek care.

The number of people admitted to hospitals in the Public Health Epidemiologist network for COVID-19 went up.  However, the percentage of people admitted to the ICU went down.

Let’s call this a maybe.

2.  A downward trajectory in confirmed cases over 14 days.

We’re gonna say no.

3.  A 14-day downward trajectory in positive-test percentage.

Maybe.

4.  A 14-day downward trajectory in current hospitalizations.

Nope.

5.  The capacity to test 5,000–7,000 people a day.

That doesn’t happen often.  However, Cooper said yesterday that in a call with President Trump and other governors on Monday, he was assured that the federal government was going to help.  And Cohen said the state is partnering with hospital systems and the VA to boost its capacity, so we’ll put this down as a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

6.  Whether the state has the capacity to do enough contact tracing.

North Carolina doesn’t right now.  But yesterday, Cooper announced that the state was hiring 250 people to do contact tracing — the vital detective work of finding out who an infected person has been in contact with and quarantining them. Hope springs eternal.

7.  Adequate supplies of PPE for 30 days.

A partial yes here.  But if you know anyone sitting on a stash of N95 masks and gowns, I know a certain governor who would probably be willing to take it off their hands.

Overall prognosis: We’ve got three maybes, two hard nos, one partial yes, and one bit of wishful thinking.  There are 10 days before the stay-at-home order is supposed to be lifted.  Judge for yourself.

→   THE LEGISLATURE’S BACK IN TOWN.

The General Assembly returned for its short session on Tuesday, meeting for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday and hoping to quickly pass a COVID-19 relief bill.  They wore masks and sat far apart from each other.  Members of the public weren’t allowed in; only lawmakers, their staff, and credentialed media could watch, though House sessions are being live-streamed for the first time.

“[Speaker Tim] Moore said at around 1 p.m. that he still had not heard from Berger or other senators about how much they plan to propose spending on the state response.  But he said the proposals from the Republican-led House and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper are already fairly similar, and he expects the same from the Senate once those details do become public.”

“On Tuesday afternoon, senators filed Senate Bill 704, the COVID-19 Recovery Act, co-sponsored by most of the Senate. Berger told reporters Tuesday that he and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Dan Blue worked together to create a system for members of both parties to submit their ideas for consideration.”

Not sure what’s weirder: The optics of the coronavirus session or the sudden outbreak of bipartisanship.  In any event, it won’t last long.  They’ll be here for a few days, maybe a week, then split until later this summer when they have a better sense of the fiscal damage.

→   COOPER WILL LET THE COKE 600 RACE (WITHOUT FANS).

Good news for both of you NASCAR fans reading this: Governor Cooper gave organizers of the Coca-Cola 600 the tentative green light to hold the race at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Memorial Day weekend — unless health conditions deteriorate.  But only without fans.  House Speaker Tim Moore released a statement thanking Cooper for allowing the race to proceed as a way to start bringing back normalcy to North Carolina.

Nothing says normal like cars racing in front of no one.

→   TRIANGLE HOSPITALS RESUME NON-URGENT SURGERIES. Hospitals have begun rescheduling patients for previously canceled non-urgent surgeries and procedures, a positive sign for the state’s fight against coronavirus. Many of these procedures were canceled in early March to clear up hospital beds in preparation for a surge that never materialized. That’s great news. As we mentioned yesterday, in the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. saw an increase in excess deaths that may have been partially due to people not getting care for treatable, non-COVID medical issues. →  WEATHER:  🌤🌤🌤 (high of 79)

Nation & World

→   U.S. EXCEEDS 1 MILLION CORONAVIRUS CASES.

We’ve seen almost one-third of all the world’s COVID-19 cases.  We’ve also had at least 57,000 deaths since February — probably a conservative estimate — and about the same number of fatalities in two months that we lost in Vietnam in two decades.

→   SURPRISE! THE CORPORATE BAILOUT HAS NO RULES.

To help out big corporations hurt by the pandemic, the Federal Reserve set aside $500 billion for loans, with the program to be jointly administered by the Fed and Treasury.  It’s complicated, but basically, the Fed will buy up to $500 billion in bonds issued by these corporations, and the corporations can use the cash to keep themselves afloat, though they’ll have to pay it back with interest.

With other bailouts, there are restrictions on what you can do with the money.  The Paycheck Protection Program requires companies to spend it on payroll and rent.  The program for midsize corporations limits executive pay and blocks companies from issuing dividends, as does the $46 billion bailout for airlines.

Under the initial version of the big corporate bailout, those same rules would have applied.  But then the Fed unilaterally changed them.

“[The initial] version of the program … offered direct loans and bond purchases to companies.  Under the CARES Act, the federal programs offering direct loans must set restrictions on company dividends and CEO pay; those that buy only corporate bonds do not. … But on April 9, the Fed altered the design of the program to exclude direct corporate lending.  The Fed program will still essentially lend money to large companies — by buying their bonds — but the Fed will not be compelled by the CARES Act to ensure that companies abide by the divided and CEO pay rules.”

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says everything will be fine.  “Mnuchin also said many companies are ceasing stock buybacks and are likely to use the additional capital to retain workers.  ‘A lot of companies have stopped their share buybacks and slashed their dividends, because they need that capital to invest in their business.  Even though these restrictions don’t necessarily apply, that’s already happening.’”

→   APPEALS COURT ISN’T SO SURE TRUMP IS A MONARCH.

Over the last year, House Democrats have sought to bring the White House to court over Trump’s border wall and its efforts to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn.  Both times, the administration has argued that Congress can’t ever use the courts to enforce its spending or judicial powers, a far-reaching and potentially dangerous interpretation of executive authority that would remove checks on the president’s ability to do whatever he wants and enable him to effectively shut down Congress’s ability to investigate the administration.

With McGahn, Trump has argued that he has “absolute immunity” from a congressional subpoena.  The House Judiciary Committee wants to use his testimony to explore whether Trump committed impeachable offenses related to the Mueller investigation.  (Spoiler: He did!)

With the wall, Trump has simply ignored Congress and diverted other funds to his pet project.

So far, the courts have declined to get involved.  But now, the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit has the case.  Its judges are skeptical.

During a three-hour teleconference argument, they expressed concern that cutting legislators off from the court system would throw off the U.S.’s already perilous system of oversight.

“In a series of hypothetical questions, Judge Merrick B. Garland asked whether the Justice Department’s view meant that presidents were free to fund the Affordable Care Act or send stimulus checks to all Americans without congressional approval.  ‘If the appropriations power can never be checked in a situation where the government just gives money away either for health care or for maintenance, that’s a significant power that the president has that can’t be checked by Congress,’ Garland said.”

RELATED: Bill Barr is coming for coronavirus restrictions.  On Monday, Trump’s lackey AG instructed all 93 U.S. attorneys to “be on the lookout for state and local directives” that he believes interfere with personal rights in order to contain the virus.

Barr didn’t specify where he would draw the line.  He just said this: “If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID-19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court.”

Noteworthy: The two guys heading up this project are one of Ken Starr’s impeachment lieutenants and a U.S. attorney who oversees Detroit.  Michigan, of course, has one of the strictest — and most hotly disputed — social distancing policies in the country.

→   DON’T GET BETWEEN TRUMP AND HIS BURNT STEAK.

The president loves himself a nice, overcooked chunk of cow flesh, preferably with ketchup, which is gross, but what would you expect?  On Tuesday, he signed an executive order (of dubious legality) forcing meat-processing plants to stay open even as plant workers die from COVID-19, invoking the Defense Production Act and arguing that he’s trying to prevent food shortages.

Behind the scenes: “Industry analysts say pork and beef processing has fallen 25 percent because of these outbreaks.  Major meat companies, including Tyson Foods, Smithfield Foods and JBS USA, have repeatedly touted their essential role in the nation’s food supply chain, often resisting calls from government officials and labor advocates to close their facilities due to outbreaks.”

“The move came just days after Tyson Foods Inc., the biggest U.S. meat processor, ran paid ads in national newspapers stating that the food supply chain was ‘broken.’ … A handful of companies account for the majority of the nation’s meat, and as workers fell sick in March, plants initially continued to run.   But pressure from local health officials and unions led to voluntary closures.”

Under the order, the government will provide masks to workers, but it will also eliminate other safety measures, including CDC guidance requiring the plants to keep workstations six feet apart and ensuring that employees aren’t facing each other.  It undercuts local health officials’ authority, as well, and limits the meat-processing companies’ liability.

→   CANCER PATIENTS ARE 3 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF COVID-19.

Earlier this week, I discussed some of the lingering questions about why some people get sick from COVID-19 while others don’t.  Here’s another aspect of that story: A study conducted with 14 hospitals in China found that certain cancer patients are three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than patients without cancer.  Part of this stems from the fact that cancer depresses the immune system; it’s also worth noting that cancer patients are often older and are more likely to develop serious health complications.  The actual risk differs based on factors like age, the kind of cancer, and ongoing treatments, and researchers found that patients with blood or lung malignancies or tumors throughout the body are at particularly high risk.

Primer is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club.  Join today and support independent local journalism. If you’d like to advertise your business to Primer’s 30,000 subscribers, please contact me at [email protected] or John Hurld at [email protected]. If you have suggestions for improving this newsletter, please contact me at [email protected].

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[dr-archeville]

Four Years After HB 2, Gray Ellis Wants to Become the First Transgender Man Elected to a State Legislature

“There’s still only 841 LGBTQ elected officials, meaning that we’re just 0.1 percent of those in elected office.”

On a warm summer day in 1977, a group of neighborhood kids spilled into the kitchen of the Ellis family home in Whiteville, a small town in rural Columbus County, awaiting popsicles.

“Line up.  Girls first,” Gray’s mother called out.

The four-year-old walked to the back of the line.

His mom caught Gray’s attention.  “Girls first,” she repeated.

“I heard you.”

Gray didn’t have the vocabulary to describe how he felt.  He wouldn’t know the word transgender until he was much older.  He only knew that he didn’t feel like a girl.

“I knew I identified as male,” he says.  “But what that meant, I didn’t know.  And I thought I was the only person in the world like me.”

His grandfather preached at the town’s Pentecostal church, and his father was the choir director.  But Ellis stresses that the town embraced him.  He never told his grandfather — or anyone — about his gender identity, but his grandfather referred to him with masculine pronouns and, as he neared death, offered him one of his prized suits.

It was, he says, one of his first gender-affirming experiences.

“I really don’t know whether he just knew and accepted it,” Ellis says.  “But it was never vocalized.”

Finding people like him, however, meant leaving Whiteville.  The day he graduated high school, he packed all of his belongings into a white convertible Mustang and drove to the Triangle to attend N.C. Central, his first step toward law school.

Three decades later, Ellis, now 47, is a family lawyer, whose firm has locations in Pittsboro and Durham, where he lives with his son and partner.  He transitioned at age 39.  He’s been living as an openly transgender man for almost a decade.

He says Durham welcomed him.

“I’ve had shockingly little backlash,” Ellis says.  “People just accepted me for who I was.  Part of that is luck, and part of that was just who I was as a person.  I’ve never been polarizing, despite being a trans person.  I cross bridges with a lot of people.”

Now he’s seeking to become the first transgender person elected not only to the General Assembly, but to any state legislature in the country.  Ellis is running against Natalie Murdock and Pierce Freelon in the Democratic primary for the District 20 state Senate seat, until recently held by Floyd McKissick Jr.  He’s already the first transgender man to run for any elected office in North Carolina.

This is part of a trend.  As stigmas surrounding sexual and gender identities recede, more and more LGBTQ people — including, notably, former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is among the top tier of Democratic presidential hopefuls after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests — are seeking public office.  All of this is happening less than five years after the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, and four years after Republicans in the General Assembly targeted transgender people with HB 2.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the last two years,” says Elliot Imse, communications director for the Victory Fund, a political action committee that helps elect LGBTQ people.  “There’s still only 841 [LGBTQ] elected officials, meaning that we’re just 0.1 percent of those in elected office.”

In 2018, Danica Roem was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, becoming the country’s first openly transgender woman — and transgender person — to take office.  Since then, the Victory Fund says 20 more transgender women and five transgender men have won elections, too.

“Places that are more welcoming to LGBTQ people have more LGBTQ people in office,” Imse says.  “When LGBTQ people are in the halls of power, we influence the debate, we humanize LGBTQ lives for legislative colleagues, and that leads to more inclusive legislation.”

Advocates hope that could be the case in North Carolina, as well.

In addition to making it a crime for transgender people to use public facilities that conform with their gender identity, HB 2 — the so-called bathroom bill — also prohibited local governments from enacting nondiscrimination ordinances that protected LGBTQ people.  While the law was repealed amid a furious backlash in 2017, its replacement — HB 142 — kept that prohibition through the end of this year.

Ellis is one of three transgender people who will appear on ballots in the area next month.  Angela Bridgman is running for the state Senate, as well, in District 18 in Wake County.  Wendy May is making a second bid for Johnston County commissioner.  Her first effort in 2016 made her the first transgender person to seek office in North Carolina.

“I’ve faced a lot of hate,” says May, who also identifies as nonbinary.  “In reality, I’m not running because I’m transgender or nonbinary.  I’m running because I’m an advocate.”

Bridgman — the first transgender woman to run for the General Assembly — says the positive response she got from her community after HB 2 passed inspired her to run.  

“A whole bunch of people became my ally,” Bridgman says.  “People stood up for me.  It really shook me out of my complacency.”

Like Bridgman and May, Ellis says he’s not running simply as the transgender candidate.  He’s focused on progressive issues like expanding Medicaid and improving education.  But being a transgender candidate has brought national attention, including an endorsement from the Victory Fund and a profile in The Advocate.

Still, Ellis is likely an underdog in a marquee contest.  

Murdock has the backing of the influential Durham People’s Alliance PAC, while Freelon — the son of a world-famous architect and a Grammy-nominated jazz singer, not to mention a former mayoral candidate and well-regarded musician in his own right — is supported by Mayor Steve Schewel and other city politicos.

Whatever happens on March 3, Ellis says he’s “super proud” of his campaign.

“I hope that what I’m doing, win or lose, is going to help bring about changes and is going to open up doors where people didn’t even know there was a door to go through,” he says.

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