Uprisings in the Midwest
It took 15 years, but the tide is finally turning
Welcome to a Thursday night edition of Progress Report.
I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but as I sit here in New York, a constituent of an anti-worker center-right governor and a corrupt, xenophobic lunatic of a mayor, I’m actually a bit jealous of the political evolution happening out in the Upper Midwest.
Things looked grim out there, politically speaking, for much of the 2010s. Democrats fell asleep at the wheel, allowing Republicans to win state trifectas and lock in banana republic-level gerrymanders. Factories shut down and left middle and working-class communities to twist in the wind. Donald Trump swept through most of the states on the Great Lakes in 2016 by activating a silent army of old white men in diners. The entire region was deemed a lost cause by people whose job it is to make sweeping pronouncements from thousands of miles away.
The sea change began in 2018 — conventional wisdom about Trump’s unique powers never seem to consider how frequently he loses — and now, progressive policy is passing at record rates in Minnesota and Michigan, labor unions are revived and reformed and on the rise, and even the worst anti-democratic offenders are in trouble.
It’s amazing what some organizing can do.
We’ve got some big developments to discuss tonight, and now that I’m reviewing them, they’re pretty much all good news. Let’s get to it.
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Hitting the Brakes
The United Auto Workers’ contract with Ford, GM, and Stellantis expired at midnight, triggering a strike that could shape the future of the US auto industry and the workforce that helped create the middle class.
The strike began with walkouts at one factory per company, with the first wave sending nearly 13,000 workers to the picket lines in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. Should a contract agreement continue to prove elusive, a total of 145,000 UAW members could wind up walking off the job.
This is the first simultaneous strike at each of the Big Three automakers, a drastic action aimed at serving as both corrective and protective measures.
The UAW, led by new militant reformer president Shawn Fain, has a long list of demands. Many of them are designed to claw back years of concessions that began during the 2008 financial crisis, including:
An end the divisive tiered pay structure;
Full-time jobs for contractors and a limit to non-union workers
A 40% bump in pay over the life of the contract (in line with the raise given to executives last year),
The return of the pension program and an annual cost of living adjustment.
Looking forward, the union also wants jobs guarantees at these terms at electric vehicle plants, which require fewer workers. Automaker executives have argued that EV factories, especially joint ventures with non-union companies, should not automatically be governed by the collective bargaining agreement. They continue to make record profits and are about to be subsidized with historic government investments, so it’s going to be hard for them to make that case to the public.
The strike has been portrayed as a sensitive subject for President Biden, who has been very steadfast in his support of unions but has also staked much of his agenda on a successful transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. Aware of that dichotomy, Fain has played a bit of hardball with Biden, withholding the UAW’s endorsement of his re-election campaign until the president shows sufficient support for the union’s goals.
Further complicating matters is the fact that Donald Trump has been trying to woo UAW members by tapping into their fears of the transition to electric vehicles and the potential for attendant job losses. Automakers have been outsourcing the production of fossil fuel-powered vehicles for years now, and would likely to continue doing so absent the incentives they’re receiving for EVs, but long-term investment isn’t all that comforting to people who need to feed their families today.
Democratic lawmakers have rushed to show support for the workers in recent days, which has been refreshing and rewarding to see, given the work I do at More Perfect Union. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, always an ally to labor, gave a rousing speech on the Senate floor in support of the UAW late Thursday afternoon.
Wisconsin Badgering
Getting pummeled in both in the press and public outrage after threatening to impeach newly elected Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz in order to maintain his party’s outrageous gerrymander, GOP House Speaker Robin Vos on Tuesday proposed what he described as a nonpartisan redistricting process based on the one used in Iowa.
As it turns out, Vos does know a lot about bridging the partisan gap in Iowa, but not in the way he promised.
In a rare and extraordinary joint letter, the Iowa Democratic state auditor and former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party distanced the state from Vos’s proposed redistricting plan on Thursday, arguing that the bill introduced by the Wisconsin GOP leader should not be compared to their process. The Vos proposal “cherry-picks” elements from the Iowa model, they said, and its lack of judicial review keeps power in the hands of a partisan legislature.
The bill passed the Assembly late Thursday evening, though it’s destined for a veto from Gov. Tony Evers.
Evers has in the past endorsed Iowa-style redistricting, but his proposals have required a three-quarters vote in the legislature to approve new maps. That guarantees overwhelming bipartisan agreement, whereas Vos’s only requires a single vote from the other party.
At this point, there’s little reason for Democrats to compromise. Vos has already pulled back on his impeachment threat, for several reasons.
On the legal end, Wisconsin’s constitution only allows impeachment for crimes or corruption, meaning that it’d be virtually impossible to justify impeaching Protasiewicz.
Vos has asked a panel of as yet unnamed former state Supreme Court justices to investigate whether he could do it anyway, but nothing that they say is at all binding. A preemptive lawsuit has been filed to prevent the House from impeaching Protasiewicz, though the justice’s decision to recuse herself from that case, should it reach the high court, means it could end in a deadlock. (She’s too ethical to vote in a case that would protect her from an unethical impeachment. Democrats, everybody.)
Legalities aside, Vos is staring down an impossible political conundrum. The Wisconsin Democratic Party announced earlier this week that it was budgeting $4 million toward a campaign to shame Vos and prevent the House GOP from going through with the impeachment. With Protasiewicz having ascended to high court in a landslide 11-point victory thanks to her commitment to abortion rights and rejection of gerrymandering, a campaign that targets vulnerable Republicans could be devastating enough to force them to disavow the impeachment.
If that happens, Vos will have not only lost his rigged maps, but also put even more members in danger come 2024, which would further weaken his own influence in a competitive legislature.
Any reason to think Republicans are willing to operate in good faith was extinguished on Thursday, when the Senate GOP supermajority voted to fire Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top elections official, based only on conspiracies and vitriol. Wolfe has promised that she’ll continue in the job until a court removes her.
Ohio’s religious school scam
Surprise surprise: Yet another state’s universal school voucher scam is already costing more money than projected, with zero transparency or accountability.
Ohio isn't tracking how many new voucher applicants already attend private schools.
"The application platform for this program does not ask where the student was enrolled prior to applying for the scholarship, so we do not have this information," Snoke said.
That means it will be difficult to discern whether the spike in EdChoice expansion scholarships came from parents looking to leave public school or those whose children already attend.
One estimate, created by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Commission during the debate over the backpack bill, put the percentage at 90% existing private school students and 10% transfers from public schools.
That’s the catch: Yes, there’s a huge demand for these vouchers, but they’re largely going to kids who already go to private school. As a result, states like Ohio and Arizona are shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to pad the pockets of parents who already sent their kids to religious private schools.
This is a feature of school vouchers — the feature, really — and not a bug. These programs continue to spread across red states, while far-right hate groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom are pushing lawsuits that could set up the Supreme Court to make them mandatory everywhere.
Quick Hits
Mississippi: Secretary of State Michael Watson wants the legislature to bring back the ballot initiative process, which was tossed out by the state Supreme Court in 2021 on a farcical technicality. This comes just a few days after the presumptive new House Speaker suggested that they should finally take a close look at Medicaid expansion.
Watson wants a higher petition signature requirement, but it’s still a noteworthy statement, especially because he mentioned an effort to get abortion on the ballot. Reproductive rights and Medicaid expansion are popular enough even in the Deep South, it seems, that GOP politicians are beginning to sweat the electoral implications of not getting them passed and out of the way.
California: The state legislature just passed a bill to make workers eligible for unemployment benefits after two weeks on strike, a broadly good piece of legislation that was specifically designed to acknowledge the tens of thousands of writers and actors that have been on the picket lines for months now (it would go into effect in January, so fingers crossed that they’re back to work by then and it’ll be helpful during any future strike).
Gov. Gavin Newsom is far less friendly to organized labor than many members of the legislature, and has already raised alarm bells over the fiscal implications of this bill, but if he doesn’t want to sign this bill, he’s going to face the wrath of celebrities that he’s tried to emulate.
Denver: Seeking to make a dent in the city’s housing and homelessness crisis, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston is piloting new “microcommunities” that can be quickly built in vacant lots and provide higher quality shelter for people living on the streets. Johnston’s proposed budget asks for $40 million to produce and run the program for up to 1000 people 2024.
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