Trump with hurricane victims — today, in North Carolina.

""For his part, Libeskind has no patience with housing advocates’ frequently articulated belief that, in an extreme crisis, developers should churn out affordable homes as quickly as possible..."

"... without worrying too much about design. 'That’s propaganda!' he protests. 'It says that poorer people should live in lower-quality environments: "Don’t waste your time on innovation." But it’s the other way around! I would love all my colleagues to concentrate on this kind of housing because it needs the same kind of passion as an iconic skyscraper.'"

From "Daniel Libeskind Tries His Hand at Affordable Housing/The Atrium, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is a fine proof-of-concept, but does it scale?" (NY Magazine).

Meanwhile, in North Carolina... how architectually interesting does housing need to be to inspire someone?

"Trump, during Fayetteville town hall, says he'd change Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg."

The Fayetteville Observer observes.

The proposal was extremely popular with the crowd, to the point where they booed a man who said he was "an active-duty soldier here at Fort Liberty."

Later, Trump said "I think I just learned the secret to winning absolutely and by massive margins. I'm gonna promise you, as I said at the beginning, that we're gonna change the name back to Fort Bragg, because... I just see this great-looking soldier just accidentally said Fort Liberty and he got almost booed the hell out of the place."

"The river that has flooded this street is normally 20 feet below it...."

One of many alarming, compelling videos to be found on TikTok right now, so use the hashtags to go in and see:

Starlink in Asheville.

Asheville is relying on @elonmusk for communication. Thank God for Starlink or we may have no information from the storm affected area at all. https://t.co/E13IcJwgKW

— Emily Zanotti 🦝 (@emzanotti) September 29, 2024

"The damage is so severe, we are telling drivers that unless it is an emergency, all roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed."

Said a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, quoted in "More Than 400 Roads Closed in North Carolina After Damage From Helene/The closures, including on two interstates, left motorists scrambling for options" (NYT).

Why isn't the hurricane damage the top story right now? That story isn't linked on the NYT home page.

I can't help feeling that the NYT is trying to protect the Biden/Harris administration from suffering political damage (like what happened to George W. Bush over Katrina).

The top of the home page is dominated by Israel's wars: "Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War/The United States’ ability to influence events in the Middle East has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers," "Israel Keeps Up Strikes Against Hezbollah in Lebanon/The Israeli military said it had hit dozens of Hezbollah targets, a day after deadly strikes near Beirut. Israel killed the group’s leader on Friday," "Having ignored allies and defied critics, Benjamin Netanyahu is basking in a rare triumph. Having ignored allies and defied critics, Benjamin Netanyahu is basking in a rare triumph," "Iran projected caution after Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah and bombings in Beirut," "Despair, Celebration and Shock Follows News of Nasrallah’s Death in Beirut," and "A Decimated Hezbollah Is a Serious Blow to Iran." 

Six stories! Important, though, and there's a lot of depth to those stories, including very new material.

But the next set of stories is the old 2024 presidential campaign:

"It’s not me being out there like Jane Fonda or something. It’s different, and the approach is different. It’s just like code-switching."

"If I lived in [Los Angeles], my conversation is absolutely going to be different. But we also know you’ve got to read the room, you’ve got to know your audience and know who you’re talking to."

Said North Carolina State Rep. Diamond Staton-Williams, a Democrat, quoted in "In N.C., some Black voters are uneasy with Harris’s abortion rights focus/Democrats worry that socially conservative Black voters in the South are wary of Harris’s outspoken support for reproductive freedom" (WaPo)(free-access link).

AND: I'm also reading this Kathleen Parker column in WaPo: "Tim Walz isn’t exactly what he seems/How America’s new wonder dad has gilded his record for political gain" (free link):

"If a government agent has knowledge that a minor under its care or supervision has exhibited symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex..."

"... the government agent or entity with knowledge of that circumstance shall immediately notify, in writing, each of the minor’s parents, guardians, or custodians. The notice shall describe all of the relevant circumstances with reasonable specificity."

That's a proposed law in North Carolina (S.B. 514). It's quoted and mocked in "I am trying to report gender infractions in my kindergarten but don’t know what counts!" by Alexandra Petri (in WaPo).

What does it mean for a school kid to "desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor’s sex." The school shouldn't be treating their children differently based on their sex in the first place. The child's desire should be meaningless. There should be only one kind of treatment. Unless you're talking about the bathrooms....

Petri writes: 

Who is the person in this state who understands gender well enough to feel that this was something worth enshrining in law and not just arbitrary and hurtful and a sledgehammer looking for a nail?... 

ADDED: Here's the whole text of the bill. The quoted subsection — truly puzzling taken out of context — fits under the heading "Protection of parental rights." The idea is that parents have a right to make decisions about their child's mental health care and about any gender treatments that might be offered to a child with gender dysphoria. 

A reader named Robert emails:

"Rough Old-Time Mountain Folk Make The Best Music."

"President Donald Trump on Monday morning threatened to move August’s Republican National Convention out of North Carolina unless there are guarantees the state will let everyone attend."

"'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. Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed ... ..full attendance in the Arena,' he began in a string of four tweets. Trump added: '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.'"

Politico reports.

Obviously, it's a problem to have a Democratic Governor in a position to squelch the Republican convention. The Democrats have their convention in a state with a Governor who's on their side (my state, Wisconsin). Health demands — if they are real — outweigh the need for in-person political theater, but that underscores how much political power the North Carolina governor has, since he can hide his political will within assertions that it's all about health.

I don't see how the North Carolina governor can give this guarantee. He has a higher duty to protect the health and welfare of the people of his state, and he cannot know in advance what the conditions will be in August. He can only say trust me and promise not to let politics affect his decision, but no matter how honest he might be, it can't be relied upon.

"Boston Accent Ranked Second Sexiest in America, Survey Says."

Boston 10 reports.

Texas is #1, in case you're wondering. My favorite part of the ranking is "14. Yooper."

And I learned a new term "Hoi Toider." (At #35.) I thought it might be a joke, but:

High Tider or Hoi Toider is a dialect of American English spoken in very limited communities of the South Atlantic United States—particularly, several small island and coastal townships in the rural North Carolina "Down East" that encompasses the Outer Banks and Pamlico Sound (specifically including Atlantic, Sea Level, and Harkers Island in eastern Carteret County, the village of Wanchese and also Ocracoke) as well as in the Chesapeake Bay (such as Tangier and Smith Island). The term is also a local nickname for any native resident of these regions....

Listen:



I know what a Yooper is, but what exactly is the accent? You can learn that and more here:

"[Mark] Harris had a 905-vote lead over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, but his success in Bladen County — where he won 61 percent of absentee ballots..."

"... even though Republicans there accounted for just 19 percent of them — alarmed regulators. When he finally took the stand Thursday morning, Mr. Harris denied knowing of any wrongdoing in the voter-turnout effort led by L. McCrae Dowless Jr., a veteran political operative known as a local 'guru of elections.' But in a series of questions, Mr. Harris stumbled and appeared to mislead the board. When he returned to the crowded courtroom after a lunch recess, he asked whether he could read a statement. He apologized to the board and explained that recent medical issues, including two strokes, had impaired his abilities and recall. And then he asked for a new election. 'It’s become clear to me that the public’s confidence in the Ninth District’s general election has been undermined to an extent that a new election is warranted,' Mr. Harris said to audible gasps."

From "New Election Ordered in North Carolina Race at Center of Fraud Inquiry" (NYT).

Apparently, the most devastating testimony came from Harris's  a 29-year-old son John, who is a Justice Department lawyer:

Will North Carolina have to redraw its congressional districts before the 2018 elections?

It's possible, since the new decision from the 3-judge district court can go straight to the Supreme Court but to a set of 8 Justices who've been split 4-4 on political gerrymandering.

Rick Hasen analyzes the possibilities at "BREAKING: Divided Three Judge Court Holds North Carolina Congressional Redistricting an Unconstitutional Partisan Gerrymander, Considers New Districts for 2018 Elections":

The court has opened the possibility of giving the state the chance to draw new maps, or maybe appointing a special master, all in line with the idea of replacing the districts with cured districts in time for the 2018 elections, where primaries have already been held...

A few weeks ago, I thought of writing a piece for Slate arguing that now would be the perfect time for the three-judge court to act in this case, because the Court is divided 4-4 and in that case the lower court ruling would stand. But given that primaries are done, and ballots needing to be printed very soon, I thought it would be too late for a lower court to try it.

And it could be that if [the lawyer for the state legislature Paul] Clement goes to SCOTUS, Justices Breyer and Kagan could agree that it is too late and agree on an order to delay this until the Court can consider the issue as a whole next term and before the 2020 elections....

But if the lower court orders new districts for 2018, and the Supreme Court deadlocks 4-4 on an emergency request to overturn that order, we could have new districts for 2018 only, and that could help Democrats retake control of the U.S. House.

Imagine running for Congress and at this late stage, not knowing where the lines around your district are? Imagine being a voter and not knowing which set of candidates is the one that relates to you? What if you've given money and time to a campaign that you now don't know is even your district? What if you've worked on convincing fellow citizens to vote for your candidate and now you don't know if they were the right ones to talk to — you should have been debating with somebody else... and you're still not sure who? I think even the possibility that the lines will be drawn before the coming election is unfair to the candidates and the citizens who've taken an interest in them. Obviously, the Supreme Court should immediately stay the 3-judge court's order. All 8 Justices should agree.

Puzzlingly violent illustration on NYT op-ed criticizing Trump's judicial nominees.

What is this supposed to mean?



I haven't read the column yet. What I see in the the illustration (which is by Chris Kindred) is a large hammer — a judge's gavel — slamming into a man's face and cracking it up. The cracked up face seems to have been fragmented even before the hammer hit. Perhaps the pre-smash fragment is intended to look like the state of Kentucky. The man seems to have the Confederate stars and bars in one eye, and he has some other symbol in front of his other eye, perhaps crossed swords or some kind of cross. I simply do not understand connecting the idea of face-shattering with this issue. Who is supposed to be wielding the gavel?

The column is titled "William Barber II: Trump’s Terrible Choice for Judge," so I'm guessing the man with the shattered face is William Barber II, and the idea is that he's a Trump nominee and he's terrible, presumably because of something connected to the Confederacy. I suppose the column argues that he shouldn't be confirmed, but does that mean he should be bashed in the face with a hammer? Why would you want to associate your opinion with murderous violence?

Now, who's the author of this piece? Oh! It's William Barber II. He's not "Trump’s Terrible Choice for Judge." Somebody else is. Ha ha. Eventually, I'm going to read this piece, but I've gone from being outraged by the depiction of violence to amused by the horribly ambiguous headline.

All right. I'm reading it. The "terrible" nominee is Thomas Alvin Farr, and he's from North Carolina, so that shape really is a state, and the shattering interfered with my state-shape perceptions. The "tails" — the unshattered parts — are very similar. The front ends differ, but North Carolina is the one with the straight-edge on top. Kentucky has the straight-edge on the bottom.

Barber connects Farr to Jesse Helms and Helms to "white supremacist causes." Helms was a Senator from 1973 to 2003, and you can look at his long career and pick out some terrible things (and also some good things), but the question now is what do we think of Farr?

When Mr. Farr graduated from law school, Mr. Helms and [lawyer Thomas] Ellis brought him into their fold. Mr. Farr joined the small law firm of Maupin, Taylor & Ellis, where all of the named partners were openly hostile to civil rights....

Most recently, Mr. Farr has carried on Mr. Helms’s legacy by helping North Carolina’s Republican-led Legislature create and defend in court discriminatory voting restrictions and electoral districts, which were eventually struck down by numerous federal courts that found them to be motivated by intentional racism. In fact, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found that the state’s 2013 voter suppression law was aimed at blacks with “almost surgical precision.”

Put on that abstract level, it does indeed sound terrible, but a balanced presentation would specify that the subject is mostly voter I.D. laws, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see whether the confirmation hearings on Farr will rest heavily on the voter I.D. issue. Polls have long shown that the great majority of Americans support voter I.D. laws. But you can tell all these people they're racists — deplorables! — and see how that works.

Senators from both sides of the aisle must condemn the experience Mr. Farr brings with him... Every senator who condemned the racism on display in Charlottesville must vote to prevent it from having power in the federal judiciary.

So the illustration means that the Senate holds the gavel and it "must" smash Thomas Alvin Farr in the face with it. I understand it now. It's very crude, violent, and ugly. And somebody at the NYT decided it belonged on that column.

"This is like a dry hurricane for us — the aftermath of a hurricane without the destruction."

"About 70,000 tourists were ordered to leave Ocracoke and Hatteras islands after construction crews severed an underground transmission line, causing widespread blackouts" (WaPo).

"A precedent of this Court should not be treated like a disposable household item—say, a paper plate or napkin — to be used once and then tossed in the trash."

"But that is what the Court does today in its decision regarding North Carolina’s 12th Congressional District: The Court junks a rule adopted in a prior, remarkably similar challenge to this very same congressional district."

Writes Justice Alito in the dissenting opinion to Cooper v. Harris, a 5-3 opinion released today.

"Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy."

Said Phil Berger, the leader of the North Carolina senate, and Roy Cooper, the new Governor, in a joint statement about the new bill, repealing House Bill 2.

The new bill would "create a moratorium on local nondiscrimination ordinances through 2020 and leave regulation of 'multi-occupancy facilities,' or bathrooms, to state lawmakers," the NYT reports.

Cooper, a Democrat, beat the incumbent Pat McCrory, a narrow victory that had to do with Bill 2 (and the boycotting of the state that it touched off). Bill 2 had required everyone using a public bathroom in North Carolina to use only the facility that corresponds to the sex designated on their birth certificate.

Cooper also said:

“I support the House Bill 2 repeal compromise that will be introduced tomorrow. It’s not a perfect deal, but it repeals House Bill 2 and begins to repair our reputation.”

Chanted at the Charlotte City Council meeting last night: "Hands Down! Shoot Back!"

"A furious crowd of citizens criticized and often shouted down Charlotte City Council on Monday night...."

Mayor Jennifer Roberts, who allowed people to speak for two hours, repeatedly had to stop the meeting, pleading for quiet. Sometimes the crowd quieted to allow people to speak. At other times, her requests were met with heckles and chants for justice....

Members of the audience repeatedly shouted down council members as they attempted to talk.

“You’re telling me you’re coming to my house. You tell me I look like Donald Trump. You tell me I’m smirking. That doesn’t feel good,” council member Kenny Smith said. “… But we need to talk. We need to do it together.”

When council member Ed Driggs said, “We have to continue to support our chief, who is an honest man,” he was shouted down.

"North Carolina has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department to defend House Bill 2, a law that bans individuals from using public bathrooms that do not correspond with their biological sex..."

"The move is in response to a letter the Justice Department sent last week warning Gov. Pat McCrory that the law is in violation of the Civil Rights Act and giving him until Monday to 'remedy the situation.'"

The state's lawsuit calls the Justice Department's position a "radical reinterpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act" and "a baseless and blatant overreach."... North Carolina could lose a lot of federal money for failing to comply with the Justice Department -- potentially hundreds of millions of dollars for its universities alone.

The drama of "considering" whether the federal government has the power to deprive North Carolina of billions in grant money.

It's a very scary drama:

The Obama administration is considering whether North Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, officials said Friday.

Perhaps North Carolina feels threatened. Pushing federal policy — or the Obama administrations idea of policy that's never put in the clear text of any statute — by threatening to cut off billions is undemocratic and underhanded.

Cutting off any federal money — or even simply threatening to do so — would put major new pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law, which eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people and restricted which bathrooms transgender people can use. A loss of federal money could send the state into a budget crisis and jeopardize services that are central to daily life....

Federal agencies have used the threat of lost money to pressure a handful of municipal governments in California and Illinois to change their policies and allow transgender students to use the restrooms of the gender they identify with....

Dan Forest, the Republican lieutenant governor and the president of the State Senate... is correct that federal anti-discrimination laws do not explicitly mention gay and transgender people: the Obama administration has repeatedly called on Congress to pass a law banning discrimination against them in employment decisions....

The Obama administration would not need to go to court to withhold grant money....

But it would be taken to court, and under existing precedent, it would lose. The conditions the states accept when they take grants need to have been clearly stated by the federal government. The states are entitled to know what they are binding themselves to as they take the money. The requirement that a choice-of-gender principle must apply to the sex-segregation of bathrooms isn't something that was understood when North Carolina accepted the grants that the Obama administration is considering taking away.

Let me just quote a little something from the Roberts opinion (joined by Breyer and Kagan) in the Obamacare case:

[O]ur cases have recognized limits on Congress’s power under the Spending Clause to secure state compliance with federal objectives. “We have repeatedly characterized . . . Spending Clause legislation as ‘much in the nature of a contract.’ ”.... The legitimacy of Congress’s exercise of the spending power “thus rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the ‘contract.’ ”

(The position taken by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito cuts even more strongly in favor of the states.)

The subject here is the power of conditional spending. The question whether there's an equal protection right to use government bathrooms based on your gender identification is a different matter.