The Good, the Bad, and DeSantis
Lots of news to discuss and controversies to tackle
Welcome to a Monday evening edition of Progress Report.
It’s dangerously hot outside here in New York, where our electricity bills are surging and our mayor continues to say horrible things to distract from his manifold failures. A New Yorker died of heat exposure this weekend, the first reported heat-related death of the summer, and as working people swelter in urban deserts, it’s hard to see any legitimacy in a government that fails — refuses, even — to address the cause of this ongoing emergency. How can we accede to a national leadership that condemns us to catastrophic meltdown?
It’s pretty grim to think about for more than a minute or two, so tonight’s newsletter is not all so negative. Tonight we’re going to run down a whole bunch of news, trading off between positive developments and alarming stories. Plus, I’ll work out some thoughts on our charged politics and what it’ll take to reverse this precarious moment.
Oh, one thing before we get to the news: Check out this footage we put out at More Perfect Union today featuring the lead organizer at the Albany Amazon warehouse mesmerizing two police officers. I was up there a few weeks ago and this campaign is for real.
OK, now on to the news!
Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: Lee, John, Fred, Gregory, and Matthew!
Bad News
Voting rights in Florida:
I feel very confident in saying that Ron DeSantis is the biggest threat to American democracy at this moment. He’s on somewhat of a glide path to re-election, aided by a national political media that refuses to recognize his open embrace of bigotry and fascism — there were neo-Nazis waving a “DeSantis Country” flag outside the right-wing convention where the Florida governor spoke on Saturday, and People Magazine has run more articles on it (one) than every major national outlet. There’s been nothing on DeSantis’s latest tacit defense of Nazism from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, or Politico. Remarkable.
DeSantis’s zeal for fascism has expressed itself most in his voting rights policies, which have been universally aimed at disenfranchising Floridians. As we’ve been covering for years, DeSantis started with a bang, essentially gutting a successful 2018 ballot initiative that was supposed to return the right to vote to more than one million former felons; over the past two years, he’s pushed through a new voter suppression law and an egregious Congressional gerrymander. DeSantis also created his own personal election “police” force and has been eager to make examples out of people to further his personal crusade against democracy.
Formerly incarcerated Floridans, who are disproportionately people of color, are the perfect scapegoats for this right-wing administration. Today, a new ProPublica report explains how ten people that were hoping to restart their lives have become collateral damage in DeSantis’s warpath. They were all registered to vote by county officials, and all now face more jail time for voting.
In all, 10 of the men who the official helped register to vote have been charged with voter fraud on the grounds they were ineligible.
Their alleged illegal voting was first spotted by a citizen who analyzed Florida’s voting rolls and then shared the information with the state. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently launched an eight-month investigation, after which it identified the 10 inmates.
State investigators found that some jail employees remembered the elections official giving clear directions to inmates about having to pay off financial obligations, while others did not. The investigation concluded that the jail visits were “lacking in both quality and longevity” and “showed a haphazard registration of inmates.” But the state prosecutor nevertheless proceeded with charges, although not against county officials.
It’s something that a man who refuses to disavow Nazis would do. Read the entire story if you want to be so angry that steam hisses out of your ears.
Good News
Voting rights in Florida:
As per usual, it’s Black folks leading the resistance against fascist white supremacist politicians. On Saturday, leaders from across the state — including candidates for both governor and US Senator — gathered in West Palm Beach for the latest meeting of the “Stay Woke Go Vote” coalition.
Nonprofits and lawmakers organized the coalition in May as part of an effort to encourage Black voter turnout in spite of the new rash of voter suppression laws.
Bad News
Public education is under attack:
Another update on another story we’ve been tracking. As Natalie wrote last week, conservatives have been using their obsession with “groomers” and “critical race theory” as the latest cover in their all-out war on public education. As a recent report indicated, Texas Republicans’ assault on secular public education is being funded by two radical right-wing oil billionaires.
Former associates of Dunn and Wilks who spoke to CNN said the billionaires are both especially focused on education issues, and their ultimate goal is to replace public education with private, Christian schooling. Wilks is a pastor at the church his father founded, and Dunn preaches at the church his family attends. In their sermons, they paint a picture of a nation under siege from liberal ideas.
One of their batshit beneficiaries, state Rep. Valoree Swanson, ousted a GOP incumbent in the 2016 primary and last year was responsible for the successful bill that banned trans kids from playing sports.
Good News
Public education advocates are fighting back:
In another deeply red state, activists are well on their way to injecting a huge amount of money into the public education system — against lawmakers’ wishes, naturally.
Idaho’s Secretary of State confirmed late last week that the Quality Education Act, an initiative sponsored by the grassroots organization Reclaim Idaho, has been officially certified and will appear on the November ballot. If approved by a simple majority of voters, the Quality Education Act will create a wealth tax and direct the $300+ million a year that it generates to Idaho’s beleaguered public education system.
I interviewed Reclaim Idaho’s founder and executive director for a story on the initiative that we published at the end of May.
Bad News
Activist judges never help working people:
A judge in Sacramento ruled that an initiative to raise California’s minimum wage cannot appear on this November’s ballot due to a systemic failure and annoying technicalities:
The minimum wage campaign argued that Weber’s office confused county election officials because she told them they had until July 13 to finish the count, based on the requirement that counties get 30 working days for signature verification after campaigns turn in their petitions.
Proponents collected 1 million signatures, but didn’t turn in signatures until May, Weber’s office said, making them late to start the clock. By the June 30 deadline to qualify for this November’s ballot, several counties had not finished verifying signatures and the campaign fell short. Seven other propositions did make the ballot this November.
Imagine if government offices were properly funded and not deeply understaffed…
Good News
Drug laws are loosening:
Coloradans, pioneers of marijuana legalization, are likely going to vote on a ballot initiative to decriminalize magic mushrooms and permit the construction of “healing centers” where those mushrooms could be consumed.
Magic mushrooms, which contain the psychoactive compound psilocybin, would be legal on the state level only for people over 21 if the initiative passes. Psilocybin is illegal on the federal level.
The sale of magic mushrooms would be limited to the healing centers, though people would be allowed to cultivate them for personal use.
Local governments would be allowed to regulate healing centers but not completely ban them.
Meanwhile, three states and a world away in Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is publicly musing about issuing an executive order to legalize medical marijuana for people with chronic injuries and PTSD.
Bad News
Corporate developers have politicians in their pockets:
Activists and progressive lawmakers in Orlando are on the verge of forcing Orange County bureaucrats to authorize a rent control ballot initiative for the November ballot. The County Commission had enough votes to authorize the initiative, so county officials have moved on from trying to block it altogether to sabotaging it through loopholes and lack of enforcement mechanisms.
Social justice advocates including Florida For All, Florida Rising and Central Florida Jobs plan to rally in front of the County Administration Building Tuesday morning, hoping to persuade commissioners to strengthen language in the measure and add an enforcement clause.
“The bill, as it is currently written, does not stabilize rent, excludes many renters and would not provide any strong enforcement mechanisms should landlords violate the law,” the groups said in a joint news release emailed Monday afternoon to news organizations.
I’ve been covering this effort extensively over at More Perfect Union and plan on continuing to follow up. You can check out the video report we produced last month below:
Expect housing to continue to be a major issue in the run-up to Florida elections, even if it’s ignored by the national media.
Good News
Co-ops are starting to emerge as a response to corporate capitalism:
Here are two cool stories about folks banding together to circumvent the rigged market for essential rights.
In DC, tenants are coming together to build their own affordable housing building. And across the country, environmentalists and people sick of absurd energy bills are starting more solar energy co-ops, which reduce the cost of buying and installing panels by harnessing the power of bulk purchasing and actual competition.
Bad News
Eh, let’s do some more good news. Life is too short.
Good News
More cities in red states step up on abortion rights:
As Republican states race to pass increasingly draconian anti-abortion laws, lawmakers in their blue urban oases are promising to protect the right to choose as best they can. In Columbus, OH, where the city’s district attorney has already promised not to prioritize the prosecution of abortion providers or patients, the city council just voted on Monday to codify that promise — and provide other protections, too.
The array of ordinances includes a $1 million grant to abortion rights groups like Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, a pledge to deprioritize prosecuting abortion-related crimes, and authorizing the City to investigate what Brown called “fake health clinics” – crisis pregnancy centers.
In a rebuke of Ohio’s six-week abortion ban, commonly known as the heartbeat bill, one of the three ordinances would direct city officials and law enforcement not to store or share information related to the reproductive health care choices made by Columbus residents.
Ohio’s ban on abortions past six weeks of pregnancy has already made the state a national pariah, but that matters little to the people having their rights taken away. Columbus’s efforts to restore those rights as much as possible — especially knowing that the state legislature will deliver some kind of retribution — is good local government in action.
I spent this past weekend in rural Pennsylvania, where vacation homes sit adjacent to boarded-up houses and empty strip malls. While I believe that it’s important to disconnect from work, politics are omnipresent, reflected in every diner and flea market, every parking lot and public park. A few things really stuck out to me while roaming around the area and speaking to folks, and with the Democratic Party in flux ahead of the midterm elections, I think they’re worth discussing.
Here’s what I noticed.
The sheer number of “Fuck Biden” flags flying all over the place.
Some flew from porches, while many others were on display — and for sale — at gas stations surrounding a racetrack where a NASCAR race was taking place today.
While their existence came as no shock, the expletive-laden flags were still jarring to see in real life. Up until a few years ago, such vicious coarseness was reserved for the fringes of our politics, but now it’s become a core message of a Republican Party that’s been full hijacked by the extreme fascist right wing.
An entire political party has come under the control of a Christian nationalist mob that stormed the US Capitol and is openly and regularly threatening violence against both private citizens and elected officials — threats that are reported as abstract political phenomena that should be factored into any electoral predictions. Dispassionate coverage is providing permission and enabling this wave of fascist hatred.
Nothing’s Getting Better
The gas station with the largest selection of “Fuck Biden” flags was stationed down the block from a largely abandoned outdoor shopping center, which was peppered with the empty storefronts of recently shuttered businesses and a large indoor flea market inside the bones of a long-departed K-Mart.
Working class folks shopping for “Fuck Biden” flags aren’t exactly looking for candidates with nuanced economic policy platforms, and besides, plenty of right-wing extremists are actually quite wealthy. Subsequently, I’m not going to argue that “economic anxiety” is the source of all disaffection or that simply presenting strong ten-point plans to revive the middle class is going to fix everything. At the same time, it’s quite clear that stagnation fosters anger, cynicism, and an endless cycle of wave elections, which tends to polarize an electorate and, without true reform, stokes far-right radicals.
And Here’s What It Means
Democrats’ failure to accomplish anything after the American Rescue Plan was a true team effort, with plenty of blame to go around even after Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema receive their share. But Joe Biden is the head of the Democratic Party and his approval ratings indicate that people associate him with our national malaise. We don’t have to accommodate the folks flying the “Fuck Biden” flags, but there’s little incentive for the voters that might provide a counterbalance to the right-wing swarm.
If Democrats are going to have any shot of keeping the White House in 2024, they’re going to need an outsider candidate who can credibly channel a righteous anger and promise to bring a political revolution that throws the bums out, so to speak. Joe Biden is the diametric opposite of such a candidate, and as much as I think he’s a man of integrity, I don’t think he can represent Democrats in 2024. Even putting aside his age and frailty, he’s the face of the failed establishment. There’s a reason why power shifts so frequently now — nobody likes the establishment.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Republicans will fail to recapture at least one chamber of Congress, or maybe they’ll win back some power and act so reprehensibly that Biden will again seem like a bulwark against GOP extremism. There are no real great options right now, but our best shot at actually making things better involves economic populism, pushing hard to expose the GOP menace, and adopting a much more aggressive tone.
For that to happen, however, we’ll need a Democratic Party that doesn’t invite outside spending from right-wing corporate PACs (see: AIPAC and DFMI), produce consultants that secretly team up with energy companies to screw Democratic candidates (see: Florida Power & Light’s latest scandal), or have a leadership that goes all-out to protect the worst right-wing members of the party (see: Henry Cuellar and Kurt Schrader, the latter of whom just announced he wouldn’t support the Democratic candidate for governor in Oregon).
In short, we need a real Democratic Party that works for working people, not the donors that own the hedge funds that employ those working people.
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