Progressives Every Day: Replace the Democratic Party with the NBA
Players know how to use their power
Welcome to the Friday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Congratulations on making it through what was just a brutal week — I guess we’re by now well-practiced at surviving five-day onslaughts of dystopia, but still, it’s always nice to make it to Friday.
That being said, there’s plenty of news to cover tonight, so I’ll stop waxing poetic and dive right in.
Elections and Voting Rights
Texas: Let’s start with some breaking news. A U.S. District Court Judge ruled late Friday that Texas is violating the National Voter Registration Act by not allowing residents to register to vote when they update their DMV information online.
Legally, people need to be able to register or update their voting information when they interact with the DMV.
In Texas, where the Republican-run government hates online voter registration, they instead direct people to a form they have to fill out and send in via snail mail.
This is not the first time this judge has ruled Texas was in violation of the law, though his first ruling was overturned on a technicality.
The ruling orders Texas to create an online DMV registration by September 23rd, though the state is likely to appeal. Remember, this is the state where Attorney General Ken Paxton went to the damn Supreme Court to prevent expanded absentee voting.
Iowa: Not every court ruling went our way, however. In Iowa, a judge tossed out over 50,000 absentee ballot requests because the legislature is eager to make it as difficult as possible to vote.
The judge ruled that Linn County Auditor Joel Miller had to reach out to voters and tell them that they had to re-apply for an absentee ballot.
Why? Miller’s office pre-filled some information out in the absentee ballot request applications sent out to each voter. Lots of states do this — some are even straight-up sending ballots to people (as you’ll see at AbsenteeBallots.info!).
Iowa’s legislature, however, passed a law this summer making that illegal so as toe blunt the impact of Democratic counties sending out the applications.
National: After two nights of striking to raise awareness for the ongoing slaughter of Black people by police officers, the NBA Players Association voted to resume the playoffs today — with some important conditions.
Most relevant to our work is the agreement that in every city where an NBA team owns its arena, the team’s management will work with the municipality to turn the arena into an extra-large polling place.
Where the deadline to establish voting locations has already passed, the team will work with the municipality to make the arena useful in other ways related to the election, including turning it into a voter registration center and/or absentee ballot processing depot.
Four teams — the Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee Bucks and Washington Wizards — already had agreed to turn their arenas into voting locations earlier this month.
Soon after the league’s announcement, the Knicks and New York City announced that Madison Square Garden will serve as a voting location. This is something of a surprise, as Knicks’ owner James Dolan did everything he could to avoid releasing even a statement in support of Black Lives Matter in June.
The LA Clippers play at the downtown Staples Center, but their owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer, recently bought the LA Forum, which is in the historically impoverished neighborhood of Inglewood. Balmer announced today that the Forum will also be used as a polling place for the area, where voters can drop off early ballots.
Florida has two pro teams. The Miami Heat have been trying to make their arena a polling location since June. The Orlando Magic is owned by Betsy DeVos’s family, but luckily, the city of Orlando owns the Amway Center and is working to turn it into a polling place, too. They just have to figure out how to navigate an occupation agreement with the WWE, which is of course owned by the family of another Trump appointee, Linda McMahon.
The Milwaukee Bucks players, who led that kicked off the strike a few nights ago, have been pushing to have the Wisconsin Assembly hold a special session to pass criminal justice reform.
And now look:
I’ve been saying it the last few days: Replace the Democratic Party with the NBA. There’s no professional or political organization more competent (they’re the only ones in the US to beat COVID!) and the players are incredibly forward-looking and understand their power.
Florida: Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in one poll by a 57-39% margin… but that’s good news.
The poll is of Pasco County, a conservative rural county north of Tampa Bay.
In 2016, Trump beat Clinton 59-37%, which means Biden is doing four points better than his Democratic predecessor. In a state where every vote matters, that’s a significant difference.
This is a money quote: “Biden wins more than 92% of Pasco Black voters, not one of whom said they would back Trump in the poll.”
Other Important Headlines
Washington, DC: The family of Jacob Blake helped lead a rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 57th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech.
That the event comes the day after Donald Trump used the White House to deliver a lie-filled convention speech coursing with white nationalism, is noteworthy and shameful.
Watch this:
California: In 2019, the California legislature passed a law called AB5 that was meant to end the scourge of big businesses mislabeling their employees as independent contractors and thereby avoiding paying taxes or offering them full-time benefits.
While not perfect — it impacts creative professionals as well, many of whom want to be freelance — it was a big victory for organized labor and millions of workers…. except that Uber, Lyft, and the other tech employers targeted by the law just decided not to comply.
While judges have continued to rule that they have to in fact treat their employees like actual employees, Uber and Lyft are ignoring the commands and trying to change the law.
The ride-share companies, as well as DoorDash, Instacart, and Postmates, are leading the charge on a ballot initiative called Prop 22 that would absolutely obliterate the protections won in AB5 and in many ways things even worse than before the law was passed.
This story today about their tactics and expenditures gives you an idea of just how much time, energy, and money they have been pouring into convincing voters to approve Prop 22. So far, they’ve spent a whopping $201 million — money that could have gone to workers, of course.
They’ve got at least 19 consultant/lobbyist firms working on the job, including some all-stars of evil: “At least five of the firms named in the documents have worked on campaigns for big tobacco, big oil and big chemical companies, including Philip Morris, Chevron and Monsanto
New York: As a Mets fan, I don’t expect team to make good baseball decisions, but I do expect them to make good moral decisions.
Thus, I’m incredibly proud that they did this last night:
I’m not so proud of their idiotic owners, but at least they’ll be gone by next year.
Quibis:
MGM Resorts is laying off 18,000 workers. The recession is coming.
This should come as no surprise, and yet, it’s still craven that I can’t help but feel a little shocked.
I was not the world’s best-behaved student, but bless teachers.
I've got a really great candidate interview coming up in Sunday’s newsletter. See you then!
Wait, before you go!
Progressives Everywhere is a one-person operation funded by readers like you (and whatever spare change I have in my pocket after paying rent). Together, we’ve raised over $1.3 million for truly progressive candidates and causes since 2018, helping to flip seats, restore voting rights, expand healthcare, and much more.
I’d love to do this as a full-time job (or at least make it one of my full-time gigs), but I’ve got a long way to go.
To help me out (more than you already have! thank you!), you can make a donation to Progressives Everywhere’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in this Wednesday’s edition of the big newsletter! I’ll also be able to pay people to do stuff for the newsletter. Win-win!