THE GOOD: STEPHANIE HOFELLER
On Sunday, Stephanie Hofeller published her late father’s files on a new website, thehofellerfiles.com. After Thomas Hofeller died in 2018, Stephanie turned over the GOP gerrymandering guru’s files over to Common Cause, which was suing the General Assembly, over the NCGOP’s objections. The bombshells they contained not only helped force the General Assembly to redraw legislative and congressional districts last year, but they also showed that the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the census were politically motivated.
THE BAD: THE DURHAM FIRE DEPARTMENT
Last month, when concerns about carbon monoxide at McDougald Terrace first surfaced, Durham Fire Department assistant chief Andy Sannipoli told The News & Observer that “there was no indication” that CO had contributed to the recent deaths of two infants in Durham’s largest public housing complex. Under pressure from activists, however, the city walked that back. Last Thursday, EMS assistant chief Lee VanVleet admitted that the infants’ autopsy reports hadn’t been completed, which means that, well, yeah, it’s possible carbon monoxide played a role, after all. The next day, the DHA began voluntarily relocating McDougald residents.
THE AWFUL: THOM TILLIS
When his primary challenger dropped out, the country’s most vulnerable incumbent could have put a little daylight between himself and President Trump. But that’s not Thom Tillis’s play this year; blind, feckless allegiance is. So when Trump droned Qassem Soleimani on Friday, Tillis went on Pat McCrory’s radio show to proclaim that it’s “reckless” to “do anything but thank the president”—a very 2003 sentiment. The next day, in an embarrassingly gratuitous bit of ass-kissing, Tillis asked his Twitter followers to “sign a birthday card” for Eric Trump, an “American Patriot.” That tweet got ratioed—i.e., more replies than retweets or likes, an indication of internet mockery—like nothing we’ve ever seen: As of Monday morning, it had 18,401 replies to a combined 732 RTs and likes.
Contact editor in chief Jeffrey C. Billman at jbillman@indyweek.com.
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