Progressives Every Day: Neither snow nor rain nor fascism
Postal drama continues
Welcome to the Thursday night edition of Progressives Everywhere!
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OK, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get to what was a very busy day.
Elections and Voting Rights
The Trump administration’s assault on the United States Postal Service and absentee balloting continues to get more intense and more overt. Look at the headlines from today alone:
Vice News reported that the USPS is “removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without any official explanation or reason given,” including many machines that would be used to sort ballots.
Already, as we’ve noted, the mail delivery has been hobbled by new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cuts and restructuring. NPR reported this today:
"Mail is beginning to pile up in our offices, and we're seeing equipment being removed," said Kimberly Karol, president of the Iowa Postal Workers Union and a postal clerk in Waterloo, Iowa.
In an interview with Fox News this morning, Trump just straight-up admitted that he was holding up requested funding for the postal service because he wants to hobble voting by mail:
“They want three and a half billion dollars for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent, that's election money basically. They want $3.5 billion for the mail-in votes. Universal mail-in ballots. They want $25 billion, for the Post Office. Now they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots… But if they don't get those two items that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they're not equipped to have it.”
Later, Trump said he wouldn’t veto a stimulus bill that happened to include the $25 billion requested for the USPS, but with Mitch McConnell adjourning the Senate for the next month, it looks unlikely to happen anyway.
Also, Trump said this during his daily briefing, because he’s remarkably stupid: “Again absentee good, universal mail-in very bad.”
Breaking tonight: In late July, the USPS told Pennsylvania that it may not be able to deliver its absentee ballots by election day, setting up a potential disaster. The PA Department of State has asked the state Supreme Court to count ballots that are received up to three days after election day. As I noted early this week, blue counties in PA are expanding early voting, though the Trump campaign is suing to stop it.
It’s important to note that absentee ballots, even with increased numbers, won’t make up more than 3% of the mail this October and November. Millions of people get their medication in the mail every single day and the slowdown will put their lives at risk. A whopping 20% of adults over 40 get ongoing medication through the mail. You’d think that would concern Republicans, but neither Trump nor other GOP lawmakers have shown any qualms about mass murdering Americans.
The postal workers union is none too pleased with what’s happening:
Still, given the ongoing pandemic, voting by mail (and if possible, using drop boxes) remains the best option at the moment. The goal now is to get as many voters to request an absentee ballot and then return it as quickly as possible. To that end, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is sending postcards to encourage people to apply for an absentee ballot online. The postcards are going out to 4.4 million registered voters not on the permanent vote-by-mail list. They will go out between August 20th and September 20th; Michigan allows people to request ballots up to 75 days before the election.
Last night, I relayed the news that James Grant, the Republican legislator who wrote Florida’s new Jim Crow poll tax law, dropped out of the race just a week before the primary.
I reported that one source told me that Grant had gotten his “dream job,” and now it’s come out that he was just named the state’s Chief Information Officer. Like everything else in his life, he got the job through some good ol’ fashion corruption:
Grant now steps into a role that he was personally involved in shaping. A bill passed this year, sponsored by Grant, rearranged the office and its responsibilities. But it also changed the qualifications, eliminating a requirement that the state chief information officer “must be a proven, effective administrator who must have at least 10 years of executive-level experience in the public or private sector.”
The bill, which became law, now says the officer must have at least 5 years of experience “in the development of information system strategic planning and development or information technology policy, and, preferably, have leadership-level experience in the design, development, and deployment of interoperable software and data solutions.”
Ready to laugh out loud?
Grant said that his bill this year was not connected to his sudden job appointment.
“Anyone who thinks I created a job for myself can’t read policy and is just throwing out cheap political shots,” Grant said. “Instead of running a data center, the CIO now has to make sure data moves across agencies and he sets the table for cyber security reform.”
I wonder if the fact that he doesn’t live in the district (and maybe even the state) any more has anything to do with it?
Here’s a nice inside look at Joe Biden’s decision-making process during the veepstakes. Elizabeth Warren was a finalist but her age, whiteness, and the belief that she may run for president again worked against her. Biden does see the three finalists he didn’t ultimately choose — Warren, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Susan Rice — as potential members of his cabinet. Boy do I want Warren to be the Secretary of the Treasury (or Attorney General!).
The Massachusetts College Democrats have issued an apology/explanation for the Alex Morse fiasco.
COVID-19 and Related Drama
Republican governors in the hardest-hit states are continuing to make a mess of things.
Two very bad trends: COVID-19 testing in Texas has plummeted while the rate of positive results has skyrocketed. Testing is down by a stunning 45% over the last few weeks while positive rates are up to 11%. Yikes.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is pulling his lawsuit over cities’ mask mandates… because he’s just going to sign an executive order that explicitly bans cities from mandating that private businesses require customers and employees wear masks. For now, cities will be allowed to mandate that people wear masks while on public property.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey screwed up the one good decision he made during the pandemic and now he’s getting sued by the one group of people less popular than Republican governors: Landlords.
Ducey signed a moratorium on evictions in March but his government has distributed just $2 million for housing aid to tenants.
The government has only given $5 million in grants to landlords, which has them all (understandably!) antsy.
Residents have to certify that they’ve applied for housing assistance by August 22nd, but whether they’ll even get it is very much up in the air.
Quibis
A gunmaker in Nevada is being forced into bankruptcy due to a lawsuit from the legal arm of the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. The owner secretly got a new license to manufacture firearms and is trying to buy all of the guns that are being put up for sale in its bankruptcy auction. They’ll have to outbid Everytown, which is also vying for the guns (so they can be destroyed, obviously).
My wife and I got married on our unfinished NYC roof in April, our tiny ceremony broadcast to a few family members instead of a considerably larger event that had to be postponed. Our honeymoon obviously had to be postponed as well; we rescheduled it for October, but it’s pretty clear at this point that we’ll have to postpone it once again. We’re supposed to go to Japan and Thailand, and if it ever does happen, this is going to be at the top of my itinerary:
Wait, before you go!
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