Everything is on fire, and by design

At least we've found Ron DeSantis's potential weakness

Welcome to a premium Friday evening edition of Progress Report.

Air travel is an utter nightmare this summer, and now that it’s impacted me, something really must be done about it.

Instead of flying out to Chicago last night, nice and early for the Labor Notes conference, the chaos has forced me into taking a 6 am flight tomorrow morning.

I’m not just complaining; like most major inconveniences, the air travel disaster is the consequence of years of political corruption and neoliberal policy. Climate change, criminal fuel prices, and corporate concentration have conspired to create this misery. It’s not just that flights are being canceled en masse; after last night’s flight went awry, airlines started charging more than $1000 for the handful of cramped economy seats still available on today’s flights. That’s monopoly power in action.

Central to the problem is the fact that there are only four or five major airlines. At least we have an aggressive antitrust division of the DOJ to block further airline mergers and alliances; now we just need a crackdown on tech, food, fuel, and consumer goods monopolies, too.

One more note before we get to tonight’s main event: Yesterday, More Perfect Union published a piece I reported and produced about the sky high housing prices in Florida and, crucially, how organizers and tenants across the state are rising up to confront the developers and politicians that created the situation. Florida is now the most unaffordable state in the country, with five cities ranked in the top 10 steepest rent price hikes.

Please watch the video below and share it far and wide (seriously, send it to people):

More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS

NEW: Florida is now ranked the most unaffordable place to live in the country. Evictions are soaring. Why? Lawmakers including Gov. Ron DeSantis have taken millions from corporate landlords and developers. Now organizers across Florida are fighting back — and winning.

Ron DeSantis is building his national profile by brutalizing minorities, children, and LGBTQ+ people, but the scope of and anger about the housing crisis he’s helped create could be his undoing — if we force it into the national conversation, which has more or less treated him like a political genius instead of a cruel wannabe autocrat.

OK, now that we’ve got the introduction out of the way, let’s get to the meat of this newsletter — a story by Natalie Meltzer about the politics behind the disasters unfolding across the nation and what can be done about it.