Trump's immigration policies have never been less popular
So he plans to cheat to hold on to power
Welcome to a Tuesday edition of Progress Report.
Yesterday was quite the eventful day here in NY. even by our standards: disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his independent bid for mayor, and hours later, the clouds unleashed a ferocious storm that lit up the skies, battered the streets, and flooded the subways. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about that course of events and any possible interconnectedness.
Right now I’m on a flight to Los Angeles to direct a final shoot for an extensive new report on the deceptive cult that has overtaken the US healthcare system. The mini-doc covers 50 years of history and takes us to some pretty wild places, so I’m excited for you to see it when editing is complete.
Note: Unlike many progressive advocacy journalists, I’ve gone fully independent, with no special advertising deals or close relationships with powerful politicians to temper what I write.
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Education: The Supreme Court once again used a dubious technicality to circumvent all established constitutional principles and precedents in order to hand Donald Trump power that far exceeds any previous conception of the presidency. Yet, the Shadow Docket decision green-lit the demolition of the Department of Education, a longstanding goal of a conservative movement that wants to re-segregate schools and cut off federal funding from those districts that need it the most.
This isn’t particularly surprising, given the shameful track record assembled by the pliant hacks on the high court, but it should still be shocking. Everything we feared about the rot at the top of society has been proven correct, as the US, a supposed beacon of strength and champion of democracy, has seen its institutions and bulwarks subsumed with little resistance.
Here is a good explainer of just how the ruling, which facilitates more mass layoffs at the DOE, will impact both the department and American education. Schools are already suffering from serious defunding, including the $7 billion in illegally frozen education grants that 24 states and DC just sued to recoup from the administration.
The dismantling of the Department of Education’s civil rights oversights and funding mechanisms will work hand in hand with a provision in the GOP reconciliation bill that essentially creates the tax structure for a national school voucher program — which is darkly ironic, given the conservative rhetoric about “returning education to the states.”
The provision allows people to get a full tax credit for up to $1700 donated to non-profits that provide scholarships to private schools. It will create a super-charged pipeline for conservatives to send tax dollars to the private (and often religious) schools of their choice; as more students attend private school, state and federal funding for public school (or whatever is left of it) will decline.
One way to combat that whirlpool: get kids into public school as early as possible. New Jersey is in the midst of trying to do just that with a new bill signed by Gov. Phil Murphy expanding universal pre-k to places it was previously unavailable.
I don’t think the conservative movement particularly cares, but their use of absurd culture war issues as cover to dismantle public education is increasingly unpopular. Voters in red states consistently vote against school privatization when given given the opportunity— last November’s initiative ending the state’s new voucher system after one year was a blowout victory — and now voters are even souring on Trump’s education policy, which has relied on hammering DEI programs that only bigots ever minded before they were politicized.
Everyone’s mad about everything: New polling from YouGov shows Donald Trump deep under water with voters, with a net -17 approval rating that actually understates the dissatisfaction: 46% of respondents said they “strongly disapprove” of the way Trump is handling his job as President.
That vast sense of deep dissatisfaction is apparent in how voters grade Trump on various issues. His only positive marks come on national security (+4) and border security (+1) and even those are tenuous, with more strongly disapproving than approving his performance in both categories.
Otherwise, it’s a parade of anger and disillusionment, including in his supposed strengths (Trump is -9 on Israel, -10 on DEI, and -10 on Israel). The issues that got him elected are even worse: Jobs and the economy (-14), taxes (-20), and inflation/prices (-32).
Redistricting: Between the right-wing backlash over the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up and the overwhelming national dismay with his presidency, Trump is no doubt aware that he’s setting up Republicans for a midterm election shellacking.
His cratering popularity with swing and independent voters is why Trump is now pushing for Texas to go big in a rare mid-decade redistricting called for at his behest by Gov. Greg Abbott. Trump today said that he wanted Texas to draw five new Republican seats on an already gerrymandered map — that is an explicit order to cheat, but in a way that the Supreme Court has blessed.
Partisan gerrymandering is now “beyond the purview” of the federal judiciary, so this give Texas cover to say that the new lines are not racially motivated (even though those two are always part and parcel). Abbott, who called the special session last week, is also pointing to the DOJ’s letter to Texas alleging that four Democratic-held districts constitute gerrymanders because they “disadvantage” white people.
The notion of adding five Republican seats may wind up being a tough sell to Texas Republicans, because it will necessitate weakening their advantage in existing GOP-held districts. Considering how turbulent the midterms are likely to be for Republicans, there’s going to be resistance.
The big question is whether Democratic states will do anything to counteract the Texas ploy, should it happen. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been vocally threatening to unleash a blue-shaded gerrymander, but that would take some real legal and political wrangling, as the state currently utilizes an independent redistricting commission.
New York could conceivably try to squeeze a few more blue districts, but that would be dicey; the big focus in the Empire State has been winning back several seats that Democrats lost in 2022 and 2024, including Mike Lawler’s 17th district.
New York: Disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that he will stay on the ballot and compete in November’s NYC mayoral general election under the banner of his new Fight and Deliver Party.
Cuomo was blown out of the water by 33-year-old Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary in June, and over the past three weeks, he’s only fallen further behind: a new general election poll from Data for Progress finds Mamdani leading Cuomo by 16 points, while the current scandal-plagued occupant of Gracie Mansion, Eric Adams, trails by 25 points.
The disgraced former governor announced his new campaign with a video that repeatedly denigrated Mamdani as an unserious lawmaker while trying to emulate his signature man-on-the-street style. It’s obviously a pale imitation, but more importantly, it shows how little he’s learned.
During his primary campaign, Cuomo was criticized for avoiding voters and sticking to friendly religious audiences and big money donors; the video offers a few wordless interactions with residents of Yorkville, but Cuomo’s voice is still the only one featured in the video. In fact, we didn’t even get to hear from the “non-unionized actor” portraying the “Gentrifier/Young White Man” that his campaign evidently tried to cast in an attempt to “broadening the candidate’s appeal to a younger demographic.”
A quick guide to what you see above: the email was forwarded to a local actor from his agent, who thought he might be good for this role. Tusk Strategies is a lobbying firm that has close — and allegedly, too close — ties to Cuomo, while Bulldog Strategies is the PR firm run by Cuomo’s smug lackey Rich Azzopardi, who has be-clowned himself on Twitter for the past four years waiting for his master’s return.
That they had to go cast a younger supporter speaks to the dire situation he faces with younger voters. I live in the neighborhood where the spot was filmed, and for what it’s worth, it wound up being largely Mamdani territory, including the blocks near the subway station seen in the video. Cuomo won the Upper East Side, but that’s a bit misleading, because it’s a huge area — it encompasses everything east of Central Park from 60th street to 96th street — and contains several distinct neighborhoods.
Cuomo dominated between the park and Lexington Avenue, including Park Ave and Madison Ave, which are lined with the city’s most expensive and opulent addresses, with more than a few belonging to his donors. It wouldn’t have looked particularly populist to film in those places, so he moved to the more middle class part of the neighborhood, using a fruit stand and a dumpy (though well-stocked) Key Foods to signal a modesty that his new wardrobe also tried to convey.
About 10 blocks north of where he filmed begins a long stretch of public housing. I would have liked to see Cuomo stand in those courtyards and shoot a video in which he says that freezing the cost of rent-stabilized apartments is an impossible pipe dream.
Health: Some bittersweet news here, as calls to the National Suicide Hotline continue to increase as the service approaches its fourth year in operation. I’m glad that the line exists and that people are deciding to seek help, but it’d be a bummer if the increase in call volume is indicative of a rise in people considering suicide.
Florida: It turns out that there is one kind of man-made climate change that Republicans are willing to acknowledge — it’s just that this one is a whack job conspiracy theory promulgated by psychos like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Far-right state attorney general James Uthmeier wrote a letter to the state’s airports demanding that they report any sign of “weather modification” in compliance with a new law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The law bans the invented practice, which it defines as “the injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of a chemical, a chemical compound, a substance, or an apparatus into the atmosphere within the borders of this state for the express purpose of affecting the temperature, weather, climate, or intensity of sunlight."
Sounds paranoid, right? Uthmeier’s letter is actually loonier than the official legal language:
From farmlands to our waterways, to the very air we breathe Floridians'® health is under attack from toxic particulates being sprayed into our atmosphere, polluting our water, contaminating agriculture, and destroying human health. Injecting our atmosphere with novel chemical compounds to block the sun is a dangerous path, especially in Florida, where sunshine is our most valuable resource. Furthermore, as our hearts break for the victims of the flash floods in Texas, I can't help but notice the possibility that weather modification could have played a role in this tragedy. Developing reports show that a weather modification company conducted "cloud seeding" operations just days before the deadly flood.
These people are nuts, and that’s the nicest thing I can say about them.
Nothing to see here: Trump is desperate to put a lid on the rising outrage over his administration’s sudden decision that after years of promises, there weren’t any actual Epstein files (but if they did exist, they were invented by Barack Obama and Joe Biden). Over the past few days, he’s been calling some of the most influential conservative malcontents and essentially telling them to shut up, a message that Neanderthal right-wing operative didn’t even bother to conceal when he did a 180 and pronounced himself satisfied with Pam Bondi’s announcement.
Good luck with that: news just broke that there are nearly three minutes missing from the Epstein prison video that Bondi used as evidence of his suicide.
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