Will Doran
@will_doran
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Writing about NC politics for @WRAL . DM me with tips, story ideas and funny place names. Formerly @newsobserver @sanfordherald @dailytarheel
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Last Seen Profiles
Pinned Tweet
Today I start a new chapter of my journalism career at
@WRAL
and
@NCCapitol
and am very excited for what’s next.
I’ll still be covering all things
#ncpol
/
#ncga
, so keep the tips coming!
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In a rare move, the group of all 50 states' Supreme Court chief justices wrote to SCOTUS, urging them to shoot down the argument NC Republican lawmakers are making--that there should be no checks and balances for election laws--in their "Independent State Legislature" case
#ncpol
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Some background: Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson was reprimanded by the U.S. DOJ in 2012 for numerous constitutional violations + an "egregious pattern of racial profiling." He was then re-elected twice, in 2014 and 2018, after no one ran against him
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Video shows Wake County deputies walking toward a queer bar in Raleigh and shooting at the owner, yelling “the game is over”
Deputies defended their actions, saying he had been handing out water and first aid to protesters and needed to be stopped.
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Fired NC cop: “We are just going to go out and start slaughtering them f—— ni—–. I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait.”
That cop was on the force for years, and was fired less than 24 hours after a new chief took over. Wonder what has gotten hushed up before?
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However, later on in 2016, the DOJ and Alamance County reached a settlement over this issue. The DOJ dropped legal action in exchange for the sheriff agreeing for his deputies to undergo bias training and more
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The brief is careful to say it doesn't support either party. But its first sentence (left photo) directly opposes the argument NC lawmakers made (right photo) about whether or not courts should be allowed to rule on redistricting maps, etc.
Link is here:
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More info on exactly what was happening before the pepper pray started today in Alamance. Plus, confirmation that a reporter was among those arrested
#ncpol
Can confirm now that an Alamance News reporter was arrested by police while taking photographs at the protest.
Arrests began happening shortly after protesters took an 8 minute moment of silence in the street in honor of George Floyd.
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One Raleigh HOA fined a family $50 a day for installing solar panels without its permission, even though state law explicitly bans HOAs from banning solar panels.
The first day they didn't pay, the HOA put a lien on their home and started foreclosure.
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Here's my story from when SCOTUS agreed to take up the NC case in time for the 2024 elections, and what it could mean for the entire country:
#ncpol
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Breaking: US Rep Jeff Jackson (D-Charlotte) to run for attorney general in 2024
Announcement comes after Republican legislators double-bunked him with Rep. Alma Adams to create a new, solidly Republican district west of Charlotte. More details here
#ncpol
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NC voting results will be delayed at least 45 minutes tonight, as the
#ncpol
elections board has just voted to extend a polling place in Sampson County by that long due to some problems they had this morning. Vote passed 3-2, with the Democrats in favor and Republicans against
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UNC students, protesting NC gun laws following on-campus shooting, chanted “Vote Them Out” in the state House just now.
House Speaker Tim Moore (a UNC grad, in a Tar Heels tie today) joked as police escorted the students out that they must have secretly been Duke students
#ncpol
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Two salient facts in this
@newsobserver
story on HOAs in North Carolina:
1. HOA boards are increasingly run by giant companies, not the neighbors
2. A loophole in state law lets them take people's homes for minor violations, without courts or due process
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A cop drove over a teen's foot during a protest.
She tried to get his badge # so he had her arrested, then falsely accused her of assault.
Due to body cam footage she wasn't charged. Now the city is paying her not to sue. Good reporting by
@aaronsguerra
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He also talked about killing a black magistrate judge, as well as a black cop he worked alongside. And later got to fantasizing about a second Civil War.
None of the cops he talked to reported him. He just forgot that he was recording himself, and got caught in a routine audit
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Many groups are filing briefs in this case, not just these chief justices.
Ex-Trump attorney John Eastman wrote a brief in support of NC lawmakers here for the conservative Claremont Institute, saying SCOTUS has gotten it wrong for the last century
#ncpol
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@DeLoach_NC
No individuals signed, just the group as a whole. However, the group's "amicus committee" is not exactly a liberal bunch
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@EvanDonovan
@rogbennett
Don’t need to know a word of Spanish to understand what he’s saying. Such pure emotion!
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New from me: Did the Raleigh PD’s former “officer of the year” frame over a dozen local residents as heroin dealers?
A lawsuit says there’s evidence he did—and that fellow cops knew and didn’t do anything about it. RPD declined to comment.
#ncpol
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This Raleigh detective framed 2 dozen innocent people with fake drugs. People lost their jobs, missed cancer treatments, had families disrupted.
He got a year-long paid vacation while under investigation. Now, is sentenced to just 38 days in jail.
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I've asked NC Chief Justice Paul Newby what he thinks of the brief.
A Republican, Newby was supportive of the legislature in the gerrymandering case that has now morphed into Harper v. Moore at SCOTUS. Was told he might respond tomorrow.
#ncpol
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Remember that as Louis DeJoy makes the USPS slower, less accessible and more expensive, he also personally has millions of dollars invested in a company called XPO Logistics that would benefit from a weakened USPS.
🚨 SCOOP: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will unveil the largest rollback of consumer mail services in a generation as part of his 10-year plan for USPS including:
- longer first-class mail delivery times
- reduced post office hours
- higher prices.
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Not just Raleigh where cops are targeting people who hand out water or other supplies to protesters. Here’s a video from Asheville:
Medic area in disarray after APD came through stabbing water bottles and tipping over tables.
#avlnews
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Martin wasn’t known as a far-right politician during his time in
#ncpol
. But the NYT reported he was behind two meritless legal schemes to overturn the 2020 election results—including the claims about Pence that led to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Now he won’t talk about it.
Former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin appears to have played a direct role in two controversial legal maneuvers to keep Donald Trump in the White House.
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Meet James! He is one day old and already the best person in the entire world
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Wilmington is in New Hanover County, where an off-duty sheriff deputy recently led an armed mob in neighboring Pender County that allegedly broke into the home of a black teen they (wrongfully) believed was involved with a missing girl
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Stunning story by
@BryanLowry3
et al: US Navy might’ve charged ex-Missouri Governor with rape if he had been on active duty during one incident. When he tried to rejoin that was just 1 reason they didn’t want him back—But then Mike Pence stepped in
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A boring headline, but a hell of a story from
@washingtonpost
on the group of teenagers who gathered online to pray and make racist jokes, until their 20-something leader started posting state secrets because he wasn’t getting enough attention
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Neil Gorsuch failed for 2 years to sell property in rural Colorado. But 9 days after he was named to SCOTUS, it was bought for $1.9M by the CEO of a law firm that handles tons of SCOTUS cases
Once again, journalists do the ethics work the government won’t
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Last year, Asheville taxpayers had to pay up hundreds of thousands of dollars after a white police officer brutally beat a black man for jaywalking after leaving work.
(The officer was criminally charged, but not until it made national news)
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I was sitting in the back of the House chamber last night when Rep. Staton-Williams shared her abortion story.
When she said this line quoted in her tweet below, about growing up in the church, I overheard the NC Freedom Caucus leader make a Church of Satan joke.
#ncpol
#ncpol
I cannot pretend to know what North Carolinians feel in this moment. But for me, I have fewer rights today than I did yesterday, and that doesn't feel good.
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Something many don’t realize: NC has more people living in rural areas than every state except Texas (and we are even more % rural than Texas)
#ncpol
Reminder: a big reason Dems have been able to crack Georgia is it's now a really urban state. Metro ATL alone made up 59% of GA's vote on 11/8.
By contrast, Dems continue to struggle in NC, where the Charlotte/Research Triangle metros combined for just 42% of the state's vote.
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“This is a national epidemic, the murder of black men,” Elizabeth City Councilman Michael Brooks said. “And all we’re asking for is they release the body cam (video). What reason would anyone have ... not to show the bodycam?”
#ncpol
#AndrewBrownJr
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Sign of the times: On the UNC subreddit thread about today’s shooting, people from other universities with shootings are chiming in to offer support—or even advice for what to do when hiding from a potential shooter on campus
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Big breaking news from the NC Supreme Court today: Voter ID struck down for intentional racial discrimination, plus another ruling that underscores the ability of state courts to rule that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. Stay tuned for a story
#ncpol
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There are 2,200 people who work at the Tyson chicken plant in Wilkesboro. The company tested them all and found that nearly 600 had COVID-19.
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A jab at North Carolina lawmakers from the former president. "Surgical precision" is a quote from the federal court ruling that struck down our 2013 law on voter ID (and various other election law changes) that the court said were intended to disenfranchise minorities
#ncpol
Former Pres. Obama: "Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darndest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision."
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After 8+ amazing years at the
@newsobserver
this will be my last month at the paper.
It’s bittersweet. I’ve loved this job, but am also very excited about what’s next!
More on that later (but for all my
#ncpol
followers, trust that you’ll still see plenty from me in the future)
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NC won a $100 million federal grant to help pay for a quarter-billion-dollar bridge replacement in the Outer Banks, and the state official in charge is named WIN BRIDGERS
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Late paying your dues one month? Forgot about a fine?
The HOA can foreclose on you without even giving a heads-up that you owe them, says one Chapel Hill attorney who handles these cases: "I've had multiple people, multiple clients who did not get notices in HOA foreclosures"
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It also raises several questions, like
1. why the FBI can’t find a guy that even a bunch of random teen gamers know the identity of, and
2. why the military would entrust this stuff to an anti-government, conspiracy-obsessed racist who spent hours chatting with strangers online
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Thinking of getting the new Boars Head vaccine as my booster when it’s time
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Guess that trip Gov. Cooper took to Japan a few weeks ago paid off
#ncpol
🚨🚨 Toyota will invest an additional $8B in its electric battery manufacturing site in Randolph Co., including hiring another 3,000 employees. This historic announcement comes on the heels of Gov. Cooper’s meeting with Toyota President Koji Sato in Tokyo earlier this month.
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I’ve never felt so much respect for someone in a floral fanny pack
Great
@newsobserver
photo of one of the many nurses on the front lines of this pandemic, at
@UNC_Health_Care
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Redlining (a Jim Crow era tactic to keep cities segregated) has persisted in North Carolina.
Today the Biden DOJ and NC Attorney General Josh Stein announced First National Bank will pay NC $13.5M for Redlining in Charlotte and Winston-Salem
#ncpol
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NC Democratic Party chair
@abreezeclayton
says Cotham’s switch doesn’t just endanger abortion rights: “Public schools are on the line. LGBTQ rights are on the line.”
#ncpol
#ncga
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Raleigh PD has over 900 positions on staff. They city’s police budget has grown by 16% since 2019, up to $124 million this year.
And they can’t patrol the handful of blocks in downtown Raleigh without hiring private contractors?
The city of Raleigh is hiring to private security to help police patrol parts of downtown, including near the GoRaleigh Bus Station. A man was stabbed nearby last night.
#ralpol
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Can’t decide which of these photos I like better from this story about a GOP group playing the North Korean national anthem at a pro-Trump fashion show, so here are both
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Instituting a no-fry zone
DETROIT (AP) — McDonald's says it is temporarily closing 850 restaurants in Russia in response to the Ukraine invasion.
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A Durham cop hurt his shoulder in a fight with a high schooler who went off campus for lunch, then charged the teen with two felonies, claiming the kid assaulted him. But the DA dropped the charges after seeing the video. Now the teen is suing for civil rights violations
#ncpol
Police ‘out of control,’ says lawsuit accusing white NC officer of framing Black teen
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An
#ncpol
story in four parts:
Are Democrats about to get their hearts broken again? Knotted in a statistical tie, the race between Democrat Cheri Beasley and her Republican opponent, Representative Ted Budd, seems close enough to raise their hopes in North Carolina.
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NC split evenly last night, 7-7 in our 14 US House seats
That was using court-ordered districts (replacing a GOP-drawn map that would’ve been 10-4 GOP even if they got <50% of the votes)
With the
#ncpol
Supreme Court now in hand, however, a 10-4 map will likely return for 2024
Rs got their Supreme Court victories in OH and NC. Likely has consequences for redistricting next year -- Ds had a good night in each state for House but worse maps may be on horizon as Rs build defenses to protect what looks like a fairly small majority
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In Raleigh the city council met tonight to talk about investigating the police response to protests these last few days.
@Anna_M_Johnson
has more
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So cops let the rioters who broke into Congress during session leave freely, but they arrested Washington Post reporters for filming it?
With
@wleaming
, still rolling the camera while we were being arrested for filming protests outside the Capitol.
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It's possible this has happened before, but I've never heard of it.
#ncpol
Cooper and Stein's brief was critical of the court's decision to re-hear the case: "If the rule of law means anything, it means that the law does not swing wildly based on the composition of this Court."
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@ryanbeckwith
Extra points to anyone who answers B and launches into a detailed explanation of the Missouri Compromise
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Josephus Daniels did as much as anyone in North Carolina to usher in the Jim Crow era. He cheered on racist violence, too, not just political disenfranchisement. The N&O has since apologized for our role in the 1898 Wilmington Massacre under his leadership
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Gov. Cooper was donating blood to mark the news today that gay men are finally allowed to give blood, due to a new FDA rule.
NC’s top health official, DHHS Sec. Kody Kinsley, is gay. He said today it feels “terrific” just to be treated like everyone else.
#ncpol
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Am still waiting for an answer as to how asset forfeiture (in which police can take your money, guns, car, electronics, etc without even charging you, let alone getting a conviction) isn’t unconstitutional.
NC has technically banned it, but it still happens here anyway
#ncpol
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My grandma is fully vaccinated and back to playing bridge with her friends. My mom is set to get her second shot soon. And my wife just got her first shot today. So happy for all the covid-protected Doran ladies!
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Is there a more Early 21st Century phenomenon than “start of a new war shown in real time by Google Maps, after soldiers didn’t turn their phones off, then broadcast on social media”
According
@googlemaps
, there is a "traffic jam" at 3:15 in the morning on the road from Belgorod, Russia to the Ukrainian border. It starts *exactly* where we saw a Russian formation of armor and IFV/APCs show up yesterday.
Someone's on the move.
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There are an estimated 400,000 families in danger of eviction in NC. But barely any of this rental aid has been claimed.
#ncpol
Wake County has doled out 7% of its money for rent help. Durham is at 11% and Johnston County has not spent a single cent of its money
Millions of dollars in rental assistance is available for North Carolina tenants who have lost income due to the pandemic. Here’s how to get it.
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Big news in
#ncpol
#ncga
this evening: A judge just threw out 2 of the 4 constitutional amendments that voters passed in November, saying the
#NCGA
is so gerrymandered it lacked the authority to even propose the amendments. Story coming soon
@newsobserver
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Written in 1960: Maybe one of the earliest honest accounts of D-Day published in the US, not scrubbed to gloss over the horrors of the day. If you read nothing else about selfless sacrifice on Memorial Day, make it this
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The tweet about this story is eye-popping, yet somehow still doesn’t do this story justice.
Here is
@keelyarthur50YS
’ lede
5 On Your Side confirms 40 cancer cases connected to NC State building
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So now the Raleigh man who is suspected of defrauding the Russian government of millions of dollars and trying to have someone murdered might also be tied to the Mueller investigation. This story just keeps getting weirder.
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SCOOP: Lt. Gov. Robinson was evicted in 2012, has never paid back rent.
His 84yo ex-landlord: "Everybody goes through hard times at some point. The quality of a person is — once they’ve gone through that — do they try to rectify their situation.”
#ncpol
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Breaking news from
@NCGOP
annual convention: Party delegates just voted to censure the party’s senior Senator,
@SenThomTillis
#ncpol
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Never even *charged* with a crime, never went before a judge, but still spent almost a month ignored in solitary confinement—without clothing, a bed or a toilet—where he eventually starved to death.
If an American died like this in some foreign country, how would we react?
NEW: Video reveals Indiana jail guards left Josh McLemore, 29, naked in solitary confinement for 3 weeks straight before he died of malnutrition. He was in a state of psychosis and had no bed or bathroom while trapped in a windowless cell w lights on 24/7
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America, 2019: A tweet from President Trump inadvertently helps BuzzFeed to force the CIA to acknowledge a clandestine operation it was running in the Middle East
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Challenge: Try to draw a state you'd like to live in using only 100 counties. Here's mine
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Mississippi voted for medical marijuana, and for Trump.
Florida voted for a $15 minimum wage, and for Trump. Already has medical marijuana.
Meanwhile NC still might go for Biden, but we recently made hemp illegal because it looks like marijuana.
The South is a strange place.
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Good morning from the NC Supreme Court, where security is tighter than I’ve ever seen, for today’s re-do on partisan gerrymandering.
The normal public access to the court is gone—even the main doors in are locked, and they’re vetting who can go inside the courtroom itself
#ncpol
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NC Democratic Party chair
@abreezeclayton
holding a news conference this morning with the state's Democratic members of congress, legislative leaders and others.
Talking about where the party goes from here, given the new district maps the
#NCGA
passed yesterday
#ncpol
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