NC Policy Watch: “Governor Roy Cooper has granted a full pardon of innocence for Dontae Sharpe. “I have carefully reviewed Montoyae Dontae Sharpe’s case and am granting him a Pardon of Innocence,” said Gov. Cooper in a statement on Friday. “Mr. Sharpe and others who have been wrongly convicted deserve to have that injustice fully and publicly…

Political Wire: “By the narrowest of margins — just five votes — businesswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick appears to have won a South Florida Democratic primary to replace the late US Rep. Alcee Hastings in Washington,” CNN reports. “The outcome in the November 2 election had been up in the air until Friday evening, when the Broward County canvassing…

Political Wire: ““The Spotsylvania County School Board has directed staff to begin removing books that contain ‘sexually explicit’ material from library shelves,” the Fredricksburg Free Lance-Star reports.Said one school board member: “I think we should throw those books in a fire.” Another added that he wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can…

AL Political Reporter: “The Alabama Legislature approved a bill Thursday that would allow for employees to file for medical or religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine. The religious exemption gives employees an exception simply for “sincerely held religious beliefs.” So not very many Alabamians should be checking that box. A Pew Research Center study of…

North State Journal: “Max Cleland, who lost three limbs to a Vietnam War hand grenade blast yet went on to serve as a U.S. senator from Georgia, died on Tuesday. He was 79. Cleland died at his home in Atlanta from congestive heart failure, his personal assistant Linda Dean told The Associated Press. Cleland, a…

Arkansas Times: “Attorney General Leslie Rutledge finally bowed to the overwhelming poll indications that she’d lose a race for governor in the Republican primary against Sarah Huckabee Sanders and quit the race, opting to run for the meaningless position of lieutenant governor instead. …Polls showed Sanders with a commanding lead, not to mention an enormous edge in money…

The Hill: “Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that Texas should secede if Democrats “fundamentally” destroy the U.S. but added that “he is not ready to give up on America yet.” “If the Democrats end the filibuster, if they fundamentally destroy the country, if they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections,…

TX Observer: “Those actions gel with the reports by Commission Shift and Texans for Public Justice, which found that as a commissioner, Wright has supported deregulation policies that would benefit oil waste companies like the one he once owned. The groups also found that Craddick and Christian, the agency’s chair, had similar conflicts of interest,…

NY Times: “Then the vaccines arrived. They proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. I have covered that gap in two newsletters — one this summer, one last month — and today’s newsletter offers an update. The brief version: The gap in Covid’s death toll…

Political Wire: ““Donald Trump once described Mitch McConnell as his ‘ace in the hole’ and wrote, in a foreword to the Senate Republican leader’s autobiography, that he ‘couldn’t have asked for a better partner’ in Washington,” The Guardian reports. “Except, according to Trump, he didn’t.” “Speaking to the Washington Post for a profile of the Senate minority leader published on…