Welcome to a premium Thursday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
Today has been jam-packed with horrible headlines, from the Supreme Court striking down the eviction moratorium tonight to Ron DeSantis committing full-on genocide in Florida to the terrorist attack in Kabul that has Republicans crowing like The Joker after a bank robbery.
Oh, and then there are the hordes of MAGA dimwits sucking down horse paste that shaves down their intestines into fecal rope worms, but we don’t have to go into that right now.
Unfortunately, as a longtime member of the media who now ostensibly works in politics, it’s my job to pay close attention to the news and how it’s covered. Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that if Republicans elected a monkey to the Senate and it started flinging turds in front of a gaggle of reporters, it would be relayed without further comment on Twitter and news broadcasts.
And I’m not the only one who thinks the media is being willfully bamboozled.
There’s a lot to cover tonight, including the first part of my interview with Rep. Mondaire Jones, so let’s get to it.
Mondaire Jones is proof that every primary matters, even in low-key races with no established villains. The first-term Democratic Congressman won a crowded primary in New York’s 17th district against several much better-funded candidates (and one much, much better-funded candidate), then began earning national attention by being outspoken on key issues months before the general election even took place.
The running start allowed Jones to enter Congress with a clear-cut aggressive progressive profile, which he’s continued to sharpen by combining a rare expertise — he worked in the Obama Department of Justice — and an activist approach to politics. Like members of the Squad, he’s bucked the typical House hierarchy to wage very public campaigns on behalf of the progressive ideals that so often go by the wayside even in a Congress controlled by Democrats.
In early August, Jones stood behind Rep. Cori Bush as she slept on the steps of the Capitol to win an extension of the eviction moratorium over the anonymous protests of caucus conservatives. This past week, he pushed back hard on the ten conservative Democrats who tried to force through a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal in order to blow up the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that contains most of President Biden’s agenda.
In a phone conversation with Progressives Everywhere yesterday, Jones was blunt about the ideological divide within the party and the principles — or lack thereof — that drove the ten holdout Democrats and their Senate allies to attempt to capsize the most ambitious social spending bill in generations.
“I think the reason House conservatives, Sinema, and Manchin don't have specific objections to the substance of what the President has proposed in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill is that their position is not ideological coherent,” he says. ”Rather, it’s a political tactic. If progressives were supporting a $12 minimum wage and a public option instead of Medicare for All, you would have moderate democrats saying ‘Well, I'm only comfortable with a $9 minimum wage and subsidies to Obamacare.’”

Jones campaigned on Medicare for All last year and has made it one of his signature issues, but he’s been even more focused on the GOP’s systemic assault on democracy. As a DOJ vet, Jones has loudly called for an expansion of the Supreme Court and has been amongst the most vocal leaders on the desperate need to save voting rights through any means necessary.
That, of course, includes eliminating the filibuster, and Jones does not mince words about why that hasn’t happened yet.
“There are people who are senior advisors to the President and members of the Senate Democratic Caucus whose primary concern with filibuster reform is that it would open the door to progressive policies being enacted,” Jones said. “And that begs the question, why are you even a Democrat?”
It’s a question that is increasingly being asked of many members in the party, especially those taking gobs of money from a group called No Labels devoted to fighting Democratic causes.
More to come in this Sunday’s edition of the Progressives everywhere newsletter…
Voting Rights
The Filibuster: Well, now we know why certain Democrats don’t want to reform the filibuster, but the pressure continues to build on them to tweak it enough to at least pass voting rights protections.
In West Virginia today, activists marched through several counties to stage a protest at Manchin’s Charleston office, demanding that he acquiesce to ending the filibuster so that Democrats can pass the For the People Act and deliver on promises such as a $15 minimum wage.
Meanwhile, op-eds in local newspapers continue to push for his agreement on voting rights, which is no small stance to take considering Manchin’s overwhelming power in the state. Yesterday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said that the filibuster diehard may be moving closer to finally green-lighting an exception to pass some version of the For The People Act, though she didn’t offer any concrete evidence beyond suggesting that he’s internalizing Republican unwillingness to work on voting rights.
This, from the top legal correspondent at The Nation, summed it up perfectly":

Over in Arizona, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema got absolutely lambasted in an op-ed that called her out for saying she idolized Rep. John Lewis but not being willing to pass the voting rights bill that bears his name.
Will she care? To be determined!
Texas: While we wait for these people to maybe grow slivers of conscience, the GOP continues its state-based assaults on voting rights. Lawmakers in the newly reunited House began full debate tonight on SB 1, the extreme voter suppression bill that is certain to pass.
This is the kind of shit we’re dealing with here:

It is beyond parody, yet all too frighteningly weird.
Nebraska: Conservatives are mounting a campaign to pass voter ID via ballot initiative in 2022, an effort that is already leading to some big protests in Omaha. Omaha!
Workers and Economic Rights
Labor Laws: Rising temperatures are leading to an unprecedented spike in deaths amongst workers who labor outdoors in normally mild climates like the Pacific Northwest. It’s an emergency for these workers, but unfortunately, there are no real federal laws to protect them right now.
Phoenix: Cities across the country have been brutally clearing out homeless encampments, even in supposedly liberal strongholds like Los Angeles and Austin (which just passed a ballot initiative to make it worse!). Phoenix has been doing it as well, and now the city’s take-no-prisoner tactics (under the Orwellian name of Phoenix C.A.R.E.S.) are under investigation by the Department of Justice. There could be major national implications if the investigation determines that they violate the civil rights of the unhoused.
Health Care
Missouri: Quick update on the Medicaid expansion battle in Missouri. The State Supreme Court ordered Gov. Mike Parson to expand the program last month, but of course, because the cruelty is the point, he’s dragging it out as long as possible. About 250,000 low-income Missourians are being told that they have to wait another two months to enroll in the program, despite the fact that it shouldn’t require any real administrative fixes to allow them to join.
California: Drug addiction and economic hardship are often intertwined, so this program that would pay people to stay sober could be a revolution in both drug treatment and the social safety net.
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