Good news in the places you'd least expect it
Good news in the places you'd least expect it
Some surprises and logical results
Welcome to a very exciting midweek edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Lots of news today, but before that, a little plug…
Today I had the honor of hosting a Q&A session about criminal justice reform, online fundraising, and grassroots progressive activism over at Reddit. The community was very welcoming and asked a lot of great questions — I’m still answering them! — and gave me a lot to think about. You can read the whole thing here!
Good Election News! In Oklahoma and Kentucky!
I’m not saying either state is going to flip blue in the November presidential election, but progressive energy is beginning to make a dent in both Oklahoma and Kentucky.
Yesterday, voters in Oklahoma approved a constitutional amendment that will opt the state into the Medicaid expansion offered by the Affordable Care Act. The ballot initiative squeaked through by a single point, but it still marks both a significant victory for working people in the state and the end of a long and arduous political debate.
As I wrote earlier this week, Oklahomans voted to outright reject Obamacare in 2012. While a court ruled that they couldn’t just reject a federal law, once the Supreme Court made the Medicaid expansion optional, Oklahoma Republicans kept the state out of the program.
Meanwhile, the uninsured rate in the state ballooned to 15% last fall and has climbed even higher this spring, making a continued blockade of $1.3 billion in federal dollars for healthcare just untenable. Once Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed his own limited Medicaid expansion bill this June, it paved the way for voters to go to the polls and get it done themselves. Should Republicans not play games with implementation, about 200,000 working people will get free government-sponsored healthcare.
Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Charles Booker may have fallen just short in his insurgent Senate primary campaign, but the energy it produced proved to be a big help for at least one down-ballot Democrat. Team Blue flipped a seat in the Kentucky State Senate for the first time since 2010 as Karen Berg beat her Republican opponent in a special election to fill the term of retiring GOP Sen. Ernie Harris.
Trump won the 26th State Senate district by 12 points in 2016, but it’s been trending blue ever since. Berg nearly beat Harris in the 2018 election and Gov. Andy Beshear won the district last November. Berg then crushed Republican Bill Ferko in the special election, winning by nearly 14 points.
Progressives running for office is a good thing. Primaries are a good thing. Engaged voters are a good thing.
More nice news in Oklahoma:
Really! In Oklahoma!
Should she win the general election, Mauree Turner will also be the first Muslim member of the Oklahoma legislature. She’s a professional criminal justice advocate for the ACLU and serves on the board of the Council of American-Islamic Relations.
A progressive non-binary Black Muslim is going to sit in the Oklahoma state legislature. Amazing.
More criminal justice reform news:
In Ohio, the State Senate passed a major criminal justice reform bill that would deescalate the war on drugs and make a dent in mass incarceration:
Under Senate Bill 3, most drug possession crimes that currently are a fourth or fifth-degree felony, which carry the possibility of prison time and the stigma of being a convicted felon, would be changed to misdemeanors. It also makes it easier for someone who’s been convicted of felony drug possession under the existing standard to have their record sealed, and allows courts to put an indefinite hold on a drug case if the defendant successfully complies with terms of treatment.
Before the Black Lives Matter protests broke out in late May, criminal justice reform was one of the few issues that could still inspire bipartisan action. While some members of the GOP are jumping on Trump’s racist “LAW & ORDER” bandwagon, it’s nice to see that progress is still possible.
More news after this…
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Wisconsin voter purge update:
Earlier this week, a federal court significantly reduced Wisconsin’s early voting period and made it far more difficult for voters to get absentee ballots. It was a sizable setback for voting rights activists and progressives in the state, but they did get some good news on Wednesday, as the state Supreme Court indicated that it likely wouldn’t issue a ruling on the contentious voter purge case until after the November election.
A conservative group called the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (lol) has been pushing to wipe 230,000 voters from the rolls in the months before the election, and given the current makeup of the state Supreme Court, it seemed likely that WILL would get its wish.
Coronavirus update:
Ugh, shit is bad.
Remember when the coronavirus was still relatively new and Republicans were revealing their ghoulish souls by shrugging and saying that eh, whatever, you’re gonna die at some point so why not sacrifice yourself for the billionaires who run the economy? Dan Patrick, Texas’s Republican Lt. Governor, was proudly carrying that nihilist flag, literally saying insane stuff like “there are more important things than living and that’s saving this country” and volunteering old people to suffer horrible deaths so bars could open.
Patrick got disappeared soon after, leaving the poor decision-making and cringe-worthy responses to Gov. Ken Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton. They’ve done a pretty solid job of making a mess of things, but it was only a matter of time until Patrick popped back up to say some more really dumb stuff. He chose a friendly audience on Fox News last night to make his grand return:
“Fauci said today that he’s concerned about states like Texas that skipped over certain things,” Patrick told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Tuesday. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. We haven’t skipped over anything. The only thing I’m skipping over is listening to him.”
Hours before Patrick’s remarks, state health officials reported unprecedented numbers: more than 6,500 new cases of COVID-19 and more than 6,000 hospitalizations.
Patrick was referring to Fauci’s remarks to federal lawmakers Tuesday, telling them he’s concerned about a “disturbing surge” of infections in Texas, Florida and Arizona.
“He has been wrong every time on every issue,” Patrick said. “I don’t need his advice anymore.”
What a jackass.
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