War in the Midwest, War in the Middle East

Only one is righteous

Welcome to a Sunday edition of Progress Report.

I’ve spent the past four days traveling across the country, from connecting airport to airport hotel to campground and back again, so that I could see one of my best friends get married. While the remote setting necessitated extensive travel and creative solutions, the scope of it was a reminder that government policy really, really matters.

The trip was extended by diversions to cities far out of the optimal linear path, each a concession to airline monopolies that charged rent-level prices for the rare direct flight. The rental car monopoly made it far too expensive to pair those flights with a car for a day or two. And hotel monopolies’ collusion with travel websites and ran up the costs of rooms in real-time.

The alternative to renting a car was taking lots of Ubers, which are more expensive than ever despite drivers’ still earning subsistence wages thanks to the success of Prop 22. Obviously, we made sure to tip as much as we could, which in this situation is essentially a tax that voters were fooled into imposing on themselves.

To be clear, the trips complications were absolutely worth it, because I got to see one of my best friends in the world get married while surrounded by her family. But as the Supreme Court debates the existence of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the FTC pursues an unprecedented slate of antitrust lawsuits against Amazon, Google, and other gigantic corporations, it’s worth noting that these are not simply debates over economic theory, but fights over how we live our lives, spend our money, and enjoy time with loved ones.

Lots to talk about today. Before we get there, a quick announcement:

The results of Wednesday’s poll asking whether you guys wanted shorter, more frequent updates or longer newsletters a few times a week were split right down the middle. Unreal!

So here’s the plan: I’m going to keep the same cadence of newsletters, but post more frequent news updates in Notes and Chat Threads, which will be reserved for paid subscribers more often than not.

You’ll get an email when I start a new thread for you to join, while notes will show up both in the app and right here on the desktop version of the site.

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Voting Rights and Democracy

Wisconsin: This is actually two great stories in one.

First, the new liberal 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to hear a challenge to the state’s unprecedentedly gerrymandered legislative maps, which have given Republicans supermajorities even when they’ve lost the statewide vote.

Second, newly seated Justice Janet Protasiewicz rejected absurd calls by sore loser Republicans for her to recuse herself from the case. In an order released on Friday, she even cited US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who has stubbornly refused to recuse himself in cases in which he has direct personal and financial conflicts of interest.

Here’s a bit of what she wrote:

Recusal decisions are controlled by the law. They are not a matter of personal preference. If precedent requires it, I must recuse. But if precedent does not warrant recusal, my oath binds me to participate. As Justice Alito has emphasized: "When there is no sound reason for a Justice to recuse, the Justice has a duty to sit."

That is true even when a case is controversial, or when my decision may upset those who would rather I step aside. Respect for the law must always prevail. Allowing politics or pressure to sway my decision would betray my oath and destroy judicial independence.

This amounts to a dare to Republican legislators to impeach her, which they’ve been threatening to do for the past few months.

Whether they can actually do that is unclear: Wisconsin’s Republicans justices rejected previous attempts to require their recusal from cases in which they had legitimate conflicts of interest, so Protasiewicz argues that she is simply following the law.

Ohio: Third time is a charm. After twice rejecting their application, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost agreed to the ballot language submitted by voting rights activists seeking to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2024 ballot.

The amendment would create a 15-person redistricting committee, made up of five Democrats, five Republicans, and five independents, none of whom could be former politicians, party officials, or lobbyists.

The amendment would also make it “unconstitutional to draw voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician.” That would prevent the sort of cheap delay tactics and end-arounds that Republicans took to keep their gerrymandered districts for the 2022 elections before winning a Supreme Court majority.

Based on the huge majorities that voted for the ultimately inert redistricting initiatives passed in Ohio in 2015 and 2017, there’s an excellent chance that this will pass. If that does indeed wind up being the case, it will only make the fact that Ohioans voted in three Republican justices last year in elections dominated by gerrymandering and abortion, that much more absurd.

Workers’ Rights

UAW: It’s hard to maintain both internal morale and public support during a strike, so labor unions often strategically release and make a big deal of small negotiating victories and successful non-monetary concessions from the company while workers are still out on the picket line.

The major “transformative win” announced on Friday by the UAW, however, was very worthy of the type with which it was delivered.

UAW president Shawn Fain told workers on a Facebook livestream that General Motors agreed to bring its electric battery factories under the union master contract. That means that a vital part of the supply chain will provide the living wages, benefits, and retirement packages negotiated by union leaders, which marks a huge concession from the automaker.

For years, Detroit’s Big Three have tried to avoid opening new factories under union contract, using partnerships with non-union companies, a loophole for new technology, and outsourcing to lower costs. With the incentives now being provided for electric vehicles, GM is now building its own batteries, with a first factory in Ohio.

Ford and Stellantis will now be pressured to include their battery plants in their contracts with the UAW. Already, Ford is leaning heavily on the rhetoric of joint ventures and employee choice, which is code for insisting on elections that allow them to intimidate and mislead workers.

"We remain open to the possibility of working with the UAW on future battery plants in the U.S., reminding that these are multibillion-dollar investments and have to operate at sustainably competitive levels,” a company spokesperson said. “As you know, three of four battery plants we’ve announced are part of the BlueOval SK joint venture between Ford and SK On. Workers for none of the four have been hired and won’t be for a while. When they are, they can choose union representation and enter into collective bargaining.

Fain decided not to extend the strike on Friday at Ford or Stellantis because they were ahead of GM on several other issues. Let’s see how this stance holds.

The UAW’s victory here will also hopefully help the unionization efforts at other automakers, including Rivian, the electric truck startup that is now being organized by the International Association of Machinists.

Starbucks: Speaking of companies going all-out to stop workers from exercising their rights, the bullies at Starbucks HQ in Seattle may soon have to pony up their union-busting receipts for the federal government.

The Department of Labor ruled on Friday that Starbucks must disclose how much it spent on sending former CEO and now ex-board member Howard Schultz, as well as other executives, to Buffalo in an all-out effort to prevent the first few stores from unionizing in the summer and fall of 2021. That effort failed, of course, leading to an organizing campaign that has thus far successfully unionized 370+ stores.

The campaign is in a bit of a stasis right now as they company stalls contract talks and appeals the ever-increasing number of negative rulings handed down by administrative law judges.

Chicago: The City Council voted to end the subminimum wage for restaurant employees last week, a major victory made possible by years of tireless worker advocacy and the election of pro-labor Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Right now, waiters, servers, and bartenders in Chicago make $9-per-hour, with the expectation that customer tips will push their take home pay higher. With the passage of the One Fair Wage ordinance, that minimum will rise over the next five years until it hits the city’s $15.80 baseline for everybody else.

The law is named after the One Fair Wage campaign, which has spent years fighting to end the loopholes that first emerged as a way of devaluing service work most often done by women and minorities. I’ve worked closely with the campaign on several occasions, including in an effort to get the law changed in New York. That could be done with a simple executive order by Gov. Kathy Hochul, but in a shocking turn of events, she has thus far refused to do so.

Drugs and Ughs

Michigan: While the federal government works to negotiate the price of ten prescription drugs through Medicare, the state of Michigan is looking to do the feds one better by simply limiting them through price controls.

New legislation passed by the Michigan State Senate would create a unique structure that would theoretically impose limits on the price of especially high-cost drugs. First, a 21-member stakeholder council would study data and recommend which drugs should be investigated, and then a five-member board would dig into the costs of those drugs and vote on where to cap their prices.

The system’s actual efficacy would really hinge on the people who sit on the board and council. While nobody with any profit motive or financial connection to the pharmaceutical industry could sit on the board, the industry would have some representation on the council. The majority party in each legislative chamber — currently Democrats — would also get to pick some members, while independent experts would get a few spots, as well.

There’s good reason to be cynical about that set-up (see above), but what does give me faith is that the legislation was co-sponsored by State Sen. Darren Camilleri, the very progressive, pro-worker legislator who sponsored and led the fight to pass the bill repealing Michigan’s “Right to Work” law earlier this year. I worked with him on that effort, which overcame the quiet doubts of some Democrats and indifference of some unions (really).

California: What the hell is Gov. Gavin Newsom thinking? For a guy who so clearly wants to be president — and nobody stomachs a debate with Ron DeSantis on Fox News if they don’t want to be president — he’s displaying an absolutely terrible grip on Democratic politics.

Gruesome Gavin is currently on a veto rampage, killing one good bill after another, including ones that even centrist Democrats in Washington would back.

Today, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have capped the price of insulin at $35 a month for people with insurance, saying that it would help drive up premiums. It’s a stupid argument, as pharmaceutical companies are being forced to charge less for insulin generally; instead, it seems to be a giveaway to compensate for California’s pursuit of producing its own insulin.

Republican War on Children

One of the most toxic elements of political news coverage is that everything has to be taken at face value. For example, Ron DeSantis experienced no reporter pushback when signing Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law in front of placards emblazoned with the words “Protect Our Children,” nor did he get any questions about the phrase when he later signed a law that made it legal for anybody to carry a gun in Florida.

Republicans have since seized the mantle of “protecting children,” when in reality, the number of children that are dying from GOP gun policies are soaring while the body both of books about Black civil rights leaders and queer self-acceptance remains at zero.

A new study released this week found that between 2021 and 2021, the number of American children killed by firearm skyrocketed by 87%. The nightmare rise in kids killed by guns parallels a surge in GOP states that have loosened gun laws, with 26 now having some version of permitless carry.

In this case, there’s no doubt that correlation reveals causation. Consider that suicides make up more than half of gun deaths:

In states with the most protective secure storage laws, the gun suicide rate among children and young adults aged 10 to 24 was actually lower in 2022 than in 1999, the report found.

By contrast, in states without secure storage laws or laws that apply only when gun owners recklessly or intentionally give a child a firearm, the gun suicide rate increased by 36 percent among young adults.

It’s not just guns, nor is it just kids. Republican policies are proving to be deadly to all demographics, with life expectancy tangibly lower in studies of comparable communities in red and blue states.

A new analysis zeroes in on similar counties in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, where investments in public health and access to care, along with laws regulating smoking, seatbelts, firearms, and other large mortality factors have moved in opposite directions since Ronald Reagan ushered in conservative antipathy for government.

I recommend reading the piece, which is filled with an outrageous history of the forces that have prevented Ohio legislators from working for the public good and doomed generations of people to early graves. The data renders the direct impact of those decisions incontrovertible. Here’s one small example:

One more stark number for you: Before the pandemic, New York spent $102 per person on public health every year, while Ohio laid out just $43.

Texas: Now that Attorney General Ken Paxton snookered his way out of trouble (for now), the next big fight scheduled for the legislature is a special session aimed at establishing a massive school voucher scam.

Gov. Greg Abbott is desperate to pass an “education savings account” law that would send huge sums of taxpayer dollars to corporate-owned charter schools and private religious schools; during regular session, the proposal put the value of each voucher at $8000 per student. Abbott has been continually met with fierce resistance from rural Republicans, whose districts rely heavily on public schools and don’t have access to private ones.

Incredibly, the proposal that the House is supposed to consider does not send any extra money to public schools or teacher pay, which even the most conservative states have been using to sell the public and reluctant lawmakers. Maybe that’ll become a bargaining chip during negotiations, but the House’s leadership truly hates the Senate after the Paxton acquittal, so I’m not sure how far it’ll get.

Florida: Speaking of Ron DeSantis and the Florida GOP’s mission to “protect children,” the legislature is now considering a giant rollback of child labor laws.

A new bill would end all guidelines and limitations on 16- and 17-year-olds, including work hours, both per shift and cumulatively per week. It also seems intended to make optional more stringent guidelines on 14- and 15-year-old workers, who right now cannot work before 7 am or after 7 pm, more than three hours per day during the school week, and 15 hours overall per week.

Other Terrorists

Hamas may have attacked Israeli territory, but it’s Americans that have truly lost their minds since the Palestinian terrorist group launched its massive coordinated offensive early on Saturday.

There’s nothing that triggers American bloodlust like a war in the Middle East, especially when Israel and Palestine are involved. From more than 6000 miles away, nuance is the primary casualty, especially this weekend.

You wouldn’t know it from the shrieking social media posts and cable news segments here, but the conversation happening in Israel is actually far more complicated than outrageous false moral and mathematical equivalences and calls for maximum destruction.

Netanyahu’s far-right regime, propped up by extremists who don’t have to enlist in the army and risk their lives every day, is very unpopular in Israel. While American politicians have immediately pledged their undying support to him, the attacks have sown even more anger and distrust for Netanyahu’s government, which has spent all of its time over the past year trying to weaken the court system and democratic norms.

Here’s where I stand: Hamas’s brutal attacks on innocent civilians are evil and indefensible and they must end. They are sick violations of human rights, not the actions of freedom fighters, and there is no righteousness in kidnapping and murdering everyday Israelis. Hamas murdered them, while the current Israeli government failed them. Its policy of keeping Palestinians in Escape from New York-like conditions helped create the pressure cooker that exploded this weekend. Believing that events have multiple causes and effects is not allying oneself with evil. Saying otherwise can only exacerbate the long-term bloodshed.

Unfortunately, the perverse incentives in our politics and media have again provided bigoted Republicans the opportunity to attach their gross agendas to an unfolding tragedy.

Last year, nearly single Republican voted against allowing the government to monitor the prevalence of white nationalists in the military and federal law enforcement. Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene spoke to white nationalists and said she had no regrets over doing so, even after condemnation from fellow Republicans. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a neo-Nazi icon and won’t say a word against them. They all hate Jews, but were empowered to pretend otherwise so that they could use the issue to promote their own vile agendas.

This is how American politics works: Tragedy strikes, context disappears, and the biggest rats in the country are allowed to seize on it for their own evil aims. As we fight our own right-wing monsters, we must remember to follow the lead of rational Israelis and Palestinians who want to live in a peace unburdened by reactionaries, too.

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