Shocker: Meta lied about abortion censorship
Plus: fights over workers rights, democracy, and medical debt
Welcome to a Friday edition of Progress Report.
I’ve got a quick doozy of an update for you on the main topic of Wednesday’s newsletter, Instagram’s censoring of posts by Aid Access, the leading nonprofit supplier of abortion medication:
Simply put, Meta lied to us, then caved under pressure. Late in the day on Thursday, the social media giant not only restored the posts it had censored, but also the group’s access to its Instagram and Facebook accounts altogether. Aid Access’s Instagram log-in was suspended last week, while it hadn’t been able to post on its Facebook page since November.
A Meta spokesperson told me on Wednesday night that the blurred and broken posts, which contained information about how to obtain legal abortion medication, were a result of a technical error. By the next day, Meta admitted that it had been purposely throttling them, as well as the social media pages for other abortion pill distributors. From a New York Times story published yesterday:
A Meta spokesman attributed some of the recent incidents involving abortion pill-related posts and accounts to rules that prohibit the sale of pharmaceutical drugs on its platforms without proper certification. The company also described some of the incidents as “over-enforcement.”
Free speech warrior Mark Zuckerberg is really just right-wing suck-up Mark Zuckerberg, but we knew that already.
Of course, the Times took credit for the restoration of the accounts, saying that they were put back up after its reporters reached out to Meta. That couldn’t be further from the truth: activists deserve the credit for making all kinds of noise about the issue on Wednesday. As for the journalism around the censorship, I reached out to the company that evening and then published the newsletter calling them out late that night. And I’m sure I’m just one of many independent journalists that took action.
OK, now onto the news roundup.
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Rigging the game from the right
Michigan: Republicans in the state House voted to approve their bills to kneecap the minimum wage increase and paid sick leave mandate that will go into effect on February 21st.
Six Democrats joined their GOP colleagues in supporting the weakening of the wage increase, while one Republican voted no. Even more egregiously, nine Democrats voted to take sick leave away from over a million workers.
The Context: The Michigan Supreme Court this summer settled a long-running lawsuit by ordering that the state raise its minimum wage in annual increments until it hit nearly $15 in 2028 and phase out the much lower tipped minimum wage by 2030. It also required employers of 10 more workers to provide up to a week of accrued sick leave; smaller employers could offer four days paid and three unpaid.
The Impact: The House bill pushes back the $15 requirement, leaves tipped workers without a raise at all, and takes sick leave away from 1.2 million of the 1.5 million workers slated to gain access to it.
Democrats still control the state Senate, so this draconian bill has no shot of actually becoming law. At the same time, the idea of rolling back some of the provisions is hardly dead, as several prominent members of the upper chamber have introduced a bill that would cap the tipped minimum wage at 60% and reduce the number of employers who have to offer a full week of sick days.
In interviews for a piece that we’ll run at More Perfect Union on Monday, several House Democrats cautioned against any significant changes. Rep. Donovan McKinney, whose northern Detroit district is the poorest in the state, said that the median income of his constituents is around $14,000 and that most do not have access to paid leave, even when they get sick. That’s not only cruel, but dangerous, especially because so many of the constituents work in public-facing jobs in the service and health care industry. Or in McKinney’s words, “a crime and a shame.”
There will be something that passes, in part because there are technical aspects and smaller specifics that all sides need to be addressed. The goal is to minimize the number of changes that diminish the benefits to working people.
New Hampshire: In what has become an annual tradition, Republicans in the legislature are weighing a bill that would impose the anti-union “right to work” law in the Granite State. During a Wednesday hearing on HB, business interests and conservatives held court in the legislative chamber while union members and activists demonstrated outside the Capitol.
There are currently 26 states with “right to work” laws on the books, and over the past 15 or so years, they’ve been debated often enough that you can more or less anticipate the rhetoric and talking points that each side will deploy. Credit, then, goes to Republican Rep. David Love, who offered up a unique and uniquely stupid metaphor in an attempt to discredit unions:
"If you don't want to buy in, you shouldn't have to buy in," Love said. "If I went up to Motorcycles of Manchester and I bought a new Harley-Davidson, do I have to join the Hell's Angels?"
Under “right-to-work” laws, workers at unionized workplaces have the option to not join or pay dues to the union while still benefiting from the higher pay and benefits that the union negotiated. This forced inequity deprives the union of the dues required to operate, retain legal representation, and negotiate future contracts. It also weakens the threat of collective action, because going on strike isn’t particularly effective if some of the workers remain on the job.
Organized labor has long had a strong presence in New Hampshire in part due to the state’s history of mills and manufacturing, which has kept moderate Republicans from supporting a law that has proven to devastate worker bargaining power and economic security. In recent years, New Hampshire’s GOP caucus has become increasingly influenced by the right-wing libertarian movement, and new Gov. Kelly Ayotte has said that she’d sign a “right to work” bill, setting up what could be an awkward confrontation with the party’s increasing share of the working class white vote.
The Debt Train rolls on
It was once an unthinkable fantasy that state and local governments would use budget funds to relieve residents of medical debt instead of simply handing all of it to corporate development subsidies. Now, there are currently 26 active government programs engaged in the life-altering practice of buying up medical debt for pennies on the dollar and then immediately forgiving it, with at least two more major projects in the works.
In Pennsylvania, a bipartisan group of lawmakers this week reintroduced a medical debt relief bill, giving it another go after falling short of becoming law in 2023.
The aptly titled Pennsylvania Medical Debt Relief Act is largely the same the previous version, which passed the nominally Democratic-controlled House but did not get introduced in the Senate. This time around, it has the firm support of Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has called for the state to spend $4 million to buy up $400 million in residents’ medical debt. That would erase a little over 20% of the $1.8 billion in medical debt held by around one million Pennsylvania residents.
The relief would be targeted at Pennsylvanians who make up to 400% of the federal poverty line (about $60K for an individual and $124K for a family of four) or have medical debt that totals more than 5% of their annual income.
Republicans still control the state Senate, however, so the bill’s passage remains very uncertain. Pittsburgh launched its own program last year, investing $1 million toward knocking out $115 million in residents’ debt.
Vermont treasurer Mike Pieciak proposed this week that the Green Mountain State join the jubilee as well, formally presenting a bill that would allow his office to spend $1 million on purchasing $100 million worth of medical debt.
Around two-thirds of the approximately 60,000 Vermonters with medical debt would be eligible for the program, which as proposed has the same parameters as the Pennsylvania bill.
Leaders of the heavily Democratic legislature joined the treasurer in making the proposal, signaling its likelihood of passing. The only potential obstacle to becoming law is Gov. Phil Scott, a moderate Republican who may nonetheless support the proposal or let it become law without his signature.
The war for democracy grinds on
Perhaps emboldened by the lack of consequences this fall, Republicans at the state level are charging forward with new attacks on voting rights and other facets of representative democracy.
Florida: Unsatisfied with sleazily misappropriating public funds to just barely prevent abortion rights and recreational marijuana amendments from passing the 60% threshold required to pass in November, Gov. Ron DeSantis has a new scheme that would essentially kill the initiative process altogether.
Governor Wario’s plan would make it illegal for campaigns to hire third parties to collect the petition signatures necessary to get on the ballot. Nor could petitions be signed in public; instead, people could only register their support at local election supervisors’ offices or requested and returns via mail, like an absentee ballot.
DeSantis wants the proposal taken up in a special session of the legislature, though as a lame duck whose popularity has cratered over the past year, he’s no longer commanding much respect from his fellow Republicans. As a result, that special session may not happen.
Not that they’re moving away from his kind of terroristic politics of cruelty; the legislature is on the verge of repealing a law that extends to undocumented immigrants who live in the state the same in-state tuition rate to public colleges that legal residents pay.
Kansas: Trumpian Sec. of State Kris Kobach wants the legislature to allow his office to use the state’s temporary driver’s license list to target and disenfranchise alleged illegal voters.
The problem? Well, maybe not for them, but the reality is that the list, when used in the past, has largely put legal citizens and voters in the crosshairs:
Of the state’s more than 2 million voters, state officials found 202 potential matches when comparing a temporary driver’s license list and the voter rolls. About 120 of those were false positives, and 85 warranted additional investigation. About 21 of the 85 have a voting history attached to them and would require even further investigation to determine citizenship status.
Expect more of this kind of shit, both because it makes for good headlines and because it intimidates people from registering to vote.
Georgia: Unnerved by shifting demographics and unsatisfied by voter suppression bills that inspired a full season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger, the man we praised for standing up to Donald Trump’s bullying tactics in 2020, is fighting to reinstate racist gerrymanders.
Here’s the truly depressing part: His office is insisting that the maps, which were tossed by a court in 2021, simply discriminate based on partisanship, not race. That’s because in 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering is beyond the reach of reach of the federal judiciary.
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