Cawthorn considers switching North Carolina districts, surprising GOP
RALEIGH, N.C. — Rep. Madison Cawthorn knocked off a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump and Mark Meadows en route to his seat in Congress.
Now the young conservative could shake up the North Carolina congressional delegation once again.
In the political map approved by Republican state lawmakers last week, Cawthorn is the incumbent in the 14th Congressional District. But he told Republican leaders in his current Western North Carolina district that he is instead considering running in the 13th Congressional District — one that most political observers thought had been drawn for North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore.
“I think he’s leaning toward it, if it’s a feasible thing,” said Lee Emerson, chairman of the Polk County GOP, in a telephone interview Wednesday night.
The 13th District includes the western part of Mecklenburg County and all of Polk, Rutherford, McDowell, Burke, Gaston and Cleveland counties. Moore is from Cleveland County.
Cawthorn’s current 11th District includes most of the new 14th District, but some parts of the new 13th District. Cawthorn lives in Henderson County, which is in the new 14th. But, unlike state lawmakers, congressional candidates do not have to live in the district they are running in.
The move would be a surprise and could set up a potential blockbuster of a GOP primary between Cawthorn, a national name in the Republican Party, and Moore, who has served as speaker of the House for the better part of a decade.
Cawthorn said on the call that he could take the weekend to decide. A decision could come before Monday.
—The News & Observer
An ‘earthgrazer’ flew ‘a whopping 186 miles’ over 2 states — then vanished, NASA says
A space object with an intimidating name — “earthgrazer” — zoomed over Georgia and Alabama this week, offering witnesses a glimpse of something rare, NASA says.
“Earthgrazers” are fireball meteors with a trajectory so shallow that they skim long distances across the upper atmosphere,NASA says.
“Very rarely, they even ‘bounce off’ the atmosphere and head back out into space,” NASA Meteor Watch wrote on Facebook.
The fireball appeared Tuesday, Nov. 9, around 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, officials say, and was “detected by three NASA meteor cameras in the region.”
It entered the atmosphere “at a very shallow angle — only 5 degrees from the horizontal.”
In fact, it was flying for so long that NASA had to recalculate its data to determine how far it traveled across the planet.
“The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 55 miles above the Georgia town of Taylorsville, moving northwest at 38,500 miles per hour,” NASA says. Taylorsville is about 55 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta.
“Its path was so long that our automated software could not handle all the data. So we ran another analysis code this morning(Nov. 10) and discovered that the fireball traveled ... a whopping 186 miles through the air,” according to NASA. “The revised calculations put the end point 34 miles above the town of Lutts, in southern Tennessee.”
It was “a rare meteor for those fortunate enough to see it,” NASA officials say.
—The Charlotte Observer
NYC Mayor-elect Adams vows to rehire plainclothes cops despite ‘riot’ threat
NEW YORK — New York Mayor-elect Eric Adams vowed Thursday to reinstate the NYPD’s controversial plainclothes cop units even though a prominent leader of the city’s Black Lives Matter movement told him “riots” and “bloodshed” will ensue in the streets if he follows through.
Adams — who met with the Black Lives Matter leader, Hawk Newsome, and other activists in Brooklyn on Wednesday — dismissed Newsome’s threat as toothless and said it holds no bearing on his plan to reintroduce the plainclothes units once he takes office.
“That’s silly, and I think New Yorkers should not allow rhetoric like that — this city is not going to be a city of riots,it’s not going to be a city of burning. It’s going to be a city where we are going to be safe,” Adams said during a Thursday morning news conference in Manhattan.
“There’s no surprise on what I said. When I ran to become the mayor of the City of New York, I said I was going to reinstitute an anti-gun unit in plainclothes. Voters voted on that. I stated what I was going to do. What I said on the campaign trail is what you’re going to see in City Hall, and I’m not backing away from that.”
Of Newsome and the other activists he sat down with, Adams added: “Those 13 people are not representative of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Newsome, the co-founder of New York’s Black Lives Matter chapter, issued the warning over what will happen if the plainclothes units return while speaking to the Daily News after his Wednesday meeting with Adams.
—New York Daily News
Julian Assange gets permission for prison marriage to partner
LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been given permission to marry his partner, Stella Moris, in his London prison.
Assange has been held in Belmarsh Prison in London since 2019, after the United States took legal action to extradite him.
The couple, who met when Assange was living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, in an attempt to avoid extradition, have two children.
Moris told the PA news agency: "I am relieved that reason prevailed and I hope there will be no further interference with our marriage."
A Prison Service spokesperson said: "Mr Assange's application was received, considered and processed in the usual way by the prison governor, as for any other prisoner."
Assange, an Australian citizen, was arrested by police after spending five years in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had sought political asylum as he fought to avoid extradition to Sweden, on sexual assault charges, fearing he would be taken to the U.S. for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks.
He was jailed for 12 months for skipping bail, but was kept in Belmarsh while a lengthy legal case was mounted by the U.S.
In January, a judge refused a U.S. request to extradite Assange, but an appeal was lodged, with the outcome still pending.
No date has been set for the wedding.
—dpa
