A Rust Belt Renaissance
And it’s getting messy in Texas
Welcome to a Thursday morning edition of Progress Report.
Yesterday’s piece, about the White House’s pursuit of a catastrophic debt ceiling deal and Democratic leadership’s broader submissiveness to Republicans, seems to have been well-timed. Hours after I hit send, House progressives decried the preemptive surrender during a late afternoon press conference, an event that also featured plenty of solid swipes at Republicans for being sociopathic liars, gamblers, and hypocrites.
“Instead of them recognizing the error of their ways, they want to protect tax cuts on private jets and make single moms pay for it, and that’s where we say no,” said Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, echoing (coincidentally, I’m sure) the point I made about how we’d be better off with governments run by legislators who know what it’s like to scrape as a single parent.
The two sides this afternoon moved closer to a deal that would impose caps on discretionary spending on everything but the military for the next two years, as well as claw back $10 billion of the $80 billion that’s being pumped into the IRS. Republicans took a hard line against raising taxes on the rich, then won a significant reduction on the funds being used to better force the wealthy to pay the taxes they do owe.
I’ll wait to see how the rest of the deal shakes out before making further comment, and instead will pivot to a much happier subject: Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk humiliating themselves with a glitch-marred attempt at using Twitter to launch the Florida governor’s campaign for president. Exhibiting the same grasp on social cues as Ron himself, DeSantis’s campaign then went and made a video out of the whole thing that looks and sounds like a conservative talk radio caller is narrating a hype video about Elon Musk and his socially stunted older brother.
In the spirit of such a delicious turn of events, this edition of the newsletter will feature mostly positive news and developments from around the country. Got to take the wins where you can get them.
What We’re Tracking
Minnesota: Democrats in Minnesota just put on a masterclass of progressive legislating and caucus unity. We’ve reported somewhat frequently on the various pro-worker, pro-family bills over the course of the past five months, but now that the legislative session has ended, it’s worth looking back at the broader list of good policies turned into law by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in 2023 alone:
Stringent protections for workers at Amazon-style warehouses, meatpacking plants, construction sites, nursing homes, and schools
A public health insurance option (starting in 2027)
The one asterisk here is that Gov. Tim Walz today vetoed a bill that would and should have created a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft drivers after the companies threatened to shut down operations in the state.
Still, it’s an astonishing list that not only puts fairly purple Minnesota on pair with most deep blue states, but in some cases, puts them ahead of the big liberal hubs. In passing broad worker protections, universal school lunch, and a public health care option, Minnesota Democrats did with just a one-seat majority in the state Senate what New York Democrats haven’t been able to do with a supermajority.
What should we take away from that? Politicians who feel pressure to deliver for their voters are far more likely to get things done than entrenched incumbents with no fear of losing their jobs.
Michigan: Not to be outdone, Democrats in Michigan, the other newly minted blue trifecta in the upper Midwest, are working on their own paid medical and family leave bill:
Michigan FLOC would allow employees to take leave from work to care for themselves or their families, and would include a variety of reasons one might need time off. Standard reasons for leave like bereavement and childbirth would be expanded under the bills to include school or workplace closures due to public health emergencies, mental health issues, and school meetings related to student health and wellbeing.
Recipients of paid leave benefits would be eligible to receive up to 65% of the state’s average weekly wage, which according to data from the 2022 fiscal year would be up to $780 per week.
It’s not as generous as the Minnesota bill, but with only 11 states offering any kind of paid leave, it’s certainly nothing to sniff at.
Texas: Republicans in the legislature have passed three treacherous new anti-democracy bills that specifically target Harris County, home to Houston and the state’s biggest and fastest-growing county. The state Senate is also trying to revive a mass school privatization bill at Greg Abbott’s behest, tying it to raises for public school teachers in hopes of forcing the House to accept it.
On the bright side, the effort to force a copy of the Ten Commandments into every public school classroom fell apart earlier this week (a bit sad that this is a victory) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton is finally getting impeached after years of being under indictment for rampant corruption.
There are a lot of horrible people in Texas politics, but if you polled people working at the Capital in Austin, you’d find wide bipartisan agreement that Paxton is among the worst of them.
Perhaps best (or most recently) known as the guy who decided that the state government should rip trans kids away from their parents, he’s famously abusive to staff, regularly puts other people’s lives at risk, last year fled his home and allowed his wife to get served with a lawsuit, lies incessantly about immigrants, and much more.
Florida: The book ban wars continue to give modern bigots and old-fashioned antisemitic conspiracy theorists alike a wide berth to impose their demented beliefs on entire communities.
But there’s some good news, too.
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