Blue states fight back, inch by inch

Legal battles between the feds and state governments rage on

Welcome to a Thursday evening edition of Progress Report.

I’ve been sick all week, which has temporarily limited my output but afforded me the opportunity to take stock of the current political moment. Unfortunately, there are no encouraging revelations or insights that I can offer; fascism has arrived and the putative opposition party is begging for a respectful conversation.

The Department of Justice today obtained indictments against former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime bogeyman to President Trump who is being charged with obstruction and making false statements about Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. It took firing a federal prosecutor and a public tantrum for Trump to ensure that the DOJ would bring charges, one of which a grand jury refused to accept. It seems like an odd way to treat the man who gifted him the White House in the first place, but Trump has never been one for manners or gratitude.

It’s an utterly meritless case ordered by an addled dictator, and absurd almost to the point of being too funny to take seriously, but the fact that Trump got his supplicants to go along with his full weaponization of state power is what makes it such a dire development. The charges may turn out to be so specious that Comey winds up walking, but it’s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to strongmen and abuses of power. Now Trump knows that he can have the DOJ conjure up charges against enemies at his whim, and most targets won’t have Comey’s level of public notoriety or access to top legal defense.

It should go without saying that Democrats should not be funding this government, much less acting like beta cucks on TV, begging Trump to meet with them so that they can hash out a deal to fund his secret police. It will take every ounce of effort from activists and animosity from poll respondents to convince national leaders to hit the brakes; fortunately, there are state and local leaders who are proving much more willing and able to put up a fight, as we’ll see tonight.

Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.

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Efforts to mitigate Republican attacks on democracy and personal freedom continue apace, spearheaded by blue state leaders and activists aiming to thwart cooperation by both local GOP lawmakers and business executives. In some cases, even red state leaders are being denied requests to assist their more vulnerable residents.

Battles over healthcare and voting rights have intensified over the last few weeks, as the Trump administration moves to tighten the screws with executive orders and lawsuits.

On Thursday, the Trump administration sued six states for refusing to hand over voting registration lists to the Department of Justice, which has requested them from almost 30 states. Filed against election officials in federal courts in California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the lawsuits allege that the states are preventing the administration from ensuring that they are properly maintaining their lists.

The DOJ’s request for names, birth dates, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers has raised alarms among voting rights and civil liberties advocates. The administration has also sued Oregon and Maine for refusing to disclose information about their voting lists.

On the other side of the ledger, the liberal advocacy group Common Cause has filed a lawsuit in Nebraska seeking to prevent the state from handing over the requested voter registration list information. The feds have asked for lists from 35 states and have only received a full list thus far from Indiana.

Perhaps most prominent and stupefying has been the White House’s assault on vaccines and basic medical science, which has created an increasingly bifurcated health care system based entirely on political geography.

With the CDC limiting its recommendations for who should receive vaccinations, states have moved to circumvent the limitations that federal regulators are attempting to impose. There are 26 states that have moved to ensure that pharmacists can administer the COVID-19 vaccine without a prescription; only three of these states — Nevada, Vermont, and Virginia — have Republican governors.

In 22 states, the federal government has been replaced as the source of official vaccine recommendations. In several cases, a number of states have banded together to create regional vaccine boards: Northeast Public Health Collaborative and the West Coast Health Alliance together now oversee the vaccine recommendations in 14 of these states. And those independent boards are now essential for maintaining children’s health, as the the CDC just recommended splitting up the childhood MMR vaccines, a suggestion derived from the fraudulent work of disgraced and de-licensed gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield.

The scandalous backstory is explained in a doc I produced on MAHA over the summer — I’ve time-stamped that section for your convenience below:

Similarly, the federal government’s attacks on abortion rights have left Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading provider of reproductive healthcare, in a major lurch. Congress’s Big Beautiful Bill cut off Medicaid funding for all Planned Parenthood services, which stretch far beyond abortion care. Cancer screenings, birth control, and STI tests all fall under this umbrella.

An appeals court decision to allow a year-long defunding of the organization’s providers could lead to the closure of up to 200 clinics and deny 1.1 million people from using their insurance to pay for Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services. Already, 40 clinics have been closed, with more on the horizon.

There have been commitments by some blue states to mitigate the damage. Massachusetts has pledged $2 million to plug half the federal funding gap — an astonishingly low grant, to say the least — while the governments in Washington State, New Mexico, and Colorado will each cover the entire shortfall this year. Planned Parenthood is seeking $35 million from the New York state government to continue operations, and in the meantime, upstate providers are providing care to Medicaid patients without charge.

The abortion conflict is not simply a federal vs. state issue: New York Attorney General Letitia James says she will defend against a lawsuit from Ken Paxton, her deranged Texan counterpart, over the state’s shield laws. Paxton is suing the state over an Ulster County’s refusal to enforce a $100,000 judgment against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills by mail to a patient in Texas. It’s a pivotal case that could determine whether red states will more aggressively pursue culture war lawsuits across state borders.

In Missouri, the abortion conflict is between lawmakers and residents, with an important intercession by a judge this week. Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ordered the secretary of state’s office to rewrite a proposed constitutional amendment that would once again ban abortion in Missouri, instructing that the ballot language expressly notes that it would overturn the pro-choice amendment passed by voters just last year. Republicans have sought to downplay that aspect

Green’s decision was a mixed bag, though, as he also ruled that the new proposed amendment could retain its second clause, which would ban gender-affirming care. In essence, Missouri Republicans are offering people the opportunity to attack trans kids in exchange for giving up their fundamental reproductive rights, a cynical reflection on the state of American politics.

New York is also in the middle of litigation against both the NLRB and Amazon over a new law that gives the state jurisdiction over labor disputes when the federal labor board does not have a quorum. The law allows New York’s Public Employment Relations Board to issue complaints and adjudicate cases between unions and employers, a power that conservatives are attempting to neuter at the federal level. There are currently several lawsuits challenging the very existing of the NLRB, which would make state boards even more critical.

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