Good abortion rights news in red states. Really!

Plus: A new twist in NYC, affordable housing, gun control, and more

Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.

This is the Weekend Rundown, where we highlight stories that have gone under the radar and take a closer look at some of the big headlines making our heads spin. And because this has been such a bummer week, I’m highlighting positive news that will make you feel a little bit better about the state of the country.

The good news includes a number of stories on abortion rights, affordable housing, civil rights, and gun control.

Note: Unlike many progressive advocacy journalists, I’ve gone fully independent, with no special advertising deals or close relationships with powerful politicians to temper what I write.

For the next two days only, you can help keep Progress Report afloat and fighting for 50% off a normal subscription. Just $3.50 a month can make a huge difference.

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You don’t mess with the Zohran

All politicians make compromises and calculations. Few do it as transparently as Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres.

Consider his history: Back when he served on the NYC City Council, Torres was a loud and ferocious leftist, carrying himself as one of the leaders of a rising movement that looked poised to dominate the state’s politics.

Once he entered Congress, he moved the right, a shift coonciding with a centrist backlash and AIPAC’s decision to fund primaries against leftists. Last year, Torres even declared that he was no longer a progressive.

His virulently pro-Israel, pro-corporate transformation continued this spring, when he condemned Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani during the primary campaign, endorsed disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and embraced the “Abundance” movement. He also teased a primary challenge against Gov. Kathy Hochul, displaying his ambition.

Then Mamdani walloped Cuomo and murmurs began that former Assemblyman Michael Blake, a progressive who gained notice near the end of the mayoral primary for whacking Cuomo during a debate, might challenge Torres for his seat in Congress. And suddenly, he began to change his tune.

It began with a newfound commitment to his work in Congress, reversing months of teasing a potential run for Albany. After four years of striving for relevance on the national and international stages, the congressman from the poorest district in the nation found himself deeply concerned with the impact of the GOP reconciliation bill. He’s also done a remarkable about face on the new Democratic nominee for mayor, speaking out twice in Mamdani’s defense in just a few days.

First, Torres told the press that he plans to file a resolution condemning GOP Rep. Andy Ogles for his racist tweets about Mamdani, including the suggestion that he should be denaturalized and deported.

“I have profound differences of opinion with Assembly member Mamdani, but we had a mutually respectful conversation last weekend, and we’re committed to building a relationship and continuing the dialogue,” Torres said during a spot on MSNBC.

It wasn’t an endorsement, but the resolution and commitment to building a relationship went beyond the steps taken by other centrist New York Democrats to build bridges with the party’s populist new star. And on Friday, he not only passed up a seemingly golden chance to criticize Mamdani, but actually defended him when asked about the idiotic “scandal” around the mayoral nominee’s college application that was dredged up by the New York Times and a neo-Nazi.

Representative Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who endorsed Mr. Mamdani’s chief rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, in the primary, said that he believed that, “within reason, we should all be the arbiters of our own identity.”

“I have had political opponents question the authenticity of Afro-Latino identity, and question my blackness,” he said. “And I deeply, deeply resent it. It makes my blood boil.”

Mr. Torres, who has written about the contours of race and ethnicity in U.S. politics, added that he believed that “the game of questioning identity can be a sordid business and should be avoided. Elections should be about ideas, not identities.”

Don’t get me wrong: I fully agree with Torres here. It’s just startling to see such a comment from him after he’s spent nearly three years siding with the identity politics of AIPAC, which absolutely loathes Mamdani.

I don’t think this indicates some personal evolution; instead, it could be something better: Torres is like a weathervane, and his directional shifts offer an indication of which way the wind is blowing within the Democratic Party.

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One more NYC story: Zohran’s charm and laser focus on the outrageous cost of living in NYC were a big part of his victory, but he wouldn’t have gotten over the finish line without his army of 50,000 highly motivated volunteers. Here’s how his team put that army together, something that Democrats of all ideological stripes can learn from.

Fighting for reproductive rights

It was a tough week for women’s health advocates (and decent people everywhere): the Supreme Court ruled that states could boot Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs, while the GOP’s budget bill essentially defunds the organization nationwide (pending the results of a coming lawsuit).

But there was better news in the states, which should offer some hope in this very bleak time.