Anderson Clayton wouldn’t just be forgiven for gloating after Election Night, any reasonable person would expect the North Carolina Democratic chair to be in party mode given what her party pulled off on Tuesday.

The numbers are almost hard to believe:

• Going into Election Day, Republicans held a 24-seat majority in the state House. Democrats flipped 22 seats and now hold a 24-seat advantage.

• Republicans held 10-seat supermajority in the state Senate. They didn’t just break the supermajority, but are one good recount away from flipping that chamber too.

• After Republicans gerrymandered the Congressional map to give themselves a 11-3 advantage, Democrats still won 10 out of 14 seats.

Add in the financial mismatch, the prominence of the incumbents that cash-strapped Democrats took down, and the satisfaction of seeing every GOP plan backfire, and celebrations are surely in order. But as much as Clayton is excited about the epic turnaround, the 28-year-old state chair isn’t satisfied.

“What I was looking at on Tuesday night is how many races that we we didn’t win that we could have,” she told Progress Report this week (watch the entire conversation above). “I think that if we had had more money in the South, if we had been able to do more, we would see North Carolina not just chasing a Democratic trifecta, [but winning one].”

Ruing near-misses after a historic election sweep speaks to Clayton’s ambition and just how far the party has come since 2023, when she upset an insider to become the nation’s youngest state chair. NC Dems had just failed to run candidates in 44 of the 170 legislative districts and lost their majority on the state Supreme Court.

Clayton came into office just as the GOP legislature was passing one of the most extreme gerrymanders in the country, cracking and packing urban areas to take away their power. The only way the party would have any chance of making a comeback was to rebuild a non-existent infrastructure in the rural parts of the state.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

I asked Clayton how she rebuilt that infrastructure, starting with recruiting candidates who were willing to run races they very, very likely wouldn’t win in 2024:

The top-notch recruitment continued this cycle, as Clayton drove through rural North Carolina, where she grew up, to look for candidates who weren’t so much politicians as normal working people who understood intimately what it’s like to struggle in this stratified economy.

That included LaKesha Womack, an ordained minister and business coach who just a few years ago was broke after health struggles and living in a motel. Womack ran for Congress in the state’s 14th district, raising just $56,000 to compete in a seat that Donald Trump won by 15 points back in 2024.

Donate to the NC Democratic Party

Nothing about the paragraph suggests any hope of winning a federal election, and that’s before factoring in her opponent, Republican Rep. Tim Moore, a former NC state House speaker who had $2 million in his bank account.

And yet Womack, running as grassroots a campaign for Congress as is possible, beat Moore by more than two points. It was one of several massive upsets in the state’s Congressional races, alongside the defeat of NRCC chair Richard Hudson in NC-8.

There were a few building blocks to the success, including running candidates who were already deeply enmeshed in their communities and willing to go even further still, which helps combats the deluge of negative advertisements that were way out of their price range.

“I think we negate sometimes how much retail politics actually still matter,” she says. “If you’ve shaken the hand and you know somebody, it’s a whole heck of a lot harder to believe an ad that you’re getting in your mailbox, or on your television screen or your phone screen, because you’re able to say, ‘No, that’s not how they approached me. That’s not how they actually appeared to me. And I’m gonna believe what I’ve actually seen versus what I’m hearing online.’”

The environment was obviously incredibly conducive to Democratic gains, but it took more than a national backlash to overcome the hideous gerrymanders and regular blowout margins in rural North Carolina. Incredible volunteers help a lot, and for Clayton, permanent party infrastructure also made a huge difference. The philosophy is simple: “I want to be a party that gives, not a party that takes.”

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

That starts with VoteBuilder, the ultra-valuable voter file database that the DNC gives to every state party. Many of them charge candidates for access to the file, but Clayton is all too happy to provide it for free. The party even provided a how-to training guide for any staffer or candidate who wanted to use it.

“If a candidate comes to me and they say, ‘I want to run for office,’ I’m like, ‘Great, I want to introduce you to my digital team that can help you build a website, that’ll take your headshot, that’ll make you look professional, and that will engage in a way to make you seem like you have a platform,’” she says. “I've got a training department and a data department that's geared up and ready to help you figure out how do you go out and target the doors to use that data source that we've got.

Tuesday was a generational victory for the party, but not every year is going to be this conducive to Democrats, and barring an unexpected state Senate victory or GOP defection, North Carolina will almost certainly remain gerrymandered next cycle. So as remarkable as it was for them to win this year, it’ll be almost as difficult for Democrats to hold on to many of the seats they flipped next cycle, while taking back the state Supreme Court — a key to ending the gerrymandering down the line — will also be an existential challenge.

This is already at the forefront of Clayton’s mind, and she’s not taking any time off before kickstarting the defense plan. There will be more retail politics and ground-level organizing, starting with Thanksgiving food banks to help communities struggling with the price of groceries. A legislature pushing for a minimum wage increase, the end to “right to work” laws, and municipal broadband… it’s all on the table as the party focuses on helping working people. It’s the only way they’ll stay in power.

That and a national party and donor class that takes the South more seriously. They’ve seen what can be done on a shoestring budget; donations will help cement the progress and drive it forward.

Donate to the NC Democratic Party

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like this one and the new Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Voters didn’t just demand change on Tuesday, they demanded a dramatic new economic order.

It was an election as both exorcism and radical leap forward. Voters, disgusted with corruption, cruelty, and precarity, officially buried Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. The dire state of the nation made Democratic gains inevitable, while the combative populism of so many candidates turned the election into a landslide (as some of us predicted it would years ago).

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Dramatically outspent by Republicans, who had near exclusive backing of billionaires and businesses, Democrats’ countered by centering those billionaires as the source of so many of the problems facing working and middle class Americans. The tax cuts paid for by social austerity, egregious price gouging at the grocery store and gas pump, the turmoil being caused by AI — Democrats blamed corporations and billionaires for the most salient issues and promised a drastic rebalancing of society.

The landslide was about more than party ID; many of these unlikely flips would not have happened with the same bland centrist Democrats that have bungled so many elections in recent years. We’re no longer relitigating the 2016 primary, but mostly because it’s become clear that ideologically, Bernie Sanders won the debate over the future of the Democratic Party.

In some cases, voters had to intervene to prevent party leaders from falling back into old habits.

The DSCC backed the very moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the Michigan Senate primary, arguing that she was more electable than former Wayne County health commissioner Abdul El-Sayed.

The DCCC, its House counterpart, spent money on a losing centrist candidate in MI-7, then fretted when progressive populist Will Lawrence took the nomination in a ruralish swing district.

Both El-Sayed and Lawrence won their elections, overcoming unprecedented dark money (and in El-Sayed’s case, unprecedented racism and sabotage) with a populist agendas: Medicare for All, controlling the spread of data centers, investing in schools instead of military contractors, and holding corporations accountable. Their victories typify a pattern that played out repeatedly on Tuesday night.

Down in Ohio, union-backed Sherrod Brown, long a critic of free trade and a champion of working people for decades, won back a seat in the Senate after a two-year absence.

Here’s another: The party’s official Senate campaign committee originally backed Maine Gov. Janet Mills in that state’s primary. When former state senate president Troy Jackson ultimately became the nominee, DC consultants did their best to blunt his populist instincts and promises. And still, the working class logger did what once seemed impossible: beat Susan Collins.

James Talarico ran explicitly against billionaires and income inequality, offering a gospel-driven populism en route to becoming the first Democrat to win a Senate election in Texas since 1988. He had the enthusiastic support of organized labor, backs a Medicare public option, champions public schools, and shrugs off culture wars by emphasizing the collective.

“We just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system: in this state, in this country, power belongs to the people,” he said in his acceptance speech.

He got specific, too: “The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets, that they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our health care, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It is the oldest strategy in the world, divide and conquer.”

Gina Hinojosa, the next governor of Texas, ran on a working class agenda that she couldn’t have been more explicit about in a big New York Times profile late last month. “I have been all over the state with all communities,” she said, explaining how she campaigns to a state as diverse and conservative as Texas. “To be clear, it is not a moderating message. It is reaching out to Democrats, Republicans, independents, with a populist message.”

I can keep going: Firefighter and union leader Bob Brooks flipped a seat in suburban Pennsylvania.

Popular Scranton mayor Paige Cognetti won the working class PA-08 back for Democrats with a platform focused on ending corruption, AI regulation, and remaking the health care system.

Rebecca Cooke, a waitress and activist, won her rematch with Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s third district.

Populist retired military officer Richard Ojeda flipped a seemingly impossible seat in North Carolina, touting the pro-union PRO Act, ending Citizens United,

Sam Forstag, a populist union-leader and former smokejumper, flipped a seat in Montana (MT-1) that Trump won by 11 points in 2024.

Zach Dembo, who won a +26 Republican district in Kentucky by an astounding nine points, ran on taking on corporations and corruption.

Randy Villegas, who ran on Medicare for All, won in a landslide in a central California district (CA-22) that Trump won just two years ago. Further south, in Los Angeles (CA-34) the populist, labor-backed, anti-AI organizer Angela Gonzales‑Torres bounced tech industry favorite Rep. Jimmy Gomez.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like this one and the new Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

And even Hakeem Jeffries, as he spoke during a victory last night, stood in front of a backdrop that said “Fighting for an Affordable America. It was a prop he could have borrowed from NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who finally convinced at least some Democrats that the party needed to embrace everyday economic populism to win voters that had long since abandoned them.

Ballot initiatives told much of the same story.

While the billionaire tax in California could not overcome hundreds of millions of dollars in spending by tech moguls, bans on corporate money in politics passed with flying colors in Nebraska and Michigan. Data centers were almost unanimously rejected, with 43 of 44 proposed bans passing in communities across the country. Coloradans deferred tax rebates for investment in public education.

Here’s the catch: now they have to govern like populists, both at the federal level and in all of the states that they now control. This victory wasn’t so much an endorsement of the Democratic Party — which is still historically unpopular — as it was a demand for radical change. We’ve seen again and again what happens when a party campaigns on lifting up working people and restoring hope to the American public, then fails to deliver on it.

But already, anonymous moderate political operatives are trying to obfuscate the obvious message and lower expectations, pointing to the size of the incoming caucus as somehow a mandate for less change.

“Saying that candidate X happens to believe these progressive policies and won, that’s not a cause and effect, right?,” an anonymous strategist told the Washington Sun. “They didn’t run on their bold progressive agenda; they ran a fairly prosaic, center-left economic argument. There’s no mandate for that.”

The strategist pointed to ads by Will Lawrence and Sam Forstag, both of whom ran on lowering runaway prices and stopping data centers, and hammered away at billionaires and corporations again and again, blaming their outsized power as the source of those problems. If it wasn’t explicit enough, here’s what Lawrence said he’d tell Big Tech executives who try to make amends after spending millions against him.

“I’d say, ‘beware, because these tech oligarchs are dramatically unpopular,” he told the NY Times. “If we want to be a party of the working class, these are the Rockefellers and Carnegies of our day. These are the richest and most powerful people who are accustomed to operating with complete impunity, and they need to be brought to heel.”

If DC wants to believe that those stances are moderate, they’re more than welcome to do so; progress is achieved when big ideas become mainstream. But progressive populist policy has to follow, including but not limited to:

• Immediately raising the minimum wage

• Restoring healthcare and setting the stage for eventual Medicare for All

• Strong guardrails on AI and data centers

• Universal childcare

• Extreme wealth taxes

• Banning gerrymandering and limiting money in politics

• New regulations on private equity and finance expansive new housing policy

• Relentless investigations of corruption

Not all of it will get through Donald Trump’s veto, but that just makes it easier to run on populism in 2028.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

That was a pretty good night and the news this morning hasn’t been half bad, either.

Thank you to everyone who watched the election results roll in at ElectionHub.org; tens of thousands of people accessed it throughout the night, keeping me up til around 3:00 am. It was worth it.

I’ll have some analysis of what these victories mean, what comes next, and the ballot measures in an upcoming newsletter. I’ll also have interviews with winners and organizers. This morning, I want to examine some of the wildest results and how exactly this happened.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Most importantly

The best part about last night is that all the biggest assholes lost. The abhorrent sociopaths like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ken Paxton were obliterated. The Trump era of wanton cruelty and shamelessness is over. For now. Let’s fight to keep it that way.

Built from the ground up

As I said on Sirius XM last night, this wouldn’t have happened without the diligent work of people who rebuilt the Democratic Party from the ground up starting after 2016. Many of the candidates who ran in local elections starting in 2018, like Texas’s James Talarico, are now headed to Congress. More than a dozen legislative chambers flipped because Democrats ran candidates in nearly every single district, which was a pipe dream just a few cycles ago.

In the states

Think back to 2016, when Republican gerrymanders meant that the GOP had control of every single swing state. Thanks to slow, painstaking work in redistricting referenda, close legislative elections, and last night’s blue tsunami, Democrats are have now seized full power in most of those places.

• Democrats now have new trifectas in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

• Another possible new trifecta in North Carolina, which had been gerrymandered for Republican dominance.

• Control of the governor’s mansion and state House in Georgia.

• They won every statewide election in Texas. They went from down 9-0 on the state Supreme Court to a 5-4 deficit, taking them one seat away from total control. They also control half the state House.

• Supermajorities were broken in Missouri (both chambers), Kansas (House), Ohio (House), Florida (House), Iowa (House), and North Carolina (Senate).

• There were gigantic shifts in often really red states — Democrats flipped:

  • 21 seats in North Carolina House

  • 20 seats in the Kansas House

  • 16 in the Missouri House

  • 10 in the South Carolina

• There will be more remarkable statistics as states confirm data, and I’ll be back with those.

Our candidates

I’m still digging into the numbers, but the state legislative candidates that we featured on our live stream all flipped huge seats to give Democrats majorities: Ben Gruber in Wisconsin and Katrina Manetta and Anna Aho Rink in Michigan. Would have been way more had it not been for heart surgery!

The Big Upsets

I began this year by monitoring flippable districts in swing states, and by last month, had expanded that out to +15 Trump seats in those states. Last night, I had to add entire new sections to the Election Hub because Democrats were flipping seats that just did not ever seem possible in our wildest dreams.

Behold the numbers in the biggest upsets at the Congressional and gubernatorial level; I’ll have more from the down ballot soon.

The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles and the huge Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Polls are closed in well over half of the states, and much to my excitement and relief, results flowing in at ElectionHub.org. Yes, it’s official: our all-in-one-place, automatically updated hub for tonight’s election results, chamber flips, and ballot initiatives is live and working. It’s going to be slower than the AP and other expensive services, but it puts everything in one place and digs deep up and down the ballot.

Visit The Election Hub

There are now four sites within ElectionHub, all of them accessible with one click:

Congress and Senate | State legislatures | Governors and other statewide elections | Ballot initiatives

Also: Doing these things is not cheap. Because I’ve turned off paid subscriptions to the newsletter while I recover from my heart surgery, I’m dipping into my own pocket to pay for this project, which is completely free to use and will not make a dime. As a result, I’ve started a fundraiser for the site’s operation, in case anybody wants to kick in to defray the cost. No pressure, though!

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

I’ve also made a cheat sheet for you, with all the relevant information you need for tonight.

Poll closings (ET)

The first big races land at 7pm (Georgia, Virginia), the heaviest hour is 8pm, and the West keeps things open past midnight. Times are when the last polls close in most of each state; split states are noted.

• 6:00 PM: Indiana, Kentucky (eastern parts)

• 7:00 PM: Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, Vermont, Florida (most), Indiana and Kentucky (rest)

• 7:30 PM: North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia

• 8:00 PM: Pennsylvania, Michigan (most), Maine, New Hampshire, Texas (most), Missouri, New Jersey, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, D.C., Florida (panhandle), Kansas, North Dakota and South Dakota (most)

• 8:30 PM: Arkansas

• 9:00 PM: Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, New York, Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, Louisiana, Wyoming, Michigan, Kansas, Texas, North Dakota and South Dakota (rest)

• 10:00 PM: Nevada, Montana, Utah, Idaho (most), Oregon (most)

• 11:00 PM: California, Washington, Idaho and Oregon (rest)

• 12:00 AM: Alaska (most), Hawaii

• 1:00 AM: Alaska (Aleutians)

Congress: the math and the races

House: 218 seats for a majority. Republicans are defending most of the field: 12 of the 17 toss ups and 12 GOP-held seats Cook rates Lean D.

House seats most likely to change hands:

• Lean D, now R-held: AZ-01, AZ-06, CA-48, CO-08, IA-01, IA-03, NC-11, NJ-07, PA-07, PA-10, VA-02, WI-03 (NE-02 is Likely D)

• Lean or Likely R, now D-held: AL-02, ME-02, FL-09, TX-09

• Redistricting flips (new maps): CA-01, CA-06, CA-41, UT-01 expected to go D; TX-32 and TN-09 expected to go R

• Toss ups: CA-22, FL-14, FL-22, IA-02, KY-06, MI-04, MI-07, MI-10, MT-01, NC-01, NY-17, OH-07, OH-09, PA-08, TX-15, TX-35, VA-01

Senate: Republicans hold 53 seats. Democrats need a net gain of four for a 51-seat majority; Vice President Vance breaks 50–50 ties. Ratings are Cook’s as of Oct. 20.

• Alaska (R, Toss Up): Mary Peltola v. Dan Sullivan*

• Iowa (R, open, Toss Up): Josh Turek v. Ashley Hinson

• Kansas (R, Toss Up): Adam Hamilton v. Roger Marshall*

• Maine (R, Toss Up): Troy Jackson v. Susan Collins*

• Michigan (D, open, Toss Up): Abdul El-Sayed v. Mike Rogers

• Ohio special (R, Toss Up): Sherrod Brown v. Jon Husted*

• Texas (R, open, Toss Up): James Talarico v. Ken Paxton

• Minnesota (D, open, Lean D): Peggy Flanagan v. Michele Tafoya

• New Hampshire (D, open, Lean D): Chris Pappas v. John E. Sununu

• South Carolina (R, Lean R): Annie Andrews v. Darline Graham*

• Georgia (D, Likely D): Jon Ossoff* v. Mike Collins

• North Carolina (R, open, Likely D): Roy Cooper v. Michael Whatley

• Nebraska (R, Likely R): Dan Osborn (I) v. Pete Ricketts*

• Mississippi (R, Likely R): Scott Colom v. Cindy Hyde-Smith*

• Florida special (R, Solid R): Angie Nixon v. Ashley Moody*

* incumbent. Matchups are listed Democrat (or independent) first.

Governors and statewide races

Twelve governor’s races are rated competitive, and seven of them are open seats. Ratings are Cook’s as of Oct. 27.

• Georgia (R, open, Toss Up): Keisha Lance Bottoms v. Rick Jackson

• Kansas (D, open, Toss Up): Cindy Holscher v. Ty Masterson

• Nevada (R, Toss Up): Aaron Ford v. Joe Lombardo*

• Wisconsin (D, open, Toss Up): David Crowley v. Tom Tiffany

• Alaska (R, open, Lean D): Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins v. Bernadette Wilson (ranked choice)

• Arizona (D, Lean D): Katie Hobbs* v. Andy Biggs

• Iowa (R, open, Lean D): Rob Sand v. Zach Lahn

• Michigan (D, open, Lean D): Jocelyn Benson v. John James

• Ohio (R, open, Lean D): Amy Acton v. Vivek Ramaswamy

• Florida (R, open, Lean R): David Jolly v. Byron Donalds

• Nebraska (R, Lean R): Lynne Walz v. Jim Pillen*

• Texas (R, Lean R): Gina Hinojosa v. Greg Abbott*

* incumbent

• Secretary of state: Arizona (Fontes v. Kolodin), Georgia (open), Michigan (open), Nevada (Aguilar v. Marchant rematch), Wisconsin (open)

• Attorney general: Arizona (Mayes; 2022 was decided by 280 votes), Kansas (Kobach rematch), Michigan, Nevada and Texas (all open), Wisconsin (Kaul v. Toney rematch)

State legislatures that could flip

Minnesota’s tied House and one-seat Senate are the closest chambers in the country; 18 chambers could flip with a net gain of five seats or fewer. Seat counts are as of before the election.

• Minnesota House: tied 67–67 (power-sharing); 68 for a majority; either party needs +1; all 134 seats up

• Minnesota Senate: D 34–33; 34 for a majority; R needs +1; all 67 up

• Michigan Senate: D 20–18; 20 for a majority; R needs +2; all 38 up

• Pennsylvania House: D 103–100; 102 for a majority; R needs +2; all 203 up

• Wisconsin Senate: R 18–15; 17 for a majority; D needs +2; 17 of 33 up

• Arizona Senate: R 17–13; 16 for a majority; D needs +3; all 30 up

• Pennsylvania Senate: R 27–23; 26 for a majority; D needs +3; 25 of 50 up

• Maine House: D 75–73 (3 ind.); 76 for a majority; R needs +3; all 151 up

• Nevada Senate: D 13–8; 11 for a majority; R needs +3; 11 of 21 up

• Vermont Senate: D 17–13; 16 for a majority; R needs +3; all 30 up

• Arizona House: R 33–27; 31 for a majority; D needs +4; all 60 up

• Michigan House: R 58–52; 56 for a majority; D needs +4; all 110 up

• Maine Senate: D 20–14 (1 ind.); 18 for a majority; R needs +4; all 35 up

• Oregon Senate: D 18–12; 16 for a majority; R needs +4; 15 of 30 up

• Texas Senate: R 18–12; 16 for a majority; D needs +4; 16 of 31 up

• Wisconsin Assembly: R 54–45; 50 for a majority; D needs +5; all 99 up

• New Hampshire Senate: R 16–8; 13 for a majority; D needs +5; all 24 up

• Delaware Senate: D 15–6; 11 for a majority; R needs +5; 11 of 21 up

Alaska’s House and Senate are run by bipartisan coalitions, so watch who can organize the chamber rather than the party count. Eleven chambers have no regular election this year (both chambers in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia, plus the Kansas, New Mexico and South Carolina senates).

Ballot measures to watch

Taxes on the wealthy, abortion and voting rules carry the night’s biggest statewide measures; data centers dominate the local list.

• Taxing the wealthy: California Prop 40 (5% one-time billionaire tax), Washington I-645 (repeal of the millionaires’ income tax), Colorado Amendment 87 (graduated income tax) against Prop 136 (4.4% cap meant to block it; if both pass, the one with more yes votes wins)

• Abortion: Missouri Amendment 3 (repeals 2024 abortion rights), Virginia Question 1, Nevada Question 6 (second and final vote), Idaho Prop 1

• Redistricting: Missouri Prop A (yes approves the GOP map splitting the Kansas City seat; no keeps the 2022 map), Maryland Question 3

• Voting rules: voter ID in Ohio, Nevada, California (Prop 39) and North Carolina (mail ballots); Alaska Measure 2 (repeal ranked choice); Massachusetts Question 3 (top-two primaries) and Question 4 (same-day registration); Virginia Question 3 (restores voting rights on release)

• Labor: Vermont Proposal 3 (constitutional right to collective bargaining)

• Data centers: about 25 local bans, moratoriums and zoning votes

Florida amendments need 60%, Colorado amendments 55%, and Nebraska initiatives also need yes votes equal to 35% of all ballots cast. On Massachusetts Question 9, a yes vote keeps the 2024 gun law.

Visit the Election Hub

The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles and the huge Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Did you know that Haley “Israel comes to me in my dreams” Stevens is not Jewish? I genuinely had no idea until recently; I’d been under the impression she was a member of the tribe since 2022, when AIPAC spent heavily to help her defeat Rep. Andy Levin, a former synagogue president and a member of one of the most prominent Jewish families in Michigan. But no, Stevens was raised Protestant and remains so to this day, even if marriage-driven conversion is potentially in her future.

Relatedly, were you aware that Haley Stevens is white and not Black? Okay, this one was a bit more obvious, but by the way she’s been talking lately, someone who had never seen her would be forgiven for thinking that she’s a prominent voice in the African-American community.

Just a few days after her off-putting GOP donor fiancé backed Mike Rogers, Stevens did the same on Sunday, endorsing the Republican candidate for Senate. It is an enormous and almost unprecedented betrayal this late in the campaign, made worse by her rationale: Stevens’ off-kilter announcement video on Sunday accused Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed of spreading hatred throughout the campaign, though she could only cite as evidence an endorsement from progressive live-streamer Hasan Piker.

Appearing at a church on Sunday, she also cited Mike Rogers’ heretofore unknown passion for supporting Black small businesses. It was a reminder that she performed far better with Black Michiganders, and that there remains some mistrust between the state’s Arab and Black communities.

In both cases, Stevens positioned herself as the guardian of a vulnerable minority, attempting to cloak a petty and selfish choice in the guise of being virtuous. The reality is that Stevens’ decision to ratfuck Democrats and endorse Mike Rogers actually does the opposite, putting Jewish people in particular at the center of a firestorm that could explode if the party loses the Senate seat. Stevens may say that she’s standing up for Jewish people, but she’s only making life more difficult for us.

The endorsement on Sunday was shocking, but not a surprise; save for a short period after she lost the primary, Stevens has spent the past few months taking digs at El-Sayed, moving goalposts and making demands that were more rhetorical traps than principled stands. At the forefront of her criticism has been El-Sayed’s opposition to Israel’s government, its genocide in Gaza, and the billions of US tax dollars that have directly contributed to those massacres.

But instead of disagreeing with him on those policies, which are now deeply unpopular with voters, Stevens has amplified false accusations made by Republicans and legitimized distractions. Recently, she went after El-Sayed for an advertisement made by an independent group that linked the United States’ Middle East policy to rising inflation, demanding that he disavow a spot in which his campaign was not involved.

“Maybe it’s how you fundraise, maybe it is what you want people to believe, but the reality is that we are not going to say that the cost of groceries is because of Jews and the Jewish state,” Stevens said. “We’re not going to say we don’t have health care because of Jews and the Jewish state.”

Again, El-Sayed had nothing to do with the ad and never accused Jews of causing high grocery prices. I’m sure Stevens knew that, too. But she decided to conflate Jews and the State of Israel, and criticism of an unpopular foreign policy with hatred for an entire people, which has become a key part of the right’s playbook. If you can’t defend the Iran War, which undoubtedly has raised prices across the board, you find a way to cast its critics as antisemitic.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like this one and the new Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

As it so happens, Stevens has been one of the largest recipients of money from AIPAC over the past few election cycles, and it’s not hard to connect her behavior to that largesse. My own Twitter replies today were filled with such suggestions from people who definitely do not match the definition of modern Groyper. This is the thrust of the conversation about Stevens among loyal, tolerant, pluralistic Democrats right now.

Normally, I wouldn’t care what people think of a conservative PAC, but organizations like AIPAC and the modern iteration of the Anti-Defamation League claim to represent the interests of Jewish Americans instead of simply the conservative Israeli government. Like any interest group, they are free to spend as they please, but their actions implicate millions of people who want nothing to do with them.

As a result, instead of millions of dollars being spent by a niche special interest group that happens to be run by some conservative Jews, the insinuation is that this money, used to promote policies unpopular with a vast majority of Americans, reflects the will of all Jews.

And this is a problem, not only because it’s annoying and false, but because it plays into some of the oldest and most pernicious antisemitic stereotypes. Throughout all of history, Jews have been accused of being conniving and duplicitous, of harboring dual loyalties, of secretly controlling the globe’s finances and governments.

The allegation was used repeatedly throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, justifying countless pogroms and expulsions.

It animated the Dreyfus Affair in 1890s France, making life hell for a very assimilated and secular Jewish soldier, and became hot copy in Henry Ford’s newspaper serial The International Jew as well as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Hitler and the Nazis used the latter to accuse the Jews of causing every problem in the German empire.

Stalin alleged that Jewish doctors were aiming to murder Soviet leaders in service of Zionism.

And more recently, George Soros has been used as the avatar of alleged Jewish control of capital and global affairs.

Haley Stevens isn’t Hitler or Stalin, and for all her talk about being involved in the auto bailout, she’s not Henry Ford, either. But whether she realizes it or not (and I genuinely don’t know that she’s self-aware to realize it), Stevens’ selfish decision, cloaked in disingenuous concern for Jewish people and aligned with the political imperatives of her AIPAC donors, insinuates that kind of conspiracy. Simply put, she used us as cover for her own bout of petty revenge.

Already, angry liberals are insisting that Stevens is owned by the Zionist lobby, which purports to represent all Jews; if El-Sayed loses the election and it costs Democrats a majority, the backlash is going to be intense and inevitably spill over into antisemitism, which as much as I hate to admit it, has gained some purchase in more ignorant segments of the left (and to be clear, I am firmly on the left). Stevens and AIPAC aligning with a GOP that has run the most Islamophobic campaign in modern memory is already enough to foster resentment. That Rogers’ spokespeople are actually registered foreign agents of Israel hardly helps, either.

I’ll probably get some blowback from this article, people telling me that nobody should compromise their principles or vote out of fear of being scapegoated. And while that’s true, where the argument falls apart is the inane idea that having Republicans in power would be better for Jewish people.

Republicans maintaining power would be catastrophic for Jews around the world. Antisemitism has soared in response to the genocide in Gaza and behavior of West Bank settlers, Americans are livid at the unending war in Iran being waged at the insistence of Netanyahu. Trump has dined with neo-Nazis, who are now a key part of his coalition; this is a guy who calls people “shylocks” during televised speeches. Anything shy of stripping Donald Trump of all his power is betraying Jewish people, and Haley Stevens just sought to do it in the most egregious way possible.

Subscribe now

Share

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Thanks to some key retweets and shares, the site has received tens of thousands of visits and bookmarks, shares and endorsements from prominent politicos, and a request from a major global news agency to borrow real-time graphics.

This little heart surgery convalescence project has blown up; with so many people set to use it on Election Night, I’ve been working to make additions and improvements to ensure it’s as complete and operational as possible. That means a few things:

First, I’ve added a new separate site for ballot initiatives, which will track around 150 referenda on things like voting rights, abortion, health care, affordable housing, data centers, and the various attempts to punish trans people. You can find the initiative section here.

Second, I’ve increased the frequency of every race update so that they’ll be updated every 15 minutes all through Election Night. They’ll be pulling from official state voting total sites as well as the AP, NYT, and other media counts, so you won’t have to go anywhere else to find the results or figure out what they mean in terms of flips, majorities, and power.

This goes for every race: Senate, Congress, governorship, state legislature, and ballot initiative races. If I have capacity, I’ll try to add others, like attorneys general.

Visit The Election Hub

Also: Doing these things, it turns out, is not cheap, due to data usage and backend capacity requirements for so many ongoing automated checks. Because I’ve turned off paid subscriptions to the newsletter while I recover from my heart surgery, I’m dipping into my own pocket to pay for this project, which is completely free to use and will not make a dime. As a result, I’ve started a fundraiser for the site’s operation, in case anybody wants to kick in to defray the cost. No pressure, though!

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

Here’s what you need to know about how the sites work:

• The site will automatically update every race — yes, up and down the ballot — every 15 minutes at minimum.

• Once 60% of the vote in any given election is in, the site indicate which way the seat is leaning, then display when each race is called.

• It’ll also report how many seats have flipped, how close each party is to a majority, and where new majorities have been forged.

• To put the race into context, each election includes partisan district lean.

• Congressional races are broken down into tiers based on rankings by the Cook Political Report. I’ll continue to add additional races as well.

• I’ve included every state legislative race and indicated swing districts, which works way more smoothly than you’d expect.

Hopefully this resource makes it easy for you to follow the elections and process the news during what should be a chaotic night. I’ll continue to improve the sites as Election Day approaches, so if you take a look and have any suggestions, I’m eager to hear them.

Visit the Election Hub

The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles and the huge Election Hub site — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Election Hub & Progress Report

So, I’m doing something about it.

This weekend I soft-launched a live election results hub for both Congressional and state legislative elections. It’s a site that includes every important election result in one easy-to-navigate place. Since Saturday, I’ve moved it to a new domain name — ElectionHub.org — and added even more functionality and information, including governors’ races, district history, and control scoreboards.

Check it out:

There are actually two sections; one for federal elections and one for state elections. Here is the latter. Literally every state legislative election is included in the latter, along with key governors races:

(Yes, this is what I’m doing with my downtime during my recovery from heart surgery.)

Donate to Progress Report!

Here’s what you need to know:

• The sites will regularly update vote totals for every single legislative race and competitive gubernatorial, Senate and House race. The closer the race, the more frequent the update. Senate, governor, and competitive House races will update every 15 minutes.

• Once 60% of the vote in any given election is in, it’ll indicate which way the seat is leaning, then display when each race is called.

• It’ll also report how many seats have flipped, how close each party is to a majority, and where new majorities have been forged.

• To put the race into context, each election includes partisan district lean.

• Congressional races are broken down into tiers based on rankings by the Cook Political Report. I’ve added a few other races as well.

• I’ve included every state legislative race and indicated swing districts, which works way more smoothly than you’d expect.

Hopefully this resource makes it easy for you to follow the elections and process the news during what should be a chaotic night. I’ll continue to improve the sites as Election Day approaches, so if you take a look and have any suggestions, I’m eager to hear them.

Visit the Election Hub

The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

It makes me anxious just thinking about it, so this week I built a live election results hub for both Congressional and state legislative elections. Check it out:

There are actually two sections; one for Congress and one for state legislatures. Here is the latter:

(Yes, this is what I’m doing with my downtime during my recovery from heart surgery.)

Donate to Progress Report!

Here’s what you need to know:

• The sites will regularly update vote totals for every single legislative race and competitive Congressional race.

• Once 60% of the vote in any given election is in, they’ll indicate which way the seat is leaning, then display when each race is called.

• It’ll also report how many seats have flipped how close each party is to a majority, and where new majorities have been forged.

• Congressional races are broken down into tiers based on rankings by the Cook Political Report.

• I’ve included every state legislative race and indicated swing districts, which works way more smoothly than you’d expect.

Hopefully this resource makes it easy for you to follow the elections and process the news during what should be a chaotic night. I’ll continue to improve the sites as Election Day approaches, so if you take a look and have any suggestions, I’m eager to hear them.

Election Results Hub

The new election sites are free to use, but were not free to make.

I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

It’s now officially been two months since I underwent my latest open-heart surgery. The recovery has been slower (three in three years will do that) but with an historically important election just two weeks away, I’m determined to help where I can. Michael Bloomberg, feel free to lend a hand, I promise that I operate lean.

Today we’ll review some early voting totals, dig into lesser-covered ballot initiatives, and look at the stakes in swing states and red states alike. I’m hoping to publish more digestible newsletters at a more frequent pace (as health allows right now), so please let me know if you like this format.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

First: If you thought you couldn’t detest Vivek Ramaswany more than you already detest him, think again. Yesterday, the billionaire pharmaceutical fraudster and Ohio gubernatorial candidate released an ad featuring Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton, urging voters not to back her daughter. Not supporting Acton is Arthur’s favorite pastime: when Acton’s stepfather raped her as a 12-year-old, Arthur sided with her husband, paid for his legal fees, and left town with him. Acton and her siblings were removed from their care by the state. Arthur stayed married to the rapist stepfather until his death.

Arthur is clearly elderly and infirm, which makes a commercial in which she accuses her daughter of being a liar even more disgusting. DDHQ, an election data and projection outlet, today moved the race to leans Democratic, and I can’t imagine the firestorm over the ad will help, especially not after this piss poor response to the uproar. Republicans just can’t stop protecting pedophiles.

Early Voting Snapshot

Comparing early voting totals from year to year is the opposite of an exact science, but all caveats aside, the numbers are still looking good for Democrats in swing states.

Nowhere does the the blue wave look more promising than in North Carolina, where as of Monday, Democrats had cast twice as many votes as Republicans. That boom, powered in large part by women and Black voters, has the overall number of early votes up by 37% thus far.

Here’s a breakdown of how those votes have been cast by party registration, chart via the NYT:

The boom is on in Georgia, too, where more than one million votes have been cast as of the close of business on Monday.

These numbers aren’t all that much of a shock: Georgia’s Sen. Jon Ossoff is expected to easily defend his seat in the upper chamber, while former NC Gov. Roy Cooper should flip the Tar Heel state’s Senate seat in a cakewalk. But there’s value in running up the score, because the more voters they turn out, the more likely it is that Democrats flip additional seats down ballot, in both Congressional races and state legislatures.

Early voting started on Monday in Texas, where the polls were flooded in prominent Democratic-leaning counties. Records for first-day turnout were broken in both Harris (Houston) and Dallas Counties.

On the heels of last Friday’s report in the NYT about the importance of state legislative races, ABC News just put out its own piece on each party’s prospects for trifectas. Pennsylvania once again leads the list of most enticing trifecta opportunities (donate to that cause here), and the story also gives some shine to Nevada, where flipping the governor’s mansion could lead to a repeal of the state’s odious “right to work” law.

The same was said about Virginia last year, but unlike Abigail Spanberger, who never endorsed a repeal and then broke her promise to sign other pro-union bills, Nevada AG Aaron Ford has made workers’ rights a central plank of his campaign for governor. Ford has been vocal about his intention to repeal “right to work,” which has helped mobilize Las Vegas’s sizable labor movement around his candidacy.

Secretary Mayor Pete is diving deeper into the state legislature game in his adopted home state of Michigan, endorsing 11 candidates in toss-up state Senate and House districts. As it so happens, each of those candidates is on our ActBlue list.

A blue wave could be just as valuable in traditionally red and Republican-controlled states, as activists seek to pass progressive ballot initiatives and Democrats hope to break long-held Republican supermajorities. Both goals are on the docket in Missouri, where Democrats need to pick up three House seats to break the supermajority and activists aim to both reject the gerrymandered Congressional maps and pass constitutional protections for ballot measures.

As I’ve written many times before, direct democracy is on the ballot in many states this year — here’s a good breakdown of where voters will have to grapple with conservatives trying to limit their voices.

As we get closer to election day, here are some of the more compelling ballot initiative fights playing out right now:

California: Prop 4 would allow state and local government to provide political campaigns with public matching funds that amplify the importance of small dollar donations. The program in NYC proved crucial to Zohran Mamdani’s ability to compete against and ultimately twice defeat corrupt former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Every campaign I’ve helped out in the city has made unlocking public matching funds — they don’t just give it to anybody, you have to reach a fundraising threshold — a top priority.

Also in California: Unfortunately, those funds won’t be available to ballot initiatives: billionaires have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign to kill the state’s proposed one-time tax on the ultra-wealthy.

Washington: Interestingly, the biggest corporations — with the biggest earners — in the Washington are ostensibly sitting out of the fight over the state’s new millionaire tax. Conservatives want to repeal the surcharge, the first income tax of any kind in Washington history, but Microsoft and other tech powers are keeping their powder dry.

Why? They’re realists and thus well aware that it’d be a not just a waste of money, but leverage, too:

While not exactly cheering for the new income tax, major employers like Microsoft have focused on warding off other tax proposals they view as threats, like a “wealth tax” levied on stock holdings and other financial assets. They’ve also feared a statewide expansion of Seattle’s JumpStart tax on big company payrolls, which they view as a job-killing threat to their competitiveness.

When Democratic lawmakers broached the new income tax, big business groups like the Washington Roundtable, which includes Microsoft and other big private employers, were in the dealmaking loop, seeking other tax-policy trade-offs.

Lawmakers didn’t give them everything they wanted, but they did roll back some recent business tax increases—like a sales tax on services—that had been imposed a year earlier. They also rolled back a big increase in the estate tax on inherited property and assets, acknowledging it was leading wealthy people to consider moving elsewhere.

If it survives, advocates say the millionaire tax will raise about $3 billion per year, most of which will go to education, healthcare, and other critical services in the state’s budget.

Massachusetts: The state Supreme Court tossed the controversial rent control ballot initiative this summer, saving landlords, developers, and most Democratic politicians some serious heartburn. Now, affordable housing advocates are focused on passing an initiative that would rewrite the minimum size lot requirement for single-family homes.

Right now, the lot required is so big that it requires developers to build large — and thus expensive — homes to recoup their cost or make a profit. Reducing the size is intended to encourage smaller, denser developments that would bring back the smaller-scale starter homes that proliferated from the post-war period through the 1980s.

Idaho: Millions of dollars have been pouring into both sides of the state’s reproductive rights initiative, which seeks to overturn one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. More than $2.5 million came in over the past few weeks alone.

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

Sometimes I compare this work to being a canary in a coal mine… if canaries were on the lookout for issues and local elections that would soon become nationally important instead of just fainting or dying from toxic fumes. I promise this will make more sense in a moment. With just over two weeks until Election Day, you can still make a big difference in important state and local races. More below.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I recover from open-heart surgery.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

Good news: The New York Times has discovered the importance of state legislative elections. Here’s what the paper of record published this week:

Congressional elections and governors’ races may get the attention, but voters in 46 states will also elect more than 6,100 state legislators in November, or 83 percent of all seats. The consequences are often profound.

State legislators — most of whom are part-time with minimal staff — typically allocate billions of dollars for schools, prisons, and health care, while shaping policies on hot-button topics such as taxes and A.I. But in an era of mid-decade redistricting, their ability to redraw congressional maps could be hugely consequential for the 2028 election.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for any length of time, you’ll be very well aware of the massive stakes of these lesser-covered elections, which are simply fundamental to the survival (or perhaps revival) of our democracy. It’d be cool if they garnered more attention in the nation’s most important newspaper than one short article built of glancing details, but it’s a start.

The Times highlights Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina as particularly crucial battlegrounds, where a strong Democratic performance could either create trifectas or break supermajorities in their respective statehouses. Because it’s more general overview than substantive guide, the story mentions neither the districts that might flip parties nor the candidates who might do the flipping. Again, it’s a start, and I’m glad these races are getting attention at all.

The good news is that all of the deeper information is freely available at my site FlipSeats.org, where I have catalogued every race anywhere in the vicinity of competitive in these states’ legislatures. Any last minute donations to candidates in these races will go a much longer way than any money tossed to federal elections.

You can donate to more than 50 of these candidates at this ActBlue page.

You can also read about and watch a few of my conversations with them in the pieces below:

Michigan

Wisconsin

Texas

Arizona

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

Tonight we jump from reporting on swingy state legislative races to one of the most fiercely contested Congressional races in the country. If progressive Democrat Matt Dunlap can win in Maine’s second District, it would blow up a lot of recieved wisdom about the kinds of ideology that appeal to much of the country. I spoke with Dunlap, and it’s a longer interview, so let’s jump right into it.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I continue my recovery from open-heart surgery. This work is all pro bono ahead of the election.

You’re invited support this work via donations to the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

Progressives and populist Democrats have proven that they can oust even the most entrenched incumbents in safe blue districts. This November will test whether they can win over electorates that traditionally veer purple and even voted for Donald Trump.

The marquee race in this category is the Michigan Senate race, which pits progressive Abdul El-Sayed against Republican Mike Rogers. Over on the House side, all eyes will be on Maine’s second Congressional district, where state auditor Matt Dunlap is facing off against far-right former Gov. Paul LePage.

Massive and rural, the district is currently represented by Rep. Jared Golden, the House’s most conservative Democrat. During the Biden administration, he voted against party priorities more than any other Democrat, then announced that he’d be fine with Trump winning in 2024. It seemed prescient at the time, as Golden eked out a close win in a district that backed Trump that year, but he went from survivor to antagonist soon after: in March 2025, he provided the one Democratic vote needed to pass a GOP budget bill, funding the administration’s reign of terror. Shortly after, word began to circulate that Golden might have earned himself a primary challenge.

The DCCC tried to discourage Dunlap, whose name was emerging as a possible challenger, from pursuing a run. A fixture in Maine politics, Dunlap was seen by insiders as too progressive for the district; he supports Medicare for All and served as chair of Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign. After Golden announced that he wouldn’t run for re-election, the DCCC backed a different candidate, moderate state Rep. Joe Baldacci.

Dunlap’s triumph in the four-person primary led pundits and election handicappers to list the district as a likely Republican pickup, but the tide is turning. Last week, Cook Political Report nudged the race to Lean Republican, while the latest polls actually put Dunlap in the lead. If he can pull off the win, Dunlap would shatter a lot of ossified political conventional wisdom about what constitutes electability. It would provide ample evidence that populist economics, not fiscal conservatism, is the secret sauce.

I spoke with Dunlap last week to better understand the unusual circumstances of this race, what people don’t understand about the politics of rural Maine, and how he plans on defeating one of the most infamous governors in American history. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Progress Report: You got into the race a year ago, before Jared Golden retired. It looked like an uphill battle given the district’s vote in 2024. What triggered the decision?

Matt Dunlap: It was not entirely my idea. The thing about it was that here we were, last March, and people had gotten increasingly frustrated with Jared for a couple of different reasons. There was the issue around a lot of his votes, which people didn’t quite get. People would give him a pass [before] like, “Yeah, he votes for the Republicans, but it is kind of a purple district and he has to mind the store at home.” But people were saying, “Yeah, everybody has to vote their district, but not like this. He’s voting with the Republicans all the time.”

The real thing that people were frustrated by was the fact he disappeared. He didn’t go to events anymore. He didn’t walk in parades. You never saw him at a Rotary breakfast. I was home one night last March and one of the Indivisible groups in the area had an event in Bangor, and he had been invited. He refused to go, so they made it into an empty chair event. A former colleague called me that night and said, “You probably need to brace yourself, because you’re going to get a bunch of calls…”

My wife and I talked about it for several months, and she was very skeptical. Every night the conversation ended with, "This is a terrible idea." But then she had people approaching her the same way, like, "Is it true that Matt's really thinking about doing this? Because I want to help him." And we finally concluded: I run, run hard, and if I lose, then people had a choice.

I put it out there that I was exploring the idea in May. It caused a bit of a thunderclap. I got calls from folks in D.C. saying, "Don't do it." I was strongly discouraged by leadership from doing it. But what I was hearing on the ground here was just the opposite.

You announced in October and Golden dropped out a month later. The DCCC encouraged other candidates to join the race and backed Joe Baldacci.

One of the rules I have here is that you only worry about what you control, and I couldn’t control what the DCCC was doing. It angered a lot of people in Maine — and not because they backed Baldacci, but because they backed anybody in the primary. They would have been just as angry if they backed me. “Why are they getting involved in a primary? That’s for us to decide who our nominee is.”

The DCCC told me they were going to back Jared, which I understood. When he withdrew, I called them that night, and I said, “Well, it’s a different game now.” And they said, “We owe you a call. We’re going to let the dust settle, and then we’ll reach out.” And a reporter asked me the next day about my response to the news that they were sending recruiters to Maine to find somebody else. They did not want me, for whatever reason. And then, five weeks before the primary, they backed Baldacci.

When I won the primary, and then it was a very slow walk to get me into that same status. And our assumption was like, “Well, we’ve beaten them now twice. [We] drove out the incumbent, and then we beat their preferred replacement.” But you can’t really have a rearview mirror in this business. They’ve been incredibly helpful now. They’re fully on board. They are part of our weekly meetings. And one of their folks said to me, “Okay, in all fairness, we backed the wrong guy.”

I’ve often said in this business that no opportunity to be a grown-up ever seems to pass me by. And while it would be fun to demand a reckoning, I just need to get elected. And if they’re willing to help me out, I’m going to take it. So we’ve all moved on from all that.

Donate to Matt Dunlap for Congress

How did you get the DCCC on board when there are so many other races?

It took some time. They wanted to see our numbers, because they had not been a part of anything to do with our campaign. So they wanted to see our poll numbers. They wanted to see our fundraising effort. And we have been very strong. I may have my faults, but I do the work. I come to the office every day and I make phone calls for five or six hours, sometimes a couple of hundred calls a day. And of course, now it’s gotten kind of lean, because people are feeling kind of tapped out, because they’re getting called by everybody. I was actually pretty excited to get into the Red to Blue program.

The conventional wisdom was that Jared Golden matched the district, like you said. So what about the district changed?

Well, really, no change. This is one of the strange mythologies of the second Congressional District of Maine, that somehow it has become deeply red. And really what’s happened here is [voters] were questioning our party. “When did the Democratic Party stop standing up and fighting for working people?”

Northern Maine, the St. John Valley, used to be entirely represented by Democrats. And now there’s not a single Democrat elected north of Old Town, where I live. And what you lose there is you don’t have that person from Fort Fairfield or Fort Kent or Presque Isle saying in the back of the caucus meeting, “Hey, don’t forget about us.” So everything’s coming out of the urban areas, and it continues an erosion that just really hurts us. It hurts our base. People feel like they’re not being heard, like they’ve been left behind. But this entire campaign has been focused around our neighbors.

When people talk to me about issues, they don’t talk about universal health care. They talk about how they can’t afford to go to the doctor. And then when you say, “Well, what if you didn’t have to worry about that?” “That would be great. That’s exactly what I’m looking for.” And it’s that sort of symbiotic give-and-take — it’s partly campaign, but it’s mostly policy. If you didn’t have to worry about child care costs, would it be easier for you to find a second job, or [for] both of you to work?

There’s this conventional wisdom that it’s fiscal conservatism that appeals to voters in places like your district. That’s not what you’re selling. Why do you think you have connected?

I think part of it is my background. I spent my whole life in the district. I grew up on a farm here. I went to school here. I’m a lifetime sportsman, which is really big for a Democrat, because you don’t have to navigate that labyrinth of gun issues and try to explain away your support for something that a lot of sportsmen don’t want. And I don’t have that issue. I chaired the Fish and Wildlife Committee. I was executive director at the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine for a year. I’m a founder of the Maine Youth Fish and Game Association.

We did some focus group work among some unenrolled, uncommitted voters, and we posited the whole sportsman issue. And for them, that wasn’t an advantage, just a baseline. So it kind of puts me in a better posture with voters who are maybe more moderate, maybe even a little bit more conservative. And in my work as a state representative and secretary of state, I think I’ve been to every school in the district talking about civics, going to communities, Kiwanis Clubs, Rotaries.

People ask me what the magic TV ad is, and there isn’t one. There’s no stone in the forest with a sword in it that you can pull out and be declared the ruler of the realm, in a right sense. It’s just got to meet people where they are, hear what they have to say, and then try to translate that back to them in terms of ideas.

So let’s say you go to D.C., things go well, and the Democrats have at least one house of Congress. What are your main focuses?

The number one thing I’ve been hearing about has been health care, so that’s the first thing we need to work on. And while a Medicare for All universal health care system would be great, the odds of that happening right away are long, because it’s going to be a complex process. But at least restoring the ACA tax credits, and getting 30,000 Mainers back onto the insurance rolls that had to drop it because they couldn’t afford it, that would be a great step. And just keep building out [from] there.

Anything that we can do — taking the cap off Social Security contributions, and preserve Social Security into the foreseeable future, and expand people’s benefits — would be a great thing as well. And just things to take burdens off people’s shoulders.

You’re not running against a fresh face or Republican without much of a record or public profile; Paul LePage was a two-term governor and a big lightning rod during his time in office. Do you think that’s made the race more or less difficult?

I think part of what Jared’s thinking in withdrawing in November was, “Okay, Dunlap, you want a primary? Have fun.” And throwing the gate open, thinking that maybe a dozen people would get into the race. And that really didn’t happen. And I think part of it was people saw LePage, with his name recognition — the fact he’s a two-term former governor, that he had run for governor again and lost, although he won the second district by a point and a half — [and thought] that this may be something that people want to keep their powder dry about.

LePage is well-known, but not all for the best reasons. He vetoed Medicaid expansion six times. He talked about people of color as drug dealers who came to Maine to sell drugs and then they get a white girl pregnant on their way out of town. He called Social Security and Medicare welfare. He said that teachers were a dime a dozen as he was proposing cutting teacher and other state retirement benefits, which he did.

He withheld voter-approved Medicaid expansion funds. He withheld Land for Maine’s Future funds, which is our big conservation program. People remember this stuff. We talked about housing in the debate, and somebody wrote to me after the debate and said he should have reminded people that he would not issue voter-approved housing bonds when he was governor. He touched everything, and usually he touched it with a fist. And I think that’s why he is not running away with this.

You’ve got to remind people of those things, but the second district makes up most of the state, and it’s really rural. You can’t exactly go around doing door-knocking. So how do you campaign in a race like this?

Well, where I am in central Maine, Old Town is two hours away from everything but Bangor. There was one stretch where on Saturday we were down in Fryeburg on the New Hampshire border. The next day we were up in Presque Isle on the Canadian border. And then we went down to East Machias, way down in Washington County. And then we were in Lewiston, in central Androscoggin County, which is in the western part of the state. It’s just what you’ve got to do, and I don’t even think about it. We got to about a week before the primary, and somebody asked me how I was doing.

And I think I’ve got an analogy, but nobody understands it, because very few people have done the crazy things I’ve done. But I ran cross country at the University of Maine, and I was a distance runner on the track team. And at one point, somebody talked me into doing a 24-hour marathon. And four o’clock in the morning, I think I was actually asleep while I was running, and you’re just kind of catatonic, but you just keep going. And it’s kind of similar with this. It’s like, “Okay, where do I have to be today?” And I don’t think about, “I wish I was doing something else.” You just plan for it, and you get out there and you go and you do what you need to do.

It forced us to get our ground game going and iron out all the wrinkles. And when the fall campaign started, we were already at flank speed. Whereas LePage was unopposed — he got the fall, the winter, the spring, the summer off, for the most part. And it still feels like he’s trying to find his rhythm, and I don’t think he’s doing a very good job at it.

Donate to Matt Dunlap for Congress

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

Our latest conversation with key candidates running in must-win swing seats takes us to suburban Detroit and what may be Michigan’s swingiest bellwether district. Let’s get right to it.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I continue my recovery from open-heart surgery. This work is all pro bono ahead of the election.

You’re invited support this work via the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

Jaime Churches was a little shaken up when she called me back on Friday morning, but she was also determined not to allow another death threat to scare or distract her down the stretch.

“I don’t usually put my life on hold for these things, because I don’t ever want my work and my commitment to community or the things I’m doing to be impacted or misdirected,” Churches, a Democrat running to return to the Michigan House of Representatives, said. “I think sometimes the goal is to distract me, and I want to keep that from happening.”

Churches spent the weekend attending parades and meeting voters, a defiantly public schedule around her suburban Detroit district. It’s hard to get used to people threatening to shoot you, but Churches has been co-existing with threats since Republicans published her personal cell phone number this summer. And in a way, she’s used to that, too: Churches was one of several Democrats that the state GOP doxxed back in 2022, when she first ran for office when she was 34 years old.

“They say, ‘Oh, it’s so sad you get death threats,’ but I’m getting death threats because since August they’ve been sending negative mailers of me in a communist uniform,” she said, more exasperated and annoyed than fearful or angry. “It seems like I’m joking, but there’s a faction of people that are triggered by this and believe this.”

I only know about the threats because Churches apologized for calling me back a few minutes after we were scheduled to talk, explaining the fractional tardiness (she was on the phone with police) and insisting that she was still game to chat. This campaign, she said, has been driven by a desire to be more open and vulnerable, to “lead with humanity” and connect with voters in a way that politics often doesn’t allow.

If nothing else, the attacks she’s endured are a clear indication that Republicans are more than a bit concerned about Churches’ prospects of winning back House District 27, which she represented for two years after winning that initial election by 660 votes. Though she outperformed both Kamala Harris and Elise Slotkin in 2024, Michigan lurched far enough to the right that Churches lost her bid for a second term.

Donate to MI Democratic leg. candidates

This year’s race is considered one of the Democrats’ best flip opportunities in a closely divided legislature. A net gain of four seats would flip the chamber and likely give Democrats a trifecta, and that doesn’t happen if Churches doesn’t win next month. Her team has sent over 18,000 handwritten postcards, and any voter who hasn’t been contacted by the campaign has likely run into Churches somewhere in the community over the past few years.

Unfinished Business

An elementary school teacher and union leader, Churches has a lot of unfinished business from her one term in office. Democrats used that two-year period to catch up on basics like civil rights, voting rights, abortion rights and the myriad other rights that Republicans throttled during their dozen years in charge. The list of accomplishments also included a repeal of former Gov. Rick Snyder’s anti-union “right to work” law; it was Churches’ vocal advocacy for the repeal that first put us in touch, when I was producing a story on the history-making effort.

It was a solid opening round of legislation, but nearly two dozen Democratic priority bills got left in the queue due to caucus disarray and infighting, including several that Churches herself backed. At the top of that pile was a pair of bills that would have required health insurers to cover infertility treatments, including IVF. It was personal for Churches, who documented her own rounds of IVF on social media. The House’s lame duck session went down to the wire, and the experience of not getting it passed was as formative and motivating than any of the successes she experienced.

“On my last night in office, a lobbyist told me that they were going to keep it from the floor and they didn’t want to see it pass,” Churches recalled. “And to know the amount of influence that corporations have on the policy that passes — no one can convince me that Lansing isn’t run by corporations, and that we have to fight to get things done for the community.”

Taking on that corporate power is at the center of her agenda this time around. She’ll revive the IVF bill and fight to eliminating co-pays on essential medications — Churches carries an epipen in case of bee stings and has seen the prices skyrocket for a lifesaving necessity — as well as tools like inhalers and hearing aids.

Another one of the Democratic bills that didn’t get passed in 2024 was an environmental proposal that would have required industrial polluters to pay the cost of cleaning up their messes. In a state known for the Flint water crisis and manufacturing, it’s a long overdue necessity, and one that also hits close to home: Churches lives a few blocks from a plant run by the chemical conglomerate BASF that dumps up to 60 gallons of toxic, contaminated groundwater per minute into the nearby Detroit River. It’s their moral and legal obligation to clean up their mess, Churches argues.

“Not only do they have the means to not [pollute], but they employ some of the most intelligent humans that work for them,” she said. “They have the skill set to also address these things, and they’re not, because we’re not making them. And I want to do that”

Years of digging through documents and asking pointed questions on behalf of her neighbors led to the discovery that Wyandotte, the town where Churches lives, had secretly stopped fluoridating its water supply, compounding the problem. Utility companies have become an arch-villain of sorts in Michigan, leading to a ballot initiative this fall that would severely limit how much both companies and their executives can donate to political campaigns.

The initiative looks likely to succeed, a positive development that Churches sees as just the start of the necessary reforms. Bigger refunds for customers during power outages, a more democratic process for choosing the Michigan Public Service Commission, fewer rate hikes permitted by regulators — they’re all on the table as constituents struggle with their energy bills.

This year, she’s found voters far more open to listening to ideas instead of resorting to partisan politics, a significant change from the presidential election cycle and an indication that the nasty attacks against her won’t stick on Election Day.

“If I’m going to get death threats because I’m a fifth-grade teacher who wants people to have insurance and power and electricity that doesn’t go out, villainize me,” Churches said. “Go ahead. Tell people I’m horrible. But that’s all that they have. They’re saying I help Muslim people. I do. They can attack me all they want, but I feel like eventually people are going to see, because I’m going to allow them to see who I really am this time.”

Donate to MI Democratic leg. candidates

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

I’ve focused a lot on primaries this year, but from now until Election Day, I’m going to do my best to run interviews with candidates running in critical races up and down the ballot. We’ll raise money for candidates, too, in those races where we can have the biggest impact. Tonight, we turn to Wisconsin.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I continue my recovery from open-heart surgery. This work is all pro bono ahead of the election.

You’re invited support this work via the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

If Democrats are going to flip and create sustainable majorities in purple states like Wisconsin, it’s going to be thanks to candidates like Ben Gruber.

Running for state Assembly in a rural district in the southernmost part of the state, Gruber is locked in an expensive, neck-and-neck race with six-term GOP incumbent, Assemblyman Todd Novak. Millions have been spent on the race already, speaks to the general national outrage with the political status quo, as well of Gruber’s uniqueness as a candidate.

In a populist moment filled with pseudo-populist politicians manufactured by consultants, Gruber has the intangibles that are impossible to fake. He’s a longtime first responder, game warden, and union leader, and has a withering yet plainspoken way of cutting through the bullshit of right-wing grievance politics. There’s none of the calculated caution or culture war virtue signaling endemic to so many swing Democrats, just a laser-like focus on the public interest.

I came away very impressed with Ben when we spoke on a live stream in May, and with less than a month until Election Day, I decided to check back in to see how the campaign was unfolding in a place where Democrats have struggled for years to attract voters. It was an incredibly candid conversation, packed with what could be instructional mantras for Democrats running in more rural regions.

The conversation below has lightly edited and condensed.

Progress Report: You won the primary uncontested in August. Where do you see the race now?

Ben Gruber: There’s been well over $2 million spent on this race alone, which is a lot for a state assembly race, and over $1.5 million of has come from the other side. They just have three billionaire donors that have funded the entire Republican Party in this state, and this is one of the seats where they have somebody that’s over-performed in the past, and they’re going to do everything they can to try and protect that. So people are just getting inundated with mailers and TV and digital and radio. So there’s just no opportunity to take your foot off the gas.

What are they spamming people with? Are they just calling you communist?

Yeah, it’s the Republican greatest hits. Despite the fact that I’ve been a law enforcement officer for a decade, including several recognitions for performance, they run “Ben Gruber is anti-law enforcement” ads, just untethered to truth and reality. They’ve run their favorite hit: transgender issues, transgender prisoner surgeries. Their hits against me are all “Ben Gruber is funding extremism,” because I donated $25 to the Kamala Harris campaign.

Their entire playbook right now is to just say it over and over again and inundate people with deceit and discrepancy, and hope that it’s enough to motivate their base and try to convince people yet again that it’s the fault of three trans kids that they’re closing schools and police departments and people can’t afford groceries and gas, and hope that people will ignore the fact that incumbent Republicans have been stealing from our communities and giving to billionaires for decades.

What are the things you’re finding people angriest about? I know you post a lot on data centers, among other things...

We had a $2 billion corporate welfare giveaway to data centers in our last state budget here. And I think that the center of the anger is just straight-up neglecting our communities and blatant corruption and giveaways to billionaires. It makes our life unaffordable. People are struggling to get health care, and the state legislature is giving money to private schools and data centers that really should be working in our communities. It’s always some form or another of that message.

Do you find that people are engaged more than they have been in the past, or they’re willing to think about voting differently?

I do. I think there’s a little bit of an awakening. And I don’t know that it’s Republicans that now want to vote for Democrats. I wouldn’t say that we’re there, but what I do see is just an overwhelming anger at incumbents and political parties and systems in general, to where people want change. I wouldn’t say that there’s a lot of appetite in rural Wisconsin for a Democratic wave, but there’s a lot of appetite for a change wave, and people want something different.

How do you convince people that the Democrats represent something different?

Quite frankly, I don’t. I’m running against a 12-year incumbent, and I’m not out there trying to sell the Democrat Party. I’m out there trying to sell Ben Gruber as somebody who served our community, and that’s the change that we need. And I think it then lies upon people who get elected as Democrats to step up and do good things, to bring forth meaningful legislation that impacts people’s lives in a positive way. And then you can go out and sell the message that that party is working for you. I don’t know that we can do that without having a record to look back on.

But right now, the incumbents and the Republicans control so much of the bad stuff that is happening. That’s what we’re running against.

Donate to WI Democratic leg. candidates

Do you think, should Democrats take the state trifecta, you’ll be able to get enough done to convince people of that?

It’s going to be an uphill battle, no doubt. The winds that we have to push against, and the bad things that have been done by the Trump administration and by the Republican administrations and state legislators here in Wisconsin for a decade and a half — it’s going to be difficult to fix in two years. So that’s where we need people with leadership skills who can communicate that and show people that we’re making progress. I’m not going to sit here and tell anybody that it’s going to be easy. It’s going to be a real uphill battle to come back with enough results in two years to convince people that things are going in the right direction.

What are the things that you’d prioritize most in the legislature?

Public school funding has got to be a day-one priority. We’ve underfunded especially rural public schools in favor of private voucher schools in Madison and Milwaukee. And people’s property taxes are going up at a time when they can’t afford gas and groceries. We have got to stop that. And then the second has got to be community funding. Shared revenue here in Wisconsin has been a longstanding promise that was supposed to keep rural property taxes down in farming communities. And the Republicans have cut shared revenue, again, in favor of tax cuts for billionaires.

Does the school privatization stuff seem like it’s made a big difference, politically? Has it been people’s entry into politics, even if they’re more usually conservative?

I don’t know how many people that’s motivating. What I find a lot is that there’s a lack of knowledge out there amongst the public about how much money is being diverted from public schools to private voucher schools. It’s still pretty well hidden here. People are slowly learning about it as we have more and more referendums and failed referendums and schools closed.

But one thing that the Republican legislature has done a good job of is turning the blame back around and blaming our local school districts and school boards, in a real sleight-of-hand trick that hides the fact that in the last budget cycle of two years, they took $1.8 billion and gave it to private schools — that came from public taxpayer dollars. So they’ve been able to do that, and that’s something that, if we regain power in the legislature, we have to not only fix, but we have to be really forward-facing in how we message it.

Running in a rural district is difficult in some ways; it’s hard to knock doors, for example. As someone who’s running in a place where Democrats haven’t really competed for a long time, or haven’t really got the infrastructure, what have you found to be effective campaign-wise?

My Assembly district covers two and a half counties, and it’s actually a larger landmass than Rhode Island. 59,000 people in this district, and it’s slightly larger than Rhode Island. So the challenges are incredibly unique, in that when we go door-knocking in our rural areas, we can’t see the next door. Sometimes it’s a one-, two-, three-mile drive in between doors we’re going to knock. The driveways are often over half-a-mile. So relational organizing has been just really important.

That’s where I think my union president and union organizer experience has really paid off. Just convincing people that we’re going to offer a different brand of politics, a different brand of leadership, but we need their help to get it across the finish line. Asking people to host events in their farm shop, tailgate town halls where we’ll go to a cul-de-sac or a barnyard and we’ll drop the tailgate on the pickup truck and we’ll have a town hall with five people. “Call your friends and neighbors, and we’ll be there.”

Relational organizing and social media to some extent has been helpful, but really it’s just convincing people that they’re part of the team, and talking to their friends and neighbors and families is what’s going to push it across the finish line. And I think that’s where we found our success and really hit our stride.

Are people skeptical of that? Politics has been so tribal and alienating. How do you convince them they’re part of it?

When people say, “I don’t want to talk about politics,” or “It’s uncomfortable to talk about politics,” I say, “That’s great. I’m not asking you to talk about politics. What I want you to talk about is impacts.” Don’t make it partisan. When people say they don’t want to talk about politics, what they don’t want to talk about is partisan politics. But when we ask people to talk about impacts to their neighbors and impacts to their farm and impacts to the land that their family has owned for generations, and when their neighbors had to do a brat fry to pay for their kids’ cancer treatments, these are all things people are willing to talk about.

They just don’t want to talk about Republican or Democrat. They don’t want to talk partisan politics, and helping people make that distinction has been really important. When you run in a rural community like this, you have to be grounded in the reality of the district and you have to have roots in the district. People have to know you or know somebody who knows you before you show up and start spouting that stuff. And that’s where we’ve been able to connect.

Donate to WI Democratic leg. candidates

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

I’m working on a big piece about city and county ballot initiatives, but I had to prioritize this one first because our intervention is needed ASAP. Let’s dig in.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I continue my recovery from open-heart surgery. This work is all pro bono ahead of the election.

You’re invited support this work via the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

The most important political news of the weekend involved AOC and Bernie Sanders introducing The Strokes in NYC on Friday night. After that, there were two campaign items that made me raise my eyebrows and shift the work I was doing to meet the moment.

They boil down to this: Voters are increasingly opting for Democrats in generic Congressional ballot polls, but the coming blue wave could be smaller than expected due to to both a GOP cash advantage and a general center-left donor myopia.

Here’s the latest on the Congressional ballot, with some historical context that makes it even more eye-opening:

For comparison’s sake, Democratic Congressional candidates had a +8% popular vote margin in 2026, when the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina were dragging George W. Bush’s approval to what were then record lows. Aggressive gerrymandering has made it less likely that Democrats will flip quite as many seats as they did in that wipeout two decades ago.

So Democrats are going to need help to maintain their advantages in red and purple territories, particularly in down ballot races. They’re being showered with money in key Senate races, but the same can’t be said down ballot. According to Politico, the party’s gubernatorial candidates are largely lagging behind in campaign cash, even in races in which they lead in the polls. And as former Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler explained, that gap could become especially costly further down ballot, when voters are more likely to reflexively return to their partisan defaults.

Check out FlipStates.org

“Even if he only loses narrowly, the flood of Republican money could keep the state Legislature in GOP hands, denying Democrats a once-in-a-generation shot at unified control of the Wisconsin state government and a chance to undo the GOP’s House gerrymander and address its intentionally restrictive voting laws before the next presidential race,” Wikler said.

To some degree, this is hardly a surprise: letting state and local parties fester and then ignoring down-ballot races in 2010 and 2014 is how Democrats — and thus the country — got into this giant mess in the first place. It’s also what I initially started this newsletter, back in 2017, to address. It’s taken years of rebuilding to get anywhere near parity, and now the understandable allure of taking back the Senate is again threatening to leave local and state-level campaigns underfunded and outmatched.

Politics has been bombarded with more money than ever, but these down ballot races are still thinly funded enough that they can be significantly impacted with small donor dollars. So, with a month to go until election day, I’m launching a funding drive for legislative candidates in winnable races in swing states across the country.

Some notes:

• Given both the right-wing gerrymanders in many states, the big Democratic lead in generic ballot polls, and a fair number of upsets in special elections, I’ve taken an expansive view of flippable and set the aperture to include districts that went to Republicans by 15 or fewer points in 2024.

• Most of those districts were much closer on the presidential level, indicating a potential proneness to flipping in off-year elections with a deeply unpopular president.

• Instead of a list with 60+ candidates, I’ve broken them down state-by-state, and am launching with the three of the four most competitive legislatures: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Michigan: There are 14 candidates in total here: Three for the state Senate, where Democrats hold a one seat edge, and 11 in the House, where Democrats are looking to win back their majority.

Including on the list are the inspiring Katrina Manetta and Ana Aho Rink, who we’ve interviewed on live streams here at Progress Report.

Donate to MI Democratic leg. candidates

Wisconsin: From being gerrymandered to the point of one-party rule in 2010 to a potential Democratic trifecta, Wisconsin is one of the great stories of democratic restoration. A redrawing of legislative districts has the state primed to flip, and we’re raising money for three state Senate candidates and four seeking election to the Assembly in Madison.

The list includes Ben Gruber, a rural blue collar candidate and one of the coolest stories we’ve featured on the Progress Report live stream.

Donate to WI Democratic leg. candidates

Pennsylvania: We’ve got 11 candidates on this list, with two for state Senate and nine for the House. Democrats need exactly two state Senate seats to flip that chamber and could use as many House seats as possible to build up their ultra-narrow lead.

Donate to PA Democratic leg. candidates

I’ll be back later this week with more candidates and a big break down of major local ballot initiatives.

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

It’s been six weeks since I underwent my seventh open-heart surgery and the recovery… well, let’s just say it’s been slow but steady enough. My health isn’t that interesting, though, so tonight I’m diving into the world of direct democracy, with some huge updates to some of the hottest policy battles of the fall.

Reminder: I’ve taken down the paywall, stopped normal billing, and made all Progress Report content — including new articles like the one below — free while I continue my recovery from open-heart surgery.

That said, you’re invited support this work via the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

The the primary elections are finished, the signature deadlines have passed, the lawsuits have been adjudicated, and the ballots are being printed, making it the perfect time to dig into the initiatives and amendments that voters will weigh in on this November…. and the ones they won’t. Oh, also, a few of the initiatives that they already voted on earlier this year.

I’ve spent the last few days cleaning, updating, and adding a ton of new initiatives to my tracker site, OnTheBallot.news. It’s a pretty expansive list of relevant initiatives and amendments, so below I’m highlighting a cross-section of them, with a focus on big and controversial policies, news updates, and favorites that fell short (or were short-circuited by bad judges and elected officials).

I’ll review the statewide initiatives today and then jump into the biggest city and regional initiatives in the next edition of the newsletter this weekend.

Civil Rights, Healthcare, and Kids

With Democrats back in complete control of Richmond, voters in Virginia will finally have a chance to lock in constitutional protections for basic human rights. Consider this an opportunity to almost fully cement the one time-capital of the Confederacy as a blue state, as Virginians look likely to approve the constitutional rights to abortion and same-sex marriage, while also finally restoring voting rights to people after they’ve been released from jail. If only Gov. Abigail Spanberger believed in workers’ right to organize (or even just kept campaign promises!).

Voters in Nevada will also vote to enshrine reproductive rights in the constitution; this one’s a formality, as it’s already passed once and just needs a second go-ahead to comply with the state’s amendment process. So far so good!

Less of a gimme is the reproductive rights amendment in Idaho, which has one of the most stringent anti-choice laws in the country. A citizen-driven initiative, it would, among other things, allow abortion up to fetal viability (and beyond in medical emergencies, as well as codify the right to IVF and contraception.

The wording on this one was subject to a legal dispute, as state Republicans who control the ballot did their best to tilt the scales by including the phrase that voting no would protect “preserve the lives of preborn children.” The state Supreme Court, unfortunately, was fine with that obviously biased language. There is an interesting debate, with unconventional coalitions, happening between doctors, religious organizations, and medical associations going on in what is generally a far-right state.

Legal decisions were a bit more positive in Missouri, where voters will weigh in on abortion rights for the second time in as many general elections. As you may recall, Missourians legalized abortion back in 2024, but a state Republican Party that hates direct democracy is now seeking to undo that decision. So how do they plan to convince people to give away the right that they just granted themselves?

At first, their game plan followed the same conservative electoral formula: stoke unconnected culture wars and tell baldfaced lies. Last year, the Missouri legislature created an anti-abortion amendment that was worded to make voters think that it actually protected abortion rights, but lawmakers were foiled by an appeals court insisted that on a more truthful explanation.

Now, Republicans are hoping that the amendment’s inclusion of a ban on gender-affirming care (which is already banned in Missouri) will be enough to tempt people to throw women under the bus. Ironically, their chances of success are in peril because the hardest of anti-abortion hardliners are threatening to hold out because they don’t think it is punitive enough.

If you want to understand the hypocrisy of modern conservatism, and how that word is really just a neat cover for bigotry, look no further than Washington State, where the right is pushing two seemingly conflicting ballot initiatives intended to immiserate children. One, Initiative 001, would roll back changes to a “parental rights” law that would for some reason delay parents and guardians from learning that their kids were the victims of crimes.

Why? Possibly because it was sloppily written, with its authors attention mostly aimed on the clause that would give parents the right to their kids confidential mental health records — a staple demand of the right-wing anti-trans movement. And lo and behold, one of the other big conservative initiatives in Washington this year is a gender verification process that would ban trans participation in school sports. A problem that nobody faces, of course, but that’s hardly the point. The same thing is happening in Colorado, where conservatives want to force trans kids to participate in sports according to their biological gender from kindergarten up through college (something the NCAA already does, of course) and Nebraska, which is doing the same thing.

Donate to Progress Report!

Voters in Arizona won’t have the opportunity to rein in the wildly expensive and increasingly politically unpopular school voucher giveaway, which has funded everything from sex toys to trips to Disneyland, due to a technicality ruling by the state supreme court… but voters will get the chance to vote on further policing and humiliating trans kids while they attend the increasingly underfunded public schools.

On the bright side, the anti-trans bigots in Maine failed in their attempt to qualify trans athletes ban initiative due to some blatant irregularities during the petition signature collection process. It was a protracted fight that involved the secretary of state and ultimately went to the Maine Supreme Court, which affirmed that the billionaire-funded campaign had fallen about 500 valid signatures short.

In one of the funnier initiatives on the ballot, voters in Massachusetts will decide whether they want to repeal a bulk of the state’s marijuana regulation laws, which would leave weed legal to possess but end the sale and cultivation of the stuff. It will not surprise you that a recent poll found that a healthy 61% of the voting public opposed the proposal while just 27% are in favor.

But hey, at least the cranks will get a hearing on election day, which is more than some of the state’s affordable housing advocates can say: after coming under fire from most elected Massachusetts Democrats, a ballot initiative that would have established limited rent control in a state where it is currently banned was tossed by the Supreme Court.

Subscribe now

Here’s a heartwarming one for you: North Dakota will vote on a constitutional amendment that would require the state to provide free school meals to every child, from kindergarten through 12th grade. According to a recent poll commissioned by the Food Research and Action Center, 79% of the public supports free meals in schools. Admittedly, FRAC convenes a coalition that advocates for that exact policy outcome, but nearly 80% is a pretty enormous margin.

Democracy, Ballot Initiatives, and Big Money

Down in South Dakota, voters will have a very different choice in front of them: Amendment L would increase the margin to pass future constitutional amendments to 60%, which would make it almost impossible for citizens to use the direct democracy process for anything substantial.

It’d be an unfortunate turn of events, especially in a state where progressive policies have no real other avenue for passage, but there’s hope: in Missouri this summer, voters overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 4, which would have throttled the initiative process by requiring a referendum to pass in every Congressional district to become law. Overwhelming might actually be an understatement, because more than 80% of voters said no to amendment, even though it was cynically paired with a ban on foreign money in elections (which, naturally, already exists).

As I’ve been closely documenting for months, Missourians will in November get the opportunity to protect their democracy. Thanks to both the state and US Supreme Courts (shocker, I know), voters will decide whether to authorize the blatantly gerrymandered Congressional map that Republicans tried to shove down their throats this year.

They’ll also have the chance to vanquish future attempts to throttle their initiative process: Amendment 6, put forth by the Respect Missouri Voters coalition, would safeguard direct democracy by requiring a whopping 80% of both chambers of the legislature to approve of any changes to approved ballot initiatives, then survive a statewide voter referendum. It’s noteworthy that the amendment is only on the ballot due to the intervention of the Missouri Supreme Court, which was a huge bulwark against GOP treachery this year.

Alas, the Nebraska State Supreme Court had far less interest in respecting voters, as it tossed a similar amendment from the Respect Nebraska Voters under the auspices of the oft-abused single subject requirement. This is particularly galling because the Nebraska legislature very recently rolled back most of the voter-approved minimum wage and paid sick leave initiative.

On the other hand, very good things are happening in Montana! There are three amendments this year that would dramatically bolster the state’s democracy and protect the will of voters, starting with an amendment that would add the right to ballot initiatives to the state constitution. They’ll also get to weigh in on ensuring that judicial elections remain non-partisan (this is how courts stay moderate in red states).

The most monumental proposal in Montana, however, wouldn’t just protect the decent status quo. Instead, I-194 would trigger a major sea change in American politics by banning corporations from spending money on political campaigns. to do so, the Montana Plan, as its called by advocates, would pull an end-around on the Citizens United decision by distinguishing between human and “artificial” persons — ie corporations, unions — and banning the latter from spending on elections. I’ll have more on this in future issues, but needless to say, it would be huge.

Michigan will also vote on limiting corporate money in elections, though Prop 2 would be more narrowly tailored to limit contributions from state-regulated utility companies, government contractors with more than $250,000 in state contracts, and the executives associated with them. Still, not bad!

As for the nuts and bolts of elections, there’s plenty on the docket. Alaska will once again force voters to consider repealing the state’s top four ranked choice voting law (Republicans hate it, as it’s allowed Democrats and independents to create a real coalition that more regularly wins elections). In Massachusetts, they’ll have a chance to create a top-two nonpartisan primary system like the messy one they have in California, as well as finally enact same-day voter registration.

I’ll have more in the next edition of the newsletter, which will feature additional statewide initiatives and a deep dive into city and county ones.

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

It’s chaotic here in New York City, where the UN is in session, people are climbing out of sewers, a Nor’easter is on the way, and most importantly, my son just turned four years old. Meanwhile, I’m slowly on the mend from my surgery, which I really only mention because it provides a nice little narrative framework for tonight’s story about healthcare and power.

I’ve temporarily paused all paid subscriptions to Progress Report until I am healthy and back to regular publishing.

I’ll still publish when I can during this paid subscription hiatus — I actually have an interview for you below. You’re welcome to support that work via the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated.

Donate to Progress Report!

Time moves at half-speed at best in hospitals, urgency necessarily subsumed by priority and precision. So while my phone call wasn’t scheduled until 12:30 pm, the fact that I was sitting on a bed in the ER at 11:15 am, waiting to speak with a doctor, had me concerned.

The irony of the situation didn’t do anything to ease the growing tension, and if anything, underscored the importance of the pending call: there I was, sitting comfortably in the Mount Sinai emergency room, less than 18 hours after a physical therapy appointment at NYU Langone, gearing up to talk about the shamefulness of recent decisions made by those hospitals’ leaders and the impact they’ll have on families with nowhere else to turn.

I was only in the emergency room to follow up on some wonky at-home blood test results (I’m fine), but the doctors and nurses at Mount Sinai were far more thorough and attentive than I’d anticipated when I showed up looking for quick lab turnaround. But medical professionals don’t make the policy or legal decisions in our healthcare system, which is too bad, because administrators clearly don’t share their single-minded dedication to the well-being of complete strangers. If they did, neither hospital would have agreed to pay millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and stop providing life-saving gender-affirming care to trans children.

While technically nonprofits, both Mt Sinai and NYU are massive and well-heeled hospital systems that serve patients from around the world. That was particularly true for young people suffering from gender dysmorphia, treatment for which continues to be banned by weird, bigoted lawmakers in states across the country. The Trump administration does not have the power to issue a national moratorium against gender-affirming care, but over the past few years, the DOJ has abused the legal system to essentially do just that, pestering hospitals with legal threats and financial sanctions until they agree to abandon their most vulnerable patients.

When NYU agreed to pay the administration $8.5 million and end gender-affirming care last week, joining Mount Sinai (which cut a similar deal a few weeks ago) and six other major hospital systems in surrender, I fired off a tweet condemning the hospital for the decision. That would usually count as the bare minimum anyone could do about an injustice, but in this case, the tweet ultimately led me to connecting with Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY), who is the ranking minority member on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the DOJ.

Luckily, I was discharged from the ER with just enough time to drag myself home (I live a few blocks away) and prep for the phone call, which began with a discussion of how Democratic lawmakers can stop this reign of medical terror and branched off into a chat about election season and some of New York’s most prominent politicians. A slightly edited and condensed version of that conversation is below:

Progress Report: What do these “investigations” into hospitals that provide gender-affirming care actually look like? What are these hospitals afraid of? How is the DOJ weaponizing the process?

Rep. Grace Meng: Well, this is unfortunately nothing new that we are seeing from this Department of Justice. Cruelty and coercion is the name of their game. What they are doing to attack and invade patient privacy and health care access, treating our young people and families in such a cruel way, is really disappointing. They know that they can’t win in court, so they’re just cheating through coercion.

Do they settle because it costs a lot of money to litigate? Because they’re at risk of losing federal funding? What are the ways that the Justice Department is able to coerce these hospitals?

Rep. Grace Meng: I mean, all of the above, right? I’m the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees all the DOJ funding. And we have seen this as we’ve been negotiating our budgets with them. They tried to include over 50 anti-LGBTQ riders, what we call poison pills, into the budget. And we, as House Democrats, were able to take them all out. But they wanted to insert 52 pieces of wording and legislation that would have restricted medically necessary health care for transgender people, basically allowing taxpayer-funded discrimination against same-sex couples, blocking any non-discriminatory and DEI-type efforts.

But they are persistent, so they try it through the budget process, and they can’t do that. Obviously, they’re trying to cheat by coercing these hospitals: NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, we’ve seen it with hospitals in other states. This is just their strategy and their tool to press these hospitals, who at the same time, have also suffered from funding and grant loss. They’re strapped for cash, and they’re just really bullying these decision=makers. And at the end of the day, the real victims are our youth and their families.

What would you like to see the hospitals do instead of settle? Hold out until the election?

Rep. Grace Meng: That’s why we’re on the political end fighting to win back the House majority, because then we have much more of a say and stronger teeth as we put together these budgets. But to these hospitals, their funding from agencies like NIH and NSF, they’re getting cut left and right. This president is now trying to have more direct authority on the NIH grants that these hospitals and colleges, for example, are getting.

And look, I’m not a hospital administrator. It’s above my pay grade. But what I have seen that is honestly encouraging in the last few days is how these media companies have treated the White House’s decision in terms of the pooling. They have decided to work together with a more collective strategy, and that’s an interesting take, right? And I wonder if there’s anything that hospital administrators can do to use their leverage. Because the DOJ, obviously, is not just targeting NYU Langone. They’re starting with these hospitals, and they’re just going to continue to bulldoze through these forced settlements.

I think the odds are pretty good that you’ll be in the majority in January. What does that look like in terms of oversight, in terms of using the budget? Not just striking out the riders, but preventing this weaponization or investigating how they weaponize?

Rep. Grace Meng: Right now, we’re in the [minority], and what we’ve been doing on the House Democrats side is trying to at the very least bring attention to what the administration is doing. So hopefully if we are in the majority, I want people to know oversight and our Appropriations Committee really go hand in hand. We literally have direct oversight over these agencies. They come in front of us. They ask for money. They have to tell us how they’re going to spend it. And we can certainly insert language that tells them how they’re not allowed to spend taxpayers’ money.

The riders are an example, and we’ll have more leverage if we’re in the majority to not just strike out harmful, poisonous language, but to be more constructive and insert language that can actually help people.

It’s not directly related, but something that I worked on was the “anti-weaponization” fund that the DOJ was trying to create, literally a legal defense fund for the January 6th insurrectionists. And because we were able to ask about it and talk about it in our committee, they came back and said, “Oh, yeah, we’re not going to do that anymore.” And they’re not doing that out of the goodness of their heart. They got attention on it, and they don’t like that, and they know it’s wrong and illegal. And so we just have to continue to conduct that type of oversight.

On the other hand, we just saw Mayor Mamdani meet with President Trump, who was once again singing his praises during a very surprising press conference. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to the mayor or anyone who’s involved in that, but I’m curious to know whether you have any insight into how he’s seemingly gotten the president under his spell.

Rep. Grace Meng: Yeah, I’m actually not surprised. When Mayor Mamdani had his first meeting in Washington, D.C., I actually reached out to the mayor and I said, “I have a weird feeling that President Trump really respects you and likes you.” And I was half joking, it was before all the pictures of them coming out all happy from the first White House meeting.

But I think a lot of what the mayor is fighting for for our city, these are issues that if Trump were to support and work along with him could make him more popular too. Obviously I wasn’t part of the meeting, and I don’t know all the details of what they talked about, but hopefully whatever the mayor can do to convince him to stop bullying New Yorkers and putting a target on the backs of New Yorkers and fellow Americans is appreciated.

Do you think it’s a star power thing? Trump cares more than anything else about that? Is he impressed by that?

Rep. Grace Meng: I think that occasionally the president knows how to read the room. And I think that he may like that New Yorkers are responding well to Mayor Mamdani’s fight for affordability and to root out corruption.

On the subject of New York Democrats… Mayor Mamdani upended the New York Democratic establishment, and now for the first time ever, Jay Jacobs, the state party chair, is being challenged in his re-election bid. And I’m curious what you make of the upheaval, all the Democratic primary challenges across the state, and the challenge to Jacobs in particular?

Rep. Grace Meng: I think that Chairman Jacobs will make his case as he runs for reelection, but it’s a team sport. And right now, regardless of which wing of the Democratic Party you’re in, we have to focus on the November election. There’s so much at stake right now. I will say that I am glad to see what the state party is doing now for the November elections. They are running a robust, coordinated campaign, for example, opening up more than 30 offices in areas that we need to flip blue, and so I would like to see more of that.

But there’s been so much conversation about the left wing, the moderate wing of the party. And I think that everyone can learn something from anyone. And I want to make sure that people are all rowing in the same direction as we head towards the November election. I’ve said that to Democratic Party leadership. I’ve said that to DSA leadership. We need to all work together for November.

The 2022 and 2024 elections were rough for NY Democrats, and probably cost the party control of Congress. You mention opening all these offices in places that need to flip blue: do you think that’s something that NY Democrats have slept on in the past?

Rep. Grace Meng: Oh, I think that there has been much improvement. We did not see this robust, coordinated campaign at this level in years past. And so I’m really glad to see that. Now we need to meet voters where they are, and opening up these coordinated campaign offices will be super helpful. We need to rebuild trust with people who have voted for us, people who’ve been lifelong Democrats, people who may have voted for Trump, and also brand-new voters and young voters. We need to meet them where they are. And I like that that’s being done right now.

What does rebuilding trust look like? Obviously Trump will still be president come January 2027, but Congress might be a different story. So what does rebuilding trust look like for a Democratic Party that has some control over things?

Rep. Grace Meng: I don’t want to speak for other people. But I think that it’s important to meet people where they are. We need to make sure that people feel that we’re not just lecturing from social media or from a cable news network, but that we’re meeting them in their neighborhoods. And for the everyday person who may be frustrated with what’s happening in this country and what they’re seeing in our neighborhoods, we need to find ways for them to get involved, for them to feel like they’re included, and for them to feel like they are able to weigh in, whether they are happy with how things are going or whether they want to be part of a way to improve the way that things are going.

It’s hard to build that trust when there isn’t a presence in some of these districts. And we saw this in past elections, including the one where Trump first won. I was one of the DNC officers during the first Trump administration. I was [vice chair of] the DNC from 2016 to 2020. And I traveled to 20-some states. I would meet people, even members of a union hall, who said that they were shocked that the Democratic Party was in their state or in their neighborhood. And they were so grateful that they felt like the Democratic Party was finally paying attention to them and listening to them. And so just continue to do more of that when there is a vacuum.

A lot of people used to ask, “What is our message? What is our message?” after Trump with his MAGA slogan. And for me, I just felt like it’s not just not having a message, but sometimes we don’t even have a messenger in some of these areas. So people need to feel like we’re listening to them and that we’re working with them and their opinions are valued. I always think about, to paraphrase that Maya Angelou quote, people may forget what you say or do, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. And that’s how we have to rebuild trust with people again for our party.

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

It’s been eleven days since my last newsletter, which should be a good indicator of how my recovery from this latest open-heart surgery is going (in a word, it’s been a slog). Three high-risk surgeries in less than three years have left me pretty beat up, and while I’ll refuse to not recover, it’s just gonna take a while.

But that’s my problem, not yours, and I appreciate supporters too much to ask you to continue paying for a publication that isn’t doing much publishing at the moment. So, starting today, I’m temporarily pausing all paid subscriptions to Progress Report until I am ready to return to regular action. This means:

• If you have a monthly subscription, you won’t be billed again until I’m back to consistent publishing;

• If you’re an annual subscriber, your subscription will be extended to make up for the lost time, free of charge.

I’ll still publish when I can during this paid subscription hiatus — I actually have an interview for you below. You’re welcome to support that work via the newsletter’s GoFundMe, and every donation is very appreciated, but a subscription is a promise that I can’t consistently keep right now. In a nation run by scam artists and disappointments, I won’t be another one.

Donate to Progress Report!

In other and better news, two stories that I’ve been covering for the last year have come to surprisingly satisfactory conclusions via the Supreme Court of all institutions.

• First, SCOTUS re-affirmed that Missouri could not use its GOP-gerrymandered Congressional map this year, giving voters a chance to weigh in on the new districts via ballot initiative. The ruling by our beloved Judge Ginger K. Gooch really pissed off JD Vance.

• Last night, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to weaponize the US Postal Service and disenfranchise tens of millions of voters. The scheme was blatantly unconstitutional, as I explained in this report back in May, but that didn’t stop Trump from throwing a fit over the loss.

Just don’t get complacent: this court is still way too friendly to fascists, so expanding and reforming the Supreme Court needs to be at the top of any to-do list for the next Democratic trifecta.

Generational change is nothing new to Jeremy Moss.

Winning a competitive Democratic primary in Michigan’s very blue 11th Congressional district all but stamped the 40-year-old lawmaker’s ticket to DC, where he will join a wave of millennial lawmakers finally remaking a chamber with a median age of 60. For Moss, the promotion to Congress represents the third time that he’ll enter an institution in need of new blood and new ideas.

In 2011, at the age of 28, he was elected to city council in Southfield, an inner-ring city about 20 minutes from Detroit. Moss describes the body he joined as a “council of elders,” with a roster that included a 93-year-old member who was at the time the oldest elected official in the state. The problems he tackled then, as the Great Recession hollowed out towns like his, now seem prescient: zoning changes that allowed for more mixed use construction, more walkable streets, expanding the local commuter college into a more substantial public university.

Barely 30 when he entered the state House, Moss, who is openly gay, pushed for LGBTQ+ protections in a pre-Obergefell world (he was later the first openly gay Senator) and started the gun violence prevention caucus. When he got to the state Senate, led the elections committee during a period of extreme small-d democratic turmoil. As he prepares to take over Rep. Haley Stevens’ seat in DC, Moss is both promising an aggressive approach to fighting Donald Trump and joining a caucus that moved further left than his own solid liberal record in the legislature.

I spoke with Moss last week and asked him all about that record, how he’s navigated the political shift, what it means to fight Trump, and the accidental brouhaha with Hasan Piker and Abdul El-Sayed that put his name in the headlines late last month. Below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

You’ve often been on the forefront of generational change. That’ll definitely be the case in Congress, so what did you learn from navigating older institutions in the legislature?

Moss: When I first came into the state legislature in 2014, not only was I advocating for the LGBTQ rights bill, but also on gun safety. School shootings really came to prominence when we were in elementary school and middle school; Virginia Tech happened when I was in college. I go to bars like Pulse Nightclub. I go to a synagogue like Tree of Life Synagogue.

When I came into the state House, me and a few other younger colleagues established our first-ever gun violence prevention caucus and we put forward solutions to mitigate these incredible challenges. It was not popular. It was not even popular in the Democratic Party when we put forward these ideas to reduce gun deaths and injuries.

But sadly, every successive prominent mass shooting made the case for our legislation to pass. So [in 2023] we passed the first gun safety bills in Michigan and they are working and they are saving lives today. So I think that’s why it is really important to ensure that younger voices are in these positions where we can actually tackle challenges and push away old thinking that has prevented some of this generational change from occurring.

After years of Republican control, there was a lot for Democrats to do when they got a trifecta in 2023. But it was a very thin majority, and the House wasn’t as aggressive as the Senate, so looking back on it, are there things you wish you’d been able to get over the line?

We pushed forward on a lot of things, even with these thin majorities. We restored labor rights after they had been stripped away — we were the first state that repealed a “right-to-work” law in something like 60 years. We scrapped our 1931 abortion felony that was still on the books in a post-Roe v. Wade world. And one of the most important things that I was a big part of was as chair of the Elections Committee, defeating all of the Trump-driven election conspiracies and expanding access to the ballot and and reducing barriers to voting.

And there were a lot of conspiracies in Michigan in 2020.

We were one of the hot spots of COVID, then we were the hot spot for election conspiracies. First, they would protest the COVID orders with guns and then they would protest the election results with guns.

And then some of those protestors tried to kidnap the governor.

Exactly. So we ended up defeating these conspiracy theories. We elected a pro-democracy, pro-voter majority with that 2022 Democratic trifecta. I took helm of the elections committee and I wrote the law to increase access to absentee ballots, to implement nine full days of in-person early voting, and to respond to some of Donald Trump’s lies about our election and secure our election results while making it more accessible for citizens in our state to vote.

You’ve said that Democrats can no longer “bring a pie chart to a knife fight,” that they have to push back against Trump in a more aggressive way. A lot of Democrats have been saying things like that, so what does that actually mean to you? Let’s say you’re part of a Democratic majority in Congress, what are the priorities? Oversight? Investigations?

I think it’s both about the way we communicate and the things that we do. Donald Trump talks with brazen confidence about the things that he’s putting forward, whether it’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico or Lake Ontario, which I put in the stupid category; or the things that I put in the harmful category, like stripping away Medicaid and SNAP; or the things that I put in the dangerous category, the trampling over the rule of law, the going to war without Congressional authority. He talks about these things as if they’re incredibly popular.

We know the things that we’re pushing for — access to affordable health care, reducing costs, alleviating economic pain that people are feeling — we know that they’re popular, but we have to communicate what we’re doing with the same brazen confidence as Donald Trump. And we have to show the same gusto about our agenda and stop walking on eggshells and pulling punches and being afraid to communicate because it’s going to offend somebody. So that’s the type of Democratic Party and politics that I want to represent.

I think the most important thing we can do is pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in the wake of the Supreme Court stripping away the protections in the federal Voting Rights Act, in the face of Donald Trump trying to federalize elections and pass harmful legislation like the SAVE Act. Voting rights secure all of the rights.

You backed tax exemptions for data centers in 2024, and in Michigan, there is a lot of support for the projects from trade unions, which want the blue collar construction jobs. But the politics have shifted massively since then, with a huge backlash against data centers. What do you make of the change and how has that impacted your thinking?

We’ve begun that work here in Michigan. We passed some of the strongest environmental protections in the country. We’ve ensured that any data center being built here doesn’t burden rate-payers and utility bill payers with the cost. And I think those have to be our North Stars about anything dealing with data centers moving forward. Protecting our environment has to be a centerpiece to any policy that’s made, including protecting our water supply from any sort of erosion as these proposals come through our state.

I’m a big proponent of local control. I don’t think that these should pop up in any community where the backlash is strong and they don’t want it there. And I think those three components of protecting ratepayers, protecting our water, and ensuring local control have to be at the centerpiece of any conversation around data centers.

What do you make of the huge shift in public sentiment?

It’s almost like a Walmart rule. When I was on city council, there was a Walmart proposal, and the backlash was so strong. People didn’t want a big box store. They didn’t want to decimate local and small businesses, and they were concerned about labor rights of employees. When they don’t want a Walmart in it the community, it should be respected; same thing with data centers.

Last month, Hasan Piker played an audio clip that was purported to be you talking about your support for Israel. You said the clip was manipulated, maybe through AI. I’ll be honest, this happened a day after I had open-heart surgery, so I’m pretty foggy on the details. Can you walk me through what happened?

I’ll send you a Detroit News article that I think really encapsulated the whole timeline. I think they did a very good job, so you can cite that. But we are in the process of figuring out the path to unite this ticket.

It was a very intense Senate primary. We actually hadn’t had a Senate primary in the last 25 or 30 years here. So our party, for the very first time, had different choices to select a nominee. There’s a lot of work to do to unite this ticket and I am going to be somebody who is putting in the work to facilitate that so that we can all make sure all voices in our party are heard, that we can continue to operate a wide tent, and I’m committed to that work.

I want to ask about the AI of it all, because as a journalist, it’s sort of overwhelming. You want to authenticate everything, but things go viral and you have no idea whether it’s real or not and the story moves so quickly. It’s hard to track reality, which is especially tough in an election cycle.

That’s exactly right. We’ve begun the work in the state of Michigan to make sure that if there’s anything that’s AI in a campaign ad, it has to be disclosed. And we’re really trying to ensure that people can’t put out fake information. It’s an erosion of our democracy when disinformation is shared, whether it’s from the right or the left. And if it confirms your biases, it’s incredibly dangerous to click the share button without doing the due diligence to make sure you’re sharing accurate and truthful information.

Thirty years ago, people got the news from Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and Dan Rather. And then maybe about 15 years ago or more, we started to get the news from cable news with a political bent, whether it’s MSNBC or Fox News. Now people are getting their news with the scroll of their thumb on their iPhones and a 30-second clip can make its way around the internet before any truth or fact is asserted, so it’s our responsibility to get back to that era of trusted and accurate news sources when we share information that can go around the Internet in a flash.

I’ll also say this, one thing that I’m passionate about is the algorithm. The algorithm rewards outrage. It farms in outrage. I’m absolutely a proponent of our First Amendment and free speech. But when you scroll through your X feed, it is manipulated to reward outrage and to keep those things going. I think that’s something that this next Congress has to tackle, because it’s untenable for our politics to have disinformation that sparks outrage just be so free-flowing all across the internet.

I very much believe in free speech, but we’ve seen the algorithm develop and be weaponized by big corporations and billionaires. So when you’re in Congress, what can be done?

I’d like to see more disclosure of the tactics that are used in creating an algorithm that helps to perpetuate narratives that propel outrage. I think there’s a lot of work to be done in this space, and this could be some of the most consequential things that we’re able to tackle here.

We actually have begun some of this work in the state legislature. We have a piece of legislation that I've been very supportive of called Kids Over Clicks. It puts forward safeguards for kids online, limits the hours that they can utilize social media. It puts a limit to the endless scrolling. And it reduces some of these parts of the algorithm that can encourage harm to kids and promote violence and self-harm. So we have done the work here at the state legislature to protect not only our kids, but to add safeguards to what the algorithm can produce.

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

You can make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

How do I know I’m a bit of a maniac? It’s still early in my recovery from heart surgery and the only thing that makes me squirm more than the pain in my chest is watching news about democracy tick by from the sidelines. I need to rest and keep the blood pressure down, but when the news is big and my body allows for it, I’ll pop in to explain developments in stories that I’ve been covering for you at Progress Report.

Get 50% off for 1 year

Donate to Progress Report!

Show Me Humiliation

Thursday was a landmark day for democracy in Missouri, where the state Supreme Court issued monumental rulings in two long-running fights between activists and GOP officials (read my deep dive coverage here)

In a unanimous decision, the high court gave the green light to a citizen-led ballot referendum that would reject the state’s newly gerrymandered Congressional map. In doing so, the court also blocked the new gerrymandered map from being used in the November election, likely denying Republicans an additional seat in the Kansas City area. Instead of a 7-1 GOP map, Democrats will likely retain two seats.

In Missouri, the citizen veto allows voters to weigh in on policies passed by the legislature via ballot referendum. If the initiative makes it onto the ballot, implementation of the law is paused until residents have their say on Election Day.

Led by a coalition called People Not Politicians, more than 300,000 Missourians signed petitions in support of a citizen’s veto, which should have easily qualified the initiative for the ballot. But Secretary of State Denny Hoskins refused to tally up the signatures, then declared the whole thing unconstitutional last month, ensuring that Missouri’s primaries were held under the new gerrymandered map. Hoskins argued in court that changing course now would be costly and cumbersome, a disingenuous point that earned a rebuke from Judge Ginger K. Gooch in her unanimous opinion.

“The secretary devotes a significant portion of his briefing to discussing the confusion, expense, and practical difficulties that may result from not utilizing the congressional redistricting in HB 1 for the November 2026 election,” Gooch wrote. “Besides being irrelevant to the secretary’s sole basis for declaring the referendum petition insufficient, these arguments are particularly misplaced given the secretary’s delay created the confusion, expense, and practical difficulties of which he complains.”

It was an unequivocal ruling, but several question marks remain. First Missouri’s Attorney General said she plans on appealing to the US Supreme Court, and there’s really no predicting how they’ll treat what should be an open-and-shut voting rights case. And second, assuming the Missouri high court’s ruling stands, it’s unclear right now how they would determine the nominees in affected districts.

One possibility is running a new primary in November and a belated Election Day after that, a messy scenario that, as Judge Gooch wrote, Hoskins brought upon himself.

The day only got worse for Hoskins and the state GOP when the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of a referendum designed to protect laws passed by citizen initiatives.

In another unanimous opinion, the court once again found that Hoskins was wrong for rejecting signatures and refusing to certify an initiative that would make it nearly impossible for the legislature to amend or overturn voter-approved laws.

The details are strikingly similar to the other case.

First, Republicans in the legislature passed a horrible law meant to circumvent popular will; in this instance, it was a rollback of a wildly popular initiative that guaranteed workers paid sick leave and raised the minimum wage, then indexing it to inflation going forward.

In response, a grassroots populist uprising steered by an idealistic-sounding nonprofit coalition (this one called Respect Missouri Voters) mobilized to protect democracy in the state, collecting signatures to qualify a referendum for the November ballot.

Then, once they’d submitted more than enough signatures (over 350,000 this time), Hoskins refused to accept the petitions, declaring that the whole initiative was unconstitutional — only to have the state Supreme Court tell him to knock it off and order the referendum be placed on the November ballot.

And once again, Hoskins got scorched by Judge Ginger K. Gooch, who essentially called his claims baseless and laughable.

“Because his certificate fails to identify any reason the petition is insufficient under theMissouri Constitution, it does not comply with (Missouri statutes) and preserves nothing for this court’s review,” Gooch wrote. “Even if the secretary had preserved his claims, nearly all assert constitutional violations that may or will occur if the petition is approved. These hypothetical claims are not ripe for review. The two pre-election claims-violation of the single-article and single-subject requirements…lack merit.”

If approved by voters, Amendment 6 will make it virtually impossible for politicians to alter or toss out a citizen-approved initiative or amendment. Doing so would require an 80% vote from the legislature plus voter approval in a statewide election.

Note: This newsletter’s paid subscribers plummeted after I came back from open-heart surgery in November, and now it’s happening again in the wake of my latest heart surgery earlier this month. We’ve dipped below an important paid subscriber milestone, which is going to really hurt the newsletter long-term unless we can pick things back up. I’m working hard to recover and get back to my best in these terrifying times, and your support to help keep Progress Report afloat is crucial right now.

Subscribe now

You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

My wife and I returned to New York last night after two weeks in Cleveland, where I underwent my third open-heart surgery in three years and seventh overall.

One of the (more minor) inconveniences created by this ongoing cardiac saga has been the way I’ve been forced to write about it, because I’m not talented enough to whip up anything that would be more visceral than just repeatedly stating the raw number of times they’ve buzz-sawed open my chest. The Cleveland Clinic is one of the few places in the world that would try this, let alone pull it off. Try to look up data about people who have undergone seven sternotomies and you’ll only find anecdotal stories from local papers, subjects always regarded as medical marvels.

I don’t need to be the subject of any feel-good stories, but there’s probably some kind of medical journal paper to be written about the course of events and the ingenuity of the medical team that has saved my life twice over the past nine months. I was talking about my son while up on the operating table, as if telling the doctors about the four-year-old back home would motivate the doctors to be even more careful during the operation. One of the anesthesiologists promised that I’d be going back home to him, and now here I am, sitting on the couch surrounded by Shea’s Godzilla toys, my vocabulary again too limited to express the depths of my gratitude to my doctors and my wife for getting me through this.

Here’s another way of understanding the complexity of the operation: my surgeon spent half of the eight-hour runtime carefully working through the scar tissue and adhesions that surrounded my heart as biological responses to the previous operations. Maybe it’s not the best metaphor — my literary shortcomings are a theme here — but the whole process is like re-fighting every previous war to simply get to the battlefield, which in this case involved removing a pseudoaneurysm, replacing the mitral valve, and fixing the tricuspid valve. I now have two mechanical valves, so it sounds like a metronomic tap dance in my head at all times.

So what now? Right now I feel like I was hit by a truck, with bad headaches and pains in places I forgot even existed, so it’ll take a fair amount of physical therapy to even get me to where I was before this whole saga started back in 2023. This also has to be the end of the saga: to paraphrase Dr. Shinya Unai, who is more like a wizard than doctor, it’s really important that I avoid needing an eighth surgery anytime soon.

Unfortunately, there’s no guaranteed way to do that, but keeping my heart rate and blood pressure down are non-negotiable. As a friend of mine said to me, all I have to do is never read the news again. Should be fine.

So, long story short, I need to chill, a sentence that feels incompatible with my personality. For example, I spent some time in the hospital collecting some thoughts about the US healthcare system, my own situation, and a few elections, so I’ve included those below.

Subscribe now

Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: Mike, Elizabeth, Jennifer, James ,and John!

Donate to Progress Report!

Hidden costs in a broken system: There were a lot of people staying in the cardiac step-down units, but they weren’t all patients.

Visiting hours end at about 10 pm in the ICU, at which point friends and family are shooed away so patients can take their medications and try to get some sleep. There’s no closing time in step down, but that’s not so much to facilitate late night visits than it is to allow patients’ families to stay around the clock. In some cases, they were there to help provide care when the nurses were busy, but I think a lot of the time, family members were bunking in with their sick loved one because it was too expensive to stay anywhere else.

Medical travel, as they call it, is often an afterthought; when you hear that a spouse or parent needs open-heart surgery, sleeping arrangements usually aren’t the first thing that spring to mind. But if you’re traveling out of town or have a long hospital stay on the horizon, the concern is real and the options are often sparse and/or expensive.

A few years ago, the American Cancer Society estimated that lodging alone for a six week chemo course could run upwards of $17,000, and it’s much more expensive in dense cities and in-demand treatment programs. There are some nonprofits that provide a modicum of housing for particular populations — the Ronald McDonald House famously offers shelter in pediatric cases, and the ACS has a network of “Hope Lodges” for cancer patients — and some major hospitals own facilities that patients can access at a discounted rate. The University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center has a hotel called the Rotary House, with standard rooms running around $175 and suites that are around double that.

More often, it’s a sort of private-public partnership with a discount. The Cleveland Clinic has three small privately-run hotels on the massive campus, which offer discounts based on expected length of stay.

The bill for our two-week stay came to over $3700, and it would have been substantially higher had we needed to park a car or eaten more than a few meals at the hotel restaurant. I’m lucky that my surgery was covered by insurance, but the hotel — plus flights, food, etc. — all came out of pocket. As much as my hand shook when I signed the bill, were were able to handle the load, but there are only so many rooms and a lot of patients’ families had to get creative.

The hospital room comes with a bed, a reclining chair, and a wall-fastened wooden futon that unfolds into a table-like bed in the middle of the room. You’d see people carrying around cold cuts to make sandwiches, groceries transported in wheelchairs, and other signs of long-term occupation. This isn’t the hospital’s fault; staff there actually treat families really well during the surgery and subsequent stay, accommodating really anything you can imagine.

Still, charity cases and generous occupation rules are not going to solve this problem, which is hardly limited to lodging. People miss work, too, compounding the financial precarity that these situations can suddenly create. There are 22 states that have passed their own versions of the Family and Medical Leave Act that provides for some weekly stipend, determined by a complicated formula pegged to the person’s income. The most generous are in New Hampshire and Vermont, which cap out at $2,128 per week, while most other states keep it in between $1200 and $1600.

Democrats have been running on trying to institute FMLA provisions in other states and nationwide, and I think they’d get a lot more buzz for the proposal if they actually explained what they did. It should be at the top of the list of 2028 policies; even moderates like Virginia Gov. Abigal Spanberger have signed them into law, which makes the FMLA a rare shared goal in a time of Democratic civil war.

Real quick: Today is finally primary day in Massachusetts, which could experience the most significant revamp of its Congressional delegation in quite some time. I interviewed two of the leading progressives running for the House this term, and I’ve included the interviews below:

Patrick Roath, a former aide to Barack Obama and Mass Gov. Deval Patrick, is challenging long-time Rep. Stephen Lynch in the 8th district. He’s running against corporate money and hoping to bounce the conservative Democrat, who has represented parts of Boston since 2001.

And state Rep. Tram Nguyen is currently leading an open race to replace Rep. Seth Moulton in the state’s sixth district. Moulton is running for Senate against incumbent Sen. Ed Markey and may be the only younger candidate I definitively want to see lose this cycle.

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:

• Premium member-only newsletters with original reporting

• Financing new projects and paying new reporters

• Access to upcoming chats and live notes

Subscribe now

You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign!

Donate to Progress Report!

I’m not sure whether it makes me a medical marvel, but I’m happy to report that I underwent my latest open-heart surgery on Wednesday and am now on the mend. It’ll be a slow process — my chest and back are killing me, they’ve got to deal with my blood pressure, I’m connected to all kinds of movement-restricting wires and tubes, and I’ll probably need physical therapy — but I’ve been through it all before.

Personally, all that really matters is that I’ll be able to go home with my wife to my three-year-old son, but bigger picture, the stakes are high for everyone: that I was able to get my heart fixed so soon after the MRI found the latest issue is a privilege that too many Americans could never hope to enjoy right now.

Politics can leave you cynical, but that jadedness quickly fades when you remember that so many activists and organizers are working to extend that opportunity to all Americans. It also makes the endless Senate ads depicting Medicare for All as godless socialism — I’m in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown is trying to return to elected office — much more bearable.

There’s a solid chance that this reads like woozy nonsense, because that’s how my brain feels right now. My plan is to recuperate and take it easy for a bit before getting the newsletter back to a regular cadence ahead of the midterm elections. There’s too much at stake to rest for long. I’ll probably send out a newsletter with a lot of my live streamed interviews this weekend, including pieces with big primary winners who support Medicare for All, so keep an eye out for that.

Thank you to everyone who offered kind words, donations, or held to their paid subscription as I work through this illness. We lost quite a few paid subscribers over the last three weeks — which honestly was expected and totally fine — so your loyalty means the world to me. And again, thank you to the Cleveland Clinic for saving my life again.

Subscribe now

Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: John, James, DT, Margaret, Thomas, Richard, William, Peter, Tom, Matthew, Joseph, Elizabeth, and Erin!

Donate to Progress Report!