Baby steps and big news afoot
Big changes coming, all for the better!
Welcome to a quick Friday evening edition of Progress Report.
I’ve got some big — and one very small — updates for you tonight, so let’s hop right to it.
Oh, but before we do that, please watch this report that I produced on Ron DeSantis’s biggest corruption scandal, which is starting to plague Florida as its residents try to clean up from a catastrophe made worse by climate change and his nightmare eu to address.
Alright, newsletter time!
Baby Shea turned one week old yesterday, a milestone that he marked with his usual routine: Sleeping, eating, triggering very frequent diaper changes, and darting his eyes around the room, registering new sensations and images in every new environment.
I’ve taken the night shift since we returned home, assuming responsibility for tending to his prolific appetite and hard-working digestive system between the hours of 10 pm and 5 am. My wife then takes the lead from dawn to noon, allowing me to catch up on a bit of sleep (or reading the news like a zombie). The daily grind is exhausting but doable in large part due the paid parental leave that’s part of the compensation at our respective workplaces.
The ability to stay home and care for our son during these heady early days without worrying about making rent or losing our jobs places us in a pathetically rare echelon of American workers — as of March 2021, just 23% of private industry employees in the United States had access to any paid family leave.
While federal law entitles most Americans to up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, that’s hardly a panacea; the expenses that trail a baby’s birth make taking more than a few unpaid days simply untenable. And in unforgiving workplaces such as an Amazon warehouse, interfacing with an HR app instead of actual human can and often does lead to mixups and glitches that turn valid time off into termination letters.
Progressives attempted to rectify this situation last year by including four weeks of paid family leave in Build Back Better (RIP). That number was a deep compromise from 12 weeks that advocates initially sought, an ask that seems like a socialist fantasy until it’s put in context. The global average paid maternity leave is a whopping 29 weeks, while new fathers average 16 paid weeks off to welcome their new child and help them adjust to this troubled world.
The sheer financial cost of raising a kid even for a week is also offensive and inhumane, but that too is an indignity that we were long ago forced to metabolize and accept as an inevitability. The expanded Child Tax Credit was a momentary revolution for a country hell-bent on punishing anyone south of the upper-middle class, and polling confirmed that it was as universally popular as you’d expect of a policy that simply gives free money to parents.
In August, the Brookings Institute calculated that the cost of raising a child in the United States averaged out to more than $18,000 a year, or just over $300,000 from a child’s birth through their 17th birthday. That number obviously fluctuates based on where someone lives and the kind of support system available to them. It feels as if we’ve been prodded to spend nearly that much on onesies and bottle gadgets already.
For all the talk of abortion driving turnout — and it undoubtedly will to some degree — the election is still likely to be decided on economic issues. It should be a no-brainer for Democrats to run on reinstating the CTC. Sure, it’d be hypocritical — Joe Manchin’s brutal murder of Build Back Better killed off the policy under a Democratic majority — but the public has generally moved on, since few people actually follow the ins and outs of policy debates. In the meantime, we have to get our excitement from the innovations and expanded overage being offered by state governments like those in Oregon and Massachusetts.
I could go on, but then I’d be stepping on the toes of one of the excellent stories we have coming up over the next few weeks from a still-growing list of excellent new contributors. There will be stories coming from states across the country about organizers, upcoming elections, and overlooked issues, and we’re paying every contributor. Some will be behind the paywall, so there’s never been a better time to become a premium subscriber (still for the bare minimum fee that Substack allows).
Progress Report will resume its regular three issues-a-week cadence starting this Sunday, so today, I’m sending along some of the stories and storylines that I’ve been reading over the past week or so in between diaper changes and feedings. On Sunday, we’ll debut our ActBlue lists of worthy local, legislative, and Congressional candidates so that we can all make one final push ahead of November.
Oh, and by the way, we raised enough money to put up our anti-DeSantis billboard just a few blocks from the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. I’ll let you know when it goes up. Trolling and humiliating evil politicians is a good and smart thing to do.
News, views, and stories worth reading:
Starbucks: The NLRB tossed Starbucks’ Hail Mary effort to put a pause on all upcoming union elections in its stores, with the agency finding that the ongoing prevalence of Covid-19 still made it necessary to hold most votes by mail instead of in person.
It’s unlikely that Starbucks’ legal team actually thought that this request would go anywhere; instead, the appeal was meant as yet another delay tactic to push back negotiations and have time to fire more pro-union workers. I published along report on their illegal stalling last week at More Perfect Union:
EXCLUSIVE: Starbucks has spent months illegally stalling negotiations with @SBWorkersUnited — and we have the inside details. Howard Schultz’s team is deploying lies, last-minute cancellations, absurd proposals, and delays as they fire workers and try to bleed out the union.Shortly after we published that report, Starbucks sent out requests to 240+ stores, asking them to pick bargaining dates. There’s still plenty of reason to be suspicious of the company’s intentions, but it’s nice to know that they’re feeling the pressure that we’re putting on them.
Expand the Court: A growing majority of Americans hate the Supreme Court, continuing a stunning decline in public trust that has coincided with the court’s aggressive assault on people’s civil rights and basic freedoms.
Samuel Alito grew ultra-defensive about the fact that a vast swath of the country is pissed at him for writing the opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade, but it’s unlikely the court’s far-right faction will slow its of undoing of American post-war civil society when the Court returns to session next week.
Student Debt: Out of deference to legal concerns and idiotic lawsuits coming from the right, the Biden Administration is clawing back some the debt relief that it announced last month.
The program will no longer be available to several million people with federal debt that’s held by the private sector, including companies that service, collect, and even invest the money.
People with student debt with private lenders, which is far more common among millennials and members of Gen X, are also shit out of luck.
Healthy Kids: As I mentioned above, the federal government has given the thumbs up to new Medicaid innovations that aim to fill gaps in children’s medical coverage and expand the purview of early childhood health benefits.
Oregon’s program will ensure that every child has continuous health coverage through their sixth birthday, which should be less an innovation than a standard in this country.
Education: Democrat Jena Nelson holds a five-point lead over Republican Ryan Walters in the race for state superintendent in Oklahoma. Yes, a Democrat is currently in the lead in a statewide, school-related election in a crimson red state.
Walters wants to slash school budgets and expand the state’s vouchers program, while Nelson has taken on the role of defender of public schools over the course of the campaign.
Forget cowering to manufactured Republican freak outs about critical race theory and the integrity of girls sports — in places like Oklahoma, slashing funding to rural schools is a real third-rail, which puts Republicans in a very bad spot. The Democrats should very loudly advocate for public school funding, more teachers, and more educational opportunities during this tight run-in.
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Great advice!