Oklahoma's unhinged attacks on free speech offer a key lesson

They're bad, but they serve a purpose

Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.

Even in an era of constant chaos and catastrophe in the news industry, this has been a particular grim week. Along with the failure of the Iowa Caucuses coverage, there were mass casualties and injustices, including:

• The Baltimore Sun was purchased by David D. Smith, executive chair of Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conglomerate that injects right-wing “news” into the nation’s largest collection of network TV affiliate stations. Smith, a frequent GOP donor, is off to a predictably rocky start with his employees, who are unionized with the NewsGuild (as am I).

• The staff at the LA Times, also members of the NewsGuild, held a one-day strike on Friday to protest an upcoming round of up to 100 layoffs. It was the first strike since the paper’s founding in 1842.

• The entire staff of Sports Illustrated was informed on Friday that they will soon be out of work. This comes just a month after the billionaire founder of 5-Hour Energy bought the iconic publication.

• Half of the staff at beloved music publication Pitchfork were let go, as the site was absorbed into GQ.

This week’s events do not suggest any reprieve from the calamity of 2023, which set records with at least 2,700 jobs eliminated in the news business and 20,400 job cuts in the broader media industry.

The ongoing fall of real news media is taking place in tandem with the rise of far-right media, which is often funded by conservative dark money and indulgent oligarchs. As we lose news outlets that hold power to account, we’re burdened with astroturf publications that do the opposite.

This is a subject we’ll continue to explore, but today I just want to thank you — the readers, donors, and paid subscribers — for supporting the work that I’m doing here at Progress Report. I’m fortunate to work at More Perfect Union, which is on healthy footing, but it has never been harder to make a decent career in journalism — I’ve dodged layoffs and gotten the axe before myself.

Your ongoing faith, subscriptions, and contributions could make it more possible for me to do this work for the long haul.

---

---

Constructed of an assortment of racial, ethnic, and affinity groups, the Democratic coalition has often been referred to as the Big Tent party. The modern Republican Party’s tent, meanwhile, has devolved into a circus of clowns, oligarchs, and grifters. The GOP’s moral rot continues to deepen and ferment, fueling campaigns of both viciousness and macabre absurdity.

This week was an especially prolific one for Republican sociopathy, which flourished in the states. Just take a look at Oklahoma, where a tornado of unhinged and unconstitutional proposals swept through the state capitol.

It’s hard to separate the psychotic from the idiotic, so presented in no particular order, some of these bills would:

• Ban viewing pornography

• Ban furries from schools and require their removal by animal control

• Designate Hispanic gang members as terrorists

• Force journalists to obtain licenses, undergo regular drug testing, obtain $1 million in liability insurance, and attend a propaganda safety training designed by Prager U.

Florida Republicans are also playing with a bill that would severely curtail the rights of reporters, though theirs is more focused on liability. Both are flagrant violations of the First Amendment and will undoubtedly be blocked by a federal judge, but that is besides the point.

Bills like Oklahoma’s batshit bill in particular serve to focus public ire on and further delegitimize a perceived enemy, which in this case is a news media that reports on their corruption and misdeeds. These bills also function to move the needle on the kind of antagonistic legislation that could pass further down the line. The far-right’s nasty and idiotic culture war bills often lay down a marker that seems insane one year, then quietly gets absorbed into the standard GOP agenda the next.

Starting in late 2022, conservative commentators, Moms for Liberty types, and the worst people on Facebook tried to spread the myth that kids who identify as furries were being provided litter boxes to use instead of toilets. Maybe some actually believed the Fox News-fueled hysteria, but the right’s real goal was to portray public schools as too woke and connect so-called gender ideology (and thus trans kids) with a tiny sub-niche that is frequently mocked and associated with sexual deviance.

It’s no coincidence that the author of the bill (see above) also pre-filed legislation to prohibit public funds from being used for instruction on “sexual choice, sexual orientation, drag queens, or similar topics in public educational institutions.” These are the people that they empower, knowing that their lunacy will not be punished.

Gender-affirming care wound up being banned by a number of states last year, a trend that has continued into this year with far less national outrage. The GOP supermajority in Ohio overrode Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of their ban on trans care, which drew local protest but only passing fury, while the Utah House’s passage of a trans bathroom ban on Friday has gone largely unnoticed.

Going on the offensive

Without a real progressive major media infrastructure, there is only so long the public will remain engaged with or outraged over any individual event or policy, especially because national Democratic leaders have shown zero interest in attacking or even bringing to light the GOP’s moral abominations. For example, I’ve been banging the drum on the Republican embrace of child labor both in this newsletter and at More Perfect Union, but have hardly heard anything from national Dems on the issue.

The same can be said for some states’ mass purge of poor children from Medicaid, a needlessly cruel policy that has taken health care from millions that has gone largely unaddressed by the federal government and unpunished by Democratic politicians. HHS has issued quiet warnings to states that have inappropriately purged enormous numbers of beneficiaries, and it recently published a website with tips for re-enrollment, but neither of those things are going to rein in Republican governors that want to see kids go without health care.

There’s nothing that precludes HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra from using his office to go publicly go after those governors and organize mass enrollment events with advocates. There’s no reason why Joe Biden shouldn’t be on a tour of these states, banging on about their abandonment of children (and 12 million adults) and picking fights that pin people’s economic misery on their governors. Members of Congress should be dedicating their offices to fixing the problem for as many people as possible, and state legislature candidates should be hammering GOP incumbents for their opposition to Medicaid expansion, which should be framed as child abuse.

This is part of a much larger pattern. Just as they won’t fight against Republicans’ cold-hearted opposition to children’s access to health care, Democrats did little to emphasize the GOP’s blockade against the extension of the expanded child tax credit, the loss of which has sent child poverty skyrocketing.

As much as they want to herald it, the bipartisan expansion of the tax credit announced at the end of this week amounts to a modest tweak that will be reflected in a single tax return instead of being delivered in monthly checks, minimizing its financial and political impact. It’s also a fraction of the value of the business tax breaks that Republicans secured in the deal, a reflection of the Republican Party’s willingness to engage in brinksmanship. The same can be said of the standoff between the Biden administration and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott over his blocking the feds from accessing the border and saving migrants.

Here’s where we find the ultimate differences between the leadership of the two parties. Republicans hone in on the smallest rumors and weaponize them, while Democrats refuse to take action or even engage with the most loathsome and political unpopular Republican policies. The moral high ground is meaningless when it’s not being utilized in battle.

---

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.

This is a second full-time job, and I’m looking to expand. There are no corporations, dark money think tanks, or big grants sponsoring this work. It’s all people-powered. So, I need your help.

For just $6 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes premium member-only newsletters with original reporting and analysis.

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!