It’s Wednesday, May 27.
Hey, y’all. I apologize for missing yesterday. I got a wee bit backed up with this week’s issue, and my assistant Cole is off camping or something this week, so I ran out of time. We’ll get back to normal(ish) soon, I promise.
A quick announcement:
Since so many high school and college students missed out on graduation (and other rites of passage) this year, the INDY is going to publish graduation announcements in our June 17 issue. Sign your favorite grad up here. We’ll run their name, photo, school, and a message of up to 20 words for $25. Using camper Cole as our model, it will look something like this:
As always, please share this newsletter with your friends and ask them to join us.
PRIMER is made possible by the INDY Press Club, which is helping us keep fearless, independent local journalism viable in the Triangle. We appreciate your support, and believe me when I tell you that our Press Club is the envy of so many other local newspapers.
—Jeffrey C. Billman, INDY editor. Follow me on Twitter @jeffreybillman.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY [2020-05-27]
Above the Fold
→ WHY IS TRUMP PICKING A FIGHT WITH COOPER?
On Memorial Day — before hitting the links — President Trump awoke and decided to honor America’s fallen by picking a Twitter fight with Governor Cooper over the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled to take place in late August in Charlotte.
“I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August,” Trump tweeted. “Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena. In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space.”
This isn’t the most important thing, but Trump is lying about at least one part of that. He didn’t insist on holding the convention in Charlotte. Charlotte was the only city that bid to host it, and its city council agreed to do host it by just one vote.
The more important thing is that Trump caught everyone, even his own people, by surprise.
“Top Republicans had been working closely with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and other state Democratic officials as recently as Friday to plan the upcoming GOP national convention amid the coronavirus pandemic. Then President Donald Trump threatened to pull the convention from Charlotte. Trump's tweet not only came as a surprise to Republican officials on Monday, but it also was completely at odds with the position that top convention officials expressed during the Friday meeting, CNN has learned.”
Here’s what happened: On Friday, the state told the RNC it needed to submit a plan for the event, which they would use as a baseline for further discussions, the same process the state was using for all other big events. Mark Meadows, the former congressman turned chief of staff, had spoken to Cooper last week about a range of potential options. Everything was going professionally and, by all accounts, amiably. Then Trump, for whatever reason, decided to weigh in.
And now: “The Republican National Committee said in a statement on Monday that it supported the President's demand for the governor to provide assurances that ‘a full in-person convention’ could be held — even as convention officials have said Trump's threat during a series of tweets on Memorial Day caught them off guard.”
NOW WHAT? There is a not-insignificant portion of Charlotte — and probably of North Carolina Democrats, and definitely the population of my couch right now — that would love to see Cooper tell Trump to pound sand. But that is not Roy Cooper’s style.
Cooper wants to always be seen as the reasonable one. And he’s going to say the same sort of thing he’s said about all coronavirus-related matters — that public safety will guide his decisions, not politics. And in the end, barring a second wave or some other unforeseeable, the RNC will go ahead as planned. In the meantime, his team leaked the behind-the-scenes details to CNN and The Washington Post to show that he wasn’t playing hardball, but rather that Trump blew things up out of nowhere.
“We’re talking about something that’s going to happen three months from now, and we don’t know what our situation is going to be. These are the same kind of conversations we’re having with the Carolina Panthers, the Charlotte Hornets … everyone wants to get back in action soon. … But everyone knows we have to take steps to make sure people are protected because this virus is still going to be with us in August.”
Trump’s threats are empty: “On Monday, Charlotte City Council member Ed Driggs, one of the council’s two Republicans, questioned Trump’s authority to pull the convention. Charlotte has contracted with the party’s Committee on Arrangements. Driggs said he doubted that any other city could put together a convention now given the two-year process Charlotte has undertaken, including arranging a venue, hotel space, and related contracts. He said the council has already accepted a $50 million federal security grant for the convention in April.”
State & Local
→ DOJ LETS 3 SENATORS OFF THE HOOK, BUT NOT BURR.
The Department of Justice informed defense attorneys for Senators Dianne Feinstein, James Inhofe, and Kelly Loeffler that it was closing investigations into the stock trades they made just before the coronavirus pandemic shook the market. It did not, however, tell Richard Burr’s lawyers the same.
“Feinstein, Loeffler, and Inhofe all claim the trades were made by their investment advisers without their knowledge. Burr acknowledges he was directly involved in his trades but asserts he was acting on public reports coming from Asia, not the classified briefings he was receiving at the time.”
As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of a key health committee, Burr was regularly receiving private briefings about the coronavirus’s progression. Even as he assured Americans that the Trump administration had everything under control, he offloaded a portfolio of up to $1.7 million just before the market tanked.
→ COOPER’S GOT AN EXECUTIVE ORDER HE CAN’T ENFORCE BY HIMSELF.
This weekend, some 4,000 maskless yahoos packed into the stands at the Ace Speedway in rural Alamance County in defiance of Governor Cooper’s executive order forbidding mass gatherings. They did so after the Alamance County attorney, Clyde Albright, who I’m sure is both a public health expert and constitutional scholar, up and decided that Cooper’s order was unconstitutional so the county wasn’t going to enforce it.
For Cooper, this poses a problem: There are a lot of rural counties in North Carolina with a lot of lawyers like Clyde Albright (and sheriffs like Terry Johnson) who are more than happy to look the other way as their towns become viral vectors, because freedom.
An executive order is only good if it’s enforceable.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Cooper addressed that issue: “It is dangerous and reckless to try and draw a crowd. I hope and pray that no one gets sick or even dies from that gathering that occurred this weekend. We hope that that doesn’t happen. But the way to prevent that kind of thing is not to do it. We are deeply concerned about that kind of activity.”
“Cooper did not say what exact enforcement and penalties would come from the state. ‘All of the options are on the table for us and we are examining those options now,’ he said.”
→ VOTING RIGHTS GROUPS SAY ELECTION BILL DOESN’T DO ENOUGH.
Today, the General Assembly will begin debating a bipartisan bill that would make it easier to vote by mail and would increase the election budget. Bob Phillips of Common Cause called it a “positive step” that could go further — but hey, this is the General Assembly, so you take what you can get, right? Maybe not. A coalition of voting rights groups is holding a virtual rally tomorrow to urge lawmakers to do more, including making Election Day a holiday.
What the bill does:
Reduces the number of required witnesses on an absentee ballot from two to one.
Allows voters to request absentee ballots by email or (lol) fax.
Creates a tracking system to let voters see where their ballot is.
Spends money on cybersecurity, admin costs, and coronavirus-related election costs.
Allows some people in nursing homes and hospitals to help folks fill out ballots.
Bans all-mail voting, because making it very easy to vote is … bad?
What the bill doesn’t do:
Have the state mail absentee ballot request forms to every voter.
Put prepaid postage on absentee ballots.
Allow felons to vote once they’ve been released from prison.
Make Election Day a holiday.
Allow more curbside voting.
What’s going to happen: The bill will almost certainly pass as-is.
→ INMATES SUE OVER COVID AT BUTNER.
Eleven inmates at the minimum-security Butner Federal Prison in eastern Durham County filed a lawsuit in federal court yesterday alleging that prison leaders’ “deliberate indifference” had led to a COVID outbreak that has killed eight prisoners so far. They asked to be released, saying that only by reducing the prison’s overcrowding could conditions there be made safe.
“Social distancing has proven the best means of slowing the virus’s spread, but at Butner, it is nearly impossible even in the best of conditions, the lawsuit says. ’Overcrowding worsens these dangerous conditions,’ the lawsuit says. ‘At Butner, where 4,438 men are crammed into a space meant for no more than 3,998, whatever chance these men have to limit their exposure is even lower than it would be if the prison were even at maximum planned capacity.’”
“Butner also has some of the federal prison system’s most medically vulnerable inmates at a low-security prison; hundreds of men suffer from chronic conditions, the lawsuit continues, making them more susceptible to experiencing the virus's most severe symptoms. The eight Butner inmates who died all had underlying conditions, the lawsuit says.”
→ TROPHY TAP + TABLE WILL CLOSE.
Another casualty of the Raleigh restaurant bloodbath — sort of. The Trophy guys have owned the Wilmington Street space that housed Busy Bee and then Trophy Tap + Table since 2007, and they’re not done with it yet. They’re also not saying what the next thing looks like.
“Don’t worry, though — the bar and restaurant will be reopening as a yet-to-be-disclosed new concept. Ownership will stay the same. ‘It’s sad but also exciting,’ co-owner Chris Powers told the INDY. ‘There’s been so many memories in that place in its current configuration. It was Busy Bee for many years, and then Trophy Tap + Table. And now we’re looking further down the road.’”
“This go-around, Powers says, the restaurant is figuring out how to best honor the historic space, while also taking a long look at what the next chapter of dining out in Raleigh might be. ‘We’re recalibrating right now. We’re heavily in the design phase, and we’re seeing what we can do with the space, physically, with historic guidelines for the building downtown,’ Powers says. ‘[We’re] also considering what service is going to look like once we are allowed to reopen.’”
→ WEATHER: 🌧🌧⛈ (high of 74)
Nation & World
→ STOCK MARKETS ARE VERY, VERY EXCITED.
Lord, grant me the optimism of well-heeled stock traders amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Stocks soared yesterday on news that, well, I’m not quite sure — I guess that states are reopening and only 100,000 people have died so far? And pharma companies say they’re kinda getting somewhere with a vaccine, maybe?
“The Dow Jones industrial average closed the day up 530 points, about 2.2 percent. The blue chips broke through the 25,000 psychological threshold during a 700-point surge Tuesday afternoon before giving back some of those gains in the final minutes of the session.”
“The Standard & Poor’s 500 index jumped 36 points, about 1.2 percent to finish at 2,9991.77. The broad index during the day cracked the 3,000 threshold for the first time since March. The tech-heavy Nasdaq added 15 points, or about 0.2 percent, to close at 9,340.22.”
“‘With more signs of the worst of the virus being behind us, investors are beginning to focus on more countries reopening and the lifting of travel bans around the world,’ Torsten Slok, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities said in an email. ‘More signs of reopening and more signs of travel bans being lifted creates more clarity for markets.’”
Different worlds: 38 million people are out of work, unemployment is probably hovering around 20 percent, and GDP is contracting at an annualized rate of about 40 percent.
→ TRUMP’S PICK FOR USDA CHIEF SCIENTIST IS NOT A SCIENTIST.
You would think one of the requirements for a job whose title is “chief scientist” is to actually be a, you know, scientist. But then, you are not Donald Trump.
“The chief scientist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is typically a low-profile job in any presidential administration. But President Trump's nomination of his former Iowa campaign manager for the post is raising concern in the scientific community and beyond about the politicization of science policy in the Trump administration. Among the concerns: Sam Clovis isn't a scientist. He holds a doctorate, but it's in public administration and not a scientific discipline.”
But wait, there’s more: “As a Senate candidate in 2014, Clovis told Iowa Public Radio that he was skeptical that human activity is driving climate change. ‘I have looked at the science,’ Clovis said, ‘and I have enough of a science background to know when I'm being boofed. And a lot of what we see is junk science.’”
Oh, right, of course: “Clovis has worn many hats. He was an Air Force fighter pilot and taught economics and business at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. He is probably best known for hosting a conservative talk show.”
→ TWITTER WON’T REMOVE TRUMP’S FALSE, LIBELOUS TWEETS.
Donald Trump is mad at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who used to be his friend but now criticizes him. And because Trump doesn’t do anything halfway, he’s been lashing out by pushing a long-debunked theory that, when Scarborough was a congressman years ago, he murdered his aide, Lori Klausutis. Klausutis’s widower asked Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to remove the president’s tweets, which are, frankly, gross, abusive, and violate any fair reading of Twitter’s terms of service. Twitter declined.
“In a letter to Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, last week, Timothy Klausutis said Mr. Trump had violated Twitter’s terms of service by falsely suggesting that Mr. Scarborough murdered Ms. Klausutis in 2001 when he was a Florida congressman and she was an intern in his office. Ms. Klausutis, then 28, actually died as a result of a heart condition that caused her to collapse at work and hit her head on her desk. ‘An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet,’ Mr. Klausutis wrote in the letter, which was published on Tuesday by the New York Times opinion writer Kara Swisher, ‘but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.’”
“Twitter said Mr. Trump’s tweets did not violate the company’s terms of service, even though its policies say users ‘may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so.’ In tweets over the weekend, Mr. Trump encouraged his audience to ‘keep digging’ into the circumstances of Ms. Klausutis’s death and suggested, without evidence, that it may have been linked to ‘an affair.’”
“Asked by reporters on Tuesday about his tweets insinuating that Mr. Scarborough was responsible for the death, Mr. Trump again spread the debunked claim. ‘A lot of people suggest that, and hopefully someday people are going to find out,’ he said. ‘It’s certainly a very suspicious situation. Very sad, very sad and very suspicious.’”
RELATED: For the first time, however, Twitter did label one of Trump’s tweets as “false.” Not the one about Scarborough — or literally everything he posts. But the one about mail-in ballots leading to rampant fraud. Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.
Trump promptly lost his mind.
Obligatory fact check, because the president is an idiot: The first words of the First Amendment are, “Congress shall make no law …” Twitter, a private company, is not Congress. Trump has no authority to stop Twitter from censoring him — or you, or me, or anyone. (He could always run over to Gab.) And, for what it’s worth, fact-checking false statements is not censoring them or stifling free speech.
→ 4 MINNEAPOLIS COPS FIRED AFTER KILLING BLACK MAN.
On Monday, four Minnesota cops located a black man they believed to be under the influence, claimed he resisted them, then pinned him to the ground and choked him to death while he told them he couldn’t breathe. All of this was caught on video that immediately went viral. Yesterday, the cops were fired.
“Video of the incident shared on social media captured the man, identified as George Floyd by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), repeatedly telling the officers, ‘I cannot breathe!’ An increasingly distraught crowd of onlookers pleaded with the officer to move his knee. By Tuesday afternoon, as outrage continued to build, Frey announced the termination of the officers.”
“The incident began when two officers arrived at the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South around 8 p.m. Monday, police said. Officers located the man, whom they believed to be under the influence of an intoxicant, inside his car. After he got out, police said, the man ‘physically resisted officers.’ ‘Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and realized that the suspect was suffering a medical distress,’ a Minneapolis police spokesman said in a news briefing early Tuesday. ‘Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he died a short time later.’”
“Witnesses begged the white officer to take his knee off the man’s neck. ‘You’re going to just sit there with your knee on his neck?’ one bystander said on the video. Minutes later, the man appeared to be motionless on the ground, his eyes closed and head lying against the road. ‘Bro, he’s not even fucking moving!’ one bystander pleaded to police. ‘Get off of his neck!’ Another asked, ‘Did you kill him?’”
The feds and state police are investigating. Of course, firing the four cops is one thing. Getting prosecutors to bring charges against them — even though the cop’s knee was on Floyd’s kneck for eight minutes — is another.
REAX: Senator Amy Klobuchar, who both represents Minnesota and is high on Joe Biden’s list of veep possibilities, quickly released a statement on the “officer-involved death.” (How was the officer involved, Amy?)
RELATED: Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the cops on a black man after he asked her to leash her dog in Central Park, has been fired from her job at Franklin Templeton and forced to give up her dog after internet sleuths dug up Instagram photos showing he had sustained injuries.
→ YOU CAN OUTDRINK AN ELEPHANT. (OK, NOT REALLY.)
One fun thing to leave you with: Humans can drink, obviously (and some of us more than others). Birds enjoy fermented berries that fall out of trees. Elk get sodded on rotting apples. But no creature loves booze like the elephant.
“One scientific paper describes elephant trainers rewarding animals with beer and other alcoholic beverages, with one elephant in the 18th century said to have drunk 30 bottles of port a day. In 1974, a herd of 150 elephants in West Bengal, India, became intoxicated after breaking into a brewery, then went on a rampage that destroyed buildings and killed five people.”
“Scientists have questioned whether animals — especially large ones such as elephants and elk — actually become inebriated. In 2006, researchers calculated that based on the amount of alcohol it takes to get a human drunk, a 6,600-pound elephant on a bender would have to quickly consume up to 27 liters of seven percent ethanol, the key ingredient in alcohol. Such a quantity of booze is unlikely to be obtained in the wild. Intoxicated wild elephants, the researchers concluded, must be a myth.”
“If you are one who wanted to believe, a study published in April in Biology Letters might serve as your vindication. A team of scientists say that the earlier myth-busting researchers made a common mistake: They assumed that elephants would have to consume as much alcohol to get drunk as humans do. In fact, elephants are likely exceptional lightweights because they — and many other mammals — lack a key enzyme that quickly metabolizes ethanol.”
Copyright © 2020 INDY Week, All rights reserved.
