Great news for voting rights and overdue relief in Florida
And live from the nurses picket line
Welcome to a Monday edition of Progress Report.
We’ve got a packed newsletter filled with (mostly) good news tonight, so instead of opening with one of those meandering and insightful introductions, I’m going to hop right into the (mostly) good stuff.
Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: Bill, Muriel, Louise, Andrew, Gerard, and Jean!
Florida
Let’s kick off with some long-overdue and deeply gratifying news: Manny Diaz has finally resigned as chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
While Democrats pulled major upset after upset elsewhere in the country this November, the party got absolutely walloped by Republicans in the Sunshine State. There are a lot of factors that go into the kind of systemic failure that allows a loathsome bully like Ron DeSantis to win re-election by a whopping 19 points, but it all ultimately comes back to Diaz, who was heralded as a prolific fundraiser but wound up driving the Florida Democratic Party into a empty ditch.
Progress Report made waves soon after the November election with this comprehensive report on the disaster behind the scenes of the FDP, and going forward, we’ll be watching and advocating to make sure the solutions proposed line up with the reality on the ground. More on Florida further down in this newsletter.
Minnesota
Long stymied by a small Republican majority in the state Senate, Democrats in Minnesota now have full control of government. With so many policies stalled over the past eight years, the party has backlog of issues to address. Here are a few of their priorities, via the Pioneer Press:
Paid leave: Ensure all workers have access to paid family leave and can earn sick time. A universal program would cost about $1 billion a year and likely be funded through a new payroll tax
Childcare: Establish a new child tax credit of $3,000 a year per child, capped at $7,500, to help pay for child care. Expand options for affordable care and preschool.
Climate change: Transition the state to 100 percent clean energy by 2040 and make it easier for residents to buy and use electric vehicles.
Legislators kicked off the work on Monday by introducing a comprehensive new voting rights bill. Its main provisions are as follows:
Allow 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote
Permit voters to opt-in to a permanent absentee voter list
Require voting materials in multiple languages and strengthen voter intimidation and deception penalties
Establish automatic voter registration at many state agencies
Create a public fund for campaign contributions that provides citizens with vouchers worth $25 apiece to give to candidates of their choice
Restore the right to vote for individuals who are no longer incarcerated for a felony conviction.
With more state governments in Democrats’ hands this cycle, we’re going to see a deepening divide in access to the ballot. Democratic states continue to expand voting rights, while many GOP states are aiming to further restrict access to the ballot.
Arizona
Here’s a great example of that dichotomy. Because Democrat Katie Hobbs won just over 17,000 more votes than Republican Kari Lake in the Arizona gubernatorial election in November, there will be a bipartisan panel studying state’s election laws instead of a pack of conspiracy-addled lunatics trying to torch the entire thing.
The governor set up the panel, which will have at least 11 members, to guarantee representation from various interests, including Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes or his designee as well as two county recorders nominated by Senate President Warren Petersen of Gilbert and House Speaker Ben Toma of Peoria, both of whom both Republicans.
Also included will be an election security expert who will be named later, two election directors nominated by counties, a member of a “voting advocacy organization,’’ someone who has a background in campaign finance laws and someone who understands election equipment and technology.
The panel’s report is due in November, and there’s no guarantee that any of its recommendations will become law. It may not even come to an agreed upon set of recommendations, because at least one of the Republican legislators invoked above is an election fraud kook. Hobbs will use this panel as a way to create another pressure point in the Arizona GOP’s civil war, perhaps isolating the true far-right degenerates.
Missouri
Speaking of trying to take a torch to democracy, the Republican supermajority in Missouri is hoping once again to make the ballot initiative process essentially off-limits to citizen campaigns. The big debate right now is over how they’re going to do it.
Republican lawmakers say it’s too easy to amend the constitution but don’t have a consensus on how that legislation should work.
Options include increasing the number of signatures needed to get an issue on the ballot or increasing the number of votes needed to approve it.
Incoming Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, said he’s in favor of upping the voting approval threshold.
“I'm personally not in favor of changing signature requirements, and you know, a whole host of these other things, which I think are literally just designed functionally to make it harder to get on the ballot,” Rowden said.
Missourians have voted to approve Medicaid expansion and recreational weed legalization via ballot initiative over the past two cycles, and now activists are aiming to use the process to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Republicans are rushing to prevent that from happening.
Labor Rights
More than 7000 nurses across New York City went on strike today over stagnant pay and dangerously low staffing levels. This morning, I headed over to Mt. Sinai, one of the hospitals that has yet to reach an agreement with the union, to check out what was a very rowdy picket line.
Here’s an interview I did with a nurse:
And check out some of the photos I took on the scene:
Negotiators are back at it tonight, but if they don’t strike a deal, I’ll be back on the scene tomorrow.
Housing
It’s a drop in the bucket in terms of what’s needed to really fix the national affordable housing crisis, but I do like the spirit and potential of this little clause in the latest government spending bill.
Included in the $1.7 trillion “omnibus” government funding package Congress passed before the holidays, and that President Biden signed last week, are $85 million in new Housing and Urban Development grants for cities aimed at the “identification and removal of barriers to affordable housing production and preservation.”
The “Yes In My Backyard” grants are designed to help counter “NIMBY” or “Not in My Backyard” opposition to allowing a broader range of housing in neighborhoods around the country.
The grants, according to the law, are intended to encourage cities to pass policies like “increasing density, reducing minimum lot sizes, creating transit-oriented development zones, streamlining or shortening permitting processes” and expanding areas where multifamily housing is allowed.
According to the omnibus, HUD will award grants to cities that demonstrate “a commitment to overcoming local barriers to facilitate the increase in affordable housing production and preservation.” Cities with “an acute demand” for housing affordable to households below the median income in their area will also get preference for the grants.
Changing zoning is probably the single biggest thing that can be done to break the years of sluggish housing production and create denser (and less racist) neighborhoods. There are often knock-down, drag-out battles in smaller cities over these changes, but we’ve got a generation of mostly renters coming through now, so that should slowly change.
New College of Florida
Students, alumni, and faculty were left reeling on Friday when DeSantis announced his plan to remake the forward-looking liberal arts college in the image of a regressive Christian institution run by Republican fanatics. I’ve been getting emails from current and former students expressing anger, fear, and defiance since the news broke, and over the next week or two, I’ll be sharing snippets from the messages along with updates about what does not have to be a done deal and lost cause.
Here’s part of an email from a New College grad from the class of 1980:
As to why DeSantis is targeting the College, I beilieive it has to do with his thirst for national publicity as he continues his quest for the Presidency of the US in 2024. DeSantis thrives on that publicity and he knows how to get it. Seeing as how both CBS Miami and the NY Post have picked up the story, I think he's accomplished that. The appointment of Rufo in this context is also understandable. Rufo is a master at monetizing anger and controversy or creating situations that can be monetized in the future. This appointment makes a lot of sense when viewed in that light.
I'm not certain how this is going to play out, but rest assured that there are already active discussions going on in all the stakeholder groups, alums, students, faculty, and staff. New College has faced tough challenges in it's over fifty-year history, and successfully met those challenges. Rest assured we will do the same with this latest challenge.
Here’s a former student who graduated in 2021:
If this guy remakes the school in his image, it will lose all of the openness that makes it special. The whole point of NCF is that you find your own way with support of some really brilliant and intellectually honest faculty and staff. It's not about indoctrination — it's about support, so that you can discover things for yourself.
And another recent grad:
It's hard for me to process the seriousness of this situation - not just for New College, but the entire state of Florida's education system. Likewise, this sets a dangerous nationwide precedent: that public education is under attack in favor of fascist indoctrination. Once they seek to change the curriculum, the culture will be forever altered, and what makes this school truly special will be destroyed.
In my mind, New College is a fantastic incubator for transformative change in our world. This scares DeSantis, and that's why he appointed these trustees.
As a newly re-elected governor, DeSantis is making these decisions from a position of power, but as both an intolerant tool and a presidential aspirant, he’s making them from a position of fear and paranoia. Students and observers in Florida alike have pointed out that picking on a small school like New College gives DeSantis what he must perceive as a low-risk target, as uproar at even its demise could conceivably be quite minimal. But based on the conversations I’m having, there will be a lot of noise — starting with the pressure that will be put on the state Senate, which has to approve all of DeSantis’s nominations.
DeSantis is counting on the broader public not knowing much about Christopher Rufo, so one of the first orders of business will be exposing his most extreme positions, which will only be difficult in so much that he’s said so many awful things that choosing which quotes to highlight could create real arguments.
More DeSantis tyranny
This entire newsletter could be about Ron DeSantis and never run out of scandals and outrages to cover.
Just over two years to the day of the original DC vintage, Brazil yesterday experienced its own version of a January 6th insurrection. More than 1500 diehard dead-enders ransacked the Capitol complex in Brasilia, demanding the return to power of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro, who has spent the last week exploring the grocery stores and McMansions of Central Florida.
Any attempt to violently overthrow a freely and democratically elected government constitutes an existential threat, but the juxtaposition between reactionary would-be revolutionaries shrieking through armed combat and the suburban mundanity of their prophet wandering around Publix is also grimly funny. The same goes for the American insurrection that sought the reinstallment of former president Donald Trump — both were terrifying events, but the fervent devotion to the dimmest conmen in history represents the endpoint of satire.
To be clear, Bolsonaro created the conditions for the the Brasilia insurrection, and likely very involved in stirring it up alongside Trump operatives like Steve Bannon. He did so from afar thanks to DeSantis’s quiet acquiescence to the presence of a pedophile-apologist, sex creep, and human rights violator. DeSantis still hasn’t said a word about Bolsonaro’s tour of Florida’s finest KFCs, largely because he hasn’t been asked about it by a complicit political media.
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Always a good, informative read. I’ve gotten news that even some other progressive news sources haven’t covered as well or as in depth.