Nurses to picket Mission Hospital, citing concerns about safety

June 14, 2021Read more

The labor union representing Mission Hospital nurses said members will picket two hospital facilities in Asheville June 15 to highlight concerns about under-staffing that, they contend, has affected the safety of patient care. The labor action is the latest in a growing fusillade of complaints about the safety and quality of patient care made to regulators and to Asheville Watchdog since for-profit HCA Healthcare took over nonprofit Mission Health in 2019.

In announcing the picket, National Nurses Organizing Committee North Carolina said Mission and St. Joseph hospitals — both owned and operated by HCA — need to make improvements to retain experienced registered nurses (RNs) and recruit new ones. Working conditions at Mission make it hard to attract new recruits, the union committee said.

Asked to comment on the union’s statement, Nancy Lindell, Director of Public and Media Relations for HCA Healthcare North Carolina Division and Mission Health, said in an emailed statement: “Since mid-February Mission Hospital has held roughly a dozen bargaining sessions with the union representatives and, in those sessions, the parties have reached more than 30 tentative agreements” on topics including health and safety.

“Despite this progress, we understand that this kind of picketing activity sometimes occurs when a union and an employer are engaged in negotiations for a contract, as we are with this union,” Lindell wrote. “This is merely a form of demonstration that the union is legally allowed to do. We want the public to be assured that Mission Hospital remains open and continues to provide the quality patient care that Mission Hospital has always provided.”

In calling for picketing, Mission nurses said hospital management has consistently failed to adhere to its own staffing standards, including nurse to patient ratios.

“Since HCA purchased our hospital in 2019, the management has cut corners on safe patient care by cutting support staff and violating their own nurse staffing grids,” said Shelby Runkles, a cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit RN at Mission. “With each additional patient, nurses are more prone to make mistakes and the risk of serious complications increases.”

Registered nurses at HCA Mission voted overwhelmingly last September to join National Nurses Organizing Committee-North Carolina, an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU), and are negotiating with HCA Mission on a first collective bargaining agreement. The pickets are scheduled to be at Mission Hospital at 509 Biltmore Avenue and Mission’s St. Joseph Campus at 428 Biltmore Avenue from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. — Barbara Durr

Stein hints at second thoughts about Mission sale to HCA

June 8, 2021Read more

Although he approved HCA’s purchase of Mission Health in 2018, Attorney General Josh Stein now appears to be having second thoughts about that sale. In a June 2 statement regarding a different hospital merger, he said he had “real concerns” about hospital consolidations, and specifically named HCA and Mission. “Bigger doesn’t always mean better. In fact, it often means worse and more expensive,” Stein said in the statement.

Stein approved the deal that ended more than 130 years of Mission’s legacy of putting quality of care over profits. But now, he said, his office has had more than 100 complaints from patients about quality of care and billing. “Consolidations drive up already inordinate health care costs,” Stein said. He urged hospital administrators, including those at HCA, to be transparent on their pricing.

HCA raised prices 10 percent shortly after taking control of Mission in 2019. As reported in The Wall Street Journal in March, a number of HCA hospitals violated federal price transparency rules that required hospitals to post their prices starting in January 2021. HCA embedded coding in its website to hide prices from consumers trying to understand what their costs might be, The Journal found. After The Journal revealed the blocking links, HCA removed them.

State Treasurer Dale R. Folwell, reacting to the Journal article, criticized Stein in March for not taking action “to protect consumers.”

“I am disappointed by hospitals’ pattern of deceit,” Folwell wrote March 31. “Patients and taxpayers deserve to know what they’re paying for care. We must get rid of secret contracts and push the power down to the consumer. The attorney general needs to be involved.”

It is not the first time Stein has warned HCA about transparency. More than a year ago, the attorney general wrote to Greg Lowe, president of the North Carolina division of HCA Healthcare, to raise concerns including “a surge in complaints about quality of care” and about HCA’s transparency in billing patients.

In his latest letter to hospital administrators, Stein said obfuscation on pricing “layers needless anxiety and uncertainty on top of what are already some of the most stressful circumstances a person can face.” — B.D.

Abolish Department of Education, Cawthorn tells NC GOP leaders

June 6, 2021Read more

Rep. Madison Cawthorn visits Trump Tower in New York City June 2 (PHOTO CREDIT DAILY MAIL)

U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC11), speaking at the North Carolina Republican Party’s Old North State Dinner on June 4 in Greenville,

Rep. Madison Cawthorn visits Trump Tower in New York City June 2 (PHOTO CREDIT DAILY MAIL)

U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC11), speaking at the North Carolina Republican Party’s Old North State Dinner on June 4 in Greenville, called for abolishing the federal Department of Education, The East Carolinian reported.

“We need to abolish the Department of Education because no Washington D.C. bureaucrat, no one who wants to push critical race theory, nobody who believes that they should indoctrinate our children at a young age and force politics upon them should be allowed to be in charge of our schools,” Cawthorn was quoted as saying.

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, primarily taught in law schools, that examines why racial inequality persists in the United States despite Constitutional guarantees and two centuries of laws enacted to codify equality and equal justice. It argues that racism is embedded in the American social system and enabled by the legal system.

“We need to allow the next generation to be raised in a nation where they’re not politicized from the age of five,” Cawthorn said. “When we have drag queens in our public libraries reading to our children, the libraries that we paid for … it is up to us to fight as hard as we possibly can for the next generation.”

Cawthorn, who was home-schooled and left college after one semester, sits on the House Committee of Education and Labor.

Cawthorn also called for abolishing the federal income tax and impeaching judges who “do not believe in our constitution.”

Former President Donald Trump spoke at the North Carolina dinner June 5. Cawthorn made an unannounced visit to New York City on June 2 and was photographed leaving Trump’s New York residence. — P.L.

HCA and Google partner to mine patient data

May 27, 2021Read more

Mission Hospital (Photo credit: Bloomberg)

HCA and Google have agreed to work together to develop healthcare algorithms using patient records, The Wall Street Journal reported May 26.

Mission Hospital (Photo credit: Bloomberg)

HCA and Google have agreed to work together to develop healthcare algorithms using patient records, The Wall Street Journal reported May 26. The patient records, including digital health records and data from internet-connected medical devices, would be extracted from HCA’s 186 hospitals and more than 2,000 clinics and facilities across the country, including Mission Hospital in Asheville and six other hospitals in Western North Carolina.

The new multi-year agreement expands a previous alliance between the two companies to share patient health data related to COVID-19. Google and HCA engineers will work to develop algorithms to “help improve operating efficiency, monitor patients, and guide doctors’ decisions,” according to the companies.

“Data are spun off of every patient in real time,” said Dr. Jonathan Perlin, chief medical officer of HCA, which is based in Nashville, Tenn. “Part of what we’re building is a central nervous system to help interpret the various signals.”

Some of Google’s earlier forays into the $3 trillion healthcare industry have raised concerns about data privacy. Dr. Perlin told The Journal that HCA patient records would be stripped of identifying information before being shared with Google data scientists and that the hospital system would control access to the data. — P.L.

Blue Ridge Public Radio’s Feingold to Retire in 2021

May 25, 2021Read more

David Feingold (Photo credit: WLOS)

David Feingold, chief executive officer and general manager of Blue Ridge Public Radio, told staff this week that he plans to retire sometime before Thanksgiving, The Watchdog has learned.

David Feingold (Photo credit: WLOS)

David Feingold, chief executive officer and general manager of Blue Ridge Public Radio, told staff this week that he plans to retire sometime before Thanksgiving, The Watchdog has learned. Feingold, 71, joined WCQS in July 2015 after a career in commercial radio and television broadcasting including six years as London bureau chief for CNN, and, for 16 years, as assistant general manager of NET, Nebraska’s statewide educational radio and television service. In Asheville, Feingold oversaw the creation of BPR News, a sister station to BPR Classic. A search committee has been formed by the BPR Board of Directors to find his replacement. Disclosure: Blue Ridge Public Radio is a publishing partner of Asheville Watchdog. — B.D.

Asheville native Joe West poised to break MLB record

May 25, 2021Read more

Major League Baseball umpire Joe West is scheduled to be behind home plate Tuesday night, working his 5,376th regular-season game. In doing so, “Country Joe” will break baseball’s umpiring record held by Hall of Famer Bill Klem,

Besides calling balls and strikes, West is famous for his feuds and confrontations with players and managers. Although his eyesight has been questioned on occasion, he has exquisite hearing, and last year ejected a team’s general manager who was yelling criticisms from a luxury box high above the playing field. In April West won $500,000 in a defamation lawsuit he brought against former major league catcher Paul Lo Duca, who falsely accused West of expanding the strike zone for pitcher Billy Wagner in return for Wagner letting West drive his classic 1957 Chevy.

West, who moved to Greenville, NC, for high school, was a star quarterback at Elon College (now Elon University). He plans to retire at the end of this season. West is a singer-songwriter and has recorded two country music albums, and is an avid golfer. Baseball scribes say he is almost certain to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Good luck, Joe! The Watchdog regrets that it cannot print this story in Braille so that you can read it. — P.L.

Update: Cawthorn taunts Liz Cheney after GOP purge

May 12, 2021Read more

Cawthorn, who backed Cheney, now calls for her ouster

May 11, 2021Read more

If there were a political Olympics, Madison Cawthorn would surely be a contender for a gold medal in back-flipping. In advance of this week’s House GOP vote on its leadership team, the 25-year-old congressman from Western North Carolina executed a perfect reverse somersault on Liz Cheney, whom he had supported for the GOP’s leadership just three months ago — only to run into a buzz saw of criticism from his far-right base on his Madison Cawthorn Chat channel on Telegram.

Last week, apparently chastened, Cawthorn posted a broadside attack headlined LIZ CHENEY MUST GO. He implied that his reason for flipping was that Cheney had fist-bumped President Biden when he entered the House chamber for a joint address to Congress last month. Cawthorn also urged readers to donate to his 2022 reelection campaign.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn posted this May 8 on Telegram

Cawthorn has also back-flipped since telling CNN anchor Pamela Brown in January that “the election wasn’t fraudulent” and that “Joseph R. Biden is our President.” He also joined 16 other GOP freshmen in signing a letter to President Biden expressing willingness to work with the Democratic administration in the “hope we can rise above the partisan fray.”

His Telegram followers booed him. Cawthorn has now reverted to calling the election “stolen,” writes that Donald and Melania Trump are still President and First Lady, vows to support “President Trump’s agenda,” and refers to President Biden and Vice President Harris simply as “Joe” and “Kamala.”

As for rising above the partisan fray, Cawthorn has voted against every proposal brought forward by Democrats, including his vote against pandemic relief programs and broadband expansion for Western North Carolina. — Tom Fiedler

Documentary shows how racial covenants segregated Asheville neighborhoods

April 29, 2021Read more

Asheville neighborhoods as we know them didn’t just happen. Racially restrictive covenants that barred the sale of homes to people of color have been among the many racist barriers to Black home ownership here. When Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity discovered such a covenant on a property it intended to develop, it decided to raise the profile of the issue by producing an 18-minute documentary. Watch the film here.

“We hope this film expands peoples’ knowledge of how past laws and practices shaped the current housing landscape,” said Ariane Kjellquist, Habitat’s communications director. The film includes interviews with Buncombe County Commissioner Al Whitesides; Drew Reisinger, of the Buncombe County Registry of Deeds; Kel Compton, a Habitat homeowner; Sophie Dixon, of the Shiloh Community Association; Sarah Judson of the University of North Carolina at Asheville; and Parker Smith of Pisgah Legal Services. — B.D.

Free COVID-19 vaccinations, no appointment needed

April 28, 2021Read more

Buncombe County Health and Human Services is now offering free, walk-in COVID-19 vaccinations at the Buncombe County vaccination clinic located on the campus of A-B Tech. The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is available to everyone 16 years of age and older at the A-B Tech location.

Cawthorn calls Democrats “bastards”

April 28, 2021Read more

Rep. Madison Cawthorn told a Newsmax interviewer last week that “We have got to get Democrats out of power … we’ve got to take the majority away from these bastards.” Cawthorn,

Rep. Madison Cawthorn told a Newsmax interviewer last week that “We have got to get Democrats out of power … we’ve got to take the majority away from these bastards.” Cawthorn, who told fellow House Republicans soon after taking office that his priority would be to seek publicity rather than to craft legislation, then posted a link to a Breitbart story about his interview to the Madison Cawthorn Chat channel on the social media platform Telegram. The Madison Cawthorn channel is popular with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, antisemites, QAnon adherents, Big Lie proponents, and other self-described “patriots.”

Cawthorn also agreed with the Newsmax interviewer that he believes Democrats are promoting a surge of refugees at the southern border in order to get cheap labor and register people to vote Democratic. “You know I absolutely think that’s exactly what it is,” Cawthorn said. “I think that the cartels want to make the money. I think the Democrats want to profit off the power. So I genuinely believe that this border crisis is something that they are actually promoting.” — T.F.

Soaring construction costs hammer affordable housing

April 22, 2021Read more

One of the city’s more interesting experiments on affordable housing is dead.

Paul D’Angelo, the Director of Community Development for Asheville, told the city’s Housing and Community Development Committee meeting this week that far higher constructions costs have nixed the project. Construction costs have risen more than 15% in the last year, and as a result the developer cannot go forward with the units as previously priced.

The proposal in West Asheville would have provided one of the few opportunities for the city to address home ownership for lower income residents. It would have built 11 single family homes at $275,000, and 12 condos, six of them one-bedrooms at $199,00 and six two-bedrooms at $239,000.

A $1.1 million loan that was approved for the developer from the City’s Housing Trust Fund will now be returned to the fund. — Barbara Durr

HCA-Mission monitor invites public comments

April 19, 2021Read more

Gibbins Advisors, the independent monitor approved by Attorney General Josh Stein to make sure HCA Healthcare adheres to the conditions he placed on its 2019 purchase of Asheville-based Mission Health System, says it wants to hear from Asheville Watchdog readers.

“The Independent Monitor for Mission Health System encourages comments from the community,” a spokesman wrote to The Watchdog. “The Independent Monitor catalogs all commentary to assist it in its monitoring work. Commentary is also passed along to HCA to be addressed. Respondents can choose to submit information anonymously or include their contact information so that HCA may follow up directly. The contact form is available at https://www.independentmonitormhs.com/contact or you can email the Independent Monitor at independentmonitor@gibbinsadvisors.com.”

Readers are also invited to follow the activity of the Independent Monitor on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/independent-monitor-for-mission-health-system/ — Peter H. Lewis

Cawthorn raises nearly $1M for re-election campaign

April 18, 2021Read more

Scores of American corporations vowed after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to withhold political contributions from the 147 House and Senate Republicans, including western North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who voted against certifying Electoral College results from states won by Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. For the most part they have kept their checkbooks closed, according to a Watchdog review of the latest Federal Elections Commission reports.

As a candidate, Cawthorn received donations of $1,000 to $5,000 each from the political action committees of more than a dozen major U.S. corporations, led by Home Depot, SunTrust Banks, and United Parcel Service (UPS). Others included Aflac, Altria Group, AT&T, Cigna, Duke Energy, ExxonMobil, Kirby Corporation, Lowe’s, Reynolds American, and Universal Technical Institute.

But in the three months following his actions to overturn the election, none of those corporate PACS has sent him money, the FEC data show. Cawthorn for NC, the congressman’s re-election committee, reported $943,837 in contributions during the first quarter of 2021, all but about $100,000 from individual donors. The rest came mainly from the Take Back the House 2022 Republican political action committee, the records show. — Peter H. Lewis

Update to “Cawthorn’s First 2 Months in Office”

April 12, 2021Read more

Subtitled “Under Attack, He Moves (Far) Right,” our story noted that Rep. Madison Cawthorn had not introduced any original legislation after 60 days in office.

Since our story appeared on March 5,

Subtitled “Under Attack, He Moves (Far) Right,” our story noted that Rep. Madison Cawthorn had not introduced any original legislation after 60 days in office.

Since our story appeared on March 5, Rep. Cawthorn has introduced nine original pieces of legislation. The first was a resolution “Commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the fall of Kronstadt [Russia], which took place on March 18, 1921.” It attracted no co-sponsors. Another of the first-term Republican congressman’s bills would permanently abolish Daylight Savings Time.

Rep. Cawthorn also introduced what he called the “Donument Act” to honor former President Donald Trump by establishing a “Southern Border Wall National Monument.” The bill, which has no co-sponsors, would give federal protection to the 400 miles of border wall built during Trump’s term along the 1,933-mile-long border with Mexico, endowing it with the same protected status as the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, and Mount Rushmore.

“We’re going to turn the border wall into a national monument so Biden can’t touch it!”, Rep. Cawthorn wrote to his followers on Telegram. — Peter H. Lewis

Mission-HCA Healthcare Public Meeting April 7th

April 12, 2021Read more

Gibbins Advisors, the independent monitor hired to oversee HCA’s compliance with terms of the Mission Health System sale, will hold an informational online meeting open to everyone in Western North Carolina served by Mission Health.

This will be the first public meeting with the independent monitor since last year’s seven pre-pandemic community meetings. In the webinar, the independent monitor will provide an update on its work, and take questions from the public.

Anyone interested in participating can register at this link.

The presentation will be recorded and posted for viewing after the event on the Independent Monitor’s website. — Peter Lewis

Contract Negotiations Begin For Mission Nurses

April 12, 2021Read more

The National Nurses Union, which in September 2020 won recognition at Mission Hospital for 1,800 Registered Nurses, is in the throes of negotiating its first contract at Mission with HCA. It took four months before negotiations actually started in January, and the NNU isn’t putting a timeline on finishing. While patient and staff safety are prime concerns as the pandemic continues, the NNU says that the nurses want HCA to make real changes at the hospital and to address “a wide range of issues”, including staffing, which many nurses say has been cut to the bone. The NNU has successfully negotiated contracts with 19 other HCA hospitals around the country, though Mission is the first for-profit hospital in North Carolina that the NNU has unionized. — Barbara Durr

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When local paper shrank, these journalists started an alternative (NYT)

“There’s a crying need in a complex city like New Bedford [Massachusetts] for in-depth, contextual, explanatory investigative journalism,” Barbara Roessner, The Light’s editor and the former managing editor of The Hartford Courant, said. Studies over the last decade have shown real costs to cities without a watchdog, including declines in voter participation and drops in a city’s bond rating. The lack of accountability can lead to waste and corruption, which drives up the cost of government. — P.L.

Waynesville fires town attorney for anti-Trump Tweets (Smoky Mountain News)

In a 4-to-1 vote, the Waynesville governing board terminated its contract with Town Attorney Bill Cannon over anti-Trump comments he made on his personal Twitter account, The Smoky Mountain News reported. Cannon, who has 38 Twitter followers, had been town attorney for four and a half years. His personal Twitter posts were brought to the attention of town officials last week by Chad Nesbitt, a conservative activist and blogger based in Asheville. Joey Reece, a member of a group called Saving Haywood, wrote in a letter to the editor: “Criticism of President Trump by him, although in poor taste and showing a lack of professionalism, might conceivably pass the smell test, but not calling the good citizens of Haywood County and Waynesville bigots that remind him of Nazi Germany.” — P.L.

For city planning geeks: Can Charlotte streets be saved?

New research finds that the “spatial logic” and order of Charlotte, North Carolina’s city street network is the most chaotic and disordered of the 100 world cities studied. This includes such urban driving nightmares as Rome, Tokyo, Moscow. Unlike cities with highly planned street-grid layouts (Chicago, Miami, Atlanta), Charlotte scored an almost perfect mark for disorder and maximum entropy with a uniform distribution of streets in every direction. — P.L.

In NC, 6-year-olds can be arrested (New York Times)

A 7-year-old boy was charged with rape in a small town in upstate New York. The only state in the nation with a lower “age of delinquency” — the age at which children can be charged with crimes and sent to court — is North Carolina, where earlier this year a 6-year-old boy was arrested and taken to court in Durham after he picked a tulip while waiting at a bus stop. — P.L.

Needed: Local funding for local news (Substack)

Local news still plays a critical role in people’s lives, and in democratic governance. One of the most promising developments in serious news in this country in the last few years has been an explosion in large-scale nonprofit funding for local news, writes Richard J. Tofel, president of ProPublica, a non-profit investigative journalism organization. But here’s the problem, he says: Most of this money is coming from national sources rather than local funders. — P.L.

Cawthorn: "My service as a husband" trumps duty in Congress (Real America's Voice)

Asked to explain why he has missed more votes than any other freshman member of Congress, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC11) said “To that, I really laugh. It shows how the Democrats feel about the nuclear family in America right now. I was doing the only thing that I find more important than my service in Congress, and that’s my service as a husband.” Besides, Cawthorn told host David Brody of Real America’s Voice News, a conservative program, “Every single vote that came up was some Democrat garbage, so I was happy to be able to not actually have to vote on those.” — P.L.

Government wants to help pay your internet bills (Washington Post)

The Emergency Broadband Benefit, a Biden administration pandemic relief program, will pay $50 a month toward the cost of Internet service for all families who lost some income in the last year and earn less than $198,000. But there’s a catch. You can get the EBB discount on your home Internet or cellphone bill only if you sign up. This tech column tells you how. — P.L.

Asheville is North Carolina’s priciest spot to live (Citizen Times)

The Asheville metropolitan area’s cost of living is 106% of the national average, according to price data collected by the Council for Community and Economic Research (CCER). On the flip side, pay in the Asheville area is lower than the state’s major metro areas and only 84 percent of the United States average. Driving the high cost of living are a spiking housing market and medical costs, said Jennie Allison, senior program manager at CCER. — P.L.

The hottest commodity on the planet today? Dead trees. (The Atlantic)

From 2015 to 2019, lumber traded at $381 for 1,000 board feet, according to Fastmarkets. (A typical new house uses 15,000 board feet.) This month, it reached an all-time high of $1,104 for the same amount. “There are people who say, ‘Climate change isn’t affecting me,’ ” said Janice Cooke, a forest-industry veteran and biology professor at the University of Alberta. “But they’re going to go to the hardware store and say, ‘Holy cow, the price of lumber has gone up.’” — P.L.

Police body cam recordings are not public records in NC (New York Times)

Police body cam footage is considered a public record in most states. In North Carolina, a court order is required, even if a police chief or sheriff wants it released. Bills have just been introduced in the General Assembly to require body cam recordings to be released within 48 hours of an incident. Police departments would have the option of going before a judge to argue that release could jeopardize someone’s safety or hinder an investigation. — S.K.

“News deserts” are real. Here’s one in eastern NC (The New Yorker)

The U.S. has lost 1 in 4 of its newspapers in the last 15 years. Around 1,500 American counties have just one paper; another 20 counties are without a newspaper altogether. These latter areas are what researchers call news deserts, and Jones County, North Carolina, is a classic example. Here’s what happens to the community, and to democracy. — P.L.

NC Senate committee votes to keep minimum age for marriage at 14 (WLOS.com)

North Carolina has the lowest minimum age marriage in the country at just 14. A proposed bipartisan bill to ban child marriages would have raised the minimum age to 18, but state senators on Wednesday watered it down to leave it at 14. In a compromise, they voted to restrict marriages for anyone under 18 to someone who’s no more than four years older. “North Carolina has become a destination place for folks marrying children and for sex trafficking,” said Sen. Danny Britt
(R-Robeson). — P.L.

NC to gain a 14th seat in U.S. House. (Carolina Journal)

North Carolina has grown enough over the last decade to earn a 14th congressional seat, the U.S. Census Bureau announced this week. Complete data is expected to be released Aug. 16, paving the way for the General Assembly to begin creating new maps for the 14 congressional districts, all 120 N.C. House seats, and all 50 N.C. Senate seats. Although the state is nearly evenly divided between Republican and Democratic voters, Carolina Journal says the “Best case scenario for Democrats would be a 9-5 GOP map that leaves all Democrat incumbents with blue leaning districts, and the GOP protecting all 8 of its member districts, while drawing a GOP friendly 14th seat. Worst case would be a map in which voters select 10 GOP members of the U.S. House and 4 democrats, to represent N.C.” — P.L.

Delayed census puts pressure on NC redistricting ahead of 2022 voting (Brennan Center)

The much anticipated, fraught process of North Carolina’s U.S. congressional and state legislative redistricting is coming up. Redistricting occurs every 10 years based on the decennial census but was delayed by the pandemic. The count that would have been delivered to the state at the end of 2020 is now expected for the end of September. This will put pressure on the state’s electoral processes and, while legislative leaders in Raleigh have said they believe they will be able to execute the redistricting in time for candidates to file in December, it is possible that they may need to adjust the primary elections schedule in 2022. Notably, if the state does not complete its redistricting in a timely manner, the courts could step in and draw temporary maps to ensure legal compliance with the schedule of 2022 elections. — B.D.

Veteran NC lawmaker punished for trying to stop backroom deal (WRAL)

State Rep. Julia Howard (R-Davie County) learned that money is thicker than GOP blood. Citing ethical concerns, the 17-term chair of the North Carolina House Finance Committee tried to stop a bill that would financially benefit dozens of lawmakers, including House Speaker Tim Moore. Moore (R-Cleveland County) stripped Howard of her leadership post and kicked her off the Finance Committee. — P.L.

NC-11 Congressman Madison Cawthorn marries Cristina Bayardelle (People)

They were legally married in a private civil ceremony in December, and held a religious ceremony in Hendersonville on April 3. “I ran for Congress because Cristina and I didn’t want to raise a family in the America many on the left seek to
create,” the newlywed congressman said.

Evanston city council approves funding for reparations to Blacks (NPR)

The Illinois city plans to use the first $10 million from taxes on legal marijuana sales to finance housing assistance for African Americans. Asheville and Buncombe County voted last year to consider reparations but plans are still
undefined.

Amid mass shootings nationwide, gun sales soar in North Carolina (Raleigh Observer)

“They talked about more gun laws, and people read into it that ‘I better get my gun now,’” said gun dealer Larry Hyatt. “And then they sent out $1,400 to buy one,” Hyatt said of federal stimulus checks deposited in taxpayer accounts.