Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
is heard live every day from noon to three on
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And again, thank you so much for your support. We
usually do this at two o'clock, but today we're doing
it at noon, and that is our weekly chat with
ap Dylon. She is a reporter at the North State
Journal nsjonline dot com, and she is also the publisher
of her More to the Story substack newsletter that you
can subscribe to.
Speaker 1: Ap. How are you today?
Speaker 3: I'm doing great, Pete? How are you?
Speaker 1: Case of the Mondays? You know, it's just the way
it is doing.
Speaker 2: Okay, So all right, let's start with a topic that
you wanted to hit on when I asked you, Hey,
what do you want to talk about today? And you
said redistricting and then you said Mark Elias, So yes,
crowd favorite.
Speaker 3: Here law group is U is representing a group of
individuals suing over the newly past congressional.
Speaker 2: Map, the gerrymandered racist maps.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes they're they're saying that it's diluting the black folk,
that it violates the Voting Rights Act. You know, there's
two main points to the lawsuit, but it's the Elias
Law Group and another outfit here that's in North Carolina.
That name is escaping me at the moment they filed
it late last week.
Speaker 2: Is that the it's a Southern Coalition for Social Justice
Anita Earls's racket, no common common Cause, common Cause, NC
common Cause.
Speaker 3: Or no, but na a CP of the breach will
be suing as well. Yes, Repairs Forward Justice. Yeah, on Saturday.
Speaker 2: Yes, the usual suspects, basically always the same crowd. H
And Mark Elias a fan favorite here at the Pete
Calener Show. We love Mark Elias here and I am
not at all serious on that. Yeah, this guy has
been and he's had his grubby little fingers in every
redistricting fight we have had. But for some reason, can
never find a Democrat controlled state that jerry manders to
ever protect the democracy in It's always here, it's always
in red states that redistrict.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, it's.
Speaker 3: He sued here quite a few times OVERBSINT ballots, over
voter ID redistricting maps and the like. He was also
former Governor Cooper's lawyer during the twenty sixteen recount, so
he was him and his his firm were involved in that.
They're also involved with Dan McCready and what was it
the NC nine yep, a couple of years back. So
you know, he's been to North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Quite often and cut out bag man for the Russia
collusion hoax.
Speaker 3: Yes, the spildassier. Yes, when he was at Perkins Cooie,
I believe Clinton's campaign lawyer, and the payment for the
spildossier I believe went through him.
Speaker 1: Indeed it did so. So that's that.
Speaker 2: What else we got? The state health plan. This is
interesting that there was a US Court of Appeals ruling
regarding the North Carolina State Health Plan and there was
an exclusion of coverage for trans related treatments, transition related treatments,
and this was a case catile versus Fallwell, and so
where do we stand now with this case?
Speaker 3: Well, this case has been going on for a number
of years, going all the way back to I believe
former Treasurer of Fallwell's first term, after they ruled that
sex change in different procedures in the state, the legislature
had passed a bill about that, but the state health
plan had always had an exclusion for that kind of
coverage anyway, and that went back quite a while, I believe,
into them, maybe even into the early two thousands, late nineties,
so I mean, it's been in place for a long time.
But when they got sued over it, that exclusion suddenly
was up in the air and they were having to
possibly process those kinds of treatments through the state health plan.
But the Fourth Circuit ruled that this is going to
have to go back to the state court in light
of Scremetti, which was a case at the Supreme Court
ruled on involving Tennessee where they upheld the ban on
those kind of treatments for that state. So in light
of that, it got sent back down from the Supreme
Court back to the four Circuit. Four Circuit back down,
and it's probably going to be upheld, and we're probably
going to to be able to maintain that exclusion of
that coverage.
Speaker 2: Right, And the state Treasurer Brad Briner, put out a
press statement after the Supreme Court ruling. You've got a
quote here that the case has always been about one question.
Do the people of North Carolina, through their elected representatives,
get to ultimately manage the state health plan or con
plaintiffs dictate what procedures we cover, because so this is
the health plan that state employees and retirees.
Speaker 1: That they are on.
Speaker 2: And yeah, like you said, the exclusion of these procedures
and quote unquote treatments has been around for dar near
thirty years, and it was only when they got sued
that right, there was a lower court Loretta Biggs, I believe,
was the judge that said, no, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You have to allow for this stuff.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if anything has been funded in
the interim before we got this ruling down, but I
agree with you it seems like the guidance from the
US Supreme Court in this scremmittic case is probably going
to allow North Carolina to continue exempting or prohibiting these procedures.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was specifically Tennessee. It was their law. There
was banning gender transition treatments for teams, like puberty blockers,
hormon therapies. I do believe that there were certain surgeries
covered under their unless they were considered medically necessary. It
was similar to the one here in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so let's talk basement strategy. This was hilarious.
And so you you cite National Review, which they are
paying attention to this race. I have noticed National Review
has had several stories about my good friend Ray aka
Roy Cooper and the Senate race.
Speaker 1: They're paying attention to it, and they detected.
Speaker 2: A a tactic, shall we say that the social media
accounts for Roy has been employing what's the strategy?
Speaker 3: He's recycling old photos and like they're new. I'm a
social media he's putting up photos of himself doing things
in the past with certain people and you know, making
you know, just a generic statement, you know, political statement
on you know, the issue of the day kind of thing.
I think they had a couple of examples in the
article about a New Year's photo that was used in
a hardworking people across North Carolina making an economy economy
strong kind of post for Labor Day, for Labor Day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was.
Speaker 3: Using something from New Year's the year prior. Same thing
with a healthcare one he used September in a September
post he accused DC Republicans of cutting medicaid, but he
had used a Pope photo that was first posted online
in December twenty twenty three. You know, so, I don't
know if the Cooper camp knew this was coming out
or not, but they dropped four photos from the current
North Carolina State Fair where Cooper apparently attended. And there's
a very curiative video of his little trip to the
fair and what he saw and did there.
Speaker 1: So we got proof of life.
Speaker 2: So there's recent proof of life of Roy Cooper actually
out on a campaign trail stop instead of using year
plus old photos of him at completely unrelated events like
photos with a veteran that were used for some other
event that was from May twenty twenty four, but it
was posted this summer. There was another one May twenty
twenty four for Teacher Appreciation Week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting.
Speaker 2: And you also write here in your piece add more
to the story on your subs deck that there is
a NC governor Flicker account. I guess that's a Flicker
is some sort of a photo platform or something.
Speaker 3: When he first came into office, he was using Flicker.
It's a photo sharing service kind of thing, and he
had stockpiled a whole bunch of photos in there, and
I know there was a lot more in there than
there is currently right now. It's like they cleaned it
out or something, because there's very few in there. And
there's a separate Flicker account that was set up as
NC Underscore Governor and that used to have a lot
of photos from press briefings from the pandemic, but now
it's only got photos from his swearing it.
Speaker 4: So wait a minute, So all those photos, all the
free media that he got during the pandemic and the
summer of our fiery but mostly peaceful rioting, that somehow
or another, all those photos are no longer.
Speaker 3: There used to be a number of those in that account,
and I remember looking at it several times in the
past during that but some of those, however, are preserved.
The Department of Health and Human Services and a Department
of Emergency Management both had similar accounts, and whenever they
were doing press conferences there and Mandy Cohen was there
or you know, the the emergency management people were there,
they had taken photos from each press briefing and put
them in there. And those photo albums still do exist,
and there was overlap between those photos and the ones
that were in the Flicker account.
Speaker 1: At one point, but not anymore for government.
Speaker 3: He doesn't have the min aire anymore under his own,
you know. And I don't know whether that was something
that got cleaned out after the pandemic. I don't know
how recent that was. It had been a while since
I went to look at them.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we should read nothing into the idea that
it is kind of beneficial to remove all of those
photos and try to try to, you know, separate him
from the COVID response and pandemic emergency declarations or.
Speaker 3: People are pretty split down that one. A lot of
people think that he did just fine and his measures
weren't strict enough, and other people don't believe that he
was in his right to you know, closed churches and
separate families and nursing homes and keep his state wide
emergency going for eight hundred and eighty eight days. I mean,
he kept kids mask longer than most countries, in the
most most of the states. I think there were only
three states that were masked longer than us, and it
was like New York, California, and one other one, so,
you know, and that was also the time in twenty
twenty when we were all locked down and we weren't
allowed out of our house, but we had, you know,
social justice protests, they were allowed out, and you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wineries fine, yeah, wineries and breweries were allowed to open,
but bars were not. He got sued over that in
the racetrack lawsuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's still going on. The bars lawsuit. That's still
going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, his d lasted a long time. The yeah,
the emergency declaration. But so this is I also detect
in your headline here a bit of a callback to
a previous election cycle twenty twenty when Cal Cunningham, the
man who would pose in front of a grill while
proclaiming to make barbecue. He during that primary, before cal
Cunningham was the nominee, there was this story that popped
about Jeff Jackson aka Baby Jesus, who was thinking about
running for the US Senate seat, and he was going
to do a one hundred county tour as part of
that effort, and Chuck Schumer told him, no, you're not
doing that. You're gonna go raise money, You're gonna dial
for dollars, and he said, we're gonna stuff you in
a windowless basement, is what Jeff Jackson said. And so
do you think that that is the strategy that we
are seeing now from Roy Cooper because of the use
of these old photos that he's not actually out and about.
He may be stuck in a windowless basement himself.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, and that was a strategy during COVID
for President Biden as well. I mean, he never made
any appearances. He was always doing zooms out of his
basement or out of his house. And I would think
that maybe, you know, in this part of the race
right now, at this point, that maybe he's running on
that because he's got more NIGG recognition at this point
and so he doesn't feel he needs to get out there.
That kind of makes sense. I think that when twenty
twenty six hits, if he continues with that, it's going
to become pretty obvious and he's going to start to
get questions.
Speaker 1: But he's going to get a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Well he's raised more money than Watley so far. But yeah,
it's very we're over a year out, still true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, ap Dylan, you can read her work
add more to the story. That's her sub stack. More
to the story, and you can also read her work
at North State Journal NSJ online. Thanks AP, we appreciate
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Speaker 1: So real quick.
Speaker 2: I mentioned this on Friday with Brett Winterbil when we
were chatting. I think it was either I think it
was the pregaming segment that we do here on the show,
the last segment on Fridays, the Wattley War Room. Mike Wattley,
he's got mug shot, mondays, I have not seen today.
I'm gonna check during the break to see if there
are mug shots that have been posted today for mugshot Monday.
I did not get you anything in celebration of this,
but this has been one of the campaign efforts to
connect Roy Cooper to the soft on crime policies of
his administration when he was governor and when he was
Attorney general. It will help to sort of tarnish that
image that he has cultivated as you know, a tough
on crime kind of Democrat and so we'll see what
the mug shots are today. Lord knows, Charlotte could probably
just keep them in high cottoness whole for the whole
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what if I told you that a member of Congress
that's not really a member of Congress but kind of
sort of is a member of Congress was labeled by
law enforcement as having early stages of dementia. Who would
you think that would be. I kind of gave it
away when I said, not really a member of Congress.
It's Eleanor Holmes Norton, she of the profoundly terrible parallel
parking abilities the But no, well yeah, yeah, well there
was actually I don't even think it was parallel parking.
Speaker 1: It was like a pull in spot.
Speaker 2: Remember there was like video somebody shot video out of
the office building showing her trying to park her Preus.
Speaker 1: I think it was. And it was one of those
diagonal slots.
Speaker 2: Where you just kind of you're supposed to, you know,
just pull in headfirst, you know, And she like was
all over the place, crossing like I don't know, seven
different parking spaces, which was quite the feat actually for
a small car like the Prius. But she is a
non voting representative for the District of Columbia, so she's
not really a congress person. She's a delegate, Okay. She
apparently was scammed in her own home by a bunch
of people who showed up and said that they were
part of an HVAC service cleaning crew or something. Said
they were going to clean out her HVAC system and
then her fireplace, and then they charged her just under
four thousand, four hundred dollars, which I have never had
a fireplace cleaning service.
Speaker 1: Now to be I've.
Speaker 2: Never had a like an old school fireplace, so I
don't know what that would cost. I have had HVAC systems,
but again, never had one cleaned. Well, no, I'd take
it back. I think I did have one cleaned a
long time ago, but it was part of like a
service package or something. But even that was not forty
four hundred dollars. That's like a hole that. Like, you
can get an air conditioner installed for that kind of price,
a brand new one, I mean, not like top of
the line, but still. An internal police report obtained by
News four in Washington, DC details how suspects were able
to enter her home access her credit card before somebody
whom her office called a house manager and friend, was
able to put a stop to it. In the DC
police report, they described Norton, who is eighty eight years old,
as having quote the early stages of dementia and said
Norton has a caretaker with power of attorney. Her office
pushed back against that claim at the time the group arrived.
The report said that again this is what the cops
wrote up, that the caretaker slash power of attorney was
not at the residence. That report does not name the
caretaker or power of attorney, but says that individual called
police And in case you're not aware, power of attorney
is like what you sign over or a court takes
from you, gives to some other person that they can
then act on your behalf because you are not mentally
capable of signing a contract, making really any decision of
a legal bearing right. That individual who hang on let mean.
This is from the NBC Washington website. Jacqueline Pelt is
her name, Jacqueline. She reported the crime. She is a
longtime friend and supporter of Norton's and she was listed
also as Norton's campaign treasurer. She apparently saw the HVAC
workers on a security camera after Norton had called her
and advised Norton to tell them to leave. Pelt then
went to Norton's home and realized that the credit card
had been charged. They then flagged down a DC cop
as well as a US Capitol Police officer, who also
went to the home to investigate Norton's credit card and
driver's license number could potentially be compromised. According to the report,
no arrests were made, but they're treating the crime as
felony fraud. In a statement to News four, Norton's office says, quote,
the congresswoman employs a house manager who oversees all maintenance services,
so she initially assumed that her staff had arranged the
visit and provided her credit card for payment. Upon notifying
her house manage, who reviewed the ring doorbell footage and
confirmed that no such appointment had been scheduled, the incident
was immediately reported to the police. Later in the same statement,
Norton's office said, quote, Congresswoman Norton does not have a caretaker.
A longtime employee and friends serves as the house manager,
residing at a separate address. A spokesperson for Norton confirmed
that Pelt had notified the police, but says she is
not Norton's caretaker. That spokesperson would not say whether Pelt
has power of attorney or not. So I'm reading this
story and maybe it's my years of training as a
local reporter which puts the prompt into my brain almost immediately,
is which is what is the local angle to the story?
Speaker 1: How do you localize this story?
Speaker 2: And for people of a certain age, you may recall
a former Mecklenburg County commissioner named Ella Scarborough. I know
I'm dating myself here, but I am old enough to
remember when way back in twenty twenty two, Ella Scarborough
passed away after a long period of absence on the
county commission where nobody knew her whereabouts, and she was
supposedly joining these county commissioner meetings by zoom, but she
was never on camera, and sometimes it sounded like somebody
else was casting votes for her because she was in.
Speaker 1: Decline.
Speaker 2: Her health was in decline. I believe she also had
some form of dementia at the time, and this was
all covered upasically by local Democrats, county commissioners, county staff.
Everybody was like giving her this shield because they didn't
want her to lose her health. Benefits, and so we
had somebody on County Commission that was not functioning and
somebody else who was not elected casting votes in her stead.
I'm not saying that Eleanor Norton is Eleanor Holmes. Norton
is casting votes. I don't think she actually can even
cast votes because she's just a delegate. But that's what
I remembered again long time ago twenty twenty through twenty
twenty two time frame. The field commissioner's report says the
HVAC workers had tried to solicit Norton two previous times,
once in August, once in September, and they were told
to leave both times.
Speaker 1: So what is going on here?
Speaker 2: That sounds to me an awful lot like she's gotten targeted,
like for some reason for I don't know why. It
could be though that in the previous visits to the
house when they have spoken to her, they thought this
is a woman that is an easy mark. She's elderly,
she doesn't seem completely all there, and so we can
take advantage of this because she's not in charge of
the maintenance of the house. So if we show up
and say we're here to do this cleaning, she's just
gonna let us do it, and she's gonna.
Speaker 1: Give us the money or maybe state actor.
Speaker 2: Right, because they didn't steal anything from the house, which
is kind of odd for like a theft ring to
not steal anything except her credit card number? You know,
did they do anything else while they were there? I
got questions, all right, if you're listening to this show,
you know I try to keep up with all sorts
of current events, and I know you do too, And
you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources.
Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app and it's a website and it combines news
from around the world in one place so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out
at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check
dot ground dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through that link
and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use
the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. So the delegate from Washington, DC to the
US House, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, not a voting member
of the US House. She's eighty eight years old. She
was victimized by some scammers who gained entry into her
house the other day posing as h VAC cleaners and
fireplace cleaner, and then they somehow got her credit card,
you know, to pay for the service that they actually
did not do, and they ran up a charge of
like forty four hundred dollars. Police were called after Holmes
apparently called her her house manager, the person who takes
care of this house that she lives in. She has
somebody that manages all of the affairs for her home,
and that woman's name is Jacqueline Pelt. She apparently called Pelt.
Pelt looked at the ring doorbell camera and said, no,
these aren't legit called the cops.
Speaker 1: They called the cops. Cops showed up, they.
Speaker 2: Filed a report, and in the police report, the cops
say Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, eighty eight years old, black woman,
suffers early stages of dementia.
Speaker 1: That's what they.
Speaker 2: Said in the report. And Norton's office is very upset
about this, okay, saying the medical diagnosis included in the
police report was based on an assumption that the reporting
officer was unqualified to make. Okay, maybe, but do you
need qualifications to identify that somebody may be in the
early stages of dementia? And honestly, law enforcement officers do
have experience dealing with people who have early onset dementia
and other dementias. How do I know this Well, I
have been in media for almost three decades now, and
law enforcement is almost on a daily basis sending out
notifications to the media looking for help in getting the
word out that somebody has wandered off.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You see the reports all the time, you get the
silver alerts on your phone. I mean, if you're you know,
a good person.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I think it just comes. It just comes,
whether you're a good person or not.
Speaker 2: Like everybody gets them, So you get these alerts and
so law enforcement is out there looking for the people,
and then you know, we'll get notification, thank you very
much for your help, the person has been located. Okay,
well what does that mean. It means that law enforcement
usually has found the person and now they are talking
to that person. And they do this again on an
almost daily basis. So not every cop obviously, but you know,
for our there's always somebody that's gone missing and then
has found law enforcement is talking to that individual. So
they actually do have some experience talking to people who
are suffering from dementia. And this is not a mockery
of Miss Norton. Again, like I have been a supporter
of the Alzheimer's Association for thirty years. I just got
done with one of our walks to raise a bunch
of money. Thank you everybody who donated as well. It's
an awful disease. Dementia is terrible, but it's also disqualifying
to be an elected official if you cannot remember things precisely.
For this reason, because this cleaning crew scammers. They could
have been just criminals, but they also could have been
something else, and we're not too sure what they might
have been up to. They only took her credit card
number and maybe her driver's license number, but we don't
know if that's all their intents were, Like, they could
have also planted bugs.
Speaker 1: I don't know if.
Speaker 2: She's got somebody asked about security clearances. I don't know
if she has anything like that. But to compromise somebody
who's a member of the body, that's a pretty big deal.
So I don't agree with her office saying that the
medical diagnosis was based on an assumption the reporting officer
was unqualified to make. Well, I don't know what that
assumption was. What's the assumption the officer was operating under.
They don't tell me. Now. Maybe there was some assumption
the officer made that is not accurate. More than likely
it was in the conversation he was having with Norton.
The spokesperson declined to say whether she has had any diagnosis.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna come out and say that the cop
made an assumption that he shouldn't have made, he's not
qualified to make that assumption or make that diagnosis, or
not qualify to say what he said in the report,
I would think it's incumbent upon you. Then to say no,
she has not had any diagnosis of dementia, but when
asked does she have a diagnosis of dementia, you won't say. Well,
that kind of tells me that she does. All right,
that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
them you heard it here. You can also become a
patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetekallanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.