Democrats take big leads in key Senate polls
And more good news
Welcome to a Sunday night edition of Progress Report.
Got a quick newsletter for you tonight, focused on some good news from the past week. It ranges from big election polls to nuanced housing policy, and I’m trying to figure out which kind of thing people like better in this newsletter.
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Democratic Senate candidates: I wrestled with how exactly to list this one, because if you’re running for office in November, you can’t exactly be a “winner” based on a poll in March. But numbers like this aren’t a fluke, and portend what could be a historic year, so screw it, let’s embrace good news when it’s available.
In Alaska, a new poll has Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola up nearly five points on incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, in the final round of ranked choice voting.
In North Carolina, former Gov. Roy Cooper is up eight points on RNC Chair Michael Whatley.
In Maine, it’s a seven-point lead for Graham Platner over very concerned Republican incumbent Susan Collins.
In Ohio, former Sen. Sherrod Brown has a two-point lead over appointed incumbent John Husted — in a poll conducted by a GOP firm.
None of these polls mean that victory is guaranteed, and we all know that a Democrat winning a Senate election doesn’t exactly guarantee progressive legislation (or stopping bad conservative legislation). Voters have to be engaged year-round, not just right before election day. Such is the value of protests like No Kings Day, which remind Democrats that there are material benefits to siding with the vast majority of Americans — and consequences for turning your back on them.
Libs in Wisconsin (so far, tentatively): Another year, another pivotal state Supreme Court election in the Badger State.
Liberals flipped the court in 2023, taking control after 15 years in the minority, and kept their majority in last year’s ultra-high-profile election. This year, the race is to replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, and if liberals win again, they’ll expand their majority on the high court to 5-2, a remarkable turnaround from where it was just a few years ago.
This election hasn’t been nearly as buzzy as the $100 million race last year, which is reflected in the most recent public opinion snapshot: with just two weeks to go before election day, a new poll found 53% of Wisconsinites undecided about who they’d support. On the plus side, state Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the Democratic-backed candidate in the race, holds a solid 23-17% lead over her Republican counterpart, Judge Maria Lazar.
It’s worth noting just how much the Wisconsin Supreme Court has changed in just a few years: In 2022, Bradley wrote a majority opinion banning ballot drop boxes, and since then, she has been on the losing side in cases that have tossed Wisconsin’s abortion ban and gerrymandered maps, among others. Like retiring House Speaker Robin Vos, she’s simply taking her ball and going home. Good riddance.
As for the gubernatorial race in Wisconsin, there’s some good news there, too: every Democratic candidate save one is leading Rep. Tom Tiffany.
Civil rights in New Jersey: New Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed three bills intended to limit municipal cooperation with ICE and protect NJ’s large immigrant population.
The first bill, which former Gov. Phil Murphy refused to sign, essentially codifies the Immigrant Trust Directive, instructions given by the state’s attorney general in 2018. Here’s the gist:
The legislation blocks state and local police from aiding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in raids or providing them with local law enforcement resources, including office space, databases, and property. State correctional officers also cannot allow ICE to interview individuals detained on criminal charges, and New Jersey prosecutors cannot use a defendant’s immigration status as the sole measure for detaining them before trial.
The other two new laws limit when ICE agents can wear masks in public and prevents the government and healthcare providers from collecting and sharing some personal information, including immigration status. A full quarter of people living in New Jersey are immigrants, including half a million who are undocumented, and much of Sherrill’s first few months in office has been spent working to protect them.
Charles Barkley: The NBA Hall-of-Famer and iconic broadcaster used a post-game discussion of UConn’s thrilling Elite Eight victory over Duke tonight to condemn ICE’s brutality, appealing to Americans’ better angels in an uncharacteristically serious and understated commentary:
UConn’s come-from-behind victory was an instant classic, so millions of people wer watching Barkley’s coherent, rational, and compassionate appeal to humanity. And deliciously, he made the comments on CBS, which has otherwise become a vehicle for Larry Ellison and Bari Weiss’s pandering to the far-right. Given just how terribly Weiss’s rebooted CBS Evening News is performing, she might want to take notes.
America’s Social Safety Net: The Trump administration whiffed big time in its attempt to find a critical mass of undocumented immigrants stealing health insurance benefits… because it doesn’t exist.
Last year, the White House sent the names of hundreds of thousands of suspected undocumented recipients of Medicaid to states, with the explicit instructions that they perform background checks and remove those confirmed ineligible beneficiaries. But according to KFF, their lists were almost entirely useless.
Officials in Colorado and Pennsylvania told the nonprofit that they could not find a single improper beneficiary among the 79,000 names they checked, while Texas identified a mere 77 out of 28,000 people screened. In Ohio, it was 260 out of over 65,000 people investigated.
The administration has been banging the “waste, fraud, and abuse” drum as a way to justify draconian cuts to the low-income health insurance program, but the facts simply contradict it. For Republicans, the cruelty is the point, and they really ought to just admit it.
Patients in New York: In a rare twist, the Department of Justice is pursuing an antitrust case against a powerful institution that may, even if incidentally, benefit consumers.
The NewYork-Presbyterian hospital system runs eight major hospitals in downstate New York, giving it control of more than 30% of the patient discharges in Manhattan. That’s a huge market share, and the DOJ is accusing the hospital system of using its size to force insurance companies into placing it in more favorable benefit categories despite charging higher prices.
In doing so, NYP allegedly ices out other, cheaper hospital systems like Mount Sinai and NYU, thereby forcing patients to pay higher premiums and more out-of-pocket charges. I can attest to this: my insurer dropped Mount Sinai and I currently owe NewYork-Presbyterian over $500 for a heart check-up that was ostensibly covered by my plan. NYP was recently in the news because thousands of its nurses went on strike for weeks in pursuit of a fair contract that protects patients. Incidentally, the non-profit hospital system’s CEO made $26 million last year.
A Medicare for All system would solve a lot of these problems, so highlighting and prosecuting these scams serves the dual purpose of improving access and showing just how broken our current healthcare system has become.
Affordable Housing in Washington: It was a rough week for NIMBYs in the Evergreen State, where Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a raft of pro-housing laws that will limit local governments’ ability to say no to housing for low-income residents.
The marquee bill will require local governments to permit the construction of transitional and permanent supportive housing in both residential and hotel development zones. Many communities — especially wealthier ones — refuse to permit the construction of this kind of housing, which provides homeless people with safe places to stay and long-term homes for disabled people. Now, local governments cannot hold such housing to higher standards than any other development.
One of the other laws signed by the governor prevents local governments from barring residential building on land zoned for mixed-use — think strip malls and other commercial developments. That may sound small, but one of the more positive trends in housing these days is the unexpected mixed-use fusion of large commercial projects with affordable housing, including this Costco in LA that will have 800 units attached, including 180 reserved for low-income residents:
As a bonus, you could go get a cheap hot dog for lunch every day to further add to the affordability factor.
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