Last week, just before everything shut down for Thanksgiving, the Republican-appointed Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina handed $2.5m to the white nationalist Sons of Confederate Veterans, claiming it would settle a lawsuit over the removal of a Confederate "Silent Sam" statue from campus -- but as local litigator T Greg Doucette sleuthed out, the lawsuit was filed after the governors voted the settlement, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans appeared to have no standing to sue, as it wasn't their statue, and even if it was, the university would not face legal liability for its students removing it. Read the rest

On November 27, just as the courthouses were closing and newsrooms were going to a skeleton crew, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina -- lately stuffed with GOP operatives and seemingly bent on destroying the university -- announced that it would settle a lawsuit with the Sons of Confederate Veterans -- a white nationalist organization devoted to installing the "traitors' flag" of the Confederacy across the south -- for $2.5m, diverting millions from educational purposes to building a Klan museum. Read the rest