Good morning, hope your fantasy football season isn’t ruined yet. Here’s what you missed over the weekend.
1. Hillary Clinton got sick, everyone lost their minds.
So, in case you’re one of the lucky few whose brain hasn’t been thoroughly broken by the election, there’s been a conservative meme going around for quite some time which posits that Hillary Clinton is actively dying.
The rumors heated up last week when NBC published a story about Clinton coughing, complete with a video clip. NBC’s story was predictably denounced by liberal pundits and used as an “I told you so” by Racism Monthly and proof that the Democratic nominee is pulling the biggest long con of her career: covering up a terminal illness just so she can beat Donald Trump by a lesser margin than pretty much any other prominent Democrat you could think of.
Most people brushed this off as either a conspiracy theory and NBC really stretching to find something to talk about on Labor Day – until, uh, yesterday, when Clinton had to leave a 9/11 memorial service because she was sick.
Clinton rested at her daughter Chelsea’s apartment in New York and then left a few hours later. Last night, the campaign announced that she had been fighting pneumonia since last week. She also canceled an upcoming trip to California in order to get some rest.
I’ll spare you all of the dumb details of the raging internet debate over if Hillary Clinton is a hero for being sick, if she has an 1830s Oregon Trail disease, or if this proves once and for all that the media has a vendetta against Clinton, Trump, both, or neither. I will say this, though: Hillary Clinton is sixty-eight years old and Donald Trump is seventy. Neither of these people are in the best shape of their lives, both of them have been putting in 80+ hour weeks for well over a year, and its likely either would have some sort of health issue come up at some point in their presidency.
Only one of them, however, has been talking about banning Muslims from entering the country since last year, has repeatedly dehumanized undocumented immigrants (the brown ones, at least) as godless killing machines, and impulsively advocates for war crimes whenever he’s asked a question about foreign policy.
As for why Trump supporters would be giddy about the possibility that the only candidate in modern US history whose unpopularity comes within lightyears of Trump’s might be replaced by someone else as the Democratic nominee, that’s anyone’s guess.
Less than two months to go. We’re all in this together.
2. Raleigh P.D. says meetings with community last winter were good, doesn’t mention that one thing that happened.
Last winter, Raleigh police chief Cassandra Deck-Brown met with community members for “face to face” sessions about, among other issues, accountability and policing. The 22-page report on those meetings was released by the city last Thursday.
Some big takeaways: the RPD is starting up a “Citizens Police Academy” early next year that it hopes will strengthen the police’s ties with the community by teaching them the basics of law enforcement, body camera testing will begin this fall, the city has “been advised” that a community oversight board would require approval by the General Assembly, and RPD won’t participate in the Faith Action ID program for undocumented immigrants.
Notably missing: Akiel Denkins, who was shot and killed on February 29 by a Raleigh police officer, and whose death kickstarted a conversation about tensions between Southeast Raleigh and the RPD. Neither Denkins or the shooting is mentioned anywhere in the report, even as it mentions Deck-Brown’s body camera proposal to the Raleigh City Council.
The report also says she gave that presentation on March 1; she was scheduled to, but because of the shooting, gave it two weeks later instead.
Although the community meetings took place in December and January, well before Denkins’ death, it’s still odd that the report doesn’t mention one of the most significant events in Raleigh involving the police in years. Officer Daniel Clay Twiddy was cleared of wrongdoing by the Wake County D.A. in April.
You can read the full report below.
3. R.I.P Rodney Ellis.
The former president of the North Carolina Educators’ Association unexpectedly passed away at 49 on Saturday. From the N&O:
Several state and federal officials and education advocates expressed their condolences over the weekend. Gov. Pat McCrory said Ellis’ devotion to education was a “labor of love,” while U.S. Rep. Alma Adams called him a “true fighter for equality.”
Those who worked closely with him said that while he represented teachers, the kids came first.
“I think his lasting legacy is whether you agreed with him or not, Rodney Ellis always stood up for kids, especially the most vulnerable kids,” said Brian Lewis, who was the association’s lobbyist for much of Ellis’ tenure. “He made his decisions based on what was best for kids.”
4. Hopscotch 7 is in the books.
The seventh annual Hopscotch Music Festival was this weekend in Raleigh. Lavender Country, Julien Baker, Vince Staples, and the Dinwiddies, among others, all killed it.
We had some writers covering it, check out their reports here.
5. Fifteen years since 9/11.
Yesterday marked fifteen years since 9/11. Here are some tweets by a guy who repeatedly voted against the Zadroga Act, which ensured permanent healthcare benefits for 9/11 first responders.
So brave. It’s really a shame that the families of the first responders he speaks so highly of finally got the reauthorization of those benefits last December. Seems like they’re missing out on seeing how much Richard Burr’s tweets are really worth once they get the bill for cancer treatments.
That’s all for today, have a good one.
