Do elections still have consequences?

Depends on who wins — and whether or not they're poor

Welcome to a Friday night edition of Progress Report.

How about those New York Knicks?!

Their win tonight was the sort of instantly iconic event that will live forever in the subconscious of long-suffering fans. It’s the sort of win that gets mixed into the surreal tapestry of post-coma ketamine hallucinations (I know from experience), the kind of three-hour diversion that allows you to continue to confront our bleak reality. Sports: I recommend them.

Hope is hard to come by these days, which is why later this weekend, I’ll be doing a good news deep dive for paid subscribers. Tonight’s newsletter takes a slightly different tact, but one that is just as important.

Before we get there, though, there’s one quick follow-up on Thursday’s big piece on Medicaid cuts that underscores its importance.

By the way, we’ll have more live video interviews coming up soon, so keep an eye out for those announcements!

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That’s bad news, because subscription support means that I can publish scoops on national security failures and host live streams on breaking election news. It’s why I can highlight grassroots activists doing work that few are covering. And how I can speak truth to power.

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Republicans have spent the past week talking up their eugenics agenda as merely a case of implementing some “work requirements” on Medicaid recipients in order to reduce fraud and waste. That term has been picked up and repeated ad nauseam by the political media, effectively laundering what is an outright lie on behalf of conservatives who have designs on kicking 13 million people off of health coverage.

On Thursday, I wrote an urgent plea to end the use of the term “work requirements,” and new data illustrates why it’s so politically important to change the rhetoric around what Republicans have proposed for the nation’s largest health insurance program.

A poll conducted last month by Data for Progress shows how quickly support for the “work requirement” policy falls when it’s reframed as a penalty on people who lose their jobs. The American bootstrap ethos and conservative propaganda-driven suspicion that people are taking advantage of the system has often led to a soft spot for means testing, at least in the abstract, but reality — and the recognition that it could hit close to home — tends to sour that support, especially for such big and widely used programs.

In this case, even calling it a “job loss penalty” is too generous to the Republican plan, as the litmus test for maintaining Medicaid wouldn’t be employment status, but instead the ability to regularly obtain and complete onerous amounts of paperwork. As a result, millions of people who either still have jobs or are too otherwise unable to work would lose their health care, which is even less popular with voters than what Data for Progress suggests.

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Do Elections Still Have Consequences?

Emboldened by nearly a decade of lawlessness from the top, Republicans in state capitals continue to overturn the will of voters, suppress the electorate, and upend the idea that elections — no matter the outcomes — have consequences. The result is a growing sense that voting is futile in many places, the acceptance of which has long been a hallmark of authoritarianism.

Take what’s happening in states where voters overwhelmingly supported ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments designed to expand their rights and economic opportunities.

Voters in Missouri are feeling extreme whiplash today after the GOP supermajority used the last gasp of the legislature on Thursday to disregard the results of last fall’s two major ballot initiatives.

First, Republicans used an arcane procedural maneuver to repeal parts of Proposition A, stripping workers of their right to accrue paid sick leave and repealing annual inflation-based increases to the minimum wage after 2026.

Both policies are overwhelmingly popular and made up the core of a proposition that won nearly 58% of the vote in November despite a significant opposition campaign waged by the state’s business lobby. The Chamber of Commerce also sued to have the election overturned, but the 11th-hour legislative knifing got most of the job done. The state’s minimum wage will increase to $15 next year, but a one-time raise will be all that’s left for hundreds of thousands of Missourians.

Workers and advocates protested the repeal in front of the state capitol building in Springfield yesterday, and afterwards, I asked an organizer who helped pass Prop A whether they planned to back another initiative to reinstate the sick leave mandate and annual minimum wage bumps. The last-minute chicanery that led to the repeal’s passage means that the coalition is now evaluating its options, and it’s still early, but nothing is off the table.

Do yourself a favor and watch the speech above by a long-time fast food worker named Fran Marion. She tells a heart-wrenching personal story with a defiance that seems like it should be impossible to muster, then winds into an explanation of the urgency of solidarity in the face of corporate America’s insatiable greed and relentless attacks on working people.

Fran has a talent that at least some organizers have finally recognized, which is something of a minor miracle. She’s exactly the kind of person who should be running for office, not getting evicted for missing a week of work while sick with the flu (not that anybody should be experiencing that, obviously).

Given her circumstances and how our political systems and recruitment apparatus operate, especially as it pertains to fundraising, that seems like a pipe dream. It’s yet another reason why it’s so important to rebuild the power of organized labor and build a real pipeline for working class candidates.

Progressives will have to re-win at least one enormous issue campaign in the near-future, as Republicans this week also used the legislative procedure to pass a bill that will put abortion back on the ballot once again.

Missourians voted to enshrine the right to reproductive care in the state constitution last fall, overturning the ultra-strict abortion ban that had been in place since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The story here is a familiar one: After voters made their will abundantly clear, conservatives first tried to stymie the new law, lost in court, and then used their supermajority to thwart democracy.

In this case, the fact that voters amended the state constitution means that it will require another statewide vote; instead of a straight repeal, Republicans have added a few minor first trimester exceptions to the abortion ban, to try to satisfy the soft pro-choice crowd, and a ban on all trans care for minors, to entice the bigots and weirdos. Voters will have their say once again in November 2026, unless the governor schedules a special election ahead of that.

Oligarchy gets sloppy with power

A similar situation is playing out in Nebraska, where lawmakers are also eager to spit in the face of voters and roll back key elements of pro-worker policies approved in November.

We’ll get to that, but first let’s highlight the at least temporarily positive update news on the effort to curb the minimum wage increase that voters approved in 2022. This has been put on pause thanks to some of the most ingenious legislative maneuvering I’ve seen from a Democratic lawmaker in quite some time.