She's Listening to Science — Imagine That!
Now it's clear what needs to happen
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
There is now officially less than one month until the November election. Today, we are going to dive into some very crucial races in swing states and discuss the latest developments in voting rights cases, among other important stories. But first, a quick word about the sickly elephant in the room…
The last four days have been wild and unprecedented even by the standards of this wild and unprecedented year in American history. Donald Trump ran for president as an agent of chaos and for the first time in his miserable cheat of a life, he’s actually over-delivered on his promises. There is no one better at failing than Donald Trump, nor anyone better at sticking others with the consequences of those failures.
Now, though, he’s stuck in the hospital, experiencing a gilded version of the pain he (and so many other callous, downright evil Republicans) have caused millions of Americans through their epic mismanagement of COVID-19. No matter how high his fever gets or how low his blood oxygen levels reach, he cannot understand the pain he’s inflicted on the rest of us… which I pointed out in this tweet that is still going viral:
To those new friends who subscribed to this newsletter after reading this tweet, welcome! To everyone who was already subscribed: Sorry for flooding your feed for the last 72 hours.
It’s been interesting to see the reactions (other than those by hopeless trolls). Democratic politicians are obligated to wish Trump and the rest of those infected at the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination super-spreader event a speedy recovery. Others wish far worse on Trump than what I expressed in my tweet.
But ultimately, what we all want is to move on. We are desperate for a new era in which we have elected officials who work for us (instead of for CEOs and foreign dictators), leaders who tell us the truth, and especially now, leaders who respect and follow science.
It’s that third item that brings me to this week’s featured candidate, straight out of the ultimate swing state…
The Doctor In Florida Working To Save Us All
As I outline on the [still-growing] site COVIDSuperSpreaders.com, Trump is not the only reason we are in this miserable place. The abject lies and knowingly careless and callous decisions made by a number of Republican governors and state legislators have also played an outsized role in the death of 210,000 Americans, the illness of 7.3 million, and the tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs, healthcare, and loved ones.
Chief amongst those governors has been Florida’s devastatingly irresponsible Gov. Ron DeSantis. He has never mandated masks, refused to shut the state down for over a month, reopened it far too early in both May (when they were at 11k new cases a day!), did little nothing to stem the skyrocketing caseload this summer, and just reopened it again despite ongoing trouble.
While Florida Republicans have ignored science every step of the way, Kayser Enneking has been helping as many people in the state as possible since the virus first emerged. She’s not only a Democratic candidate for a super-flippable seat in the Florida State House, but Enneking is also a doctor who teaches at the University of Florida and practices at its medical center, Shands Hospital. In March, Enneking converted her campaign into an information center for COVID-19, including weekly webinars that continue to this day.
I first spoke to her back in May, right when DeSantis reopened the state, which Enneking correctly predicted would lead to a spike in cases. We recently reconnected to discuss the situation in Florida as it stands, now that DeSantis has again prematurely reopened the state. Enneking is dealing with her own fair share of COVID-19 cases as a physician, which combined with her campaign gives her a unique insight into the problems plaguing the state.
I asked Enneking to go through the biggest mistakes made by DeSantis and his GOP cronies. She offered three major indictments.
“They completely dismissed it and never made sure that places had appropriate amounts of PPE,” she explains. “Testing has been a disaster. In July, when the cases were just skyrocketing, you could not get a test. And if you could get a test, you didn't get the results back for two weeks, so it didn't really do a whole lot of good anyway.”
“To me, the number two thing in the shop of horrors that we’ve had here was the whole effort to make schools reopen before we got any indication that cases were going to abate at all,” Enneking says. “The head of the Department of Education basically threatened the schools and said, ‘if you don't open brick and mortar schools, you'll lose your funding.’ They said the only way you could get out of that was if you had a pass from your local health officials, and then directed the local health officials to not speak to the schools.
“Richard Corcoran, the education commissioner, has been trying to get rid of public education in Florida for 10 years,” she adds. “And I think he saw his opportunity to do it with this.”
“We still have no official mask-wearing policy, so it's been this complete patchwork of different regulations in different places,” Enneking says. “It’s just shameful how we've not had any real leadership on that, because clearly, we would have saved lives had we done that.”
Instead of fighting to stop Florida from becoming the biggest COVID hotspot in the country this summer — the state has soared past 14,000 dead and 700,000 cases overall — Republicans in the state have instead put all their effort into simply denying people the right to vote.
For those who haven’t followed the saga, buckle up and get a pillow to scream into. Floridians voted by an overwhelming margin to restore the voting rights still taken away from the whopping 1.4 million people who had completed prison sentences. Given the corruption and racism of police in Florida, Black and brown people had been disproportionately impacted and stripped of their democratic rights, so it was a massive victory for civil rights.
Then Republicans in the state hijacked the new law. Instead of implementing what people voted for, they added an egregious poll tax to it, requiring the paying back of entirely unrelated fines and fees. It not only made it likely impossible for 800,000 to register, the subsequent legal battle over the law saw the GOP pause all voter registrations even from those who paid fines. That alone was over 85,000 voters.
It was a back-and-forth legal battle, but by September, a federal court — dominated by Trump appointees — ruled that the poll tax could stand. While Michael Bloomberg kicked in a few bucks to help a handful of people register, the reality is that about 700,000 people can still not register to vote. It was an absolute disgrace, and one that Enneking is keen to reverse when she gets to the legislature.
“The fact that the Republican Party of Florida has followed through with their modern-day poll tax is just another example of how they are not interested in following the will of the voters, and would rather suppress voters than try to earn the votes of former felons by running on the issues,” her campaign manager told me in an email. “This attack on the will of Florida voters reinforces how important it is to flip the Florida legislature, and House District 21 is key to flipping the Florida House.”
As if a deadly pandemic and direct assaults on democracy weren’t enough, Enneking noted some of the other things that desperately need to change in the state. High up on that list was the deliberately broken unemployment system, as was expanding Medicaid in the third most populous state in the country. She was always in favor of Medicaid expansion — she’s a doctor, after all — but now more than ever, she feels momentum on the side of providing healthcare to more people.
“Medicaid expansion is really about helping working people who don't get paid much get access to insurance,” she says. “When you lose your job because of a pandemic, that’s not a sign of being a bad person. So, I think it has made that conversation feel much more relevant to people's lives. It’s even more important when you may have to go to the hospital with this disease that may kill you and, if it doesn’t, it will certainly leave you with an enormous bill.”
Enneking is running in one of the closest districts in Florida, within a larger area that is mostly blue. She can win this race. Already they’ve made 15,000 voter contacts, and with a month to go, any and all help will allow them to talk to more voters and get out the vote despite not going door to door (a doctor is not going to put volunteers or homeowners at risk). The more voters that Democrats contact in Florida, the better chance Biden has to win there, too. So helping this campaign will really pay off.
I’m raising money for Florida Democrats running in tight races — you can donate below!
Where Else Can We Help?
Everything feels like it’s on fire in the United States, with the economy back on the decline and COVID-19 numbers again on the rise. But again, we’ve got less than a month until Election Day, polls are going our way (for the moment), and if we give it everything we have, there are a number of states where we can overthrow totalitarian GOP rule and install Democrats.
Now, Democrats aren’t perfect — many are too tied to corporate interests and others are too timid and afraid of Republicans. So in this newsletter, we make sure to support both the most electable and most progressive Democrats so that we can ensure that if we do take power, popular policies that actually help people have a fighting chance.
All year, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite candidates and raised money for top Democratic challengers in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Michigan. With momentum on our side, I’m seizing the opportunity to add new candidates to a few states’ ActBlue page. This way, we can maximize the number of campaigns that we help take advantage of this movement and beat even more Republicans.
For the three states I’m focusing on today, you can find the original candidate guides, new candidate biographies, and donor links below:
New Candidate: Julia Pulver (MI-HD-39) is a nurse and public health advocate who has been outspoken throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In a state where Republicans and lunatics carrying guns around the Capitol have opposed every single step that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has taken to protect citizens (more on that later), having a Democratic majority is crucial.
New Candidate: Janet Diaz (PA-SD-13) is a progressive City Council member who simply outworks other establishment members of the party. She won another upset primary, this time in a very flippable Lancaster district, by getting progressives activated. She has since united the party and represents one of the Democrats’ best chances of winning one of the four State Senate seats they need to flip the chamber.
North Carolina: Guide | Donate
New Candidate: Emily Bunch Nicholson (NC-HD-1) was called a “far-left bureaucrat” by the NC House’s Republican campaign committee, which was really good enough for me. Her long list of policy priorities and the thoughtful interviews she gives only reaffirm that she’s a great candidate to support.
Can You Help Us?
Together, we’ve raised nearly $2.7 million now for progressive candidates and causes, plus $1.5 million for bail funds and civil rights groups. That’s over $4.2 million raised!
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Important News to Know
The back-and-forth on election deadlines and other rules guiding absentee ballots has led to absolute chaos and confusion in a number of key states. Simply put, Democrats have been late to challenge a decade’s worth of Republican efforts to suppress the vote. Now, the parties are engaged in court battles that could significantly impact the election and may not be decided until just days November 3rd.
Last week saw a number of major decisions and maneuvers in these cases, with one major surprise reversal happening just yesterday.
North Carolina: On Friday, a judge in Wake County Superior Court approved a settlement that was to allow more time for ballots to arrive and give voters more flexibility on fixing errors on their ballots. A day later, a federal judge put a hold on that ruling — and it’ll take weeks before anything changes.
Federal Judge James Dever agreed with Republican legislators (who, by the way, created an ungodly gerrymander and for years suppressed Black voter turnout) that the agreement was unconstitutional.
Now, they have to wait until October 16th — nearly two weeks from now — for another hearing.
As a result, issues with absentee ballots will create a whole lot of uncertainty, put (a disproportionate number of Black) voters’ choices in limbo, and give people fewer places to hand in their ballots.
Here’s one reason why Republicans are fighting this so far:
Georgia: In a blow to voting rights and my free time, a federal court on Friday rolled back an extended deadline for absentee ballots to be returned to the Board of Elections by three days.
Now absentee ballots only have three days past Election Day to get to the BOE in Georgia, which means that I have to update the state’s entry on AbsenteeBallots.info yet again.
Would it shock you to know that the two judges who voted to roll back the deadline were appointed by Donald Trump?
Texas: On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott decided to limit every county to just one ballot dropbox center, no matter its size or population. On Friday, a lawsuit was been filed, as promised, challenging the decision.
A whole cadre of organizations filed suit in a federal court in Austin today, claiming that Abbott’s order was unconstitutional and discriminatory.
“The impact of this eleventh-hour decision is momentous, targets Texas’ most vulnerable voters—older voters, and voters with disabilities—and results in wild variations in access to absentee voting drop-off locations depending on the county a voter resides in,” they wrote in their argument. “It also results in predictable disproportionate impacts on minority communities that already hit hardest by the COVID-19 crisis.”
Early and absentee voting has already started in the state, which makes this extra absurd. In fact, as the Texas Tribune notes, Abbott and the GOP just recently argued against restoring straight-ballot voting because of how close we are to the election. Shocker that they’re being hypocrites, right?
Texas: Want to know who is even more awful than Gov. Abbott? Yes, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick is certainly awful (see COVIDSuperSpreaders.com for more on that), but today I’m talking about Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Paxton was indicted on securities fraud charges way back in 2015. The top law enforcement officer in the state has had felony charges hanging over his head for much of his time in office. He hasn’t been tried yet because his lawyers have been fighting over the proper venue.
Now, Paxton is being accused of a whole host of other crimes by seven people in his own office. On Friday, top aides wrote a letter to the state and federal lawmakers that no boss wants to read. In the letter, they write that they “have a good faith belief that the attorney general is violating federal and/or state law including prohibitions related to improper influence, abuse of office, bribery and other potential criminal offenses.”
Even Abbott is like, oh yikes.
This is the kind of guy Paxton is: This summer, he threatened voters and voting rights groups with felony charges if they had the audacity to use the incredibly deadly COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to request an absentee ballot (or to encourage people to do so).
Oh, fun fact: Ken Paxton is the co-chair of Lawyers for Trump. Sounds about right.
Michigan: The Republican-controlled State Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s emergency orders meant to keep citizens safe from COVID-19 were now unconstitutional, throwing Michigan into chaos.
It’s unclear when the order will now expire — it could be immediately or, as Whitmer suggests, still be three weeks away from being defunct, since defendants usually get time to ask the court to reconsider.
She also said that some of her executive orders would remain in place under alternative methods not mentioned in the lawsuit.
Still, Attorney General Dana Nessel says that she can’t enforce some of Whitmer’s orders with criminal charges.
The Michigan GOP is a far-right cult that knows its time is up now that its gerrymander has been outlawed by a ballot initiative in 2018. If Democrats can retake the legislature this year, it’ll change everything.
Wait, before you go!
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