Censorship in Real Time

 

Watch Clayton High School senior and valedictorian of the class of 2026 get the microphone snatched from her when she began to say what she really felt about the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the treatment of immigrants by ICE in our own country. Leen Hijaz had just said the following, veering away from the text that was approved by school officials beforehand:

“Whether it’s the millions suffering in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan and so many other countries around the world, or the families being torn apart by ICE,” Hijaz said over the cheers of her classmates. “These are not distant issues, they are happening as I speak.”

Here's the video of that moment:

 

Not only did the school principal snatch away her free speech rights along with the microphone but then followed up the wrong by denying Hijaz her own diploma. Did I mention that Leen is valedictorian of her class?

Adding insult to the injury, the school put out this lie: “School administrators intervened in order to maintain the integrity and focus of the program in real time. This action was not about limiting a student’s voice, but about ensuring that a school-sponsored event remained consistent with its intended purpose.”

"Not about limiting a student's voice"? It's all about limiting any voice that goes against whatever MAGA is told to think on any given day. 

Proud of the courage of Gen Z! Such bravery may be the only thing that can repair the freedoms in our Constitution.

 

A Groyper War

 

White supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes briefly pulled his support from Donald Trump in August, according to The New Republic, writing on X that he was declaring a “groyper war” on the Republican nominee because his 2024 campaign was being “hijacked” by lobbyists, consultants, and donors who had clouded histories. Most of them had aided Trump’s 2016 Republican opponents. At the time, Fuentes believed that Trump was “blowing it” by employing that crowd of weak cucks.

Just this past Thursday, Fuentes was harshly criticizing Capitol Hill Republican leadership for courting the Right Wing before any election and then dissing them on policy and influence after that election. “Sorry. Thank you for your vote, now go fuck yourself,” Fuentes said. “That’s the message from the Republican Party for the next four, eight, 16, 100, 1,000 years. Thank you for your vote, now go fuck off until the next election.” 

Hard to discern whether Fuentes meant to include Trump himself under that blanket condemnation, but logic would sort of demand it. Trump has, after all, actively endorsed Mike Johnson as Speaker, and Johnson is a notorious weakling willing to bargain with the Democrats.

But "groyper war"? That's an expression I had to research.

"Groyper" is the name of a dumpy cartoon amphibian, a toad a.k.a. "Pepe the Frog," which has become an accepted meme and mascot for a "Groyper Army," a loosely defined group of followers and fans of Nick Fuentes, who will on orders from Fuentes rain down hellish harassment on various weak people picked out by Fuentes for punishment. Thank you, Wikipedia:

Pepe the Frog is a comic character and Internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie .... Pepe originated in Furie's 2005 comic Boy's Club. The character became an Internet meme when his popularity steadily grew across websites such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and the white nationalist site 4chan. By 2015, Pepe had been completely hijacked as one of the most popular memes for white nationalism used on 4chan and Tumblr.

I dunno what Fuentes' Groyper War accomplished back in August, nor how much distraction and/or consternation it caused the Trump campaign at the time -- perhaps it was simply shrugged off as a minor  inconvenience -- but there are certainly lower level Republican conservatives who might worry about getting fingered by the likes of Nick Fuentes and his team of Internet trolls.

Which Major Party Needs To Change the Most?

 

North Carolina political analyst and writer Alexander H. Jones (no, the good Alex Jones) explored some important history of both the North Carolina Democratic Party and what has now become the MAGA Party. He points out that especially the old Democratic Party before Harvey Gantt and Barack Obama -- was a one-party oligarchy with an iron hand that ruled from 1876 (until fairly recently really). Writes Jones, "Democratic hegemony [was] secured by the disenfranchisement of Black voters" (2 Jan. 2025). Any political domination without a principled and effective opposition has every opportunity to turn corrupt, or mean, or both. The old slave-holding, landed class that lost the Civil War became the Democratic Party machine post-Reconstruction as it reasserted property over civil rights and white over Black. Jesse Helms, after all, began his politics as a Jim Crow Democrat. 

It took a long damn time for an effective Republican opposition to arise in North Carolina. Jones reminds us of an astounding fact: "In 1976, only one — one — Republican sat in the North Carolina Senate." Though no Republican Party machine yet threatened Democratic hegemony, the hearts and minds of white rural voters were already roiling in cultural ferment because of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (followed closely by the Voting Rights Act of 1966). If you were not part of a rural community back then -- as I most certainly was in those years in the Panhandle of Texas -- you perhaps do not realize the terror and fury that Lyndon Johnson unleashed on white minds of an otherwise comfortable cultural tradition. Minds changing unfavorably and hardening self-destructively were not a good sign for the political party of President Lyndon Johnson. Many rural Democrats would stay registered "D" even while casting protest votes for very right-wing Republican alternatives, like Barry Goldwater in 1964 ("In Your Heart You Know He's Wacky"). In NC Goldwater took almost 44% of the presidential vote against Lyndon in 1964, and probably 10% of that total were registered Democrats. I'm guessing, of course. In 1964, Republicans weren't even 33% of registrated voters in the state.

Bottomline: Through the ineffable influence of Jesse Helms and Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy," the Old Republican Party of business and banking became increasingly what the Old Democratic Party had been, a political movement that depended ultimately on racial resentment. "Republicans built momentum decade by decade" on the strength of it. They learned how to gerrymander Black voters and contain Black power.

What's noticeable, Jones says, is the split personality that's become pronounced in the contemporary NCGOP. Republican primary voters keep running extremist nuts for governor and other statewide offices while also buying into a more moderate line of mannikins for U.S. Senate:

Savvy political strategists like Karl Rove and North Carolina’s Paul Shumaker saw the state was becoming more moderate and suburban. In response to John Edwards’ victory in 1998, Rove recruited Elizabeth Dole to run for Helms’ old Senate seat, and she won suburban Wake County by 10 points .... Richard Burr and Thom Tillis were also in her mold.

Following another crushing loss last November of a far out Republican for Governor, the NCGOP is perhaps caught in its own vice. The segregationist base of the new Republican Party likes hard-edged extremists like Mark Robinson, while the general voting public does not cotton to extreme:

The GOP — more accurately MAGA — has a base heavy on evangelicals, know-nothings and not a few racists clustered in very conservative counties who only want to support candidates like Robinson, who just lost by 15 points.

The voting bloc that once held back the old Democratic Party can now hold back the new Republicans. And good riddance. 

 

The Judge Gets It

 

RALEIGH -- A federal judge on Monday struck down a North Carolina law that criminalized voting for people with felony convictions. 

In a 25-page order, U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs wrote that the law, which was originally passed in 1877, “was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters.” 

Biggs’ ruling does not affect the rules regarding voter eligibility for people with felony convictions. North Carolinians convicted of felonies are still ineligible to vote until they have completed their sentences. 

The case dealt with a separate law that made it a Class I felony for anyone with a felony conviction to vote before their citizenship rights had been restored.

[Kyle Ingram]

So It Goes

 

Will Doran, WRAL reporter, a little before 10 a.m. on Tuesday:

BREAKING: The NAACP and Common Cause are suing state lawmakers over racial gerrymandering in new NC maps. Unlike previous lawsuits, this challenges the new US House lines as well as the #NCGA districts https://wral.com/21202363/ #ncpol

Hard to get excited any more about potential justice in the age of Clarence Thomas.

Tillis, Showing More Crack

 

Senate Republicans were recoiling (The Hill's word) on Monday at Trump’s comments at a rally in New Hampshire over the weekend, where he said the thousands of immigrants streaming into the United States on a daily basis are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Thom Tillis, when cornered by Alexander Bolton in the Senate: “I think it’s unhelpful rhetoric.” 

A master of understatement, that senator!

The NC Senate District That Prompted a Lawsuit

 

The newly gerrymandered Senate District 2 stretches more than 160 miles from the Virginia border to Carteret County on the Atlantic Ocean. It descends diagonally southeastward from Warren County, then protrudes, like a hitchhiker's thumb, northward encompassing Washington and Chowan counties, then dips back down towards the coast.

That map "cracks" Black majority counties to give white Republicans the majority, which a Federal lawsuit alleges violates the Voting Rights Act.

Attorneys for the two North Carolina Black plaintiffs bringing the suit (from Halifax and Martin counties, respectively) also filed a motion to expedite proceedings, asking the court to finish arguments and decide on a motion for a preliminary injunction by Dec. 1 — three days before candidate filing begins.

Gov. Cooper Attacks the NC Chamber of Commerce for Racial Bias

Gary Salamido

Last Friday, November 17, Gov. Roy Cooper wrote a letter to Gary Salamido, president and CEO of the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. Reporter Billy Corriher got his hands on a PDF of that letter and linked to it on Twitter. 

In the letter the Governor acknowledges the role the Chamber has in influencing both the General Assembly and the Governor's office about acceptable candidates for certain judicial and quasi-judicial jobs, like Business Court judges, industrial commissioners, and members of the Board of Review. 

The letter reveals more about the influence the Chamber has on the Republican bosses in the G.A. The bosses have already passed laws giving themselves the power of confirmation over the jobs listed above. It's simple dominoes. The bosses have power, but the Chamber has power over the bosses, because the Chamber represents money, and money wins elections.

The Governor details one example of the Chamber's veto, the case of the failed appointment of a Black woman to Business Court who's an ex-JAG officer in the Air Force and an Unaffiliated voter. "She is a partner at one of the largest law firms in the United States, where she represents corporate clients in product liability claims, complex civil litigation and environmental litigation." This is the sort of talent Cooper is saying the Chamber vetoes because she's Black.

It's kind of a bombshell letter.

Naturally, Mr. Salamido did not like the letter, mainly, he says, because Cooper released it to the media before he himself received it. Salamido called the letter “malevolent and libelous.”

Checking In on Mark Robinson's Main Republican Primary Challenger

 

Bill Graham, the Salisbury personal injury lawyer who once upon a time ran for governor in the Republican primary with Pat McCrory (polled at 9% to McCrory's 46%), got recruited this year by some establishment Republicans to challenge blowfish Mark Robinson in next March's Republican primary for governor. Graham is supposed to be the great white hope for more mainstream NC conservatives who fear Mark Robinson's chances of crashing on the rocks of his own extremism. Graham announced his candidacy less than a month ago, so it's an obligation to check in on him from time to time to see how he's doing. 

A Meredith College poll of some 755 voters -- 44% of whom said they would vote a Republican ballot next March -- published these preferences for governor yesterday:

Mark Robinson 41%

Bill Graham 5%

Dale Folwell 3%

A whopping 42% were "undecided." Graham has apparently targeted those undecideds with a scare tactic TV ad, "VIOLENCE IN OUR STREETS!" which one observer justifiably called "racist as fuck." In the ad, Graham says about "violent criminals" that he'll "put them in jail or in the ground." (Bet he was very tickled by that line.) But it's pure trumpist tough-guy posturing and smacks of white supremacy, which no doubt will be reassuring to your country club and truck cab Republicans who make up that 42% undecided. Mean and cruel at heart are apparently requirements in successful Republican primary candidates.

This Right Here Needs To Be a Federal Lawsuit

 

Study the map below. It's state senate districts 8 (darker color on left) and 7 (light color next to the ocean) in and around the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. The meandering blue line pretty much down the middle is the Cape Fear River, not only a wide and deep natural barrier to travel but also the county line between New Hanover and Brunswick. So you're called on to note the bulge to the east of the river, that allows the new Senate Dist. 8 to hijack a mainly Black population of Wilmington to cripple a Democrat's shot at beating the Republican incumbent for the NC Senate in District 7. 

Sen. Mike Lee is the incumbent and stands to benefit most from this piece of out-and-out racial gerrymandering for political advantage. Could you get any more obvious? Plus the willingness to greatly inconvenience and discourage a whole class of voters for purely petty and partisan reasons is truly despicable. 

Some Laws Demand To Be Broken

 

Coined by scholar Jarvis Givens, “fugitive pedagogy” refers to the subversive strategies Black educators used to teach students the skills to think and to survive despite a system of education that was designed to only prepare them for manual labor.

--Lisa Delpit, MacArthur "genius" honoree, author of Multiplication Is For White People (quoted here)

"Jarvis Givens is a [young!] professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a faculty affiliate in the department of African & African American Studies at Harvard University" (Harvard bio). His first book in 2021 was titled Fugitive Pedagogy because it traced the history of Black educators -- either informal teachers or licensed instructors -- who managed to pass along to their Black students knowledge and information that they weren't meant to have. That's the fugitive part. The pedagogy consisted of "This is who you are, this is who we are, this is how we got here, this is how we've managed to survive here."

Some Black educators are warning that new days have dawned where the teaching of racial reality can get you canned. Fugitive pedagogy becomes a thing again, but it shouldn't be the tool of Black teachers only. White teachers who know a hawk from a handsaw should also participate in undermining the conservative push to make everything seem as rosy as possible and the status quo as guilt-free as a Sunday picnic.

News From Trump-Era School Boards: The Wilmington Censorship Case

 

So this is happening in Wilmington. Friday morning the New Hanover School Board convened for a hearing on whether Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, written by Jason Reynolds, adapted from the work of Ibram X. Kendi, should be permanently banned from any school reading list.

WHQR, public media in Wilmington, reported:

Since January, a parent, Katie Gates, has been pushing to ban the book and now, after her request was denied in two different appeals, the school board is deciding its fate. When Gates first complained, her daughter had been assigned Stamped as part of an Advanced Placement course. Since then, her daughter accepted an alternative assignment and has since completed the course, but Gates has continued to pursue getting the book removed....

...the board will determine whether the challenge to the book has “merit” and whether that book should be “retained, removed from the New Hanover County Schools entirely, whether it should be removed to another school level, or whether its availability should be restricted.”

I haven't read Stamped. I rely on an honest broker like Wiley Cash to school me: 

The book is a “remix” of Ibram X. Kendi’s National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning created for readers ages 12 and up.

While the book reveals the genesis of racist ideology in America and suggests ways to combat it, Gates characterized it as “embracing dangerous ideologies.” In her complaint, Gates challenged the book through a number of inaccurate “facts,” contending that Thomas Jefferson freed his enslaved people and that the Bible was not used to justify slavery.

In the piece that Cash wrote for The Assembly, he concludes that "the fix" may already be in since two of the board members, including the chair, colluded with Katie Gates: "Much of the board’s public wrestling with this decision appears to be theatrical. Gates and two conservative members of the school board seemingly laid the groundwork for the decision—to be made sometime this fall—months ago. Emails WHQR obtained reveal close coordination between Gates and school board member Josie Barnhart and Chair Pat Bradford."

Cash's interest comes from a personal place:

"I’m a parent of two young children who attend New Hanover County schools, and I’m deeply invested in ensuring that they learn the true complexity of American history. As a North Carolina native who was educated in the state’s public schools, I did not."

For example, Cash writes, he didn't know about the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, a brutal white supremacist coup, until he was in graduate school taking a class on North Carolina literature at UNC-Greensboro. (Many of the rest of us didn't learn about Wilmington until 2020, when Wilmington's Lie came out and won the Pulitzer.) It would be well worth paying the measly subscription price to get Wiley Cash's full essay, for his discussion of Charles W. Chestnutt is well worth the effort.

UPDATE

The board voted Friday 4-3 to temporarily ban the book from the high school curriculum but retain it in high school libraries until the board can update its policy to allow a “balanced” book to be added to the AP course.

Is the UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor a Bad Ass?

 

Kevin Guskiewicz

Last week Kevin Guskiewicz, the chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, unilaterally announced free tuition grants for deserving NC students whose household income falls below $80,000. He made the announcement hard on the heels of SCOTUS's decision limiting the use of race in college admissions nationwide, and he seemed to be doing it as an "up yours!" to SCOTUS. 

"Our responsibility to comply with the law does not mean we will abandon our fundamental values as a university," Guskiewicz wrote. "We are and will remain passionately public, and we will ensure that every student who earns admission to Carolina can come here and thrive."

A "passionately public" university makes sure its student body isn't just affluent, milk-white kids from suburbia, whether you count them by their skin color or their economic situations. Ballsy of Guskiewicz (who has the power and authority, by the way, to grant tuition wavers or financial aid to certain students).

Especially ballsy of Guskiewicz for making the move without first asking permission. Republican members of the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees and of the UNC Board of Governors (aren't they all Republicans, or wanna-bees?) said they were shocked -- shocked! -- when they heard the same news everyone else was hearing, that the Chapel Hill Chancellor had the balls to counter the backward-trotting Supreme Court of the United States.

I'm developing new respect for Dr. Guskiewicz. We last mentioned his name on this site when he showed up defying the ambitions of House Speaker Tim Moore. Guskiewicz now has at least two strikes against him, so of course they'll want to get rid of him.

What's In Their Hearts?

 

Two prominent members of the far-right Freedom Caucus in the NC House showed their asses in the last few hours, as though they needed even more product branding after their attacks on the rights of women in the state.

Rep. Jeff McNeeley (Iredell Co.) interrupted -- interrupted -- Rep. Abe Jones, who is Black, and asked him if he could have gotten into Harvard if he wasn't Black or an athlete. Okay, McNeeley, said "if you weren't a minority or an athlete," but I think everyone knew exactly what he was implying. Abe Jones does indeed have a law degree from Harvard. (McNeeley apologized, but as we know the harm was already done.)

Keith Kidwell

Before that display of uncooked racism, Rep. Keith Kidwell (of the mean eyes) heckled Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams during the debate on the abortion law veto override. While Staton-Williams was tearfully telling her own personal experience with abortion, even though she had grown up "in the church," Rep. Kidwell quipped, "she means the Church of Satan" loud enough for nearby staffers and House pages to hear him. Will Doran, the reporter for the News and Observer, also heard him.

If Kidwell has ever apologized to Staton-Williams, he's kept the apology well out of sight.

What Are Republicans In Favor Of? What Are Democrats Afraid Of?

Rep. Laura Budd

House Bill 40, "Prevent Rioting and Civil Disorder," passed both House and Senate in Raleigh in February and became law in March without the governor's signature. Gov. Cooper did not veto it because Tim Moore had established the first of what will be many veto-proof super majorities with the ineffable help of several Democrats, most of them Black, who voted for the law and who ought to know better or at least show some recognition of who stands to get hurt the worst. 

The Democrats who voted for H40: Cecil Brockman, Laura Budd (why?), Abe Jones, Garland Pierce, Shelley Willingham, and Michael Wray. Budd and Wray are white. Everyone else is Black. Note that Tricia Cotham's not on the list.

I searched all these six House members in social media, going back to February, to see if any of them opted to explain their votes on H40, their siding with the Republicans over something that sounds very like the racial politics of the Nixon era -- "Prevent Civil Disorder," and what exactly in your mind reaches the level of "disorder"? The bill is so transparently aimed at the folks who have for generations pushed for their civil rights, the concession of so many Black legislators is, well, noticeable.

But not one of those six issued any public rationale that I can find, or even a scrap of discussion that might shed some blessed light on their odd fellow-travelling -- quite literally helping to demonize Black Lives Matter and other mass movements to come. Who else didn't explain themselves most noticeably and notably? Mecklenburg Democrat freshman Laura Budd, who is a very liberal attorney and who is quite voluble discussing all sorts of other legislation on her own Facebook group, but sez nary a word about her surprising defection on H40.

So it's not surprising that today the American Civil Liberties Union announced their legal remedy:

WLOS — The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit, challenging a North Carolina law just passed this year that imposes stricter penalties for protesting and rioting.

House Bill 40 increases penalties for protesting and makes protestors liable for civil damages to individuals harmed by a protest, even where a protestor only verbally encouraged activities defined as “rioting” and did not take any individual actions to cause injury or damage.

...the lawsuit contends that “multiple provisions of the law, including provisions that could apply to protestors whose own conduct is entirely peaceful, are overbroad and vague and will function to dissuade people from engaging in lawful protest activities.”

“HB40 represents a culmination of the legislature’s repeated efforts to crack down in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. It is a flagrant attempt to vilify and criminalize a social justice movement. This bill forces North Carolinians to risk the immediate and long-term loss of their freedom when exercising their right to protest. This suit is an effort to protect the right to protest and advances our continued support and defense of the Black Lives Matter movement and activists,” stated Sam Davis, Attorney from the ACLU of NC Legal Foundation.

NC House Speaker Tim Moore Has Hired an Avowed White Supremacist as His New Policy Advisor

 

Carlton Huffman, on Linked In

Carlton Huffman proudly lists a new job on his Linked In page. As of this month he's "Policy Advisor" to the Office of the Speaker of the NC House. He's also self-described as a "Patriot Conservative."

Carlton Huffman has a pretty colorful white history, most famous for us for when he was a staffer for House member Jonathan Jordan in 2011 and was forced to resign his staff position for the following activity....

An unsigned "poison pen" letter with nasty racist overtones was surreptitiously placed on the desks of NC Senate members on the day in March 2011 when the new Republican majority were to vote on an otherwise non-controversial act to symbolically pardon Gov. William Woods Holden for his 1870 impeachment. Holden was a Republican who called out the militia to put down Ku Klux Klan thuggery. He was impeached by a Democratic General Assembly as a n****er-lover, the first governor ever removed from office in the United States. The act introduced in 2011 to pardon him, albeit symbolically, would have been doing the right thing for a Reconstruction Republican who was unfairly and maliciously driven from office by backward, racist Democrats.

But the unsigned letter attacking Holden's biography appeared on Senate members' desks, quoting an un-reconstructed pro-slavery UNC history professor from almost a century ago, who accused Gov. Holden of "corruption." Spooked, the Republican leadership in the Senate immediately suspended action on the bill.

NC Senate rules forbid unsigned pieces of paper that advocate for or against legislative action. WRAL reporter Laura Leslie was the first to identify Carlton Huffman as the author, and he soon resigned from his staff position. 

Huffman batted around in other political jobs in North Carolina and Wisconsin after that, doing field work for Phil Berger and others (according to Linked In). Most recently, he was a regional field director for the Herschel Walker for Senate Campaign, sort of proving that Walker was always mainly a tool for white supremacy.

Because Carlton Huffman is pretty dedicated to the cause of making sure that white people are uber Alles. I received via email this partial list of Huffman's recent activities yesterday:

Huffman has been a regular correspondent and featured guest on The Political Cesspool Radio Program that proudly proclaims this about its principles: “What we are: Pro-Christian (God), Pro-White (Family), Pro-South (Republic).” The program’s host, James Edwards, has been widely panned as a dangerous white supremacist including by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Huffman has had leadership positions in both the North Carolina Council of Conservative Citizens and the national Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC). The CCC was the radicalizing organization cited by Dylann Roof in his manifesto found after his 2015 massacre of nine Black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. In fact, the CCC released a statement after the fact that stated Roof had “legitimate grievances” against Black people.

Huffman, who went by the pseudonym The Unreconstructed Southern and posted under the username dixie1984 (the year of his birth, and linked with his personal email here), was the main individual posting for the NC CCC chapter and also claimed to have spent time writing for the national CCC page.

The topics covered on the NC CCC blog are wide ranging, but never deviate from being white supremacist in nature with regular claims that we must be “preserving European-American culture of the United States.” Huffman espouses anti-school racial integration beliefs, opposition to the Voting Rights Act, fear mongers that Barack Obama will bring about a “vicious anti-white campaign of terror,” regularly attacks the LGBTQIA+ community, regularly refers to minorities in derogatory terms, and seeks to stop the dilution of the language and culture of European-Americans by immigrants and minorities. He further calls for the infiltration of the Republican Party by white supremacists in order to further and more effectively push the message of white supremacy.

BREAKING UPDATE

Well, day-um! Just as I posted the item above, I saw the news that Huffman has resigned. 

American History X

 

Columbus County, NC, is a long way from Watauga County, down almost to the coast with no major highways that you might have traveled on your way to getting a tan at the beach. It's almost exclusively rural. Whiteville is the county seat, a name that has some resonance for this story. According to the 2020 Census, the county's population is a little over 30% Black, with an additional 2,000 Waccamaw Siouan American Indians. 

As recently as the 2018 general elections, the county had a Black sheriff, Lewis Hatcher, who was defeated in that election (by 34 votes) by one Jody Greene, who was suspended from office in October pending an investigation of recordings of his going off on racist rants. The county's DA had filed the court petition to remove him. (Actually, Greene voluntarily stepped down to head off a public hearing on his misdeeds.) His unbecoming behavior toward Black subordinates went public in September (covered here on WataugaWatch, you bet!).

Once (and future?) Sheriff Jody Greene

Nevertheless -- and this is where rural North Carolina can be as irrationally unpredictable as a Franz Kafka short story -- Jody Greene's name remained on November's ballot, and he actually won the election with 54.26% of the vote, beating the sheriff's deputy, Jason Soles, who blew the whistle on him for his balls-to-the-walls racism.

The DA -- maybe with remarkable presentiment -- issued this warning on the same day Jody Greene stepped down: “These allegations speak through time and are disqualifying to anyone seeking to hold the high office of sheriff. Should Greene be successful in the November election, my office would have an ethical obligation to file, and will file, a new Petition to Remove Greene from that term of office based on the allegations alleged in the current Petition to Remove.” Whoa! 

In the updated petition for removal, the DA lists new allegations against Greene, claiming Greene had arrested residents without basis, threatened county commissioners, and had a sexual relationship with a female employee while on duty.

Trump America likes its autocrats, especially the armed bullies.

Mike Clampitt, 2nd Member of the NC House, Outed for Membership in Oath Keepers

 

Clampitt

First, it was NC House member Keith Kidwell outed as a member of Oath Keepers, the paramilitary outfit that participated in the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. Literally dozens of Oath Keepers have been arrested for their participation in that assault. Apparently sitting back home and watching were Rep. Kidwell and yet another member of the NC House, Mike Clampitt of Bryson City. (Clampitt has traded that seat back and forth with Democrat Joe Sam Queen. Queen beat Clampitt in 2018, but Clampitt took back the seat last November.)

The following is from an investigation by ProPublica, as reprinted by The Progressive Pulse:

People with law enforcement and military backgrounds — like Clampitt, a retired fire captain in Charlotte, North Carolina — have been the focus of the Oath Keepers’ recruiting efforts since the group started in 2009. According to researchers who monitor the group’s activities, Oath Keepers pledge to resist if the federal government imposes martial law, invades a state or takes people’s guns, ideas that show up in a dark swirl of right-wing conspiracy theories. The group is loosely organized and its leaders do not centrally issue commands. The organization’s roster has ballooned in recent years, from less than 10,000 members at the start of 2011 to more than 35,000 by 2020, membership records show....

Clampitt said he went to a few Oath Keepers meetings when he joined back in 2014, but the way he participates now is by being a state legislator. He has co-sponsored a bill to allow elected officials to carry concealed guns in courthouses, schools and government buildings, and he supported legislation stiffening penalties for violent demonstrations in response to last year’s protests in Raleigh over George Floyd’s murder. Clampitt said he opposes violence but stood by his Oath Keepers affiliation, despite the dozens of members charged in the Capitol riot.

"The way he participates now is by being a state legislator." Yeah, we get that. He has another history of nostalgia for the Old Confederacy, and luckily he's a state legislator who can pass a law that you cannot bring up the Old Confederacy in any NC classroom in a discussion of racism.

NC Voter ID Law Struck Down as Unconstitutional

 

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina judges struck down the state's latest photo voter identification law on Friday, agreeing with minority voters that Republicans rammed through rules tainted by racial bias as a way to remain in power.

Two of the three trial judges declared the December 2018 law is unconstitutional, even though it was designed to implement a photo voter ID mandate added to the North Carolina Constitution in a referendum just weeks earlier. They said the law intentionally discriminates against Black voters, violating their equal protections.

The law "was motivated at least in part by an unconstitutional intent to target African American voters," Superior Court Judges Michael O'Foghludha and Vince Rozier wrote in their 100-page majority opinion.

"Other, less restrictive voter ID laws would have sufficed to achieve the legitimate nonracial purposes of implementing the constitutional amendment requiring voter ID, deterring fraud, or enhancing voter confidence."

The majority decision, which followed a three-week trial in April, is now likely headed to a state appeals court, which had previously blocked the law's enforcement last year while the case was heard. The law remains unenforceable with this ruling.

With a similar lawsuit in federal court set to go to trial this January and another state court lawsuit now on appeal, it's looking more unlikely that a voter ID mandate for in-person and absentee balloting will happen in the 2022 elections.

The ruling reflects "how the state's Republican-controlled legislature undeniably implemented this legislation to maintain its power by targeting voters of color," said Allison Riggs, the plaintiffs' lead attorney....

GOP legislative leaders have tried for a decade to require photo IDs to cast ballots....

How They Run: Pat McCrory, Chameleon

 

Here are some recent campaign themes from Pat McCrory's social media (Facebook and Twitter, mirror images of one another):

Still needing the Trumpists --Trump publicly pissed in his face -- the ex-governor knows the odds against him in the primary if the conservatives coalesce, so he puts out paint-by-numbers conservative boilerplate, like stringing together "Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and George Soros" in the same sentence, alleging they're the trio spending "MILLIONS" to propagate the "radical liberal agenda." (What? No "Socialism"?) Your standard wall-papering over the "moderate" Republican candidate's lack of passion for the culture wars.

Fighting to stay relevant after the Trump diss, McCrory has challenged his two Republican rivals to three debates before the primary. Mark Walker immediately agreed, but Ted Budd, the Trump honoree, hasn't, and McCrory is obliged to spread that news.

Most interesting (cause Pat McCrory ain't at heart no mean man), he tries going "full Ron DeSantis," scapegoating immigrants on the Southern border as the real causes of disease. McCrory shared a Fox News posting: "WH dodges question on why vaccinated Americans must wear masks while infected migrants [are] released into Texas town." That's inflammatory, guaranteed to raise the race temperature of Trumpists, where it's always burned hot.

In fact, the Southern border constitutes a "National Security Crisis." McCrory currently harps most on that meme: "President Biden and Vice President Harris, get to the border - we can't keep ignoring this National Security Crisis!" he said in a video posted yesterday. In a separate post he returned to the theme, naming the main three Democratic candidates as sharing in blame: "There is a crisis on our Southern Border - and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refuse to admit it. Why won't Erica Smith, Jeff Jackson, or Cheri Beasley speak out about this National Security Disaster?!"

What is the disaster, exactly? Could it be no more complicated than brown people weaponized as a threat to white supremacy and a distraction to the real facts of the case, that it's anti-VAX and anti-mask Americans who are spreading disease willy-nilly across the landscape?

Also recently, McCrory tested "Joe Biden's inflation" as a thing, a hobby-horse he might ride like other Republican candidates -- the high price of gas as a sign of Biden's failed administration. It's bogus, and anyway, it's a weak punch that lands like overcooked pasta. McCrory nevertheless has learned to throw in the Democrats to share in the blame: "Why won't Jeff Jackson, Erica Smith, or Cheri Beasley speak out on this?!"

Bless his heart, McCrory's trying! But the impression remains that he doesn't have actual passions for policy positions. He has a passion for pleasing, especially the country-club one percent.