Arizona & Florida Republicans are going ham

Things look much better in neighboring New Mexico, though

Welcome to a premium Thursday evening edition of Progress Report.

There’s a lot of news for us to discuss tonight, including some real voting right scandals and good news from blue states. Lots going on now that state legislatures are back in session.

Before we get there, let’s take a moment to reflect on how our country is structured to empower the heartless and powerless to stop the bottomless cruelty that they inflict on people every single day. I produced the story below, about the janitors that Elon had tossed out from the NYC Twitter offices once he’d spent $44 billion to acquire the company,

More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS

NEW: Twitter abruptly fired dozens of janitors—mostly immigrants & women of color—with no warning or explanation. Workers received a text just before leaving work informing them they shouldn’t return. Just like Twitter’s mass layoffs earlier this year, it was likely illegal.

Despicable, right? What makes it all the more disturbing is the sheer number of people that have been defending Musk’s honor in annoying tweets fired in my direction. Each tweet is its own tragic little story, but the general message from these sad reply guys has been that nobody in this country is owed anything, which is essentially the oath of self-annihilation that people like Musk have been trying to convince Americans to accept and recite for more than a century. And what makes it even more disturbing still is the fact that Musk met with Kevin McCarthy at the Capitol today. Shame has long since exited the building.

OK, with all that said, let’s move on to the news!

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In Arizona, the loons continue their aggression.

Republicans lost every statewide election and barely clung on to their majorities in the state legislature in November, a brutal result that can be blamed in large part on the freak shows they had on the ballot. Yet instead of deciding to clear the deck and return reality, the GOP legislature has decided to double down on the corruption and crazy.

First, the legislature just voted, over loud Democratic protest, to delete lawmakers’ emails after 90 days and allow them to trash text messages and other communications at their discretion. Doing so cuts the legs out from anyone that might want to request public records while investigating, and these are just two random examples, attempts to overturn an election or hold a circus of a “recount” that embarrasses the state.

One of the most well-known of those efforts was a series of emails that Virginia Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a supporter of former President Donald Trump, sent to a host of state Republican House and Senate members just days after President Joe Biden won the election. She urged members to throw out Biden's delegates to the Electoral College and replace them with a GOP slate.

The House changed its rules on Tuesday, and the Senate on Wednesday. The changes create broad exemptions for the Legislature from state Public Records Law, which requires retention of records indefinitely and release to the public on request.

Senate Republicans were forced to release thousands of emails and text messages related to their partisan review of the 2020 presidential election, although they fought the release in court.

They also voted to limit debate on legislation, which is basically another way of ending the filibuster. In Kyrsten Sinema’s home state. And that’s just one of the attacks that Arizona Republicans are lodging against democracy…