How Fox News threw Michigan into chaos with one ugly lie

I don't think it's going to work out for them, though

Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.

More grim news from the Republican Party’s War on Children to share with you tonight. Plus, huge developments out of Michigan, where Democrats are under fire from right-wing media clowns and dealing with some of the biggest weirdos you’ll find anywhere.

---

---

New developments in Michigan offer a disturbing view of how just a dew minutes of short right-wing media can lead to serious social and electoral consequences.

Recall petitions were filed last week against six members of the Michigan legislature; five of the recipients are Democrats while one is a Republican. Of the five Democrats, three represent districts that are competitive enough to possibly flip, should the recalls eventually make it to the ballot, but campaign strategy and electoral odds are hardly the point. Instead, the petitions were fuselages of pure culture war, instigated by Fox News and other lunatic outlets.

State Reps. Jennifer Conlin (D-Ann Arbor), Reggie Miller (D-Belleville), and Jaime Churches (D-Wyandotte) were each hit with recall petitions as a result of their support for what should have been relatively banal legislation. All three voted in favor of HB 4474, which updated the state’s hate crimes law by adding age, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability to the list of protected characteristics.

All 56 Democrats in the House voted for the bill, as did three Republicans, allowing it to pass with some breathing room in a very close chamber. The modest show of bipartisanship was almost immediately brushed aside by conservative media, however, as Fox News began attacking the bill within hours of its passage.

Fox’s headline blared that “Michigan House passes bill that could make using wrong pronouns a felony,” an accusation that ignored the reality that the bill never once mentions pronouns.

Fox’s story sought to frame the outrage as a violation of the First Amendment, but in order to do so without suggesting the abolition of hate speech protections altogether, the network had admit to an ideological objection that only further made the case for the bill’s existence. Lucky for Fox, there were already Republican Michigan legislators actively slinging slurs toward trans and non-binary people.

"The state of Michigan is now explicitly allowing the gender delusion issue to be used as a ‘protected class.’ This opens up numerous issues when it comes to the courts and the continued weaponization of the system against conservatives," State Rep. Angela Rigas whined to the network.

The outrage and false pronouns talking point quickly spread across other right-wing outlets, including Newsweek, which resorted to featuring a tweet from TV’s Judge Joe Brown as the basis for a takedown. The story went international, as well, with coverage in the Daily Mail, Rupert Murdoch’s shitty conservative tabloid in England, and an objectively funny segment on GBN, the UK equivalent of Newsmax. (Most of it is about how Michigan is the shape of a mitten, and I recommend you watch if you need a laugh).

The brouhaha lasted only a few days, but the damage was done. In Traverse City, a liberal enclave within a more rural part of the state, a salon owner kicked up a storm when she posted a truly idiotic and bigoted missive on Facebook that announced that trans people would not be served at her store.

She was no doubt emboldened by the Supreme Court, which just legalized such discrimination, but the nastiness of her post indicated little legal acumen.

The hashtag at the very bottom of the post is a misspelling of the name of a conservative chiropractor who ran for the GOP gubernatorial nomination last year. Garrett Soldano made his name by taking a stand against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Covid protocol, founding something called the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine; during his campaign, he added election denial and gun rights absolutism to his set of core beliefs in an attempt to appeal to a state Republican Party filled with unbelievably paranoid far-right militia.

Of the three Democrats challenged for their support of hate crime protections, Rep. Jaime Churches is the only one who represents a district that Trump won in 2020. That would naturally make her the most in danger of losing their seat, but she also won it for a reason, as I can attest having interviewed her for a piece at More Perfect Union earlier this year.

Wyandotte, the town that she represents, was for many years a factory town, and like many outside of Detroit, it has struggled a bit in the wake deindustrialization. Churches spent her pre-political career working as a teacher and vice president of her union, a role that she tapped in her appeal to the community’s local unions and blue collar residents.

Understanding the opportunity presented by the the swing district, many unions jumped into action on her behalf — I actually interviewed her at a union hall — and she’s delivered with crucial votes on repealing Right to Work and other issues. That kind of ground game will be crucial should a recall happen, though that’s hardly guaranteed given the number of signatures required to even get the question on the ballot.

The other Democrats, Betsy Coffia (D-Traverse City) and Sharon MacDonell (D-Troy) had vastly different experiences in 2021. While Coffia won her seat by just over one percentage point, MacDonnell scored a 16 point victory.

Each face their petitions for voting in favor of expanding red flag laws so that police can more easily take guns away from people going through a mental health crisis and could be a danger to themselves or others. Oddly, the person that filed the petition against MacDonnell said they were actually mad about the legislator’s disinterest in discussing ways to address broken marriages.

Michael T. Ross went through a nasty divorce in 2002, it seems, and tried to take his children from his ex-wife two years later. His effort failed, and nearly two decades later, he’s using the electoral system to work out that frustration. The red flag issue, he said, was a way to get conservatives to rally for the recall — certain grievances, even the audience learns how to play.

According to newly released analysis, the United States remained the undisputed world leader in children killed by guns in 2021, when the country logged a nauseating 2,571 kids slaughtered needlessly by a firearm. The number of young people shot to death in 2021 nearly doubles with the inclusion of 18- and 19-year-olds, jumping all the way to 4,739.

Altogether, the mortality rate reached six deaths in per 100,000 people under the age of 20. The country with the second-highest rate, Canada, clocked in at 0.6 children killed by guns per 100,000. In Europe and Asia, the numbers were even lower.

The UK has a .05 per 100,000 child mortality rate, despite sharing many of the United States’ economic and social problems. The difference is the same difference that we encounter internally here in the United States.

While this is a nationwide crisis, there are parts of the country where the chaos is especially bad. It should come as little surprise that the states with tight gun control laws had less than half the number children murdered by firearms (4.3 per 100,000 children) than those states that make it easier to access a gun than a library book (8.7. per 100,000).

The states with looser gun laws are either run by Republicans or divided enough that the GOP is able to block any efforts by Democratic governors to enact tighter regulations. Accordingly, a half of all child gun deaths in the United States in 2021 took place in just 10 states, only two of which were fully governed by Democrats: Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Missouri.

At the end of March, feeling the unique rage that follows school shootings, I suggested in this newsletter that the GOP ought to be referred to as the Party of Child Murder. Between these abysmal numbers, the way Texas is treating children at the border, and the mass purge of Medicaid that’s kicking millions of kids off health care, it’s fair to say that it’s a nickname that feels more appropriate than ever. Let’s use it.

---

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

You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in the next weekend edition of the newsletter!