With a month until the election, an alternate reality creeps in

Absurd lies, ballot initiatives, DeSantis takes a big L, and more

Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.

There is now officially one month until the most important presidential election in US history and all I can think about is… the New York Mets! What a team, putting up a playoff run for the ages.

My head is obviously swimming with elections and politics and policy, but I do recommend finding or reconnecting with an entirely separate passion for the next month (or longer) as well. The Mets, Liverpool, my toddler son, going to the natural history museum and staring at the ancient artifacts and prehistoric creatures and considering the immense scope of life and evolution on this planet… it’s all helpful in taking my mind off of politics every once in a while. I think you’ll enjoy something similar.

OK, now let’s get to the newsletter.

Note: To make this work as accessible as possible, I’ve lowered the price for a paid subscription back down to Substack’s $5 minimum. If you can’t afford that right now, please email me and I’ll put you on the list for free. Every paid subscription makes it easier for me to comp one while becoming sustainable.

---

---

Chaotic evil: Donald Trump can be so stupid and obnoxious that it can overshadow what a singularly malicious force he represents and the tangible damage that he continues to cause so many Americans, even while out of office. And even when his abhorrent behavior does become clear for all to see, it’s become so normalized that national media attention flits away before the public can appreciate the damage.

Over the past month, Trump’s desperation to return to the White House has prompted him to become even more prolifically and heartlessly full of shit, causing profound chaos and pain all over the country. According to a new report based on local government emails, Trump’s rampant, ultra-racist lies about Haitian refugees have led to even more hardship and fear in Springfield, OH than previously reported:

Multiple organizations and charities in the city who assist Haitian immigrants also emailed city officials saying that they had received threats or needed police assistance. This included St. Vincent De Paul church, which said two people showed up and “walked the perimeter and exteriors of the buildings extensively throughout this time. They spoke with staff and questioned about their involvement with the Haitian community.” 

Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio asked police for “directed patrol” of their building after receiving threats on X and an “uptick in hateful messages” over email, and seeing a “suspicious large black pickup truck with tinted windows idling outside our office.” 

City Hall and public schools were also threatened by right-wing freaks from all around the nation, while emails flooded in for Springfield’s elected officials, accusing them of everything from treason to bribery and being “bureaucratic fucktards.”

Over the past week or so, the far-right media has run with a gross series of lies about the federal government’s role in the Hurricane Helene recovery effort in North Carolina, constructing an alternate reality in which the federal government plans to plow over victims and seize their land, FEMA spent all of its money on undocumented immigrants, and shadowy figures control the weather.

Trump has insisted over and over that President Biden is withholding money from victims in Republican areas, making the unfounded claims on Fox News and beyond. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, has backed the stupidity with false logic and smug distortions (see above), teed up by media questions like “what do you have to say about this thing we won’t call a lie?”

Meanwhile, local GOP officials have repeatedly denied all of these assertions and even said that they have had a negative impact on the recovery efforts in their towns and districts, so please cut them out. Here’s what North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin had to say on Thursday:

The conspiracy theories are deranged in an almost boring way. They’re largely the kinds of paranoid fantasies typically advanced by liars and crackpots, conveniently attached to an unthinkable tragedy that makes anything feel possible. It’s one thing for lunatic nobodies around the country to be spouting them online; to have the GOP nominee for president saying them on TV and on the stump with almost zero pushback or recourse is unfathomable.

Longshoremen, short strike: Geared up for war, the International Longshoremen Association instead barely got a skirmish.

With shipping containers piling up in harbors and political pressure intensifying, USMX, the shipping and port trade group, agreed to a pay hike of 61.5% over six years, large enough for the ILA suspend its nascent strike until mid-January. Dockworkers at 36 ports down the East Coast and Gulf will go back to work as their reps negotiate automation and retirement this fall.

The temporary agreement stands as a major victory for the Biden administration, which played a key role in brokering the deal, even if some Democrats wanted the president to toss the dockworkers overboard.

As The Washington Post reported on Friday, there was growing bipartisan pressure on the White House to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act and force ILA members back to work. The Democrats who wanted Biden to bring the hammer down on the workers were too cowardly to speak on the record, presumably because they also count on unions to assist their re-election efforts.

We know their kind, because they’ve plagued the party (and in many cases run it) for decades and decades. They likely fall into one of two camps: Vulnerable incumbents who were afraid of blowback over any economic impact and neoliberal Pinkertons who regularly stymie efforts to help working families.

Many of them, of course, probably qualify for both groups. I don’t think that journalists should ever be pressured into giving up their sources, but I’m willing to make an exception here if it means obtaining the list of Democratic lawmakers who were working behind the scenes to convince the president to kneecap 45,000 workers on behalf of international shipping cartels.

It’s one thing to tiptoe around explicitly supporting a strike like this one, but it’s truly stupid to think that a Democratic president breaking a strike would be politically advantageous or helpful to working class families.

Even with an activist NLRB installed by the most pro-union president since FDR, Democrats are already facing huge defections by working class voters, including union members.

If Biden had inserted himself into this strike, the backlash would have been immense, not just from the 45,000 union dockworkers but also millions of other union members and just anybody who identifies with that blue collar ethos. VP Kamala Harris is already tracking behind Biden’s 2020 performance with union families by five or more points and scrambling to make up ground with these voters.

The Teamsters’ embattled president, Sean O’Brien, issued an angry statement on Sunday warning the White House to stay out of the situation, and would likely have portrayed the White House’s interference as vindication of his decision not to endorse Harris. There is no doubt that Trump and Fox News and the entire right would have run with the White House’s betrayal as yet another example of the liberal elite coming down on working people. Sure, it’s dishonest, but that’s irrelevant to them.

Biggest loser of 2024: While it’s frustrating that we can’t flay these anonymous Democrats, the silver lining is that we absolutely can Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who continued his incredible year-long losing streak with one of the dumber own goals you’ll ever see in politics.

Always eager to take swipes at unions and desperate to seem like a tough guy, DeSantis announced on Thursday afternoon that he would send members of the Florida National Guard and his own brown shirt state guard to keep order at the Port of Miami and scab jobs wherever possible. A classic sniveling John Hughes movie villain move, it blew up in DeSantis’s face a few hours later when the strike ended and he just looked like an anti-worker creep.

Earth to Dick Dubin: Americans’ confidence in the Supreme Court is at an all-time low. Given its central role in curtailing abortion rights, granting Trump near-limitless power, many of the provisions of Project 2025, and so many other deeply unpopular policies and proposals, this would seem a prime target for Democratic ads.

An astounding 56% of Americans don’t trust the Supreme Court to do the right thing, while just 44% do think the court is operating in the public’s best interest. When this survey began, back in 2005, trust in the court was at 72%.

God Bless America: Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, has embarked on his most blatantly illegal grift yet.

In June, Walters made national headlines by decreeing that every public school teacher would be expected to instruct students on The Bible and Ten Commandments. Late last month, Walters one-upped himself when he requested bids from Bible publishers that included an onerous list of criteria that could only be met by versions of the Good Book marketed by Donald Trump and by his son, Donald Trump Jr.

According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters. 

The funny thing is that in late September, Walters said he didn’t want any bells and whistles in the Bibles that the state wanted sought to purchase. After all, had he been honest about the goal of his injection of religion into school, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the budget request for the bibles approved.

According to Oklahoma Watch, a plain paperback copy of the King James Bible costs $2.99 online. The Bibles marketed by the Donalds Trump cost $60 (for the former president’s version) and $90 (for Jr.’s book) apiece. The budget request, for $3 million, lines up almost perfectly with the cost of 55,000 versions of the holy texted marketed by the elder Trump.

The extreme narrowness of the RFP’s requirements mean that it’s almost certainly illegal, but Walters is no stranger to trying to push illegal conflicts of interest. As I reported, he’s been the leading advocate for religious public charter schools — which the conservative Oklahoma state Supreme Court smacked down this summer — and for school privatization writ large.

---

Arizona: Republicans spent years pushing a law that made it easier to purge and disenfranchise residents who can’t provide physical proof of citizenship, only to make a very strange strategic flip this year.

In short, a court ruled that hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters who didn’t provide proof of citizenship were allowed to vote in national elections, but not statewide elections. The Arizona GOP fought agains this, only to reverse course when party leaders realized that a majority of who were caught in the error were actually Republicans. Noble.

San Francisco: As if they didn’t do enough damage in California with Prop 22, Uber and Lyft have their greasy fingers on an effort to kill a local ballot initiative that would tax them in order to pay for public transportation upgrades.

Ballot initiatives: Speaking of direct democracy, there will be about 160 measure son the ballot this year, which is in line with the average number of measures since 2010.

Uncertainty still remains around the effort to pass a constitutional amendment that would legalize medical marijuana in Arkansas. Secretary of State John Thurston and AG Tim Griffin, two trigger-happy initiative killers, have been trying to throw this one off the ballot for months and months, but activists have proven resilient. The state Supreme Court will now determine whether the amendment makes the cut.

---

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.

None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So, I need your help.

For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:

• Premium member-only newsletters with original reporting

• Financing new projects and paying new reporters

• Access to upcoming chats and live notes

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!