Working class politics in the year's wildest election
With 22 candidates and no frontrunner, a lifelong labor leader looks for an edge with progressive populism. Plus, news from all around the country.
Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.
I am in DC at the moment to see my coworkers from More Perfect Union and participate in some our annual winter/spring retreat. It’s my first time out of Manhattan all year, which is wild to contemplate, but it feels good to travel again. It’s also a good warmup for my upcoming trip to England, where I plan to shoot a documentary in late April. (Learn more about that here!)
This is an absolutely packed newsletter, leading with an interview with a very promising Congressional candidate and then a lot of important news. Let’s get to it.
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Of the more than a dozen union strikes that rocked the airline industry in the 1980s, few were more contentious or high-profile than the work stoppage mounted in 1985 by the pilots and flight attendants employed by United Airlines. Wendy Morse, one of the first female pilots for United, was pregnant while marching with co-workers in and around Chicago, and as she protested the company’s demands for another round of drastic concessions, Morse was also providing her future son his first exposure to the labor movement.
“I love to say that I've been on the picket line since I was in the womb,” John Morse told Progress Report in a recent conversation. “The labor movement has always been a part of my life, and it's really important to me because it's about fairness for everybody and ensuring that use our power to make life better and so that everyone can achieve the American dream.”
The strike ended after 29 days, but the Morse family only deepened its involvement in the labor movement from that point forward. Wendy rose through the union ranks and became the first woman to lead the United chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) in 2010, and not long after, John graduated law school and began working for the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA). He stayed a dozen years and worked his way up to become Associate General Counsel, a job he left late last year so that he could focus on running for Congress.
A voice for working families
When Congressman John Sarbanes announced in October that he planned to retire at the end of his ninth term, it took Democratic lawmakers and political observers in his home state of Maryland by surprise. In the absence of an obvious successor or consensus candidate, and with open seats so rare in the blue state, the primary quickly became — and remains — a free-for-all.
Candidates began declaring by November, with state legislators, small business owners, lawyers and IT professionals flooded the race early on. Some were more qualified than others, but none, Morse felt, were offering the sort of rhetoric or platform that he thought essential for such a blue seat.
“I wasn't thinking about running for Congress or anything like that,” he says. “But I watched who jumped into the race, and I was waiting and hoping to see someone who would step up and fight for the American people. I didn't see that happen.”
Morse jumped into the primary in mid-January, the 16th candidate to join what has become a massive field of 22 Congressional hopefuls. With two months before the May primary, it’s likely that at least a few long-shots and cautious politicians will drop out, but the ballot should still be split enough that a candidate who can consolidate a segment or two of the base will have a decent chance of taking a plurality and winning the nomination.
Pulling together a coalition of progressives and labor could give Morse the juice he needs. After kicking off his campaign with the enthusiastic support of Sara Nelson, the head of the AFA, Morse has earned endorsements from the UAW, CWA, and several other unions. and he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders last week, which speaks to both his political beliefs and the approach he’d take in office.
“My primary election is about defending our values,” Morse says. “There are some people who talk about wanting to work across the aisle and making some modest gains along the way. I'm all for working with whoever wants to help working people, but with this Congress and the Republican Party, that's just not the case. Matt Gaetz has no interest in working with Democrats on anything that's going to help working people.”
The sentiment extends to human rights all over the globe; Morse was the first and seemingly only candidate in the race to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Morse and I touched a number of other topics, so click the button below to read more of our conversation about his experience, campaign, the issues he’s most focused on, the frustration of modern politics, and more.
Percolating Progress
🗳️ 👩🏻⚕️ The Montana Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a proposed ballot initiative to protect abortion rights could move forward, a major win over one of the state’s top Republicans.
The 6-1 vote ended a two-month legal tussle with GOP attorney general Austin Knudsen, who initially blocked the proposal for being “legally insufficient.” Planned Parenthood and other activists now have just over three months to finalize the proposal’s wording, get it approved by lawmakers, and then collect 60,000 signatures in order to get on the ballot.
They can expect plenty of help from the infrastructure around the state Democratic Party, which sees the initiative as key to Sen. John Tester’s chances of winning re-election.
🏘️ 💰 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is asking for $80 million in his upcoming budget to help distressed renters amid the state’s ongoing housing crisis.
The money would be focused largely on immediate needs, including eviction defense for lower-income tenants, initiatives to alleviate homelessness, and a fund that provides grants to repair damaged homes. It’s one of several proposals working its way through the state legislature, where Republicans control the Senate and Democrats hold a narrow lead in the House. Other ideas include zoning reform to encourage affordable housing development and further tenant protections.
With competitive elections less than ten months away, there is expected to be some bipartisan cooperation on at least some of the proposals.
🌻 🛌 A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Kansas is also considering legislation that would help alleviate homelessness.
The state averaged over 2600 people without shelter on any given night last year, the culmination of six years of rising homelessness. Right now, they’re looking at a $40 million fund that would provide grants to communities willing to add more beds in its shelters.
🚨 🔒 Georgia is taking steps to ease the path to steady work and new beginnings for people held back by certain criminal convictions.
A pair of bipartisan bills would provide Georgians convicted of minor crimes opportunities to earn professional certifications for in-demand jobs and seal the records of some nonviolent felony offenders after they finish their sentences.
Should either bill pass, it would represent a welcome shift, however subtle, for a state that has followed the new Republican orthodoxy of “cracking down” on crime.
In February, the legislature approved a bill that would expand cash bail, making it mandatory for 30 additional crimes. The bill would also place limits on who could post bail for people in jail, kneecapping the essential work done by bail funds and churches. It currently sits on Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk amid growing opposition and threats of legal action should he sign it.
Monsters Among Us
🏛️ 👹 The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted Texas permission to enforce its ultra-draconian new immigration law, which is now the subject of a chaotic legal spin cycle.
SB 4 makes it a crime for migrants to enter the state through Mexico without prior authorization. Signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in December, the law carries a six-month jail sentence of up to six months with a first conviction and a sentence between two and 20 years for a second conviction. Alternatively, a defendant can agree to self-deport to Mexico, which stated Tuesday that it would not authorize entrance for people sent there by Texas.
In practice, the law, which was initially blocked by a lower federal court in February, would put millions of people of color at risk of profiling and unlawful arrest by state and local police.
The lower court ruled that SB4 violated the constitution by granting state and municipal law enforcement power to enforce immigration law, which has long been the purview of the federal government. Texas appealed to the extremely conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which suspended the lower court ruling while it reviews the case. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to affirm the circuit court’s decision on Tuesday evening, allowing the law to go into effect… for at least a few hours, until two other circuit judges decided late Tuesday night to temporarily reinstate the lower court’s decision.
The flurry of activity on Tuesday was a bit dizzying — here’s a smart legal summary of the situation — but what’s abundantly clear is that the far-right Supreme Court is happy to manipulate the legal process to protect ideological and political allies. Just as they did for Donald Trump by agreeing to consider his ludicrous claim of having total immunity for his actions as president, then pushing the arguments back by more than a month, the six conservative justices are totally disregarding any sense of propriety or illusion of impartiality.
As I wrote last week, it’s long since past the point of no return for this court, which has been granted its own version of total immunity by Weimar Democrats who have no interest in executing the oversight responsibilities entrusted to them by the American people. We are watching the total collapse of the constitutional order and the boundaries of ideology and power, which have crumbled under the weight of Republican extremism and abdication of Democratic counter-pressure.
The Supreme Court claimed to have made no decision over the constitutionality of SB4, its decision to allow the law’s enforcement is entirely in line with its strong belief in the supremacy of states’ rights specifically when those states are run by Republicans. Perhaps there are nuanced legal distinctions between permitting the state of Texas to supersede the federal government’s authority on immigration and blocking the state of California from enforcing gun control laws, but they were both guided by the reality that nobody seems to want to put up a fight and threaten the court’s power over them.
📖 🤬 A Republican lawmaker in Nebraska is under fire after pulling one of the most vicious, psychotic, and vile stunts you’ll ever see in a state capitol.
Republican state Sen. Steve Halloran inserted the name of his Democratic colleague, Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh, into the graphic rape scenes from a novel that he read aloud during a Monday evening debate over a book banning bill. The incident was met with gasps and outrage by other legislators, including many Republicans, several of whom called for Halloran’s resignation.
Here’s video of the incident. Halloran is reading from Lucky, a memoir by Alice Sebold, who was raped while a student at Syracuse University.
At first, Halloran, a longtime homophobe, misogynist, and unpopular scumbag, claimed that he was actually calling out Cavanaugh’s brother and fellow senator, John Cavanaugh. The smug excuse crumbled after his GOP colleagues joined in the condemnation, though Halloran’s subsequent apology was hardly heartfelt.
Machaela Cavanaugh, one of the most outspoken Democrats in the legislature, teamed with state Sen. Megan Hunt to lead long and emotionally charged filibusters over the Republican bills to ban abortion and gender-affirming care. The Republicans eventually changed the chamber rules and passed partial bans on each.
The book ban would prevent teachers and school librarians from distributing books that are considered “obscene,” even for academic purposes. The bill has a very broad definition of obscene, of course, sparking fears that it would lead to mass censorship.
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