Hope after the Supreme disaster

Good things are happening away from Washington

Welcome to a Saturday morning edition of Progress Report.

Thursday’s newsletter focused on the Supreme Court’s central role in the right-wing war on modern life and Democratic leaders’ refusal to push back as tens of millions of Americans lose their rights. The reactionary supermajority continued that war yesterday with two decisions so driven by antipathy and impunity that the details of each case — including whether plaintiffs were actually harmed or even exist — were essentially irrelevant.

It’s not going to get much better without intervention, either. In one of the most egregious examples of its members’ legal and moral nihilism, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a law that prevents domestic abusers with restraining orders against them from acquiring firearms. Maybe their master plan is to foster so many mass shootings that people won’t even need to worry about living long enough to pay their debts?

Today, we’re going to touch on a few important implications from the court’s decisions and dive into the important stories from across the country that have flown under the radar this week (and probably would have every other week, as well). Great stuff on abortion rights, affordable housing, ballot initiatives, and climate change, among other topics.

Needless to say, you may feel a fair bit more optimistic when you’re done reading this email. And not just because the Orcas may be coming to punish the wicked and save the rest of us.

This is incontrovertibly true, by the way.

Oh, and yeah, Twitter is broken. Perhaps forever, fingers crossed. I’ll be posting in Substack Notes more and you can also find me on Bluesky for as long as that’s an ongoing concern.

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Direct Democracy

It’s Hard to tell whether conservatives are more hell-bent on dismantling democracy or ending abortion everywhere they can. In Missouri, Republicans are giving it their all to do both at once, throwing relentless obstacles at activists seeking to codify reproductive rights via constitutional amendment.

The legislature failed this spring to raise the threshold for passing an amendment, but according to a new suit by the ACLU, Secretary of State (and gubernatorial candidate) Jay Ashcroft is trying to sabotage the effort with unfair and misleading language on the initiative itself.

The group is asking Cole County Judge Jon Beetem to toss Ashcroft’s language, which, in part, would ask voters to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions.”

Ashcroft “disregarded his duty to craft a sufficient and fair summary statement and instead certified one that is argumentative against adoption of the Initiative, is misleading as to the Initiative’s probable effects, and prejudicial,” the lawsuit said.

Ashcroft knows that Missourians are likely to support the measure when it’s described fairly and accurately, so this is as scummy as it gets.

And in other Show Me State ballot news, a gun-control group called Sensible Missouri is seeking to qualify an amendment that would allow local governments to enact stricter gun laws than the almost non-existent ones in place on the state level.

Right now, they’re polling three separate options: