Your dose of hope during Caucus coverage tonight

There are good things happening in a lot of places. I promise.

Welcome to a Monday edition of Progress Report.

Today is both Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Republican Iowa Caucuses, which sets up a strange dichotomy of a media celebrating the great civil rights leader before shifting to uncritical coverage of the people most dedicated to undoing every inch of the progress for which MLK gave his life.

It’s pretty obvious that Trump is going to roll tonight; the only question is whether Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley wind up first in line to choke on his dust. If it’s Ron, my guess is that anything less than a 20-point loss will be treated by the media as a triumph and lead to days of speculation as to whether the jerk has a second wind. They need a narrative, not a coronation.

Personally, my biggest concern right now is that the newest polls have Biden losing to all three Republicans and down to a 33 percent approval rating, lower than Trump ever plunged, even after leading a damn insurrection. I know it’s still early, but if this is the most important election of our lifetime, Democrats running an 82-year-old lifelong politician who is that unpopular, especially with young voters, seems a bit risky.

But we’re not going to focus on the negative tonight — this newsletter is filled with good news on a wide array of major issues. If this is something you want more frequently, vote in the poll at the bottom of the issue!

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The ongoing struggle for voting rights

There’s a near-endless list of things I’d do differently if I were in charge of Twitter, but right at the top of the list would be instituting a verification process for politicians that want to post tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr. My two-factor authentication system would ask one question: Do you support the Voting Rights Act that MLK fought so hard to get passed?

Sadly, the number of tribute posts would fall precipitously, because at the same time that MLK has grown into a universally lionized figure, Republicans have never been so blunt about their disdain for multiracial democracy. Following the battle over voting rights is like keeping an eager eye on a seesaw, and this past week, there were several developments that tipped it in the direction of free and fair elections.

Months after Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin put the brakes on the customary re-enfranchising of formerly incarcerated citizens, a bipartisan coalition is working to pass a constitutional amendment that would finally automate a uniquely archaic process that has hinged on gubernatorial discretion for far too long.

Every Democrat supports the amendment, while the Koch group Americans for Prosperity has been seeking to whip Republican support (odd, yes, but criminal justice reform is one of the few issues that they’re decent on). To amend the Virginia state constitution, an amendment has to pass both houses of the legislature in consecutive sessions, then win majority support in a statewide election. The aim is to get this amendment on the 2026 ballot.

In North Carolina, the state Board of Elections ruled that college student IDs may be used to satisfy the state’s new Voter ID law. It remains to be seen whether this ruling will stick, however, as the composition of the Board of Elections hinges on a lawsuit yet to be heard by a federal court.

Last year, the GOP legislature forced through a law that strips Gov. Roy Cooper of his power to name five members to the board; should the governor lose his bid to have the law permanently blocked, it’s highly unlikely that the GOP legislature’s appointees would rule the same way. There’s currently no timetable on that, though.

In a shift, working people get new protections on the job

It took Democrats several generations to realize that their abandonment of working people was central to their political collapse in many places, but at least some party leaders are now trying to make up for lost time. The past few weeks have seen a flurry of new bills, laws, executive orders and federal policies intended to not only provide working people new rights, but to back them with some real regulatory teeth.