Big primary wins in the Sunbelt

More victories over corporate-approved politicians

Welcome to a premium Wednesday evening edition of Progress Report.

As I mentioned last night, we’d prepped to send out a packed newsletter to subscribers before the massacre in Texas gutted anyone with half a conscience and made it impossible to focus on anything but that rampage, the larger civil war turning that is this country into a theocratic terrorist state, and the sclerotic leaders that have failed to even recognize the aggressive rot that has overtaken their beloved institutions.

Yes, I’m still fired up, still heartbroken, and still outraged. The impotent response from too many Democrats today, the late-breaking news of the police that allowed those innocent children and heroic teachers to be engulfed by hellfire, and new lows achieved by politicians whose cynicism has reached demonic proportions — it’s all too much to process, and some permutation of each seems to present itself every single day.

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins

Amerie Jo Garza's father, a med aide, says he found out she was one of the victims when he arrived on the scene and was helping another little girl covered in blood. She told him her best friend had been shot. When he asked her name, she said his daughter's. There aren't words.

The best reason I can give you to believe that we can transcend this bleak epoch is that there are good people who are working every single day to make it so. In some places, they are even making progress in their individual and collective battles to topple or reorient power structures.

Tonight and tomorrow, we’re going to be talking about some of those fights and the victories they’re racking up. Instead of sending an even longer version of what was originally supposed to be Tuesday’s newsletter, I’m breaking it into two more digestible pieces. We’ll look at election news tonight, and tomorrow afternoon, premium subscribers will get a piece on another exciting front in the ongoing struggle to wrest back power from the exploitative few.

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The entire House leadership pulled every string and spent every dollar they could to protect the corrupt Congressman Henry Cuellar from accountability, and at the moment, it seems as if he may have survived by the thinnest of margins. But in many other places, voters openly embraced a progressive agenda and dismissed the members that abused their trust and regularly sided with right-wing lawmakers and business lobbyists over their own constituents.