The key swing state races going under the radar

And a new theory on Trump's Nazi talk

Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.

There’s a lot to discuss today, so we’ll start off with some news and then take a deep dive into key down ballot races and the candidates worthy of your financial support. Then I’ll examine an almost unfathomable failure in election coverage and introduce my new theory about why Trump gets away with so much.

Note: To make this work as accessible as possible, I’ve lowered the price for a paid subscription back down to Substack’s $5 minimum. If you can’t afford that right now, please email me and I’ll put you on the list for free. For every paid subscription, I can give out a free one, no questions asked.

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1️⃣ Look at those splits: The latest edition of Pew’s monthly election tracking poll suggests a nation that is evenly split between candidates and very far apart in demographics and ideology.

Overall, Vice President Kamala Harris holds a one point lead over Donald Trump, 48%-47%, with a coalition dominated by women, people of color, and the well-educated. Trump is strongest with white people, lower education voters, and men — he and Harris have nearly polar opposite gender splits.

None of this is a surprise, really, but Pew is a very thorough and reliable pollster, so the numbers carry more authority. It also produces cool data visualizations that make it far easier to find and comprehend the meaning of the results.

I recommend checking out the entire write-up, which has insights into questions about the strength of people’s support for their candidates, who they believe has better articulated their policy positions, and their thoughts on bipartisanship.

Spoiler: A lot of people believe that Harris would reach across the aisle and work with Republicans, so the campaign can probably stop emphasizing that now.

2️⃣ Looking good: A new poll finds 60% of voters in Nebraska rejecting the idea of using public taxpayer dollars to pay for private schools.

The poll, part of a larger survey done for several Midwestern state newsrooms, is a huge lift for the public school advocates behind the upcoming ballot initiative to repeal the state’s new voucher program. Betsy DeVos and the Ricketts family are pouring resources into trying to defeat the initiative, which was passed on the very last day of legislative session this year.

Why do I so know much about Nebraskan education policy? Well, I just produced this new report on the battle:

Given the GOP dominance of the state, there are very clearly a lot of Republicans who oppose school vouchers, which makes sense for such a rural state. Nebraskans

3️⃣ Relentless cheating: Remember last month, when Ron DeSantis’s special election gestapo showed up at the homes of people who’d signed a petition to get the abortion rights amendment on the November ballot? It seemed like a cheap way of intimidating voters, but DeSantis and his appointees were actually cooking up something far more nefarious.

Late Friday night, the state’s Secretary of State’s office dropped a 348-page report alleging that Floridians Protecting Freedom engaged in serious fraud in order to collect the nearly one million signatures required to qualify for the ballot.

“The allegations included reports of paid FPF petition circulators signing petitions on behalf of deceased individuals, forging or misrepresenting elector signatures of petitions, using electors’ personal identifying information without consent, and perjury/false swearing,” the report alleges.

It’s quite obviously just another way for DeSantis to abuse his office in a quest to tank the amendment, which would override the six week abortion ban he signed last year. The Florida Supreme Court denied his AG’s lawsuit to block it from the ballot in Aril, but has since green-lit deceptive ballot language and DeSantis’s spending millions in state funds to run TV ads and a digital program against the amendment.

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These are must-win seats in must-win states

When I started the original version of this newsletter, all the way back in late 2017, many state and local Democratic parties had been decimated after a decade of neglect. Everyday people were stepping up and running for office around the country, but they had little institutional support and even less money.

So, I took it upon myself to find and support those candidates — and progressives in primaries — through journalism and grassroots fundraising.

I try not to boost many politicians without reason these days, so I’ve largely moved away from raising money for candidates… until now. With a few weeks to go until a do-or-die election, I’ve decided to dip back into highlighting and raising money for some select candidates. Here’s a spreadsheet with most of the races that I plan to target.

This is the first round of endorsements, a mix of endangered incumbents and challengers in winnable districts, in states where Democrats have slight majorities or could flip a chamber. I’ve chosen carefully, prioritizing progressives with backgrounds in labor, advocacy, and/or jobs that serve the public good. I also tried to pick as many younger candidates as possible, as we desperately need a new generation of leaders.

I’ve included a nugget about each, and you can check out their websites for more info.

Minnesota:

The lowdown: There are tight margins in both chambers of the legislature, and each of these races represents very viable flip opportunities.

Sarah Kruger, House District 26A: The chief of staff at FairVote Minnesota, a pro-democracy nonprofit, Kruger, 38, has a progressive list of priorities that includes a number of rural issues and fully funded public higher education.

Abdi Daisane, House District 14A: A Somali immigrant who spent 18 years in a refugee camp in Kenya, then moved to the US and earned his masters in public administration. At 36, he’s a community leader and owns a daycare. His wife is a poet.

Michigan:

The lowdown: Democrats have a two-seat advantage in the House, and these are two of their most endangered lawmakers. They’re also two of their youngest and most promising legislators.

Rep. Joey Andrews, House District 38: A former policy analyst for the Michigan AFL-CIO, Andrews, 36, is wrappping up his first term in office. I recently interviewed Andrews him for my story on the rightward drift of working class white men and how to stop it.

Rep. Jaime Churches, House District 27: A former teacher who was active in her union, Churches, 36, is also finishing her first term. I interviewed Churches as she entered office in 2023 for a story that kicked off the ultimately successful effort to repeal “Right to Work” in Michigan. She won by just 660 votes in 2022.

Pennsylvania:

The lowdown: Democrats have a one-seat advantage in the PA House. They’ll be playing defense in several districts, but the candidates below are running in swing districts where wins could give them some much-needed breathing room.

Anand Patel, House District 18: A small business owner and former elected school board member who emigrated from India as a toddler, Patel is running in a tight Bucks County district against an incumbent whose main qualification is being the daughter of a former legislator.

Anna Thomas, House District 137: Just 28 years old, Thomas earned a Master’s in Public Administration from Penn and now works as a planning commissioner in Bethlehem.

Hadley Haas, House District 44: After Haas’s two sons were born with a rare genetic disorder that made them hard of hearing, Haas became deeply involved in helping deaf children access care and education assistance. She’s also the co-chair of the Pittsburgh chapter of the gun control group Mom’s Demand Action.

Wisconsin:

The lowdown: Thanks to the remade state Supreme Court, Wisconsin has finally been liberated from the GOP gerrymander that made anything approaching fair representation all but impossible. Democrats may not flip either legislative chamber this year, but they can at least put themselves in position to do so in 2026.

Jodi Habush Sinykin, Senate District 8: Habush Sinykin left the law firm she co-founded and has spent years as an environmental policy expert and activist, frequently testifying in the Capitol and lobbying for legislation.

Sarah Keyeski, Senate District 14: A mental health counselor, Keyeski became a community leader when she started a nonprofit during the pandemic. She’s also a public school advocate running against rabid supporter of school privatization.

Elizabeth Grabe, Assembly District 51: Grabe is a realtor who serves on several local environmental committees and runs her family’s farm.

Ryan Spaude, Assembly District 89: Spaude, 30, moved home to go to law school and now serves as a local prosecutor focused on community safety. His priority issues include fully funding child care, public education, and finally expanding Medicaid.

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Like most people, I was pretty surprised when Donald Trump won the 2016 election. It wasn’t so much the fact that Americans had flocked to a racist, misogynist demagogue that shocked me — I had no illusions about our collective virtue — as it was the nation’s choice of racist, misogynist demagogue.

At that point, Trump had been a public figure for 30+ years, known for being a braggart, business flop, scammer, and clown who didn’t even take himself seriously. The past decade has felt like the Twilight Zone, the dumbest person alive growing more and more powerful despite acting like a mix of George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Cosmo Kramer after taking a shovel to the head. Indictment for treason has only made him stronger.

Up until now, I have been truly baffled by the lack of attention given to Trump’s lynch mob tour over the past few weeks. Yesterday, he took it to Aurora, CO, which the far-right has claimed for months to be under siege by Venezuelan gangs. The city’s conservative GOP mayor forcefully debunked the rumor, but Trump’s agenda has never depended on reality.

His speech sounded like Goebbels in the locked areas of assisted living, promising to “liberate” America with mass deportations and the death penalty. Here’s how he described immigrants:

“They're rapists ... these are the worst criminals in the world … Our criminals are like babies compared to these people. These people are the most violent people on Earth. And remember, they don’t just come from South America. They come from the Congo in Africa. They come from the Middle East, they come from Asia, they come from prisons and jails all over the world."

Here’s another nugget for you:

"They come from the dungeons of the third world … and [Harris] has had them resettled beautiful into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens."

The rhetoric was so nakedly racist that it’d get anybody else kicked out of public life for good, but because it came from Donald Trump, it barely made a dent in a news cycle that continues to churn toward our doom.

How is it possible that what should be landmark moments of hatred, in a campaign that will be remembered as a low point in our history, are being treated by news outlets like any other political event?

Here’s CBS’s headline: “Donald Trump promises in Colorado rally to enact what he calls ‘Operation Aurora’ if elected”

It’s meaningless! Operation Aurora could be anything! Even political junkies wouldn’t have known anything about it at that point.

Now here’s what the NY Times said: “Trump Rally in Aurora, Colo., Is Marked by Nativist Attacks.”

If anything, that headline sounds like some nativists launched attacks on Trump and his supporters.

I couldn’t find much other coverage, which is all the more distressing. I think part of the lack of attention stems from Kamala Harris continuing to tack right on immigration, which sends the message that Trump’s approach is politically smart, which is all that the press cares about at this point. But I also think the very nature of Trump himself, the clownishness that made him so hard to accept as a real candidate and politician, now insulates him from the kind of scrutiny and consequences that other politicians would face for committing even a fraction of his offenses.

Journalists would often say that you should take Trump seriously but not literally, reasoning that because he was a congenital exaggerator who blabbered constantly, examining his every word would be a waste of time, not to mention beneath them. It made some sense at the time, but it has long since become a dangerous approach to covering him.

Now we know that not only will Trump follow through on his dark promises, he also commands an army of followers who hang on his every word and take them so literally that they will storm the Capitol and inject bleach into their veins. Calling immigrants “animals” who will cut people’s throats, warning Jewish people that they’ll be blamed if he loses the election — it’s truly sick stuff, and just because he’s a bloviating idiot doesn’t mean that it should be glossed over or metabolized through the news cycle within a few hours.

Trump is promising to unleash cruelties that won’t be stopped by a pliant Supreme Court or ideological civil service, while his venomous speeches function as violent commands to his followers. Donald Trump may be a doofus, but he’s also a uniquely dangerous force. It’s time to start taking him literally.

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