Trolling their way to a national crisis

And a tribute to a hero

Welcome to a Friday evening edition of Progress Report.

This is a jam-packed edition of the newsletter — we’ve got a mounting constitutional crisis, child labor laws, international conflict, the border, and even some actual good news, so let’s get going.

Progress Report is only sustainable with the continued support of our readers. Far-right media is financed by dark money and conservative mega-donors. We rely on grassroots, forward-thinking readers like you. Please help us fight the good fight.

---

---

I’m proud to say that together we have raised nearly $4500 for abortion funds and clinics since Tuesday’s newsletter.

The abortion funds, which help women obtain reproductive care when they can’t afford or access it by themselves, have experienced an enormous surge of requests since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and states began instituting strict abortion bans.

While the financial support that the funds and clinics received from donors in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision have largely dried up, the demand for their help only continues to grow. Without intervention, some of these funds and clinics may soon be forced to cease operations, which would be catastrophic.

The post-Dobbs statistics are barbarous, especially in Texas. Along with the increase in teenage pregnancies, a new study estimates that the state’s strict abortion ban led to 26,000 pregnancies from rape last year. All told, the study projected that there were nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape in the 14 states with abortion bans. Texas led the way with 26,313 pregnancies from rape.

The numbers are so large that they almost dull the senses to the scope of the suffering and depth of malice and social decay that make them possible. Instead of allowing ourselves to become numb to this everyday inhumanity, let’s try to help the people who are bravely working to overcome these efforts to trap women in a living nightmare.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott informed the Biden administration on Friday evening that it will continue to deny Border Patrol agents access to a key stretch of the southern border, once again defying the federal government and deepening a constitutional standoff that is quickly veering into national existential crisis.

The standoff began when federal Border Patrol agents began removing some of the concertina wire that the Texas National Guard had laid out along the Rio Grande and around Shelby Park in the small city of Eagle Pass. The barbed wire, intended to prevent migrants from entering the country, has also blocked federal agents from providing aid to those in distress. Three migrants drowned on January 12th after the Texas National Guard blocked the feds from saving their lives.

In an uncomfortably tight vote, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the federal government ultimately has control of the border and that Texas must provide access to Border Control. Abbott vowed to defy the ruling in a letter on Wednesday that borrowed heavily from the declarations of secession issued by Confederate states in 1860, and has made the dubious claim that Texas has the right to supersede the federal government in its effort to “protect itself.”

Every Republican governor save for Vermont moderate Gov. Phil Scott signed on to a letter on Thursday backing Texas in its fight against the federal government. Failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis attempted to provide context with an obnoxious selfie video that makes you question whether he’d ever used an iPhone before, members of Congress discussed taking the national budget hostage to prevent the federal government from asserting its power, and zealot House Speaker Mike Johnson has encouraged Abbott to keep it going as well.

There’s also been chatter from lawmakers and pundits on the right about simply ignoring the (disturbingly narrow) Supreme Court decision that permitted the federal government to take down the barbed wire.

There are a few dark ironies here. First, Biden is all-in on the new bipartisan deal that would militarize and shut down the border in exchange for billions of dollars for Israel and Ukraine, meaning that his administration is ready to grant most of Republicans’ wishes anyway. And second, the far-right has complete control of the federal judiciary, so in calling for Texas to ignore the Supreme Court, reactionary lawmakers and talking heads are chipping away at its legitimacy in ways that Democratic leadership would never dare.

In fact, that is likely part of the calculation behind the increase in hostility.

The impotence shown by the Biden administration in its hesitance to prosecute Trump over the insurrection and by Democratic leadership in refusing to investigate the Supreme Court’s vast corruption has sent the message that there will be no consequences for any provocation, no matter how much it tears away at the fabric of what remains of our democracy. Republicans will continue to spew horrible, racist lies to justify their intransigence with minimal pushback, which keeps the cycle growing more and more toxic.

Biden could federalize the Texas National Guard right now if wanted to, as JFK did when Alabama Gov. George Wallace refused to integrate public schools. Considering his distaste for conflict and conscious rightward turn on immigration, I suspect that Biden will instead wait for pending legal proceedings to play out.

via USA Today

Abbott is clearly doing this as a performative stunt to rally the GOP base and perhaps position himself for the 2028 election, while the Republicans rooting him on are very much in on the ruse. Yet it is happening nonetheless, with real world consequences, including the drowning of a young migrant family. It’s also setting a precedent for future disputes with the federal government. These governors have ignited the miscreant imaginations of the right’s culture warriors, many of whom already tried to overthrow the government once already.

There have already been already signs of Republican leaders’ growing willingness to defy DC, including in Iowa, where the party passed a rollback of child labor laws that far exceeded what’s permissible under federal regulations. The Republican-dominated legislature received a letter from the US Department of Labor while debating the bill, then another from a Democratic legislator in September; neither did anything to discourage the implementation of the bill. Since then, the number of bills intended to roll back child labor protections has only continued to grow.

There is always going to be tension between states and the federal government, but it feels different this time, in part because the border is a matter of national security and involves battalions of armed troops. Should these incidents continue with more frequency, even as a form of trolling, outrage politics may lead us to the brink of the sort of conflict that we haven’t seen since the Civil War.

Another full-on armed conflict would make little sense given the size and strength of the US military, but it’s possible that we’ll see a balkanization, or a breakdown in federalism that empowers regional and local governments over a national union. Conservatives are already on a mission to strip federal agencies of their ability to enforce regulations on corporations, as I’ve been writing about for months now.

Pull the thread and the questions come fast and thick. Will the remaining states be willing to create their own confederation and institute their own laws? (Gun control, universal health care and pre-K would be nice.) Or will they simply abide by the miserable decisions of the far-right Supreme Court and continue to allow Republican legislators to block progressive laws that their states wouldn’t recognize either way?

This is all speculation, of course, and it could be all moot in about ten months, as a Trump victory in November could give Republican governors everything they want without requiring any semi-secession. But it was only a few years ago that we would have never expected a giant mob to violently invade the Capitol under the direction of a sitting president, and the response to that from those with power has largely been pitiful, so it’s worth thinking ahead.

Regardless of how exactly this plays out, we’re not going back to any prior standard of normalcy. The myth of American exceptionalism, that “it couldn’t happen here” has been shredded, and it’s hard to imagine there not being fundamental changes to how this nation is constructed.

Donald Trump was ordered by a jury today to pay E. Jean Carroll a total of $83.3 million for defaming her after she accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s, for which he was found liable last spring. His lawyers have promised to appeal, and it’s hard to believe he’ll ever actually pay up, both because Trump has a decades-long history of bilking people and because it was his presidency that plunged us into the era of zero consequences.

It wasn’t so much Trump’s policies that broke America, though most of them were abhorrent, as it was his complete lack of shame, willingness to bully, and ability to rally his frothing supporters in his defense. It dragged the GOP not only further to the right, but toward a politics of cruelty, vengeance, lawlessness, and disregard for public backlash.

This morning, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take every measure possible to avoid committing a genocide in Gaza, a significant decision that the AP called an “overwhelming rebuke of Israel’s wartime conduct.”

By the end of the day, several senators announced a dreadful bipartisan deal that would provide billions of dollars worth of weapons to fuel the brutal war that has already killed more than 26,000 Palestinians. President Joe Biden immediately came out in favor of the deal, including its provisions that would further militarize the southern border, allow Biden to unilaterally lock down the country, and make it harder to successfully obtain asylum. This cuts against everything Biden ran on in 2020, and while the sheer number of migrants entering the country does constitute a kind of crisis, the bill proposes cruel solutions that will do little to fix the underlying issues.

Here, actually, there may be some consequences, but only for the Biden administration. While the chances are infinitesimal that this immigration deal will win over voters whose concern over the border is a function of a larger bigotry and far-right ideology, there’s little doubt that it will further anger the young voters who currently disapprove of Biden by a 29-71 margin.

---

Here’s some good news for you:

Bad news tends to suck up all the oxygen in the room, but there were also plenty of positive developments worth recognizing this week. Here are a few of the best news stories of the week:

• Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used part of her State of the State speech to outline plans for universal pre-k and free community college. Democrats will have to wait until the spring to get back their majority in the House, and they can look to Minnesota for an example of how to pass those programs with a minimal edge in the legislature.

• The Florida election board certified Friday that pro-choice activists had collected enough petition signatures to qualify a constitutional amendment protecting the right to an abortion for the November ballot. Now it just needs to pass muster with the state Supreme Court, a dicey extra step necessitated by a cheap lawsuit filed by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody.

• A Black church right outside Richmond, VA is redeveloping one of its properties into a housing development that will have 240 apartments and town houses. The project is part of a larger effort by many religious groups, which are looking to repurpose their underutilized land and buildings to serve the community. Participants call it the YIGBY movement, which is short for Yes In God’s Backyard.

• Medicaid expansion is already having an enormous impact in North Carolina, where more than 300,000 people have enrolled since the program became open to them in early December. It has been especially helpful to the poorest and most rural counties in the state.

---

In a time so defined by chaos, it’s a basic imperative to seek out sources of light that can pierce through the perpetual gloom that lingers over our world. For me, wife and toddler son aside, the light has come increasingly from pro soccer, especially Liverpool FC.

I’ve been a fan for nearly 20 years, drawn in first by the Miracle of Istanbul and then quickly hooked by the club’s illustrious history and the city’s populist values. For nine years, those values have been embodied by Jürgen Klopp, the great German tactician, coach, and leader of men.

Klopp revived the club after it fell into disrepair in the mid-2010s, then led Liverpool to every major trophy. He has provided a vital conscience during Covid and other global events. And today, Jürgen Klopp announced that he will step down as Liverpool manager at the end of the season.

It doesn’t embarrass me that I spent a fair amount of Friday in a state of shock and then something like mourning; Klopp was a guide and a beacon for millions of fans, yet sometimes it felt as his words were directed only at you. I want my club to win, and losing Klopp will likely make that more difficult, but sorting the future can wait for another day. Soccer made Klopp a star, but it’s his empathy and wisdom that have made him a hero.

He is the rare public figure who is not obsessed with himself or consumed by petty rivalries, who doesn’t align with bigoted goons when they feel criticized, who treats everybody with deep respect and earnest compassion. Watch the video below and you’ll understand what I’m saying.

We are bereft of those figures right now — there are few politicians that qualify, while Elon Musk and most other well-known business leaders wield their power for vanity and personal gain. Jürgen Klopp is a singular figure, beloved by his fans and even his rivals, an inspiration who has brought joy and meaning to people around the world. Liverpool FC is a communal experience, and Klopp gave us so much to celebrate together.

His quick wit, philosophical outlook, and hot-and-cold relationship with the media together produced a ream of memorable quotes, one of which has become something of a mantra whenever I’m faced with a major challenge. Speaking before Liverpool played host to Barcelona in the second leg of the Champions League semi-finals in 2019, down 3-0 on aggregate after a thumping in Spain and all but condemned to a crushing loss at the end of a magical season, Klopp was asked what he would be telling his players before the match.

“If we can do it, wonderful,” he said. “If we can't do it, let's fail in the most beautiful way.”

Liverpool reached played as if possessed by a higher power that night, producing a miracle comeback to defeat Barcelona 4-0 in front of a delirious home crowd that may have broken the sound barrier when the winning goal hit the back of the net. They were unafraid to lose, and that’s why they won.

He could have stayed in the job forever, but Klopp has often insisted in interviews that there’s more to life than soccer, or really any other job. His decision came down to needing to recharge and spend time with the people he loves. As I sit here writing this at nearly 1 am, that admission lingers in the back of my mind. We need more public figures like Jürgen Klopp, people who give all of themselves and then step away without asking for more. You’ll Never Walk Alone.

---

Wait, Before You Leave!

Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, and delivers incisive analysis, and goes deep into the grassroots.

This is a second full-time job, and I’m looking to expand. There are no corporations, dark money think tanks, or big grants sponsoring this work. It’s all people-powered. So, I need your help.

For just $6 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes premium member-only newsletters with original reporting and analysis.

You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in the next weekend edition of the newsletter!