The Best Political News of 2023: Part 1

Lots of bullies got their comeuppance

Welcome to a Sunday night edition of Progress Report.

I’m sitting here listening to howling wind whip across Manhattan and driving rain collide with my window, flash flood warnings lighting up my phone. This particular kind of chaos shouldn’t be an issue in December, but we’re wrapping up warmest year on record, so this may be the new normal.

A holiday season of hurricane-like conditions instead of snowstorms matches the general gloom of the moment. The war in Gaza gets more tragic and intractable by the day, Senate Democratic leaders are pushing draconian and inhumane border policies, and President Biden is mired with the lowest approval ratings in history. There’s plenty more, but I’ll leave it at that.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the darkness during times like these, and there’s nothing wrong with wallowing now and again. But as we finish the year, we should also look back on the positive moments and monumental achievements that have taken place in 2023, as a reminder that significant progressive change isn’t just possible, but is happening with increasing regularity.

With that in mind, and in hopes of cheering you up if you need it, I’ve put together a deep dive into some of the best political news and policy developments of 2023. It’s big enough that I’m sending the first part tonight and will follow up with the second part on Tuesday. I’ve got that second part planned out, but I’m very open to suggestions for additional stories, so drop them in the comments.

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Democrats flip Virginia’s legislature

The 2021 election was truly an epic botch job by Virginia Democrats, who lost the governor’s mansion and state House while nearly losing the state Senate, too. Republicans maximize every ounce of power they get, so not only did a progressive legislative boom get cut short, weed legalization got bottled and voting rights took a hit, too.

The failure also had national implications, including the ascent of Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a new prototype for suburban conservative. Relatedly, the GOP romp also stoked the “parents’ rights” movement that has been such a nightmare since.

A similar outcome was predicted for this past fall’s election, but Youngkin, eager to prove himself as a presidential contender, put abortion front and center of the GOP’s agenda. In touting a 15-week abortion ban, he sought to prove that Republicans could neutralize or even win on the issue.

The gambit failed miserably, with Democrats flipping back the House of Delegates and growing their lead in the state Senate, thereby ending both Youngkin’s legislative agenda and hopes of being president. Now he’s doing things like proposing new funding for childcare, a pivot to an issue championed by his Democratic predecessor, Ralph Northam.

Michigan repeals its “Right to Work” law

After the Tea Party wave in 2010 put the GOP in control of state governments nationwide, Republicans in the Midwest used their newfound power to kneecap the labor unions that had built the region.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker pushed through Act 10, which stripped collective bargaining rights from public employees (more on this later). Over in Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder and his legislative leaders rewrote (abused) the rules in order to pass a “Right to Work” law, which allow employees in a unionized workplace to enjoy all the rights and benefits of a union without actually joining and paying dues.

In 2018, after nearly a decade under a terrible GOP gerrymander, Michiganders voted to create an independent redistricting committee charged with drawing fair maps. With an even playing field, unions went all-out to help Democrats flip the legislature in 2022, and buoyed by a dysfunctional state GOP, an abortion ballot initiative, and the popularity of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Democrats pulled it off.

I reported and produced the video above soon after the election, which goes much further in depth on the subject. According to the lawmakers featured, it helped nudge Democrats towards making good on their promise, making Michigan the first state in 58 years to repeal a “Right to Work” law.

North Carolina finally expands Medicaid

It had become an annual ritual: Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper would propose that the state expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and then Republicans would immediately reject the suggestion outright. Back and forth they went for five years, with little progress until 2022, when incentives from the Biden administration made it financially attractive and local Republicans were banging the drum about the death of rural hospitals.

GOP leaders began their turnaround that year, initially proposing a plan that had a work requirement and other adjustments. That didn’t pass, but by March of this year, GOP Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger, a longtime foe, was publicly advocating for the expansion in newspaper op-eds. It didn’t hurt that expanding Medicaid was popular with 73% of rural residents and even 57% of Republicans.

Republicans passed a bill but were refusing to move on the budget required to activate it, so Cooper took the initiative and announced that the state would do it on his terms if they didn’t get their shit together. The program officially expanded earlier this month. Now, 600,000 additional working class North Carolinians will have access to free government-sponsored health care

The feds get serious about antitrust

In September 1932, New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaigning as an unabashed populist, asked voters in Portland, OR to “judge me by the enemies I have made.”

The future president was discussing the importance of regulating public utilities and the furious response it would engender from unscrupulous monopolists. Quite fittingly, nobody has inspired nearly as much animosity from the right people in recent years as Lina Khan, who as chair of the Federal Trade Commission has moved aggressively to put the teeth back into antitrust law.

Khan, along with Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, have fundamentally reoriented the United States’ approach to business monopolies. After decades of laissez-faire permissiveness that led to oligopolies in most industries, the feds are now focused on preventing mega-mergers and anticompetitive behaviors perpetrated by corporate behemoths.

The CFPB has been ultra-busy with investigations and crackdowns on financial institutions, the DOJ is trying to block the JetBlue-Spirit airlines merger, and the FTC is on an unprecedented run of legal and administrative action. Khan’s team has filed more than three dozen lawsuits to block proposed mergers, forced the abandonment of 19 mergers, and is putting the Kroger-Albertson’s deal, which would further consolidate grocery stores and drive up prices, through the ringer. She’s also proposed rules on eliminating junk fees and limiting non-compete clauses imposed on workers.

Perhaps most notably, Khan sued Amazon in September for its anticompetitive business practices, pitting the federal government (and some state attorneys general) against the massive conglomerate in a case that could change online retail and free small businesses, customers, and workers from a cycle of abuse and coercion.

Khan’s aggressive regulatory regime has infuriated business leaders, sympathetic media, and even some FTC employees used to the kind of passive and permissive oversight that greased the revolving door. That she’s a 34-year-old Muslim woman who ascended from academia has triggered them further, leading to a full year of vitriol that has veered into the personal.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board’s outrage with Khan has led to regular editorials that have taken the tone of an obsessed, jilted lover; fuming pundits like CNBC’s Jim Cramer regularly and hysterically call for her ouster; and hit pieces filled with anonymous quotes are now a veritable subgenre, like this ill-timed piece in New York Magazine. The good news is that Khan doesn’t care, and keeps racking up wins.

NLRB’s Cemex and joint employer decisions change the game

Much like the FTC, the National Labor Relations Board is experiencing a renaissance of purpose after decades of being slowly neutralized by aggressive business interests, conservative legislation, and executive disinterest.

Jennifer Abruzzo, a longtime NLRB attorney who spent the Trump years at the CWA, returned as general counsel in 2021. Instead of seeking compromises on behalf of businesses, Abruzzo has returned the agency created in 1935 by the National Labor Relations Act to aggressively defending the rights guaranteed in that cornerstone piece of New Deal legislation.

Willing to take on the best corporate lawyers money can buy, Abruzzo has pursued and secured positive rulings for organizing Amazon and Starbucks workers, instituted new financial penalties for unfair labor practices, and won a case this fall that puts her on the cusp of banning captive audience meetings. Those are all significant victories, yet are minor compared to two new rules established this fall.

In August, the NLRB issued a ruling that created a new framework for when employers are required to bargain with a union that hasn’t won an NLRB certification election. The Cemex case was brought at Abruzzo’s behest, and last month, she vowed to vigorously enforce the new standard, which forces an employer to recognize and bargain with their employees’ union if they commit unfair labor practices during an election.

Near the end of October, the board handed Abruzzo another win by revising the Joint-Employer standard. The ruling asserts that any company that exerts significant control over subcontractors — from McDonald cooks to Amazon delivery drivers to white collar workers — should be considered a joint employer, making them responsible for their health and safety and bargaining a union contract.

The new rule will prevent big corporations from pleading ignorance about horrible working conditions endured by subcontractors while making it easier for millions and millions of workers to organize and protect their rights. Naturally, it’s pissing off the big business lobby, which has already filed a lawsuit that pushed back the rule’s implementation.

The Supreme Court’s right-wing corruption exposed

Gutting agencies like the FTC, NLRB, and SEC has been a goal of conservatives since Reagan declared war on competent government, and since winning a sympathetic right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court, they’ve been making swift progress. This term, the court has already signaled an interest in taking an absurd case and using it to throttle the SEC’s in-house enforcement capability.

Such a decision would be a legal farce, but one celebrated by some of the conservative justices’ most loyal patrons. Beginning in April, the nonprofit outlet ProPublica began exposing Justice Clarence Thomas’s unbelievably lucrative relationship with billionaire Nazi swag collector Harlan Crow and other conservative donors, a thread it continues to unravel with help from the New York Times and other major outlets.

The gifts and favors that Thomas and other justices, including Samuel Alito, have received over the past two decades would be automatically disqualifying in a sane world, but the conservative jurists refuse to even acknowledge wrongdoing. It’s immensely frustrating, and Sen. Dick Durbin’s unwillingness to do anything substantial to investigate them further is even more so, but the good news is that the scandals have all but destroyed the legitimacy of this court.

In October, a Marquette University poll found that just 43% of Americans approved of the Supreme Court’s performance, while 57% signaled disapproval. In July, a poll conducted by Pew found approval at 44%, the lowest in the company’s history. This is unprecedented stuff, and instead of feeling forced to simply accept the court’s decisions, more Americans than ever view it as a tarnished body in need of significant reform and fundamental changes.

With more key rulings on the way and public animosity soaring, there are signs that the court is now trying to moderate a bit on issues like gun control, which they almost fully defenestrated last year. The revelations won’t fix the court directly, but limiting its ambition is key, and the worse it gets, the more pressure it’ll put on Democrats to run on changing things.

Moms for Liberty’s epic implosion

They were loud, angry, zealous, and made headlines around the nation, but in the end, it turns out that the people fueling the culture wars at school board meetings and driving Republican education policy were just a small, crazed minority of public school parents.

After two years of bullying children, banning books, and rewriting local education curriculum to match their twisted bigotries, conservatives were walloped in school board elections all across the country in November. Raw election numbers don’t do the spanking justice, given the difficulty of identifying the leanings of many candidates in small, rural counties, so the best way to evaluate just how poorly the paranoid, bigotry-addled candidates fared is to look at the performance of campaigns endorsed by Moms for Liberty.

As I reported last month, Moms for Liberty’s various candidates won just 30% of their races, with many of their losses serving as explicit rebukes of the pain and chaos they had inflicted on unsuspecting school districts. Republicans frequently crossed party lines to vote for Democrats, even in more conservative areas, simply to oust the local Moms for Liberty zealots that had taken over two years prior. Such was the case in Pennsylvania’s Central York school district, which went from having the most extreme book ban in the country to a flipped board controlled by Democrats.

It only got worse for the Moms for Liberty, as one of their co-founders, an activist in Florida, admitted to being involved in a ménage à trois with her husband, the chair of the Florida GOP, and another woman. The story involves sexual assault and is rather disturbing, but the relationship itself revealed the hypocrisy of the far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ organization.

The November electoral dismantling, paired with Ron DeSantis’s humiliating failure of a presidential campaign, have Republicans increasingly backing away from torturing children in school as a political strategy. No matter how the 2024 elections go, the fact that kids won’t be exploited for nominal gains is very good news.

To be continued…

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