Big news: Dem primaries, another big scoop, and voter shifts

Trump is running rampant, but the public is noticing

Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.

This is a packed edition of the newsletter, thanks in part to a new format that I’m trying out. The categories may shift a bit, depending on the week, but my plan is to make this kind of in-depth wrap an exclusive for paid subscribers going forward.

Today we’re talking about:

• Progressive ballot initiatives and spoiled GOP plans

• My new exclusive reporting on the Trump administration’s war on science and government disaster relief

• A surprising political shift away from MAGA?

• Polling

• Upstart Democratic primary challenges

• An exclusive interview

• And more!

Again, there’s a lot here, and I hope that I can continue to be this thorough during a time of shallow, disposable news. If you’ve ever thought about becoming a paid subscriber, this is absolutely the time to do it. We’ve got some big live stream interviews coming and some big fights to win!

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Utah: Public workers, activists, and union-members across the state came together to blow way past the number of signatures needed to qualify a key initiative for the 2026 ballot.

The coalition collected 320,000 signed petitions, more than double the 140,000 required by state law, in support of an initiative that would overturn the state’s new ban on collective bargaining for public sector employees. The margin that should give them plenty of room to overcome attrition from ineligible voters, challenged signatures, and attempts by the Koch operation to convince people to pull their names from the petition.

When we spoke with two of the organizers during a recent live stream interview, they felt cautiously optimistic about meeting what at the time seemed like an onerous signature requirement, which also contained difficult geographic minimums. They’d collected around 130,000 going into the final five days of signature gathering, then ended with an all-out blitz by everyone from teachers and sewer engineers to cops and firefighters.

The show of strength, by a very bipartisan coalition, is the latest pushback against an increasingly red state government.

Gov. Spencer Cox has tried at times to appear more centrist, which has largely involved hemming and hawing over right-wing bills that he ultimately decides to sign. He played that exact performance when the ban on collective bargaining hit his desk, acknowledging the significant outrage over the bill by holding his nose while giving it his approval. Now he’s trying to move even further away from the law by pretending he was never into it.

“I said from the beginning I didn’t like the bill. It wasn’t something I was interested in, not something I would run,” Cox said this week. “I want to congratulate them for their signatures, not just the UEA, but others as well. It takes a lot of work. I know. As one who has worked hard to gather signatures over the years, to get 300,000 signatures is very impressive.”

In other news…

• It required millions of dollars and a last-minute browbeating from Donald Trump, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott finally pushed his school privatization dreams through the state House. This is going to be an expensive disaster.

• For an idea of just how out-of-order this is going to become, just look to Arkansas. Though the state is ground zero for the school privatization movement, the Republican legislature was still forced to pass a new bill that caps the amount of voucher money that families can spend on “non-educational” items, which currently eats up 56% of the budget.

• Democrats in Missouri staved off the GOP’s attempt to overturn the state’s new minimum wage increase and sick leave requirement. Missourians approved the new law with 58% of the vote in November. The bill’s Republican sponsor said they’d be willing to wait as long as it took to outlast a filibuster, but the House gave up at 1 am and set the bill aside.

Geologists can’t say “critical minerals” or… North Dakota?

An official at the US Geological Survey sent out an updated list sensitive words and phrases that cannot appear in employees’ proposals or other work without special permission from administrators. And according to USGS employees, the words on list, which had not been previously reported on, make it ultra-difficult to do their jobs.

The USGS is part of the Department of the Interior, and its research is a key component in weather monitoring, geographical mapping, and disaster response. Not being able to refer to droughts or terms such as oil and gas resource assessments — a service the agency literally provides — makes getting anything done impossible.

Here’s the most updated list of hot topics:

• Invasive Species (particularly invasive carp)

• Public health

• International issues as they impact national security

• Border issues

• Regulatory reform support

• Anything North Dakota related

• National security broadly

• Critical Minerals

• Oil & Gas Resource Assessments

• PFAS

• Colorado River Basin

• Klamath River Basin

• Drought

• Indigenous / Tribal issues

• Work with/for/or relevant to Reclamation

• Chronic Wasting Disease

Blocking any actual work getting done might be the point. Leadership at the USGS has been wiped out, and one source there told me that all of the employees who can authorize purchases or negotiate with contractors have been jettisoned. Unless there’s a geological site or other experiment happening next door, they’re not going, because they can’t fly or even order an Uber.

This is most dangerous due to the work that the USGS does with FEMA and other emergency service providers. During a natural disaster, the agency provides real time updates on the conditions of the land, the levels of flood waters, and the dangers hidden in the area.

It’s also worth noting that the USGS has a restriction on mentioning anything to do with North Dakota, the state previously governed by Interior Secretary Doug Bergum.

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An inflection point?

There are more than 30,000 members of the Council of Prison Locals C-33, the union that represents federal correctional employees, and it’s fair to assume that a majority of them did not vote for Kamala Harris last year. While the vice president won the enthusiastic backing of the AFGE, the CPL’s parent union, corrections employees withheld their endorsement, as members believed that they would be exempted from Project 2025’s plans to defenestrate the federal workforce.

Instead, the Trump administration has treated correctional employees with the same contempt as everybody else: mass firings, job offer rescissions, and most recently, an executive order that aims to nullify their collective bargaining power and destroy their union. It’d be easy to smirk and shrug — this is what some might call the “find out” phase of supporting Donald Trump — but it’s beginning to have a tangible political impact.

Earlier this week, I some time on the phone with a correctional worker at a federal prison in Kentucky. A lifelong Republican, DA (I’ll release his full name in an upcoming video) voted for Donald Trump three times, and while we didn’t get into specifics, he said that he thinks that Trump is doing a fine job on some fronts. But DA isn’t so keen on the White House’s attacks on his coworkers and his union, which is where the political becomes the personal and changes everything.

Already, the federal government has used Trump’s very illegal anti-CBA order to stop automatically deducting union dues from workers’ paychecks, and with management constantly claiming that the CPL is now useless to them, low-paid correctional workers are hesitant to pay the dues themselves. This is how unions wither and die in “right to work” states, so it’s an existential concern for a shop steward.

DA works in Kentucky but lives in West Virginia, where he’s “represented” by an all-Republican Congressional delegation that has shown absolutely zero interest in even looking into the situation. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito told him that her job is to support President Trump to the hilt, and dismissal that was the final straw. Not only will DA not vote for Capito’s reelection in 2026, but after a recent visit to the county registrar, he’s no longer even a registered Republican.

He’s a registered independent, not a Democrat, and I would guess that he won’t be making monthly contributions through ActBlue anytime soon. But DA is also archetypal of the kind of voter — a southern working class white guy who is personally conservative but cares about the rule of law and believes in workers’ rights — that Democrats lost generations ago and have not seemed capable of winning back.

And now, Trump, the president that fully radicalized the demographic, is causing so much chaos that it’s starting to seriously damage his voters and thus his standing.

If even five to ten percent of such voters were to react to this administration like DA has, it would be an electoral groundswell. Flippant sops to the extreme culture war right, a la Gavin Newsom (here and here and here), isn’t the way to do it, either. You’re not going to out-cynic this Republican Party.

But what Democrats can do is use this moment as an inflection point and decide to stand up for the rule of law and the rights of workers. They can be caught hounding down the corrupt and championing the underdog, promising something better and then fighting to make it a reality. They can be caught showing up at local protests on behalf of people who likely wouldn’t vote for them. They can fight.

A new generation begins a wave of primaries

The Democratic Party in DC is as much of a protection racket for the elderly as it is a functioning political party, built on lip service and deference to seniority. It took a decade too long, but base voters are finally waking up to the desperate need for change, in both leadership and overarching approach to politics.

November was a disaster and the response to Trump has been largely dismaying, and unlike in the past, the gerontocracy can’t defend its actions: Democratic lawmakers have been increasingly appearing frail in public, checking into the hospital for serious illnesses, and dying in office, which has gifted majorities to Republicans.

The future, thankfully, is unwritten for the first time in a long time. And while I don’t know whether David Hogg represents the future of the Democratic Party, he gets credit for his efforts to force a break with its past.

The 25-year-old activist and newly elected DNC chair caused a freakout in DC this week when he told the New York Times about his plans to help run primary challengers to old, out-of-touch Democratic members of Congress. He said that his organization, Leaders We Deserve, will pour $20 million into supporting these campaigns, which will focus on members in safe blue seats.

“People say they want change in the Democratic Party, but really they want change so long as it doesn’t potentially endanger their position of power,” Hogg told the paper. “That’s not actually wanting change. That’s selfishness.”

This, naturally, sent many Democrats into a tailspin, and some have spent several days since griping about the prospect accountability instead of trying to prevent the full collapse of American democracy.

James Carville was especially hot under the collar over Hogg’s announcement, ranting for the tens of people who watched his appearance on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show, where he threatened to sue the young activist and called him a “contemptible little twerp.” The anger, though, was not actually about any perceived betrayal, but was instead fueled by Carville’s hatred for progressives, who he’d like to see leave the Democratic Party altogether.

“Maybe we can have an amicable split here and you go your way and we go our way,” he proposed, as Chris Cuomo brayed with excitement. “And after the election, we come together and see how much common ground we can find.”

Hogg later hit Carville for his growing obsolescence, pointing out that he hasn’t run a major winning campaign in 30+ years. It was an important point to make, because Carville is an embodiment of the party’s refusal to change. It’s a racket not only for aging lawmakers, but also “strategists” and pundits like Carville, who maintain guru status for life, shaping both party politics toward their own outmoded biases.

More than a few Democratic lawmakers also spoke out to blast Hogg, though most were granted anonymity to beat up on a 25-year-old willing to stick his neck out instead of simply cashing in.

When the anonymous Democrats insist that the DNC and DCCC should be in the business of protecting incumbents, they conveniently omit the party’s refusal to lift a finger when crypto and AIPAC fund right-wing challengers to progressive members of Congress, because this is ultimately a question of ideology, not practicality or winning.

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Generational challengers

One of the first big Democratic primary targets will be Georgia Rep. David Scott, whose mental acuity and physical wellness have been called into question by colleagues for years. Now nearly 80 years old, Scott occupies a safe blue seat that could belong to someone with more fight and a better attendance record, which is why he is already facing two primary challengers — including one who is almost five decades his junior.

Earlier this week, 32-year-old Gwinnett County school board member Everton Blair announced that he is challenging Scott for the nomination in Georgia’s 13th district, calling out Scott’s age and political sclerosis.

“I am running for Congress because it is time for the next generation to step up and correct the direction that this country is headed,” Blair told an Atlanta newspaper. “Change can’t wait, and Democrats need a new bench of leaders who are committed to solving real problems for regular, working people.”

Blair was the first Black and openly gay member of the Gwinnett County school board, which he helped navigate through Covid.

Scott has had a rough few years. In 2024, he was caught yelling at photographers who snapped him in a wheelchair in the halls of Congress, and in January, he lost his position as the ranking member on the House Agricultural Committee due to frustration over his infrequent attendance.

While he’s often faced primary opponents, there have rarely been any real threats; last year, Scott had six challengers, including grifter candidate Marcus Flowers. He’s also being challenged by a state senator named at Emanuel Jones, who at age 66 does not exactly represent the next generation.

There is also a primary brewing in South Florida, where boy wonder Elijah Manley is massively out-raising embattled Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.

A 26-year-old organizer, Manley previously ran campaigns for both state legislature and Broward County school board, positioning himself outside of the Florida Democratic Party’s inept power structure, while Cherfikus-McCormick has mostly been drifting and grifting over the past few years; she’s under investigation for allegedly misusing campaign funds as well as pocketing Covid-era overpayments to her family health care company. She won the Democratic primary to replace the late Rep. Alcee Hastings by just five votes.

Whether Manley is prepared to be a member of Congress is TBD, but since jumping into the race in February, he’s managed to raise a respectable $273K, which is 18-times more than Cherfikus-McCormick’s minuscule quarterly $15K haul. She reported just under $4K cash on hand, so unless she once again cuts her campaign a million dollar check from her own personal account, it may be that she doesn’t even wind up running for re-election.

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Nowhere to go but up?

A majority of Americans do not trust Donald Trump on the economy, especially in the wake of his confused tariff circus. The only problem is that they trust Democrats even less to handle the economy.

The most recent Gallup poll makes for some grim reading:

Americans have extremely little confidence in Democratic leaders to run the economy, which makes some sense, considering that their many years in the public spotlight coincided with ongoing economic stratification and decline, followed by the inflation that overshadowed the Biden administration’s various economic stimulus packages.

What this chart says to me is that people are once again desperate for change and are increasingly aware that Trump’s regime of corruption, austerity, tariffs, and oligarchy is not going to provide them with the prosperity that he promised (duh). Another new survey, by CNBC, finds half of the country anticipating a decline in economic conditions, up from a third of respondents in December.

But there’s also little faith in top-down neoliberalism, with its tax credits and convoluted, means-tested, and limited programs that frequently fail to launch. Winning the future will take a whole new vision, a promise to empower working class people and small business, an entire reimagining of the economic and social power structure.

Don’t believe the (some) headlines

I went down to DC last week to interview former NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, who in a single four-year term accomplished more for workers than any cabinet official since Frances Perkins. It was a long and detailed conversation, though the format means that we have to release it piece by piece. It’s worth it, I promise.

In the short piece below, Abruzzo outlines the most transformative new rights she secured for workers and unions, explains why coverage of the Trump administration’s actions on workers rights’ are misleading, and how the White House is trying to turn ours into a top-down, patriarchal society.

I’ve got more from this interview still to come, so stay tuned.

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