What will it take for poor MAGA voters to see the light?

Can we do anything about it?

Welcome to a Sunday edition of Progress Report.

Quick intro tonight, because we’ve got some very interesting news from the states that prove that we truly live in two different countries. Then it’s on to a disturbing conversation and what we can do about it.

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Florida: Both houses of the Florida legislature have moved forward with dueling bills that would make it all but impossible to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot. It’s a priority of lame duck Gov. Ron DeSantis, and though they hate one another, the legislators and the governor have come together to deny Floridians this one last vestige of democracy.

Oklahoma: Republicans in the Sooner State are also moving forward with a bill that would make it far harder to get citizen initiatives on the ballot. And just like Florida, they’re doing this under the guise of “election security.”

Nebraska: In 2022, 59% of voters in Nebraska voted to raise the minimum wage. Last year, a whopping 75% of voters approved an initiative that requires employers to provide between five and seven paid sick days. In what’s becoming standard practice in red states, Republicans in the legislature want to slow down and weaken both voter-approved laws.

They’re well on their way to slapping voters and workers in the face, as both LB 258 and LB 698 passed through the Nebraska legislature’s Business and Labor Committee late last week. Not that there needs to be corruption or conflict of interest for this to be a bad bill, but Jane Raybould, the sponsor of the minimum wage decrease bill, happens to come from a family that owns a supermarket chain.

Oregon: In better labor-related news, lawmakers in Oregon are closing in on enacting a groundbreaking law that would make it far more likely and sustainable for workers to go on strike.

The bill, which would allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, advanced through committee on Thursday after five heated hearings. Whereas New York and New Jersey have laws allowing private sector workers to collect unemployment while on strike, Oregon would be the first to extend the right to public sector workers.

Colorado: An odd dynamic is building in Colorado, the kind of which you see mostly in states where Democrats dominate state politics. It’s not so much progressive vs. centrist as it is a matter of business-aligned Democrats and worker-aligned Democrats, and it’s causing a lot of conflict now that the session is in full swing and lobbyists and non-profits are making their voices heard.

There are three worker-related bills this year that have drawn particular scrutiny for their friendliness to industry. One of them, which would create financial industry-approved regulations on advanced paycheck loans, was both introduced and killed by the state Senate majority leader.

Meanwhile, the Colorado Employee Protection Act is still on track to get passed by the legislature. The big hurdle will be Gov. Jared Polis.

Minnesota: A proposed constitutional amendment would allow 16-year-olds would vote in local elections across the state, making Minnesota the first state to extend any version of the franchise to people under the age of 18.

Young people wouldn’t right wouldn’t be granted automatically, as it would be up to local governments to pass a resolution that gave them ballot access. If it makes it through the legislature, the amendment would go before voters in 2026.

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“I think they’re just going to have to bottom out.”

I spoke on the phone with a Gulf War veteran for a story a few days ago and have been thinking about the conversation ever since. As an infantryman, James saw frontline action during the US’s ground invasion of Kuwait and Iraq, which exposed him to a variety of chemical weapons and burn pits, which are now linked to a wide range of illnesses and disabilities. There’s little doubt that breathing in the poisoned desert air led to James’s ongoing struggles with a number of vascular problems, including severe sleep apnea and chronic sinusitis and rhinitis.

The VA has been his “lifeline” for health care, and when the PACT Act was passed in 2022, funding care specifically for veterans whose illnesses stem from burn pit and toxic chemical exposure, he was finally fully covered for all his health needs. That relief is now threatened by DOGE’s mass firing of VA staff — it plans to cull 80,000 people this year — and the GOP’s proposed government funding bill, which zeroes out the annual funding for that additional care.

James, a registered Democrat, lives in the ruby red Blue Ridge Mountains, so he’s got plenty of friends, including fellow veterans suffering from similar disabilities, who voted for Donald Trump. Buyer’s remorse is beginning to set in for a few of them, he told me, while others continue to try to justify what’s happening under DOGE and the Project 2025 playbook. The same went for people from the surrounding areas more generally.

When I asked what he thought it would take for them to recognize that the Trump administration is eagerly throwing them under the bus, his answer was grim but not unexpected: “I think they’re just going to have to feel it themselves and bottom out.”

This was, in a sense, the optimistic view of things, as there were plenty of Trump supporters in the area who he accused of “willful ignorance,” rejecting even the most obvious facts in favor of wild conspiracy theories ginned up by far-right media and influencers. James includes most of his family among these lost souls, and it got so bad last fall that he had to cut many of them off.

The last straw came when he was checking in on his mother in Asheville after Hurrine Helene.

“There are hundreds of people in the piles of debris and FEMA won’t let anybody save them,” she told him. “They’re going to burn them all.”

James, a longtime federal worker for the National Park Service, tried to explain that no, FEMA was not keeping hundreds of people trapped in big piles of debris, nor was the federal government going to burn them all alive. His mother was unmoved, certain that she had the inside information.

“Where’d you hear this?” James asked.

“It’s on YouTube,” his mom explained. “Two guys went down there with cameras.”

He was exasperated then and remains exasperated now, five months after the conversation. The idea that she would believe such an absurd lie from random jokers — or even well-established guys — on YouTube over established news media confounded him.

It’s frustrating to me, too, having spent well over a decade building a career in journalism — maybe I should have just made up lies on YouTube. Because pretending to be a reporter, making up heinous lies, and spreading them through social media platforms — that is big business.

Obviously, I’m not going to do that, but the conversation did make me think about this newsletter’s place in the political media ecosystem. I love writing it, but does it break through to a broader reader base? Is it accessible? Useful? Relatable? There are also a lot of stories I’d like to cover in depth, but as a one man band, most don’t get touched. Reporting takes a long time, and writing often takes longer.

These are long-running conundrums, but now I have an answer for them. Starting next Sunday, I’ll be doing live video interviews with activists, lawmakers, community leaders, and other relevant personalities, as we’ll go in depth on big news stories in their orbit where they crossover into Progress Report’s interests. The archive will be available both at Substack and YouTube.

These will be newsy interviews that also go in depth beyond what can fit into a written feature, and I hope provide normal people with helpful explanations and perspectives. They’ll also be fun and conversational, and hopefully the kind of thing that can be passed to somebody who is MAGA-pilled but still tethered to reality.

(Of course, written newsletters will continue — that will never change.)

I’ve already got a number of great guests on board and the hope is that hearing things from a first-hand perspective from experts and people involved in the stories will be more convincing to people like James’s mom. Will it work? Maybe, with your help!

I’ve lost some paid subscribers lately for one reason or another, and I’ll need to spend some money on video editing software and such, so today I’m offering subscriptions for 20% off. I promise I’ll use it better than the DNC.

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