Winners and Losers: Massive Democratic Upset in Texas

And more mostly good news

Welcome to a Saturday night edition of Progress Report.

This is the inaugural edition of Winners and Losers, the new weekend feature that will go to paid subscribers… starting next week. I’m still iterating on it — the format will probably change over time — but wanted to give people an idea of the overall intended vibe. Again, the format and style will change, and for the better, but this should give you a decent idea of what we’re doing here. Amid such chaos, it’s good to have a bit of fun.

Also: fuck ICE, which tear-gassed children in Portland today, brutally and without provocation. Tear gas is illegal in Portland.

Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.

You can help keep Progress Report afloat and build that network for just $5 $2.50 a month — every subscription helps!

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Texas Democrats: There looks to have been a massive upset in a special legislative election tonight, as Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a statewide union leader and progressive populist, is on track to flip a solid red state Senate seat in the Fort Worth suburbs. Even with the normal caveats — Democrats usually overperform in special elections, and this one took place on a Saturday — this will be a massive upset.

Trump won this district 58-41% in 2024, but a mix of backlash against the administration and local issues like education and the all-encompassing war on “woke” being waged at the state and county level scrambled the standard alignments and loyalties. It’s a warning sign for Republicans used to dominating Texas, especially Governor Greg Abbott, who is running for a fourth term later this year. The GOP candidate, Leigh Wambsganns, was in line with the Texas GOP’s brand: a Christian nationalist backed by oil billionaires. Those things can be a weakness if exploited by the right populist candidate.

For context on just how big this is:

The final numbers aren’t in yet, but as of publication time, Rehmet was up by nearly 14%, meaning that this district shifted by 30 points from 2024.

Humanity: A judge on Saturday ordered the release of Liam Cornejo Ramos and his father from a federal immigration center by no later than Tuesday, a welcome development in a case that has become a symbolize the cruelty of Donald Trump’s violent immigration enforcement regime. Ramos, a 5-year-old who attends pre-school in Minneapolis, was used as bait by ICE agents who sought to arrest his mother, an immigrant from Ecuador. The little boy was later sent with his father to a detention center in Texas, where he’s been said to be struggling.

The Ramos family has been seeking asylum since presenting themselves at the border in 2024, going through the proper legal steps as required by the US government. Though Liam’s father has no criminal record, US District Judge Fred Biery acknowledged that the family might nonetheless be deported. Still, Biery wrote, the lawlessness and cruelty of the process to this point has shocked the conscience and violated all protocol.

“Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency,” Biery wrote in his ruling. “And the rule of law be damned.”

Voters in Oregon: A federal judge dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Oregon that sought to compel the state to hand over its voter rolls, which contain citizens’ private personal information. The DOJ has sued 24 states and DC for this data, which it wants to use to disqualify voters ahead of the midterm elections. Last weekend, Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to extort Minnesota into providing private voter data after the murder of Alex Pretti.

And voters everywhere: Whereas the DOJ’s lawsuits against each state will likely require individual dismissals from judges, a federal judge on Friday blocked key components of Trump’s executive order on voter ID. Specifically, the judge blocked requirements that federal agencies assess citizenship before providing voter registration forms to people on public assistance programs, nor can the feds request ID from members of the military who register to vote or request absentee ballots.

Critically, the judge, a Clinton appointee, wrote that the White House was attempting to subvert the constitution by imposing such rules. “Put simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

OK, here’s one more judicial decision worth celebrating, because it means that OMB director and segregationist Russell Vought must publicly disclose how his agency spends its funds — something you’d think a guy supposedly obsessed with government waste and bureaucracy would be doing all along. Hypocrites, all of them.

Patients in Virginia: Wasting little time with their new trifecta, Democrats in the state Senate voted to advance legislation to create a new prescription drug affordability board. Neighboring Maryland is pioneering the state-level price regulation tool, which sets an upper limit to what pharmaceutical companies can charge for certain drugs.

New Yorkers: Eric Adams worked harder to sabotage successor Zohran Mamdani’s start at City Hall than he did to succeed during his own term, with mixed results at best. Mamdani’s lawyers and staffers are actively looking for legal maneuvers and loopholes to neutralize the former mayor’s acts of subterfuge; fortunately, it’s been far easier for the city council to counteract the pettiness and rampant corruption that Adams displayed during his final few weeks in office. On Thursday, the city legislature voted to override vetoes on 17 bills that Adams had rejected on his way out the door, including some big wins for working people:

The revived legislation includes bills expanding access to affordable housing and homeownership, reforming the city’s decades-old street-vending system, providing new due-process protections for app-based drivers, strengthening pay and benefits for security guards, reforming city procurement practices, and restoring a legal framework that allows survivors of gender-motivated violence to pursue civil claims.

There will be more opportunities for street food vendors after Adams spent four years cracking down on the mostly immigrant workforce and entrepreneur base, while Uber and Lyft drivers now have the strongest just cause protections in the country, which will make it much more difficult for those gig employers to randomly deactivate them from the platforms and cut off their income.

Another one of the vetoes that the council overrode was on the Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act, which will provide minimum wage and protections for the more than 60,000 private sector security guards in the city who have often been treated like an underclass of workers. The law is named after a security guard who was shot and killed while protecting people at the mass shooting in Midtown last July.

There was more good news for workers on Friday, when the city announced that multiple food delivery apps would pay $4.6 million in back wages to compensate workers they had ripped off and deactivated over the course of 2024. The penalized apps include UberEats, HungryPanda, and Fantuan.

At the state level, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she would seek to ban 287(g) agreements between municipal governments and ICE, which allow the feds to draft in local cops and resources to help with immigration enforcement. It’s the right thing to do, and also an explicit shot at her main GOP challenger this year, Nassau County Exec Bruce Blakeman, who has made his Long Island jurisdiction a safe haven for ICE. I wrote about the blue states introducing 287(g) bans earlier this week.

And speaking of New Yorkers rejecting ICE, I stumbled upon a protest put on by high school students in Union Square on my way back from a doctor’s appointment on Friday. The photo below really captures the beauty of our diversity and solidarity.

I couldn’t quite make out what they were chanting, but I’m pretty confident it involved equating ICE to the KKK, so you know these kids have studied their history.

God I feel old.

Chicagoland news consumers: Instead of going along with the charade and paying deference to a right-wing editorial board that would never endorse her, activist, media commentator, and Illinois Congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh told the powers that be at the Chicago Tribune to shove it.

Stephen Miller: This label has applied every week of this miserable human hemorrhoid’s entire life, so he may just have a permanent place on this list, but this week stands out in particular because he it marked what — fingers crossed — might be the beginning of his political decline.

The thing about being a loud and proud Nazi who openly brags about violating people’s rights and ordering untrained shock troops to commit mass violence is that everyone knows who to blame when people’s rights are violated and untrained shock troops commit mass violence. The occupation of Minneapolis has been a debacle for the Trump administration and GOP writ large, and as Republicans try to distance themselves from it, Trump included, Miller is finally getting thrown under the bus.

For example: It was obvious to everyone that Miller was the author of the Department of Homeland Security statement that called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” just hours after he’d been murdered. When even Republicans condemned the statement as tasteless and factually incorrect, Miller tried to deflect the blame.

“The initial statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground,” Miller said in the statement. “Additionally, the White House provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors. We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol.”

In trying to save his own ass, Miller made the mistake of saying that Border Patrol had failed to comply with directives when Pretti was murdered. That wouldn’t do for the White House, which is drowning in outrage over the CBP killing and still trying to smear Pretti. So, Miller’s erstwhile allies released a statement seeking to clarify his remarks, which wound up being pretty humiliating.

“Stephen was specifically referring to general guidance given to ICE ‘that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used… to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors,’ and officials would be examining why additional force protection assets may not have been present to support the operation,” a White House spokesperson said.

But the damage was done; now, a majority of the public wants ICE to be abolished and Republicans are losing ground on immigration, a catastrophic failure that can be chalked up to following Miller’s mendacious fantasies.

The Biden Department of Justice: If you don’t learn from your failures, you’re destined to repeat them, a lesson that Democrats with designs on national leadership should be taking to heart right now.

First, it’s worth pointing out once again that Biden’s Attorney General, Merrick Garland, had access to the Epstein files and could have released them at any point during the four years that he served as the most powerful law enforcement official in the nation. The revolting material that’s coming out now, detailing the close connections and evil predilections of the richest and most powerful people in the world, will exist in news accounts but likely never lead to prosecutions or the downfall of any deserving delinquent.

Had the release happened under the Biden administration, perhaps justice could have been served — and Trump prevented from returning to the White House. The problem was that publishing the papers would have exposed some billionaire Democratic donors and influential elites who ostensibly run the party, and there’s no class solidarity like the solidarity of the rich and powerful.

No discussion about the Biden administration’s wasted opportunities would be complete without mentioning his fumble on court expansion, which he refused to consider even as the far-right Supreme Court revoked one right after another and consistently struck down his executive orders. The institutionalists in the administration proved a catastrophic and absurdly naive influence — and now we’re seeing Republicans use the exact same tool to expand their own power.

On Friday, Utah passed a bill that would expand the state Supreme Court, and should Gov. Spencer Cox sign it, he will have two extra seats to fill. Conservatives have been raging against the high court in Utah for months after it tossed the state’s gerrymandered Congressional map. One can only imagine what the new justices will think about the issue of gerrymandering. Alas, we wouldn’t even have to worry about it if Democrats had take some action to hold the far-right justices accountable for their corruption.

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