The Lede — March 10, 2023
Welcome to 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:
- President Biden’s new budget proposal would include a 25% minimum tax on US billionaires. However, given GOP-control of the House, such policies will almost certainly not be included in the final budget.
- Senate Republican Mitch McConnell was hospitalized with a concussion Wednesday night after taking a fall.
- The United Auto Workers could soon have a new top dog calling the shots. Incumbent leader Ray Curry is down 645 votes to newcomer Shawn Fain.
- State governments with GOP leadership in Iowa, Arkansas and Ohio are attempting to slash regulations surrounding child labor.
- A Justice Department investigation into the Louisville Police Department and the killing of Breonna Taylor reveals a culture of brutality, discrimination and illegal policing practices.
The Lede
Is military engagement in Mexico the new hobby horse of the GOP?
In a recent interview with “Fox and Friends,” U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, lamented that former President Donald Trump did not engage in a covert military action that would have involved bombing cartel-controlled drug labs located in Mexico.
“One of the things we learned post-Trump presidency is that he had ordered a bombing of a couple of fentanyl labs, crystal meth labs,” explained Comer.” “…For whatever reason, the military didn’t do it. I think that was a mistake,” he added.
The Kentucky congressman is most likely referring to a passage in then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s new autobiographical book, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times.” Esper writes that Trump believed that if they could conduct such operations in a clandestine fashion “no one would know it was us.”
Comer’s comments are just the most recent example of Republican saber-rattling: Earlier this year, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) expressed frustration with the fact that the U.S. was involved in Ukraine but not “bombing the Mexican cartels that are poisoning Americans.”
DeSantis administration allows utility companies to hide shut off data
Florida utility companies like NextEra and Duke Energy are getting exactly what they bargained for when they donated millions of dollars to Ron DeSantis’ gubernatorial campaigns.
A new report by The Lever reveals that in November of 2021, the DeSantis appointees on Florida’s Public Service Commission (PSC) struck down a previous rule that sought to track the data of utilities customers impacted by the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This decision came after the PSC granted companies the ability to raise their rates and reap in profits: Costs for customers have risen by 20% since this agreement.
These bureaucratic calls now merge to create little transparency regarding such corporatism. We now have no way of knowing how many people in the Sunshine State have had their power cut off because of these price hikes.
“If that disconnection rate continued … NextEra would have shut off 1.2 million customers in 2022,” writes Lever reporter Matthew Cunningham-Cook.
“But we do not know the total, because the DeSantis-appointed Florida PSC allowed the company to hide the data.”
Policy Corner
Minnesota passes bill to allow undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses
As we noted in our inaugural newsletter, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is capitalizing on its legislative trifecta to pass a slate of progressive bills including free lunch and restored voting rights for some formerly incarcerated individuals.
And they continued to take advantage of their opportunity this past Tuesday. Gov. Tim Waltz (D) signed into law the “Driver’s Licenses for All” bill, which would allow undocumented residents in the state to obtain drivers licenses. Before its passage, 18 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico had implemented similar programs. By all accounts, the bill should help reduce hit and runs and fatal car accidents.
But discussion of the bill within the Senate at one point became very heated.
Senator Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) pushed back against claims by GOP members that providing undocumented people with driver licenses would undermine homeland security.
“The fact is that our communities are much safer with our immigrant population, they contribute immensely to our state. And we’re all better off because of them. We heard them being called terrorists. We heard them being called drug dealers. We heard a lot of insults. We heard that they’re a threat to our national security. And that’s a flat out lie,” Fateh said.
“I’m not confident that we don’t have people in our midst that are terrorists that may want driver’s licenses. Millions are pouring across, there’s no way of vetting them. And terrorists can come to Minnesota, get a driver’s license, get on an airline and fly off on an airplane,” replied state Sen. Nathan Wesenberg (R-Little Falls).
The final count was a 34-31 vote in the Senate and a 69-60 vote in the House.
Congressional negligence brings an end to SNAP expansion
Last week saw the end of the pandemic-induced Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) expansion when Congress failed to make such benefit increases fixed. The deadline was March 1.
Residents in 32 States, D.C., the Virgin Islands and Guam will see a substantial decline in their food benefits: The average was a $9.00 daily allotment under the expanded program, but will fall to a mean of $6.10. And if the GOP-controlled Congress has its way, we could see it go down close to $4.75 a day.
Children and the elderly will be explicitly impacted by such cuts. Seniors will see their average benefits cut by 91.8%, and the cuts will directly affect the astonishing 25% of youth dependents nationally that rely on the program. Additionally, this will only further compound the consequences of an inflation rate that ravages the already meager paychecks of working people.
And such austerity measures, which impact issues like child poverty and abuse, will surely cause more social malaise.
“Poverty and hunger are policy choices. It’s time we step up and do more,” noted Progressive Caucus Chair and Washington Congressmember Pramila Jayapal.
But such slogans only go so far. The fact remains that even when such provisions were in place, almost a third of all American households are classified as “food insecure.”
Person of Interest: Michael Knowles
Last week at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Committee summit — an annual meeting of the minds — saw the usual rogues gallery of reactionary freaks: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, JD Vance, Majory Taylor Greene and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro were all keynote speakers.
But one, slightly less relevant guest grabbed the most headlines. Michael Knowles, a conservative pundit and podcast host for Ben Shapiro’s right-wing rag The Daily Wire, came under fire for suggesting that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology.”
Transgender people, according to Knowles, are “laboring a delusion, and we need to correct that delusion.”
