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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Millions of jobless Americans are waiting on Congress to decide whether to extend a $600 weekly boost to unemployment benefits.
Republicans are proposing another $1200 stimulus check, while offering unemployment benefits that would replace a laid-off worker’s wages by up to 70 percent.
Our political contributor Mary C. Curtis has more on that and the latest on the race for the White House.
Many Americans, when they remember the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, reflexively turn to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, quoting selective passages about content of character. But my sister Joan, who stood under a shaded tent that day, making signs with freedom slogans for out-of-towners to raise high, had a different answer when I asked for her thoughts. Not to take anything away from King, she told me, “It wasn’t just that speech. It was all the speeches.” And what impressed her teenage self most were the words of a man who was just 23, a few years older than she was.
On that day, John Lewis was already stirring up the “good trouble” he favored when he said: “To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now!”
It was a speech that, in an early draft, was a tad fiery for some elders in the movement for equality and justice. Lewis did tone it down — but not enough to lose its urgency.
Some of the tributes to Lewis, who died last week at the age of 80, emphasized his generosity of spirit, evident in his ability to forgive and embrace those who beat him into unconsciousness. But the picture is incomplete without acknowledging the impatience, the fury to make it right, that saw him through more than three dozen arrests, five after he was elected to Congress. Just as those who would have been or probably were in that majority of Americans who considered King a rabble-rouser then and revere him now, many are all too eager to recast Lewis as a secular saint who just wanted everyone to get along.
Of course, they would. It would let them off the hook.
Parents, students and teachers got the word they had been waiting on for weeks: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will begin the upcoming school year in the classroom then switch to all-remote learning.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said the state’s public school systems can reopen with a hybrid of in-person and remote teaching, while South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and the state’s public school teachers are at odds over McMaster’s reopening plan for schools.
The reopening of North Carolina’s economy will stay in Phase 2 for the time being as coronavirus hospitalizations continue to set records. The head of the CDC, Robert Redfield, came to Charlotte to make the case for mask-wearing, saying that masks could “drive this epidemic to the ground” within two months.
For the first time since the financial crisis, Wells Fargo ended a quarter in the red, and said deep cuts – including layoffs – were on the table as a result.
The Local News Roundup has more on those and other stories.
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – President Trump, at Mount Rushmore on Friday night, set the stage for a campaign increasingly focused on “culture war” issues.
“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” the President said.
So, is the appeal of a “culture war” campaign too narrow?
Or is there a Nixon-esque “Silent Majority,” as the President is saying, ready to show up in November?
Click above for more with our political contributor, Mary C. Curtis.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – The debate over a mask mandate, just one part of how the coronavirus pandemic is becoming increasingly political.
Our political contributor Mary C. Curtis has more on the recent spike in cases we’re seeing in the South, and the strategies for the presidential campaigns, as we move closer to November.
CHARLOTTE, NC — Fresh off a disappointing campaign rally over the weekend, President Trump spoke to a packed crowd of students at a rally in Arizona Tuesday night.
But the president’s visit didn’t come without criticism… as COVID-19 cases in Arizona are surging.
Here’s more from our WCCB political contributor Mary C. Curtis.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, especially for a city that wants to be world class. Charlotte would join that list of cities to have hosted both Democratic and Republican national conventions. Its hotels and restaurants and streets would be bustling. Its arena would be filled with crowds, greeting the acceptance speech of repeat GOP standard-bearer Donald Trump, guaranteed grabber of headlines (and other things, as the Access Hollywood video attests).
And the world would be watching.
Well, the world is watching, all right, as what was a somewhat grudging but eventually accommodating relationship has deteriorated into sniping and bickering, with a nasty split on the horizon.
As usual, the catalyst for the acrimony was Trump himself.
CHARLOTTE, NC — President Donald Trump says the Republican National Convention will be looking for another host for its convention in late August.
Governor Roy Cooper isn’t planning to ease social distancing guidelines for a full-scale convention.
Here’s our political contributor Mary C. Curtis with the latest on the controversy.
CHARLOTTE, NC — President Trump says governor Roy Cooper has about a week to decide on whether the Republican National Convention can be at full capacity in August.
Gov. Cooper says he supports having the convention in North Carolina but he has to put the health and safety of citizens first.
Here’s our political contributor Mary C. Curtis.
