Colorado wants to tax the rich to feed the poor
And GOP states are attacking abortion once again
Welcome to a Friday night edition of Progress Report.
The government is still closed, but the President of the United States is still spending your hard-earned money on stupid AI-generated videos and memes.
Lots of news to discuss in the states tonight, so let’s jump right into our deep-dive.
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Working for the public good
Michigan: Childhood advocates scored a big win this week as the legislature finally agreed to a state education budget that includes universal school meals — something that the Democratic trifecta hadn’t been able to achieve during Joe Tate’s underwhelming reign as House Speaker.
Colorado: Voters will get a chance to save the state’s SNAP program, which faces a 50% reduction in funding due to the GOP’s draconian budget reconciliation bill. More than 600,000 Coloradans benefit from the food aid program; if voters approve Propositions LL and MM, the state will raise taxes on those making above $300,000 to plug in the gap.
Also in Colorado: The state’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board made history this week when it voted to limit the price of arthritis medication Enbrel, capping it $600 per weekly dose to match what Medicare guidelines offer its manufacturer, Amgen. That would max out insurers’ outlay at $31,000 a year, whereas they currently average $53,000. Patients have to pay an average of $4600 per year out of pocket, a number that should drastically shrink should a court uphold the price cap.
Colorado was one of several states to set up a prescription drug affordability board in recent years, and the first to have that board actually follow through on its mandate. Other states with affordability boards include Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Washington. The hope is that if enough states vote to limit the price on a given medication, the drugmaker will be forced to sell it at a lower cost nationwide.
North Carolina: More than 80% of voters oppose partisan gerrymandering of the state’s legislative and Congressional district. Unfortunately, a three-judge panel just blessed the gerrymandering of the state Senate map, and lawmakers are considering redrawing the state’s Congressional map to get Republicans an even bigger advantage.
More Democratic primaries
Washington, DC: At-large councilman Robert White announced that he is mounting a primary challenge to Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s Congressional Delegate for more than 30 years.
His launch ad is deeply respectful of the legendary leader, for whom White worked for five years, but argues that the 88-year-old legislator’s inability to fight the Trump administration’s assault on the distract necessitates a new generation of leadership. A number of other local DC politicians, community leaders, and media figures are also considering entering the race.
New York City: Socialist City Councilwoman Alexa Avilés is exploring a primary campaign against Rep. Dan Goldman (NY-10), whose centrist politics and soft previous victories have made him a prime target for a resurgent left in New York City.
In 2022, Goldman squeaked out victory in a nine-way primary by just 1700 votes, capitalizing on a field split between four progressives and tapping both a huge personal fortune and generous support from AIPAC. He took just 65% against two no-name candidates in 2024, and his unwavering support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and pro-crypto voting record have further encouraged prospective challengers.
Avilés will only enter the race if she wins the backing of DSA, which seems like a foregone conclusion. The resurgent leftist organization’s endorsement won’t clear the field, though, and I’d bet that at least one other left-leaning candidate will jump in for a shot at representing a district that stretches from Lower Manhattan through north Brooklyn. There’s no reason someone as conservative as Goldman should hold the seat, which should be a platform for a true progressive leader.
Missouri: A year after losing a bitter primary against a one-time ally, former Rep. Cori Bush is running to win back her old seat in Congress. The St. Louis nurse-turned-activist-turned-politician officially announced her candidacy on Friday, setting up a rematch with Rep. Wesley Bell, a prosecutor who beat her by five points with help from millions of dollars from AIPAC.
The politics of supporting Israel have changed drastically among Democrats over the past year, to the point that even Hakeem Jeffries has begun to publicly distance himself from AIPAC. It’s likely that muscular support from a lobby group that has become synonymous with the genocide in Gaza and corruption of Democratic leaders is likely to be as much of a net positive as it was in 2024, and Bush could run as having been right about the war from early days.
That said, Bush doesn’t list Israel among the topics she wants to tackle in her launch press release, which points toward economic justice as the focal point of her campaign.
Fighting the housing cartel
Tenant power: Nine former tenants of Equity Residential are going on a debt strike in protest of abusive practices by the nation’s fifth-largest apartment owner. Equity Residential is already facing a strike by a large number of current tenants who refuse to pay shady utility fees. Their campaign is being backed by Debt Collective, which has done groundbreaking work on student and medical debt cancelation.
California: The people who govern homeowner associations are quietly some of the most powerful people in the country, with outsized control over people’s houses, communities, and in many cases, financial futures.
Fines from HOAs can sometimes become so steep that they lead to foreclosure, an unconscionable situation that California just addressed with a new law that drastically lowers punishments levied by obnoxious neighbors. Now, HOAs fines are capped at $100 across the state, ensuring that nobody is kicked out of their home because a busybody doesn’t like the color of their shingles. This is a big deal, because more than 65% of homeowners in California are subject to HOA rules.
It’s something: Greystar, the nation’s biggest landlord, would pay $50 million in a proposed settlement of a class action lawsuit over algorithm-based rent price-fixing. The minuscule fine would provide more than a third of the $125 million total owed by a consortium of more than 50 landlords who were sued over using RealPage to jack up rents in concert with one another.
Abortion rights under attack
South Carolina: Activists descended on Charleston this week for a volatile hearing over what would be the nation’s most punitive abortion ban. Dubbed the Unborn Child Protection Act, the bill would all but make saying the word “abortion” illegal in South Carolina, with a list of far-reaching draconian provisions that go beyond anything on the books in the United States.
The law would:
End exceptions for rape, incest, and fetal anomalies
Create criminal penalties for women who undergo an abortion, with penalties of up to 30 years.
Require employees at pregnancy crisis centers to testify against women who eventually undergo abortions
Fully outlaw abortion-inducing medication
Make it illegal to even tell somebody how to get an abortion.
Require doctors to try to resuscitate premature babies who die during delivery
Currently, South Carolina law bans abortion after six weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, fetal anomalies, and the life of the mother. Only 37% of South Carolinians support the current law, and the new proposal has split anti-abortion groups, some of whom do not believe that women should be prosecuted for ending their pregnancies.
Ohio: Republicans got smoked a few years back in a ballot initiative that legalized abortion in the Buckeye State, but they’re determined, no matter how politically unpopular, to make exercising that right as difficult as possible.
Over the past few months, lawmakers have introduced a series of bills that interfere with the right to choose; one would create a 24-hour wait period, another would force students to watch a pro-life propaganda video every year, and a third would just ban abortion altogether (which, again, is unconstitutional).
Missouri: Republicans in the Show Me State are taking a different approach to undermining a new pro-choice constitutional amendment, instead trying to trick voters into repealing it altogether.
For the second time, Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green has ruled that the ballot language for a new amendment proposed by Republicans does not sufficiently inform voters of its true intent. The proposed language says that the 2024 abortion rights amendment would be modified but gives no indication of the actual consequences; instead, it simply notes that it would allow “abortions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, rape, and incest.”
For any casual voter simply judging the amendment by the language on the ballot, the assumption would be the proposal actually provides additional abortion rights, when the opposite is true. In that way, it’s reminiscent of how the Ohio GOP screwed with the language in last year’s redistricting amendment, making it appear as if it would mandate gerrymandering instead of banning it.
Missouri’s secretary of state has one more chance to produce acceptable language; should he fail to do so, Judge Green will do it himself.
Not this guy again
Former Chicago mayor and all-around unpleasant guy Rahm Emanuel pulled a Rahm Emanuel this week: dropped an f-bomb in an ignorant rant that attempted to misrepresent vulgar centrism as actual populism.
Emanuel, who is fantasizing about a presidential campaign in 2028, snapped at a New York Magazine reporter for asking him about NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, pointing instead to the heartland as the future of Democratic politics.
“Why are we talking about the New York City mayor’s race and not about a Sioux City Democrat who just flipped a +11 Trump district in Iowa?” Emanuel said. “It’s because you are a New York City journalist with a fucking 917 area code.”
Had Emanuel been a subscriber to the Progress Report newsletter, he would have watched our interview with that Sioux City Democrat, Catelin Drey, and Drey shared Mamdani’s emphasis on grassroots, door-knocking, affordability-focused politics. You can watch that interview right here:
It’s a great flaw of the modern political media that news outlets have to refer to Rahm Emanuel as a potential presidential candidate just because he’s been making noises to friends about his delusions of grandeur.
He is a political relic whose instincts about public opinion have not changed in more than 30 years. The resume is historically awful: Emanuel put together a shambolic House majority in 2006, helped derail Barack Obama’s presidency as his shitty first chief of staff, and crashed out as Chicago mayor after hiding police murders from the public. He would earn fewer votes in a Democratic primary than Mike Gravel and the sooner he disappears, the better.
Frankly, the fact that I’m dedicating this much space to him in the newsletter is probably beneath me, but I really want to emphasize just how irrelevant and out-of-touch this guy is. Rahm Emanuel exists to trash progressives, service Wall Street donors, and undermine any sort of grassroots energy. He wants the Democratic Party to throw its coalition members under the bus in service of wooing imaginary centrist voters who are annoyed by all the same things that annoy him. There is no upside to his presence in politics or the national dialogue, and taking him seriously is just an embarrassing sign of terminal Beltway brain.
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Rahm Emanuel's description is amazing!😂