Welcome to The Lede!

Welcome to the initial newsletter from The Lede! We’ll get you caught up on the news you missed during the week. And as an independently owned progressive outlet not constrained by a media conglomerate, you’ll read breaking stories and analysis here you won’t get anywhere else. Let’s get to it!

Speed Read: 

1. Former CEO of Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas and Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson have defeated incumbent Lori Lightfoot and advanced to a runoff in the Chicago mayoral election. Unofficial results show Vallas received 33.8 percent of the vote, and Johnson received 20.3 percent.
2. A new bipartisan bill introduced by Ohio Sens. J.D. Vance (R) and Sherrod Brown (D) would create new federal regulations and penalties for trains transporting toxic chemicals.
3. The Biden administration is mulling over legislation that would place limits on the social media app TikTok.
4. The cereal companies behind Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms and other sugary cereals are resisting new Food and Drug Administration guidelines that would preclude these brands from labeling their products as “healthy.”
5. The Supreme Court began hearing arguments about the legal validity of Joe Biden’s student debt relief program. 

 

Beneath the Headlines: 

Unsealed federal charges reveal white supremacist terror plot

CW: This story contains graphic imagery and racial expletives. 

A recent investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch has revealed the inner workings of a white supremacist conspiracy to attack critical energy infrastructure. Brandon Clint Russell, the co-founder of the neo-nazi group Atomwaffen Division, and his girlfriend, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, have been federally charged with plotting to attack “multiple electrical substations in Maryland.” 

Russell had already served time in a federal prison when a bomb-making material was discovered in his home during a 2018 homicide investigation involving two other Atomwaffen members.   

“This alleged planned attack threatened lives and would have left thousands of Marylanders in the cold and dark,” said U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron for the District of Maryland in a statement. 

Read more at Heartland Signal

 

Regressive politics surrounding the unhoused growing in California

As homelessness continues to rise in the United States, “progressive” cities like New York, Chicago and Seattle have been critiqued for failing to deal with such a pressing catastrophe. 

Nowhere has the issue become more ubiquitous than San Francisco and California more broadly. Indeed, homelessness is very much on the minds of voters in the state. 

But recent years have seen the rise of a reactionary backlash to city governments and their supposed enabling of homelessness. 

For example, a recent New York Times op-ed by billionaire Sequoia Capital honcho Michael Moritz placed the blame on the so-called radicals in the Democratic Socialists of America, the “malleable” nature of local governance and the city’s Board of Supervisors. 

Read more at Heartland Signal

 

Policy Corner 

Minnesota Congress introduces a slew of progressive legislation

Last election cycle, the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party achieved majorities in both the House and Senate and held onto the governorship. And now the DFL is prepared to put that trifecta to use.

This February saw the passing of bills that would restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals and create a universal school lunch program. Additionally, legislative committees are preparing a bill that would crackdown on wage theft in the construction industry — a sector that is notorious for exploiting and stealing from its workers.

House File 28, called the “Restore The Vote” bill, would grant close to 50,000 Minnesotans on probation or parole the ability to vote. It will not, however, permit convicted felons to participate in elections. 

But the school lunch program is especially prescient: While more than 15% of Minnesota children experience food insecurity, a quarter of those do not currently qualify for free school lunch. The program will cost the state $200 million annually. 

Rep. Sydney Jordan (DFL-Minneapolis), who wrote the bill, rebuked fiscal hawks that called for some restraints. “We don’t means test for who gets a desk or who gets a locker,” she told the Star Tribune. 

Luckily, those who may argue such initiatives should be means tested can sleep well knowing that Minnesota’s $17.6 billion budget surplus can easily accommodate the financial demands of guaranteeing all children have a daily meal during the school year. 

 

Person of Interest: Paul Vallas

By securing a third of all votes cast in the first round of the Chicago mayoral race, Paul Vallas — who served as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools from 1995 to 2001 — has booked his ticket to the big dance. 

It is his first electoral win in a long history of defeats, and a surprising one at that. His last mayoral run in 2019 saw him winning a mere 5.4% of the vote and finishing ninth in the race. 

Vallas, who also served as the CEO of Philadelphia’s public schools and oversaw the rebuilding of the New Orleans school system post-Hurricane Katrina, ran a conservative campaign that stressed a (supposed) return to traditional, law-and-order policing. He’s now just one strong performance away from becoming the head of the Midwest’s most industrious and populated city. 

His pro-police message resonated with neighborhoods in the North, Northwest, and Southwest precincts, who were apparently unbothered by his close relationship with former Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara. The controversial president, who believes COVID-19 vaccine mandates are comparable to the Holocaust, is a MAGA acolyte that openly campaigned for Vallas. 

Vallas also spoke at a school choice charity event hosted by an anti-LGBTQ group that once referred to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker as a “groomer.”

And Vallas’ record as a bureaucrat might be even more troubling. As a public school czar for two major metropolitan centers, Vallas became notorious for budget mishaps, manufacturing educational inequality via charter advocacy, and union busting. 

Furthermore, Vallas was instrumental in turning New Orleans into a laboratory for “school choice” experiments. Under his watch, New Orleans became the first city in the world to have an entirely charter-based school system. 

In their endorsement of Vallas, the Chicago Tribune maintained that he was full of “detailed plans and fresh ideas,” but more privatization and less police accountability has been the norm in the City of Big Shoulders for quite some time. 

But that’s par for the course. Chicago, and America in general, has always had a love affair for brutes. As the late, great Mike Royko once said of Richard J. Daley: “‘Bust their heads’ was the mood of the land, and Daley swung the biggest club.”

Austin Linfante contributed to this issue of The Lede.