Independent News

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Top Starbucks executives are really butt-hurt about the so-far overwhelmingly successful union organizing drive in their stores. In a leaked video call with managers, CEO and founder Howard Schultz included the company’s own employees in a list of “obstacles and challenges” the company has “managed to overcome,” describing them as “a new outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company.” 

These are Starbucks workers, and they are voting overwhelmingly for a union in which they are the driving force. Workers at the Seattle Roastery, by the way, voted to unionize on Thursday, 38 to 27. There are three large “roastery” locations in the U.S., and this is the second of those to vote yes.

Rossann Williams, the company’s president for North America, repeatedly called on managers to ignore what they’re seeing on social media, flatly denied any union-busting (while describing, in veiled terms, her own role in that union-busting) despite multiple National Labor Relations Board charges against the company, and called it “heartbreaking for me to see and hear how some partners are talking about the company that I love.” Managers’ “number one responsibility,” according to Williams? Persuading workers to vote against unionizing. Not that there’s a union-busting campaign going on.

A union activist fired from a Buffalo Starbucks responded:

“okay rossann, i sat and spoke to you one on one and told you i wanted a union. i asked you why you were here in buffalo and you said to improve the partner experience. you assured me i wouldn’t experience retaliation yet i was fired march 4th. starbucks is breaking the law.”

Apple retail workers at the Grand Central store are trying to organize.

Biden administration blasts Arizona for lax workplace safety rules, Dave Jamieson reports.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said Wednesday that it’s moving to revoke Arizona’s state OSHA plan. The Grand Canyon State is one of more than 20 states that run their own workplace safety programs under federal approval, with inspections carried out by state officials. Under the law, a state plan must be “at least as effective” as the federal program. If it’s found not to be, then federal officials could move to take over enforcement.

Following the work of major Democratic consulting firm Global Strategy Group worked on Amazon’s union-busting campaign, the Democratic Party is reportedly considering banning its consultants from such anti-union work, Politico’s Eleanor Mueller reported.

“Add personal story here”: Starbucks’ anti-union one-on-ones fall flat. A total must-read from New Jersey Starbucks worker Sara Mughal, peppered with great anecdotes like this:

We were prepared for the one-on-ones. One barista, Paul, started off his meeting by responding to the manager’s “How are you?” with “Pretty good. Everyone’s feeling strong about unionizing, Scott just got fired, and Hamilton Starbucks [our neighboring store] just filed [for a union election].” Scott was our former district manager who had bragged about his past experience union-busting in Philadelphia.

Two opportunities for organizers, would-be organizers, and activists: The 2022 Labor Notes conference is in Chicago from June 17 to 19. And online, a series of Organizing for Power workshops kick off on May 10.

National Domestic Workers Alliance names new director. Jenn Stowe is the granddaughter of a domestic worker and, in addition to previous roles at NDWA, she has worked at Priorities USA and Planned Parenthood.

How a Dollar General employee went viral on TikTok.

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The moment you walk into a liquor store anywhere near us and they see your birthdate begins with a “1” instead of a “2” they instantly know you’re eligible to drink. The lifespan of Daily Kos isn’t quite there yet, but knowing that the top song in 2002 was Nickelback’s “You Remind Me” is definitely an interesting way to see where we are in a good way, in a bad way, and in a cringeworthy way all at the exact same time.

So this week on Connect Unite Act, I get to announce that on May 20, we are holding a virtual Cheers & Jeers meetup once again. Take a chance to join with your fellow members of Daily Kos for an evening of fun, pop-ins, and the chance for all of us to talk about anything we desire.

You know, I wish I had all the time in the day to read every single comment, every single diary. I try hard to read as many as I can between other work, but I almost never miss Bill in Portland Maine’s daily Cheers & Jeers. Going back as many Netroots Nations as I can remember, the organization, planning, and fun of our Daily Kos Cheers & Jeers dinner and the Daily Kos Caucus were two of my favorite organizational moments. We would get together and any member of the Daily Kos community could ask questions of staff and each other, and we built connections and understanding. 

It is a lot easier to appreciate someone when they step out from behind the keyboard and you can see them in real life.

COVID, however, has changed so much about our ability to come together and just talk. On May 20, we’re going to host the second Cheers & Jeers virtual gathering via Zoom. While it isn’t quite the same as meeting in person, it is definitely a chance for everyone to hear each other and talk about their own cheers and jeers.

If you plan to attend the Cheers & Jeers virtual meeting this year, you will need to RSVP. You can do so by sending me Kosmail. You will need to RSVP to attend!

Thoughts on music of 2002

In going through a recent neurology exam, one thing on the report really stood out to me: It is the fact that I struggle on visual recognition, but when it comes to multitasking or recognition of something through music, I do considerably better. By considerably, I mean night and day differences.

Seeing Nickelback as the group with the Billboard hot hit of 2002? Come on. There has to be something better that I connect with, right? Something that might represent Daily Kos better than Nickelback?

So I took time to fish through my murky memory of the albums and songs from 2002 that made a huge difference to me. One of them ended up selling significantly more copies than Nickelback could dream of, even if it started slow. There will be a remaster coming on April 29, and 20 years later, this song is still as good as I remember it. And yes, I will wait for the remaster:

For now though, it might be time to remember one of my other favorites from 2002 and focus on what happens next for the election in November. What does that require? Let’s have Missy Elliot sum it up:

More news ahead!

If you are interested in finding a group that connects to you by subject, region, or cause, check the DK New Groups group, which can give you the details in an easy-to-understand format.

Are you or your group interested in holding a virtual event? Please let me know—I would love to try and help you realize that!

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by Frances Nguyen

This article was originally published at Prism.

Civil rights groups and voting rights advocates knew they were entering a new frontier this redistricting cycle, the first after the Supreme Court gutted a cornerstone provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965: the preclearance regime, which required certain states and counties with a history of racial discrimination in voting practices to report any changes to election law, practice, or procedure for federal review and approval—including their redistricting plans.

In its 2013 decision on Shelby v. Holder, the high court ruled that Section 4 of the Act, which determined that the jurisdiction of the preclearance regime—Section 5 of the Act—was outdated and therefore unconstitutional. Things had changed, the court’s narrow 5-4 majority argued, and the success of the preclearance regime in those states and counties over more than 50 years proved that it was no longer needed. Without a jurisdiction, Section 5 became unenforceable. Waves of voter suppression laws immediately swept through the states formerly held under preclearance, some within 24 hours of the decision.

And as voting rights advocates feared, several state legislatures have set their sights on the once-in-a-decade redistricting process to further steamroll voters of color for political gain, drawing gerrymandered maps that dilute their voting power and reduce the number of majority-BIPOC districts to diminish their representation. While independent redistricting commissions have been effective at reducing partisanship in the redistricting process in some states, in those where legislatures maintain control over map-drawing, litigation is often the only recourse for voters of color to protect themselves. Such cases often take years to resolve, all the while allowing for the harm to remain active until a decision is reached. However, if they’re decided in voters’ favor, the precedents can safeguard against gerrymandering elsewhere in the country or, in some cases, outlaw it altogether.

Now communities impacted by gerrymandering are using the courts to test the strength of what remains of the VRA at the federal level, and explore what protections state laws might offer. So far, results have been mixed.

In February, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court reversed a lower court order for Alabama (one of the states previously covered under preclearance) to redraw its congressional map. The lower court had found that the legislature-drawn plan likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racially discriminatory voting procedures, because it only included one district where Black voters would have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice when there could’ve been “two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” With a second district, Democrats were likely to pick up another seat in the House in the fall. The court gave the legislature 14 days to redraw the map accordingly, but when the state appealed to the Supreme Court, the justices ruled in a 5-4 decision to pause the lower court’s decisions on the grounds of maintaining the status quo and not derailing the state’s upcoming primary, leaving the discriminatory map in place.

The decision’s effect was almost immediate. The following month, a federal judge cited the Supreme Court’s newly established precedent in a ruling to keep Georgia’s redistricting maps in place despite finding that the plaintiffs had presented enough evidence that the maps violated Section 2 by diluting the representation of Black voters. Georgia, another state formerly under preclearance, is projected to be one of the fiercest battlegrounds this midterm.

“It tends to happen that, when harmful things occur in one southern state, it sets a trend for other states [in the South] to follow,” said Jesús Rubio, Georgia state director for Mi Familia Vota, a national organization working to build Latino political power. “That’s exactly what occurred: the federal judge here in Georgia saw the Alabama Supreme Court case and threw it out on the grounds that it was so similar to that case.”

‘Why do people have to wait to have their rights?’

Cases involving threats to the voting strength of communities of color are still fair game for the federal and high courts, but those cases were difficult to prove to begin with: Claims of racial gerrymandering require plaintiffs to prove that lines were intentionally drawn to dilute the political power of minority voting blocs, whereas cases brought under Section 2 of the VRA must be tested by the “totality of circumstances.” Litigants must point to conditions, known as the 1982 Senate Factors, such as a state’s history of official discrimination in voting or other areas that affect the voting process, or burdens on political participation due to the continuing effects of discrimination in such areas as education, employment, or health. And while Section 2 cases don’t require explicit proof of intent, meeting the “totality of circumstances” test often involves producing a body of evidence that strongly implies that at least some intent was involved.

“I don’t think people know that voting rights lawsuits are extraordinarily complicated,” said Sonni Waknin, a managing attorney for the UCLA Voting Rights Project. “It’s not just about lawyers; you need data scientists, social scientists, and historians to prove, or disprove, evidence of a voting rights violation.” Gathering proof can be both cost- and time-intensive—both of which frustrate efforts to throw out gerrymandered maps within the same cycle that they’re approved.

“The litigation solution just means that you’re going to wait,” said Waknin. “You don’t get the relief now, and that’s harmful in so many ways. Why do people have to wait to have their rights again?”

And that was before the barrage of attacks on the VRA since the Supreme Court signaled in its Shelby decision that it was now less interested in protecting voting rights. Without Section 5 protections in place, Section 2 of the VRA took on greater significance as one of the last lines of defense for voters of color to protect themselves against discriminatory laws and line-drawing designed to suppress their political power—which explains why Section 2 appears to be under siege now.  

Last year, in its decision in Brnovich v. Demo­cratic National Commit­tee, the Supreme Court reversed a 9th Circuit ruling that a pair of Arizona voting laws were racially discriminatory (and therefore viol­ated Section 2) for disenfranchising voters who vote in the wrong precinct and limiting who can deliver an absentee ballot to a polling place. In doing so, the ruling narrowed the scope of Section 2 claims that can successfully move forward before the court, and tacitly endorsed the “Big Lie” that widespread election fraud justifies targeted voter suppressive legislation.

These days, advocates and legal experts expect courts to be more hostile to redistricting challenges brought under the VRA.

“The reality is that those claims do face a lot of headwinds. They were always hard claims to win,” said Michael Li, senior counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice’s democracy program. “But I think it’s fair to say that it’s also gotten harder this cycle because the courts have gotten more conservative and are skeptical about the use of race in American society in general.”

Litigation without Section 5

Perhaps the cruelest irony of the VRA’s slow dismantling is that Congress passed the law expressly because case-by-case litigation was not effective enough to address the rampant, widespread racial discrimination against voters of color in Section 5-covered jurisdictions. Before the VRA, states fully covered under Section 5 would either simply ignore court orders or find another way to suppress voting rights for communities of color—not unlike what we’re seeing this cycle.

Under Section 5, covered jurisdictions had to submit redistricting plans to the Justice Department and prove that new district lines would not affect the ability of communities of color to elect the candidates of their choice. Without it, the burden of proof now rests on the Justice Department to prove that maps are discriminatory. Such is now the case in Texas, where the Justice Department has filed a lawsuit charging that both the state’s congressional and legislative redistricting plans intentionally discriminated against Latino and Black voters there. It joins a slew of private lawsuits brought against the state on the same grounds.

Between 2010 and 2020, Texas grew by nearly 4 million residents according to the complaint in United States v. Texas, and people of color represented 95% of that population growth—half of which is attributed to Latinos. Consequently, Texas’ House delegation gained two new seats, but the congressional map the legislature drew would ensure that those new districts have white majorities—who will then elect the new representatives. What’s more, the congressional plan actually reduces the number of districts with a Latino voting majority from eight to seven. Similarly, in the state legislature, the districts with a Latino voting majority dropped from 33 to 30. The lawsuits together allege that the state was flagrant in its intent to deny electoral opportunities for voters of color, particularly for Latinos.

Advocates for Latino political power are no strangers to this process in Texas: According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Texas has violated the VRA with racially gerrymandered maps in every redistricting cycle since the Act was enacted; they knew to expect nothing less this cycle. Except this time, there was no preclearance regime to hold back the legislature from its worst impulses.

“We see this really direct attempt to dilute power, this extra effort being taken to make sure that we are not showing up on maps, and that the maps that are being drawn and passed are not actually accurate of the community presence on the ground,” said Rubio’s counterpart Angelica Razo, Texas state director for Mi Familia Vota.

In a public hearing, Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, who chairs the Texas Senate Special Committee on Redistricting, claimed that the maps were drawn “race blind,” without reference to any racial data, and were reviewed by legal counsel to make sure they were compliant with federal anti-discrimination law. However, she declined to explain their process for drawing district lines, or what factors were considered in mapmaking, invoking legislative privilege.

Similarly, North Carolina’s legislature was accused of drawing state House and state Senate districts that diluted Black voting power. Republican legislators defended that they intentionally excluded racial data in their approach to redistricting because they were sued for using race last cycle, state Sen. Ralph Hise, a Republican and co-chair of the legislature’s redistricting commission, told CNN, and that they didn’t read the law as requiring them to incorporate race.

“That’s a new defense that they’ve come up with,” responded Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a regular advocate for plaintiffs in redistricting battles in Texas. “There’s no such thing as ‘race-blind’ redistricting. And even if it were true, it’s irrelevant. There’s no area of the law, including this one, where you’re allowed to claim you are ignorant, and therefore your violation should be ignored. It doesn’t work like that.”

A similar defense has been used in Alabama, which, in its appeal to the Supreme Court over its congressional map, is challenging how much race can be a consideration in VRA compliance when it comes to redistricting—a consideration that the Supreme Court will deliberate on in the fall.

“It seems kind of nutty, right? How do you comply with the Voting Rights Act without thinking about race? It’s a race-explicit statute!” said Li. “It doesn’t make sense, but this is the world of the Supreme Court: you have to draw a car without thinking about a car too much.”

The danger, however, is that when the Supreme Court does take up the full Alabama case in the fall, its conservative majority will seize the opportunity to rewrite the parameters of when race can be considered in complying with the VRA, whittling away remaining protections for voters of color and providing ample cover for racially discriminatory voting practices to continue unabated.

Another well-worn defense is that any racially discriminatory maps are still legal because they were drawn solely on the basis of partisanship, hiding behind the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause. In Rucho, the Supreme Court decided that federal courts cannot hear constitutional challenges to maps gerrymandered for political reasons, essentially giving carte blanche to partisan gerrymandering and at the same time providing a convenient cover for racially discriminatory maps: Now legislatures can simply claim they were produced to meet partisan ends only, putting them beyond the purview of federal courts.

“That’s a longstanding contention: ‘We’re not doing this for race reasons; we’re doing this for party reasons,’” said Saenz.

It’s true that partisanship and racial voting patterns often overlap with some communities of color, but to treat them as homogenous would be a mistake. “If party and race coincide, that’s not a given,” said Saenz. “The Republican Party has so alienated minorities that they won’t vote for them. You don’t even get to say that’s not racial.”

‘The law is on our side’

Despite some states’ efforts to put forth discriminatory maps and essentially claim in court that they did so by accident, there are still occasions for cautious optimism.

Ultimately, advocates believe that the law is on their side.

The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) has joined a suit in North Dakota challenging the state’s legislative map for diluting the Native American vote, namely for the Spirit Lake Tribe and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. The suit claims that the map approved by the governor packs a supermajority of Turtle Mountain citizens into a single house subdistrict while separating other Turtle Mountain citizens and Spirit Lake citizens into nearby house districts and subdistricts—where the majority voting bloc often votes against Native Americans’ preferred candidates—shrinking their opportunity to elect two candidates of choice to the state House down to just one. The tribes had appealed to the state legislature’s redistricting committee in public meetings (which were held far from reservations) to have their reservations drawn into the same district. Michael Carter, a staff attorney for NARF, said that the tribes had also proposed what they believed would be fair redistricting maps to the legislature and provided a legal basis for why a district encompassing both reservations is required under the VRA. Their concerns were entirely ignored. “That really left the tribes with no choice but to bring the case,” said Carter.

Historically, Native Americans have had to rely on litigation to protect their voting rights against an onslaught of suppressive measures that prevent their meaningful participation in the political process, and yet they have won more than 90% of the cases they’ve brought, according to NARF.

“We feel good about the case,” said Carter. “Otherwise, the tribes—and tribal members who are plaintiffs—wouldn’t have brought it. Of course, there’s a shifting legal landscape right now, and those developments have been concerning, but we don’t think that anything that has occurred so far, involving the Supreme Court or any other legal precedents, alters our policy, our case, our legal arguments, or our ability to pursue the remedies that the tribes are pursuing.”

Saenz feels equally confident about the case in Texas. MALDEF has litigated in the state for decades. “[Texas] loses cases year after year, decade after decade, and nothing has changed to appreciably alter that likely outcome,” he said. “I am quite confident that the law is on our side. Precedent is on our side.”

What’s more, while the Supreme Court’s rulings over the last decade have left states (and their respective legislatures) to their own devices, there are still state-level protections that provide some buffer against abuses of power in redistricting. “Free and fair” clauses in some state constitutions have helped pave the way for successful litigation against gerrymandering. In a 2018 redistricting lawsuit brought against the state, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court found that its 2011 congressional redistricting map violated the state constitution’s Free and Equal Elections Clause, ruling that “[a]n election corrupted by extensive, sophisticated gerrymandering and partisan dilution of votes is not ‘free and equal.’” The decision set a legal precedent for other states with similar clauses in their constitutions to bring challenges against gerrymandered maps to state court.

Both North Carolina’s congressional and legislative maps this cycle were struck down by the state’s Supreme Court for violating provisions in the state constitution, including those guaranteeing free elections and equal protection. The court imposed a new map that wouldn’t diminish Black representation.

And Ohio’s Supreme Court has rejected three rounds of state legislative maps drawn by the GOP-dominated redistricting commission in barely two months for being chronically noncompliant with the state constitution’s anti-gerrymandering law, a 2015 amendment added by Ohio voters explicitly outlawing partisan gerrymandering (and, ironically, creating the same commission that ultimately drew the rejected maps).

The League of Women Voters of the United States—a longtime litigant in gerrymandering cases— was a plaintiff in two successful lawsuits in Ohio this cycle, in Adams v. DeWine and League of Women Voters of Ohio v. Ohio Redistricting Commission.

“Our hope, through strategic litigation, is to hold our elected leaders accountable and protect the freedom to vote at all costs,” said Celina Stewart, chief counsel and senior director of advocacy and litigation for the League of Women Voters of the United States, in a statement to Prism. “There is too much at stake, and without action, there will be no progress.”

Challenging Race

In the years to come, there will be more court cases probing the nexus of race and voting rights, spurred by the challenges brought by this redistricting cycle. What remains to be seen is how the courts will handle when and how race intersects with politics—whether they will ignore it, deny it, or face it.

“It is hard to disentangle race and politics,” said Li. “But courts are set up to disentangle these sorts of things, to figure out motive. Just because these cases are hard doesn’t mean they don’t have a remedy.”

For Saenz, the only wild card is the composition of the courts. Before Trump left office, he appointed more than 200 judges to the federal bench—including some of the most ideologically reliable conservatives in the movement. How they’ll respond not only to a rapidly growing minority voting bloc—and accompanying demographic fear—is the danger.

“It would be naïve of me to say that demographic fear has not seeped into the overall political discourse of the country, and that, in turn, can have an effect on the courts,” said Saenz. Still, he said, “if we have judges who are going to stick to the law as developed, and who, in good faith, are going to apply the facts, then I’m confident that we have strong cases, not just the ones we’ve filed but future ones.”

Li observes much of what has happened this cycle as just that: a visceral reaction to demographic change, or, more accurately, “an emerging multiracial America.” While the most insidious plays for partisan gains have long-term consequences for communities of color, they are still shortsighted and, ultimately, futile. “It’s Republicans taking a look at the future and deciding that it scares them instead of competing for it,” he said. “It’s not like the country is going to stop getting more diverse.”

Frances Nguyen is a freelance writer, editor of the Women Under Siege section (which reports on gender-based and sexualized violence in conflict and other settings) at the Women’s Media Center, and a member of the editorial team for Interruptr, an online space for women experts to disrupt discourse in traditionally male-dominated focus areas. She is currently working on a creative nonfiction portfolio on race, identity, and the American Dream.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Come for the politics, stay for the community. Daily Kos’ unique platform and mission have created a powerful chosen family who congregate on its pages each day. It’s like no other political hub on the internet.

The internet—and the world—was a very different place on May 26, 2002, when Markos Moulitsas dashed off seven sentences and hit “Publish” on the first-ever post on Daily Kos. Moulitsas—better known as the Kos in Daily Kos and Kos Media, LLC—will be the first to tell you that he never anticipated what was to come.

And now, we’re just weeks from the 20th anniversary of that iconic handful of sentences. In case you haven’t noticed, we kinda can’t stop talking about it or coming up with ways to celebrate. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been challenging everyone—including you, dear Community—to ponder our writings here on Daily Kos over the last 20 years and pick a personal best.

It’s been a blast collecting submissions from the Community Contributors Team, our Daily Kos Staff (part one and part two), Kos himself, and you, dearest Community.

RELATED: Daily Kos Turns 20: We want to showcase the ‘best’ thing you’ve written here! Up first: The CC Team

And now it’s time to present the first of several collections of Community TIMB submissions!

Some years ago, I’m told, there was a wonderful series called This Is My Best (TIMB), which encouraged Community members to share their own writing that they were most proud of, rather than the writing of others. One part self-promotion, one part self-confidence, all parts awesome, TIMB encourages writers to press pause on their role as their own worst critics and take some time to toot their own horns. 

So let’s go! This week’s stories are intimate and reflective, deeply researched and political. And they mean a lot to the people who wrote them. So give ‘em a read!

And remember: If you don’t see your story below, we’ll be keeping the party going right up until our joyful 20th anniversary on May 26!

TEXMEX

Who the hell am I? (2007)

I like it because by writing it, it caused me to reflect on who I was and how I am perceived. I don’t reflect on the writing. I mostly write like I am writing in a journal. I put my thoughts into words for me. But, then I know that there are others who read my words. But often what I write just sinks and disappears. So my feelings don’t get hurt all the time if they do.

SIDEPOCKET

Rebels with a Cause: A success story (2013)

[I did] a lot of research on a subject of vital interest to many in the Bay Area, and links to several cool Kossack events.

WU MING

Obama’s scold is a good sign (2005)

I keep coming back to this diary, written after then-Sen. Obama had publicly criticized lefty bloggers for being mean to Democratic senators who voted to confirm John Roberts for chief justice of the SCOTUS, because of how prescient it has turned out to be in retrospect. We knew that the GOP was going to pack the Supreme Court and use it to wreck our democracy, and we knew that Democratic senators’ obsession with bipartisan comity was being systematically taken advantage of.

Obama did turn out to be a great statesman, but as citizens we deferred far too much to his leadership in his first two years, instead of applying maximum pressure, and so the tea party pushed the historical dialectic in the opposite direction, until the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter and Indivisible movements (and a ton of stubborn, unheralded grassroots organizing to take the Democratic Party over from the bottom up) pushed it back again. We have grown and matured as a movement of citizens, online and off, and our organized pressure has gradually moved the country in the right direction over the past decade and a half.

But the best part of this is that Obama posted a rebuttal linking to my diary! High point of my blogging career.

FISH OUT OF WATER

COVID-19 antibody response drops in 3 months, according to Kings College London report in review (2020)

My best diary on COVID-19. This diary was spot-on, warning us accurately about how immunity would fade, and how policies based on the concept of herd immunity would lead to pointless mass death.

KROTOR

40th anniversary of the military reign of terror in Argentina (Part I) (2016)

One of the things I am proud of writing is a five-part series about the overthrow of democracy in Argentina, and the resulting seven-year military dictatorship. I wrote it back in 2016.

What I like about it: It surprised me by taking on a life of its own. I intended to write up a short summary of events to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the coup, but I quickly realized it would be woefully inadequate for bringing understanding of the period to many people. So, I started writing it with more and more detail, and ultimately it turned into a major project: five lengthy, researched, and footnoted diaries, written over a period of eight days. It was an intense period, believe me.

What else I like about it: As I said, it was to be short summary, so I began with the the initial moments of the coup. Rather than the typical presentation of historical events, beginning long before the salient point and trying to anticipate and explain its origins, I began with the event itself. From there, I moved forward in time, then backward, then forward and backward, and finally forward to current times, sort of peeling new layers of the complex onion of the relevant historical foundations, causes, effects, and aftermaths in Argentina. I think it made it a more interesting tale to present things that way.

Finally, I like it because it was my small contribution to aiding interested readers in understanding my adopted homeland of many years now.

SENOR UNOBALL

A gang, a gun, a murder (2013)

A long and detailed personal look at the insides of a murder trial. Jury selection, testimony of witnesses, how it felt to have somebody’s life and future in my hands. Details of Latino criminal gangs that I knew nothing of beforehand.

ZENBASSOON

I’m a failure (2014)

This is something I wrote after the death of Robin Williams. These are the things I’ve struggled with every day. I’m trying to communicate what depression is, and why it is so mystifying to others.

CRONESENSE

Mother’s Day: The other side of the coin (2007)

Part memory, part reflection on our role in the Iraq war, which seems timely today. We were the aggressors then in an ill-fated war. My son served in that war and came home safely, only to commit suicide after a two-year struggle in 1993.

One thing I liked most about my diaries was the wonderful comments that others posted when they shared their reflections of my subjects.

CAPTAIN FROGBERT

Whom do you shoot? (2007)

Wrote this way back in 2007, and I think of reposting it every time there’s a mass shooting. Thirteen years and we are still watching people walk into schools, shopping malls, and everywhere else and murder people for no sane reason. And we STILL have to pander to the pathetic gun loony, cosplay KKKommandos, and their sad little pew, pew, boom, boom fantasy lives.

MORRELLWI1983

History of the Antiquities Act, Part 1: The beginning of conservation (2015)

Most of my diaries have been environmentally based, such as my Antiquities Act series and my National Park Series. As for which is my best, its really hard to pin down. I would say the introduction diary to the AA series. Both of my series have involved a lot of research, particularly the NP ones. Some states have lots of public areas, others, not so much.

LIBERALDAD2

The Economic Case for Welfare (2014)

This was my very first Daily Kos diary and is still one of my favorites, because it highlights a common economic fallacy about poor people and money. It proves why giving poor people money strengthens the economy for everyone. I have never understood why the business community opposes giving their customers more cash: It obviously helps all of them. It’s the opposite of Reagan’s “trickle-down” theory, because it shows that injecting money at the lowest tiers of the economic pyramid is way more effective than at the top. I think it didn’t get much attention because it had too much math, LOL.

ERICLEWIS0

Cartoon: Animal Nuz: Fight Night Edition (2016)

Not my best Animal Nuz cartoon, but I really like [the] first panel. I am just happy with how it looks like a real kick, and maybe the idea that the Pope can kickbox.

WIDE EYED LIB

Free Food: Why foraging beats ‘taking nothing but photographs’ (2010)

For a little more than two years, on almost every Sunday during the Northeastern growing season (roughly March to November), I published a story on how to forage edible wild plants. I started on March 22, 2009 and the last one was June 19, 2011—I published a total of 53 diaries in between. All of them included original photographs of numerous edible wild plants and describe their characteristics, growth range and edible and medicinal properties. I’m proud of so many of them, but I’m choosing this one because I outline my whole philosophy of how foraging creates a lasting bond with nature.

GLEN THE PLUMBER

Tales from the trail: Getting out the vote in CA-17 (2014)

My little one and I had spent many months canvassing for our favorite congressmember. And we used Daily Kos to recruit others to join us. While I had written many diaries covering the race, I never wrote about our experiences while canvassing. But that changed after an experience on one of the final days before the election, I had to share.

Our little family had put a lot of effort into the race. And in the end, we had an effect.

It’s not too late to submit your own TIMB story, of course. To make my job easier (and data entry much faster—give some love to Christopher Reeves for his help on that front), please use this format for your submission:

Linked title of story (year published)

A sentence or two in your own words—not an excerpt—about why it’s your “best.”

See you in the comments!

RELATED: Daily Kos Turns 20: Let’s showcase our best work! Up next: The man who started it all—Kos himself

One more thing: If you’ve already submitted, there’s no need to do it again, and we are only accepting one story per person. And if you simply can’t narrow down your choice before comments close, we’ll be back with another installment (and opportunity to submit) next week, when I’ll have even more Community submissions from the last four weeks.

This post was originally published on this site

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Yes, it’s a tough-looking midterm, but Democrats can still go on offense! The Downballot takes a deep dive into 10 House districts across the country where Republicans are vulnerable for a variety of reasons, whether due to redistricting, retirements, long-term demographic trends, or plain old GOP infighting. Our tour runs from the eastern tip of Long Island in New York all the way to sunny Southern California, with many stops in between.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also investigate Ron DeSantis’ turbocharged gerrymander aimed at undermining Black representation; discuss two more Republican Senate primaries where Trump endorsements have made a mess of things; call out a Democrat for running an offensive ad that risks contributing to anti-Asian hatred; and take stock of upcoming elections in France and Australia.

Daily Kos’ House fundraising slate.

David Beard:

Hello and welcome. I’m David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir:

And I’m David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency from Senate to city council. We have a special request for you. Apple Podcasts is sort of like the New York Times Best Seller list for podcasts and The Downballot has been shooting up the charts. But you would be doing us a huge favor if you subscribed to us on Apple Podcasts and left us a five-star rating there. You can do that very easily. Just pop open the Apple Podcasts app on your phone or on your desktop. Type in The Downballot and you’ll find us right there.

David Beard:

Let’s dive into today’s episode. What are we going to be covering today?

David Nir:

First up, we’re going to be talking about the bizarre situation unfolding with redistricting in Florida. We’re going to be talking about the absolute mess that Trump is making of a couple more GOP Senate primaries in Ohio and Pennsylvania. We’re also calling out a Democratic candidate for Senate for running an offensive, xenophobic ad, and we are previewing upcoming elections in France and Australia. Beard and I will also be taking a deep dive into the house playing field and looking in particular at 10 Republican-held districts where Democrats have a chance to go on offense and actually pick up seats this year.

David Beard:

Great. Let’s get started.

David Beard:

Let’s go ahead and get started with our weekly hits. Why don’t you kick us off down in Florida where we’ve got a new map to consider?

David Nir:

So we have a new map, but it comes from a totally bizarre source, and that is Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Normally in states where the legislature is in charge of redistricting, the legislature draws new maps. But after a protracted showdown with DeSantis, Republican lawmakers decided to abdicate their responsibility. It’s really shocking on one level, but on the other hand, the way that we saw the Republican-run Congress bow down before Donald Trump, it’s really not all that surprising to see the Florida GOP go totally supine.

David Nir:

So they simply said, well, the way we’re going to resolve this impasse is to let DeSantis draw the map that he wants and we’re going to pass it. They’re well on their way to doing that. DeSantis introduced his map just a few days ago and on Wednesday of this week, the state Senate passed the map on a party-line vote. And the map itself is a total travesty.

David Nir:

Now, for starters, it is an extreme GOP gerrymander that would create 20 seats carried by Donald Trump compared to just eight for Joe Biden. And that’s compared to just a 15-12 advantage for Trump under the current map. And of course, Florida is a perennial swing state. It certainly leans somewhat to the right, but Trump only won it by about three or four points in 2020. So this map gives the GOP a huge advantage.

David Nir:

But it’s how the map goes about doing this that is so troubling. Over a decade ago, Florida voters approved amendments to the state constitution to reform redistricting and crack down on gerrymandering. These are generally known as the Fair Districts amendments, and they block lawmakers from drawing maps that unduly favor one party over the other.

David Nir:

They also contain a provision that bars legislators from drawing maps that diminish minority voting power. Now, the most salient feature of DeSantis’s map is the demolition of the 5th Congressional District. This is a seat in north Florida that runs from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. It is quite Democratic-leaning, and it is home to a plurality of black voters. Black voters are the largest proportion of residents of the district, and it’s represented by a Black Democrat, Al Lawson.

David Nir:

DeSantis’s map completely shreds the district and turns it from a seat that Biden would’ve won by a 63-36 margin into a seat Trump would’ve won by a 57-41 margin. That’s a swing of 43 points. That’s just absolutely massive. Of course, it becomes a white district. Very, very likely to elect a white Republican. And even if the map passes the house as is expected and of course DeSantis signs it, those Fair District amendments still lurk and Democrats are absolutely certain to file a lawsuit.

David Nir:

The Florida Supreme Court has gotten much more conservative over the years. It cracked down on GOP gerrymandering using these amendments in the previous decade. And the justices may be more inclined to be favorable toward DeSantis and the GOP particularly because DeSantis himself has appointed some of them. But legal experts say that the language in the state constitution protecting minority voting rights is actually quite strong and quite clear.

David Nir:

So there is a realistic chance that the Supreme Court throws out at least this part of the map. Of course, this huge GOP impasse that lasted for months and months, benefits Republicans in another way, which is we have seen courts refuse to strike down or adjust unconstitutional or flawed maps because it’s supposedly too close to the election to do so.

David Nir:

So even if the state Supreme Court does have a problem with this map, there is a real chance that it’s still winds up getting used in November. So definitely keep an eye on the litigation over this map. We will be revisiting it as soon as there is anything to report on.

David Beard:

And my theory during this whole long stretch of Florida back-and -forth between DeSantis and the legislature is that DeSantis has just been pushing for a maximalist GOP map the whole time and doesn’t really care whether or not it gets struck down. His goal is to push this so that he can go to GOP activists in Florida and across the country, because he’s clearly eyeing the presidency at either 2024 or beyond, and say he did everything he could to get Florida Republicans elected. He pushed it to the brink. Some court, be it the Florida state court or federal court around the Voting Rights Act, stopped him from pushing this maximalist map, and then he can blame the judges and all of that. But he can go and talk to the activists. That’s, I think, his main goal. And then if he gets this map, then great. It’s like a win-win. But if he fails to get this map, he can still say he did everything he could, which I think is his main goal, because he’s looking out for his future more than anything else.

David Nir:

I think that’s exactly right though. It will be really amusing if DeSantis winds up railing against his own judicial picks as liberal activist judges. But of course you can’t put it past him.

David Beard:

Oh, yeah. He would absolutely do that if it came to it. I’m going to take this now to a couple of Senate primaries that Trump has gotten himself involved in. We’ve talked some about Alabama Senate and Georgia governor, where he’s been very involved in endorsing Republicans in primaries. So late last week, Trump endorsed venture capitalist J.D. Vance, which is a few weeks to go until the May 3rd Republican primary in Ohio.

David Beard:

It’s frustrating many Republicans there, particularly the other candidates who have been fighting hard for Trump’s endorsement: former state treasurer, Josh Mandel, most notably. He even made sort of a Hail Mary ahead of the endorsement when it became clear that it was happening, releasing a poll claiming that he would win for sure with Trump’s endorsement. He would easily win this primary, but Vance very well would lose even if he got Trump’s endorsement.

David Beard:

So trying to play on Trump’s idea that he doesn’t want to be a loser by instead saying, “Well, Vance is going to lose even if you endorse him, so you better endorse me because I’m going to be the winner.” And of course, all of this happened just the week after Trump endorsed Dr. Oz in the Pennsylvania Republican Senate race, to the consternation of many Republicans in Pennsylvania and otherwise who didn’t want to see Oz be endorsed because he has some apostasies against a number of conservative positions.

David Beard:

He’s not seen as the true conservative. And so there’s sort of this tension between Trump and his sort of personal favorites and the Republican Party’s desire for sort of true conservative candidates. And as Politico wrote, “The former president’s endorsements have often added more chaos to these already contentious fights.” So it’s really interesting to see this sort of division between Trump, who has these really idiosyncratic reasons for endorsing candidates.

David Beard:

One of the theories even that he endorsed Vance was because Vance used to be an anti-Trump Republican. He once labeled himself a never-Trump guy. He had now-deleted tweets. Called Trump reprehensible. He claimed that he was voting for Evan McMullin. So he’s somebody who was sort of forced to come down to Trump. And the theory is that Trump likes that. He likes not just somebody who’s always been in his corner, like somebody like Josh Mandel would be, but somebody who he forced to come to heel and then sycophantically praise him. And that’s one of the reasons he endorsed Vance.

David Beard:

So it’s just really interesting to watch the sort of weird, almost psychological drama as Trump goes around and picks these candidates much to the upset of all these other Republicans who are involved in these races. And we’ll see how it turns out. Trump now has a number of Senate candidates he’s endorsed. Some of them very well may not win. I think there’s no guarantee that either Vance or Oz are going to win their primary. So we’ll see how Trump reacts if they fail to come out on top.

David Nir:

The idea that longtime loyalty to Trump is quite literally trumped by more recent obeisance to Trump is really amazing. Though I think the story of Oz is a bit different. My guess is that Trump simply likes other TV celebrities and Oz has had Trump on his show in the past. So do you think that’s why he picked him in that race?

David Beard:

I think that was definitely a major factor. They knew each other from before. He loves TV. We saw that for years. The most important thing to Trump was who was on TV in front of him when he was watching it. And so the fact that Oz is another TV personality. Apparently, I saw that Melania Trump is also a big fan of Dr. Oz, so that couldn’t hurt. So that certainly played a big factor in this endorsement. Because the safer endorsement was clearly to just endorse David McCormick, who’s the other leading candidate, who’s a hedge fund guy, very conservative, liked by a lot of the establishment Republicans.

David Beard:

Trump’s endorsement of him probably would’ve helped him sort of sail through or would’ve made him, I think, a pretty strong favorite. And now we have this very messy thing, but Trump is going to do what Trump does, I think. And everyone is beholden to that, particularly with the Republican Party.

David Nir:

So I would much rather spend my time on this show complaining about Republicans, but this time I’m going to register my objection to a Democrat. Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan is running for Ohio’s open Senate seat and he just launched a new ad declaring, “We’ve got to take on China and be Americans first.” But it’s his first ad, which featured an even more amped-up version of this offensive anti-China rhetoric, that really has me upset. And we’re going to play it now.

Tim Ryan:

“China, It’s definitely China. One word, China. It is us versus China. And instead of taking them on, Washington is wasting our time on stupid fights. China is out-manufacturing us left and right. Left and right. America could never be dependent on communist shine. It is time for us to fight back. We need to fight back. It’s time to fight back. We need to build things in Ohio by Ohio workers. I’m Tim Ryan and I approve this message.”

David Nir:

Asian Americans were furious. Ryan’s colleague, New York Congresswoman Grace Meng, demanded that he take down the ad. Asian American advocacy groups demanded likewise. And even Senator Sherrod Brown, who previously endorsed Ryan, declined to defend the ad and said that Ryan should have introduced himself to voters with a biographical spot instead. The reaction in many quarters has been dismaying. It’s been the kind of thing you see all too often when members of a minority group call out racism or bigotry.

David Nir:

A lot of folks simply refuse to take it seriously. I saw one remark online saying, “Well, the ad only mentions China, not Chinese people. So what’s the problem?” That’s not how incitement works. Hate crimes against Asian Americans didn’t spike because Donald Trump exhorted goon squads to terrorize individual people, they spiked because people like Trump sought to demonize China as a way to deflect blame for their atrocious handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

David Nir:

And that is what led to a spike in hatred that really the worst Americans turned into violent action. Rhetoric really matters. Now, the professional class was more polite, essentially deflecting these concerns and saying, “This is an effective message in the Rust Belt. This is what it takes for a Democrat to win.” But I want to point to a Washington Post piece by Dave Weigel exploring the ad and some unnamed Democratic operatives pointed out, well, former Governor Ted Strickland, he’s a Democrat and when he ran for this same Senate seat in 2016, he relied on similar messages.

David Nir:

Here’s the problem. Even if you are going to this as a matter of bare-knuckle politics and tell Asian Americans that their concerns don’t matter, Strickland got crushed. He lost by 21 points and not only did he get his ass handed to him, he ran 13 points behind the top of the ticket.

David Nir:

Hillary Clinton didn’t deploy this same kind of rhetoric. So if you’re going to argue that this kind of angry demonization works, at least come up with a better example. And the fact of the matter is other Democrats have won Senate races in many other states throughout the Midwest, including in Ohio as well without sounding like this. In the end, what makes this extra dismaying is that Ryan is selling voters a bill of goods.

David Nir:

He’s been in Congress for 20 years. So why hasn’t he managed to fight back, quote-unquote, against China in that whole time? What’s going to be different about electing into the Senate versus electing into the House? If you really want to help Americans who’ve been harmed by the decline in manufacturing and the outsourcing of jobs, telling them that you’re magically going to roll back the clock to a better time is just not the way to do it.

David Beard:

And the particularly revealing aspect is, is that China isn’t even the place where most manufacturing jobs are going overseas at this point. Jobs are going overseas to a ton of different countries in a ton of different sectors for different reasons. So the idea that the problem with jobs overseas is China in particular versus American policy or trade policy is just not true. So to point out one country over the broader situation is clearly wanting to find a villain and blame the villain as opposed to actually solving policy.

David Nir:

Right. Why not go after greedy American corporations who are undermining American workers at home?

David Beard:

Exactly. So I’m going to wrap us up with another international election roundup really quick. We’ll start off in France where the presidential runoff is already upon us. We’ve talked about it the past couple of weeks. Voting takes place this Sunday, the 24th of April, just two weeks after the first round and President Emmanuel Macron’s lead over his challenger Marine Le Pen has expanded a bit in polling since we talked about it last week. It’s now around 10% as things seem to have settled a bit.

David Beard:

So hopefully that means he’ll comfortably win on Sunday. That’s obviously, I think, the broadly preferred thing. Le Pen is a far-right candidate, is very concerning, has a been a big fan of Russia in the past. That was the issue that came up a lot in the debate that happened just on Wednesday where Macron went after Le Pen for her party’s loan from a Russian bank, and really attacked her on her past contacts with Russia and support for Russia before the invasion of Ukraine.

David Beard:

At the same time, Le Pen went after Macron for his proposed pension reforms that would raise the retirement age to 65 in France, which has been very unpopular, and which Macron has sort of halfway walked back to talk about compromises and things like that as he realized this was really a problem for his race. So that’s coming up on Sunday. We’ll have the results next week.

David Beard:

And then the other major news story is that in Australia, the date for the upcoming general election was set. Australia has elections every three years for their House. It’s going to be on May 21st. Incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison is going to attempt to win a fourth consecutive election for the Liberal National Coalition while Anthony Albanese will try to win back power for the Labor Party after a decade in opposition. And just to clarify, the Liberal National Coalition is the center-right coalition. Don’t get confused with liberal. It’s not what liberal means here in America. And of course the Labor Party is the major center-left party in Australia.

David Beard:

The election will have all 150 seats in the lower House and then 40 of the 76 seats in the Australian Senate. The Labor Party remains in the lead in polling, but it has narrowed in the past few weeks. So it’s certainly something to watch as the campaign heats up as we go through the end of April and into May to see if the Labor Party can maintain its lead, or if it really becomes a toss up.

David Nir:

That’s it for our weekly hits. We are going to take a short break. And when we come back, Beard and I are going to be discussing the districts where Democrats have a chance to go on offense this November in the House. Stay with us.

David Nir:

So this week, we’re going to talk about Democratic opportunities to go on offense in the house this year. Now, I know we’ve talked about constantly, 2022 as a midterm year. Democrats control the White House. They have every reason to expect a difficult time at the ballot box in November. But for a whole host of reasons, the best defense may in fact be a good offense. There are a lot of Republican seats this year that actually present interesting ripe targets for Democrats to potentially flip.

David Nir:

One key reason, of course, is redistricting. Democrats were unexpectedly aggressive in many states in gerrymandering the maps in their favor, but there are also retirements and GOP primaries that are creating opportunities as well. Now, in fact, Daily Kos just put together a slate of 10 races where we are asking for donations to the eventual Democratic winner of the primary. And these aren’t necessarily the top 10 pickup targets for Democrats. They aren’t the only possible pickup targets for Democrats, but they are races that we feel, for a variety of reasons, represent a really good use of small-dollar donors efforts, that these are races where you’ll get a good bang for the buck. And if you want to keep the gavel out of Kevin McCarthy’s hands, this is the place to start.

David Nir:

So we thought it would be a good idea if we dug deeper into each of these 10 contests to understand why we think that these Republican seats are vulnerable and why grassroots donors should consider giving their hard-earned money to help Democrats in these contests. So we’re going to start off with a couple of races where two Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump last year are facing difficult primaries.

David Nir:

And they, in fact, might not even wind up being their party’s nominee in November. And the first one we want to talk about is Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. This is a seat held by freshman Republican Peter Meijer. It’s in the Grand Rapids area. And things have changed a lot because of redistricting. So what’s going on here, Beard?

David Beard:

Peter Meijer is the incumbent there. As you said, he voted to impeach Trump. It is a district that’s no longer gerrymandered. In the previous decade, it had been part of the Republican gerrymander that sort of broke down in the Detroit suburbs and Democrats picked up some seats, but it really held up in Western Michigan.

David Beard:

So now the un-gerrymandered map has a seat based in the Grand Rapids area that Biden would’ve won by 8% if it had existed in 2020. And so obviously that makes it a very good opportunity for a pickup. Meijer, of course, could be a tough opponent. But he is facing a primary, as you said, against John Gibbs who is a former Trump administration official that Donald Trump has endorsed. And meanwhile Democrats have former DOJ attorney Hillary Scholten, who ran in 2020 against Meijer in the gerrymandered version of the seat and lost by just about 6%.

David Beard:

So if Meijer survives as primary that’ll probably be somewhat of a tougher race. You could certainly imagine middle-of-the-road voters who are not crazy about Trump, who might want to reward Meijer or who would vote for Meijer, but would otherwise vote for Scholten if maybe Gibbs won, but I think the race will definitely be very competitive either way.

David Beard:

And the other factor to think about is that the primary isn’t until August 2nd, so we still have months to go of Meijer and Gibbs going at each other and causing more Trump chaos in that district before a nominee is selected.

David Nir:

And Scholten there has the primary to herself. She has been raising pretty good money. And you have to wonder if Meijer loses the primary, would he endorse Scholten over Gibbs? Or maybe just sit the race out? That could raise an interesting question after August 2nd.

David Beard:

Yeah, I definitely don’t see him endorsing Gibbs given his real ability to stand up to the Trump wing and desire to stand up to the Trump wing that you really don’t see very often amongst Republicans, even though he’s very conservative otherwise. I would think he might just sit it out. I don’t know if he would go actually endorse a Democrat, but maybe Gibbs will win and we’ll find out.

David Nir:

So there is one other pro-impeachment Republican on this list. That’s David Valadao in California’s 22nd District. This is in California’s Central Valley. I want to point out that Valadao currently represents the 21st District. This seat has changed numbers, but it’s still quite similar geographically to the seat that Valadao already represents. And he has been in and out of office a couple of times.

David Beard:

Valadao had been a congressman, previously lost in 2018 to a Democrat, came back to reclaim his seat in 2020, and is now running for reelection. And as you said, a slightly changed seat in the Central Valley for this year. Now, Biden won this seat by 13% in 2020, but it has some significant turnout issues in the midterms where turnout really drops which can really hurt Democrats, depending on the year.

David Beard:

So Rudy Salas is the Democratic front runner. He’s a five-term Assembly member. He’s got some really deep roots in the district and he was pretty widely seen as the top Democratic recruit that was possible for the district. He was who people wanted to run against Valadao. If you asked people, what is the number one Democratic recruit for this district, it was Salas. So if anybody can be Valadao in 2022, it’s him.

David Beard:

And as you said, Valadao may not be on the November ballot. He’s being challenged from the right by Chris Mathys who’s running, again, largely on the fact that Valadao voted to impeach Donald Trump. Mathys unsuccessfully ran for office in New Mexico back in 2018. And in 2020, he’s mostly been self-funding this year. So it’s a little bit of an oddball candidate. You would normally dismiss it, but because of the Trump issue, because of the fact that Valadao voted to impeach Trump and a lot of the Republican primary electorate hate that idea, there’s a very real possibility that Mathys could advance in November.

David Beard:

And that’s the thing that I want to mention as well. California of course has their top-two primary system. So all of the candidates will appear on the ballot in June. Salas as the main Democratic candidate is expected to advance to November, but Valadao and Mathys will be competing for that other spot on the ballot. So if Mathys wins, he’s a really bad fit for this district.

David Beard:

Now, obviously if it’s a good-enough Republican year, anything could happen. But it’s really hard to imagine Chris Mathys being the right fit for this district, so that would be a big boost to Democrats. But I think again, even if Valadao advances to November, Salas is a really great Democratic nominee and has every opportunity to go and win this Biden +13 seat.

David Nir:

Yeah, California’s top-two primary really changes the calculus here because Valadao would have to finish in third place not to wind up on the November ballot. And in the decade that California’s been using this system, no incumbent has ever finished in third. So it would be extra remarkable, but I really wouldn’t rule it out. One other thing I should mention is that there is also a special election taking place on June 7th for a district that is also numbered California 22, but that is Devin Nunes’ old district, the one that he vacated to go run Donald Trump’s Truth Social media company into the ground.

David Nir:

Completely separate race, completely separate candidates, completely separate district. They just happen to share a number. This is something you always have to watch out for in a redistricting cycle. So let’s move on and talk about a trio of open seats that Republicans are either giving up or are open because they’re brand new, thanks to reapportionment. And we will start in the eastern corner of the country on the eastern tip of Long Island in New York’s 1st Congressional District, where we have an open seat because the incumbent is running for governor.

David Beard:

So Biden won this new district by 11%, which is a big difference from how the district used to be when Trump won the district by 4% back in 2020. So that’s a big change and a really big opening for Democrats, which is probably a big reason that Zeldin bailed. So the district has three Democrats running in the primary. One of whom is veteran and educator, Jackie Gordon, who ran in the 2nd District in 2020.

David Beard:

Now, that district was also redistricted, but it took a lot of the Republican-leaning areas that the 1st used to have. So it’s a much more safe Republican seat. So she’s running in the 1st District in 2022 and she’s joined by two Suffolk County legislators, Bridget Fleming and Kara Hahn. So those are the three Democrats. It’s a pretty competitive primary, and the primary is not until the end of June, on June 28th.

David Beard:

So it’ll take a while to sort of see how that develops. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Republicans have unified around Nick LaLota, who is the GOP and Conservative Party-endorsed candidate. Of course, in New York, there are additional parties such as the Conservative Party and others that share candidates so they can essentially co-endorse, which can be beneficial to certain candidates to have both, in this case, the GOP and the Conservative Party endorsement.

David Beard:

He’s a veteran and a local official in the area. So he’s going to do his best to defend a Biden now plus-11 seat, but it could be a tough road.

David Nir:

One thing I should note is that a state court judge struck down New York’s congressional map sort of in a really confusing and messy opinion, partly on the grounds that it was a gerrymander, partly on the grounds of the legislature, which he said didn’t have the authority to draw a new map. That ruling was stayed by the appellate courts. I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that we will use the map that Democrats passed this year. Candidates have already filed petitions to get on the ballot, but I suppose there is an outside chance that the map could change in years to come.

David Nir:

Now out in Colorado, we have a very different situation, one that we haven’t directly addressed yet, which is that thanks to population growth, Colorado added a congressional district. It had seven seats and now it has eight. And number eight is of course open because it’s brand new. There is no incumbent and it’s a rather competitive seat, but Democrats are very much hoping to pick this one up.

David Beard:

So Biden would’ve won this seat by 5%. So compared to some of the other ones we’ve talked about a little bit narrower, but still a Biden win, and more than his national average of 4.5. On the Democratic side state Representative Yadira Caraveo has essentially locked up the nomination because she won the ballot at the state convention with 71% of the vote. And to get on the ballot via the state convention in Colorado, you need a minimum of 30% of the vote.

David Beard:

So she had one primary opponent at the convention, but he only received 29% and didn’t make the ballot, didn’t petition on, which is the alternative way to get on the ballot in Colorado. So she’ll be the only Democratic candidate on the primary ballot. And then meanwhile, there’ll be a four-way Republican primary between Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, state Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann, and former Army Green Beret Tyler Allcorn.

David Beard:

So a bit of a mess again on the Republican side. A lot of candidates. Saine is the one who qualified via the convention. The only one to do it in that way, but has not raised much money. So it’s very open at this point. The other three all petitioned onto the ballot. And so we expect that this’ll be a primary that goes on for a while and could get very messy.

David Nir:

Moving on to another open seat, let’s talk about North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, which is in the southern suburbs of Raleigh. North Carolina also won a new congressional district in reapportionment, but it’s a little bit difficult to say which seat actually counts as the, quote-unquote, new seat because there’s also the 14th District. That’s a much bluer seat that Democrats are almost a lock to pick up. So you could call the 14th the “new one.” You could call the 13th the “new one.” Either way, this seat does not have an incumbent.

David Beard:

Yeah, it’s interesting because this is almost sort of Ted Budd’s old seat, but of course he’s running for Senate. And so in a way it’s open because of that, but it’s so different that it’s really hard to even imagine that as the successor seat. But anyway, in this new seat, Biden won it by 2% had it existed in 2020. So it was very narrow, less than his national margin. So it’s going to be a really tough seat, but it is in a growing Democratic area. So that does give some hope that this will increasingly become better for Democrats.

David Beard:

So this is a good opportunity to try to get it, win it as an open seat. There are two main Democratic candidates, state Senator Wiley Nickel and former state Senator Sam Searcy. And then there’s eight Republican candidates. So if you thought we had a bit of a cluster in Colorado, much more so here over in North Carolina.

David Beard:

The, I think, most notable Republican candidate is Bo Hines who was endorsed by Trump. He’s a former college football player. He’s not from anywhere near the district. He previously announced that he was going to be running in other congressional districts closer to where he was from in Western North Carolina. But that district didn’t end up materializing, because if you’ll remember the previous version of the North Carolina map that the legislature had passed had a Republican leaning district west of Charlotte.

David Beard:

So at one point he was going to run there. At one point, he was going to run in the Triad area. Now he’s running here, just because it’s the open seat in North Carolina that he thinks he can win. So it’s sort of all over the place for him, but he has Trump’s endorsement, which in an eight-candidate race could be enough.

David Beard:

Another notable candidate is former Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, who is running again. She however has not raised much money and so she’s not seen as maybe the leading candidate despite having the federal experience, having won congressional races before. It doesn’t seem like she’s the one who’s picking up the establishment endorsements here.

David Beard:

And so otherwise it’s really a free-for-all. There’s a lot of candidates who you think could win or potentially advance to a runoff. So North Carolina has a runoff only if the winner doesn’t receive 30% of the vote, which doesn’t usually come into play. In a two- or three-candidate primary, it would be impossible to fall below the 30% barrier, but in an eight-candidate primary, it is very possible, particularly without really a leading candidate.

David Beard:

I guess Hines is the leading candidate, but you could easily imagine him only getting 25% of the vote or something based on Trump’s endorsement and all the other candidates getting some number that adds up to their other 75%. So it’s very possible we see a runoff here. The primary is May 17th. So that’s coming up fairly soon. But if the primary does go to a runoff, we go all the way to July 26th is the runoff. So that would be another two months of messy Republican primary-ness in this seat.

David Nir:

We’re halfway through this list and we are going to head back out to California. The rest of the seats that we’re going to talk about all have incumbents seeking reelection and some of them were reconfigured a little bit. Some were reconfigured a lot. California’s 27th District in the northern suburbs of LA. This is a district that used to be numbered the 25th. You may recall that Democrats lost a special election in 2020 after the former Congresswoman Katie Hill resigned. And now they are once again trying to reclaim it.

David Beard:

Biden won this seat by 12% in its new form. And so Congressman Mike Garcia, the incumbent, is facing a difficult challenge by trying to overcome that margin. And he also, in redistricting, lost sort of a base area for him, which was Simi Valley, which is a pretty conservative area of the Los Angeles region. And he’s got two Democrats challenging him. One is Christy Smith who lost in 2020, both in the special and in the general. The general was very, very close. She lost by less than 400 votes.

David Beard:

But there’s another Democrat running, who’s also running a strong campaign, Quaye Quartey. And so the two of them are going to have to fight it out for the top two primary slot alongside Garcia in the top two primary on June 7th. Garcia does have a very conservative voting record, given the district. He’s not somebody like Valadao or Meijer who has sort of done some things that might appeal to Democrats or incumbents. He is really gone after a very much hard-right voting record, very close to Trump. So it may be more difficult than your average sort of Republican who tries to moderate himself to win a Biden +12 seat.

David Nir:

So just a little bit to the south is California’s 45th District. This is represented by freshman Republican Michelle Steel in the western part of Orange County. And this is also looking like another plausible target for Democrats.

David Beard:

Yes, it’s a narrower, closer seat than the one we just talked about. Biden would’ve only won this seat by 6%. A little bit more than his national margin, but not a lot. But Steel only represents 16% of this redrawn district. There were a lot of changes in Orange County. So in the district she ended up running in, it doesn’t have a lot of her old constituents. So there’s going to be a lot of instances where she’s going to have to reintroduce herself to voters, which sort of makes it like a semi-open seat. It’s not obviously the same. She has a lot of the benefits of incumbency, but a lot of voters are not going to have voted for her before.

David Beard:

She has one main Democratic challenger; Jay Chen is the leading Democratic candidate. He’s a Reservist. He’s on the Mount San Antonio Community College board of trustees. And he’s done some good fundraising. So this is really sort of a straight top two expected to go through easily into the primary all the way to November.

David Nir:

We’re going to shift to a totally different part of the country. Smack in the middle is Nebraska’s Second District. This is held by Republican Don Bacon. This is a seat that Democrats have targeted for years. In fact, they held it for a while with former Congressman Brad Ashford, who in fact just died this week. Republicans engaged in a defensive gerrymander to try to protect Bacon. They didn’t really make it redder if you’re looking at the top lines, but they prevented it from getting bluer as it naturally would have by adding rural areas instead of consolidating it around the Omaha area. But it’s still a competitive seat.

David Beard:

Biden won this district by 6%, which is around the same margin of the old district. And so it’s definitely still a very competitive seat, just slightly more Democratic than Biden’s national margin. Bacon was first elected in 2016 and he’s never won more than 51% of the vote in the district. So all of his races have been very close. And the Democrats have a couple of candidates running. State Senator Tony Vargas is the state establishment Democratic choice, but he’s facing a primary challenge from mental health counselor Alicia Shelton, who has been endorsed by EMILY’s List. So that’s some real oomph behind her candidacy there. The primary is May 10th, so it’s coming up pretty quickly and we should see which of them advances to the general election to take on Bacon.

David Nir:

To wrap up this segment, we are going to head to the American Southwest. And we’re first going to talk about Arizona’s First Congressional District. Again, this is another seat where the numbering changed. It is represented by Republican David Schweikert in the Eastern Phoenix area and its suburbs. It was previously numbered district six, but it has been growing more and more competitive as many suburban regions have.

David Beard:

Yeah. And Biden won the seat by only 1% in his current form. So it’s a very, very competitive seat. It’s the most Republican seat of the ones on this list, but it is an area that’s trending Democratic, so we do have that going for us. The Democratic candidates: There’s a few candidates here. Jevin Hodge is a businessman and community leader. He narrowly lost a race for Maricopa County supervisor by just about 400 votes in 2020 and so is now running here in this race.

David Beard:

Ginger Sykes Torres entered more recently, but has the endorsement of Congressman Raúl Grijalva who’s sort of the dean of the Democrats in Arizona. He’s been in there a long time. And then we’ve also got former Phoenix Suns director of membership experience Adam Metzendorf, who’s also running. And then on the Republican side, Dave Schweikert is the incumbent Republican.

David Beard:

He has a couple of issues. He has a primary challenge from insurance executive Elijah Norton, who has self-funded nearly $3 million into the race. So that is a lot of money to come up against you in a primary race, particularly when you’ve got some new constituents. Like we said, this one doesn’t have as much change as the California race that we talked about. There are some new constituents for Schweikert, so that’s something for him to be thinking about. And the other issue Schweikert has is that he was reprimanded on the House floor in 2020 for a number of ethical issues, including misusing taxpayer dollars, violating campaign-finance reporting requirements, and several other violations of House rules, which is not something that happens very often. Reprimands on the House floor are not a common thing.

David Beard:

And his 2020 race was very competitive. This issue came up a lot and he really narrowly won. So it’s certainly something we could see come back here in 2022. And again, we’ve got a very late primary here. It’s not until August 2nd, so Norton has a lot of time to spend that $3 million, hitting Schweikert before the general election comes around.

David Nir:

Let’s wrap up in the state next door in New Mexico. Democrats controlled the redistricting process and they made the state’s lone Republican-held seat—that’s the 2nd District, which is represented by Yvette Herrell—considerably bluer. This is a seat that actually Democrats managed to win under its old configuration, but now presents a much juicier target.

David Beard:

So this district now includes the western part of Albuquerque, which gives it a really good, strong Democratic base that it didn’t have before. The previous district was Trump +12, which, even though Democrats were able to win it in 2018 like you said, it’s going to be really hard to have ever held onto in that configuration. But the new district is Biden +6. So just a little bit above his national margin.

David Beard:

So it should be a really competitive, a really good target. We’ve got a couple of Democrats running. The probably leading candidate is Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez. And then we have also got Dr. Darshan Patel running on the Democratic side. The primary is June 7th. So that’s coming up pretty soon. And then we’ll have a Democratic nominee to go after Herrell for a number of months leading up to the general election.

David Nir:

So as I mentioned at the outset, Daily Kos put together a fundraising slate this week for all of these races. We are using ActBlue nominee funds. These are a very interesting fundraising vehicle. If you’re not familiar with them, they allow you to donate right now. And the winner of the Democratic primary in each case will receive all the funds, they’re held in escrow, the moment that they win the nomination right after their state has the primary. So it’s a great way to get involved right now, if you’re not sure about which candidate to pick in a primary with multiple Democrats running. And it also helps make sure that whoever the Democratic nominee is in each case winds up with a nice chunk of change the moment they finish their primary.

David Nir:

Usually, that’s a time when campaigns have really spent a lot of their money. And so getting an infusion of resources all at once is extremely helpful to allow them to start the general election off strong. You can find a link to our post describing this slate and internal linking to our ActBlue page in the episode description.

David Beard:

That’s all from us this week. The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you find podcasts. You can reach us by email at [email protected]. And if you haven’t already, please like and subscribe to The Downballot and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks also to our producer Cara Zelaya and editor Tim Einenkel. We’ll be back next week with a new episode.

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The Qronicles is a series that will collect some of the news, videos, and general mis/disinformation roiling around the conspiracy world of QAnon. You can cringe, you can laugh, but these folks are organizing and showing up at the polls!

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Q.

Q, who?

Anon.

We are back this Qweek [teehee] with another installment from the world of QAnoners, or whatever they’re calling themselves today. There are a lot of snakes in this episode, so if you are triggered by snakes and/or people injecting pee into their arms, consider this your warning.

Yeah, I said “people injecting pee into their arms.” Knock knock.

We may have reached QAnon singularity. There’s a power vacuum since the original Q disappeared, and a lot of money to be made. Guess what. There’s a new conspiracy theory making the rounds that COVID-19 is “a synthesized form of snake venom that is being spread via drinking water and vaccines as part of a plot by the Catholic Church to turn everyone into ‘a hybrid of Satan’.”

Quite a theory, right? Too good a theory to be true? Possibly. Either way, it is spinning up the conspiracy theorist (CT) world something fierce.

According to the Daily Dot, chiropractor Bryan Ardis’ and fellow conspiracy enthusiast Stew Peters’ claims about the snake venom coronavirus thing are bending some other QAnon “influencers” out of whack. Time to go to a chiropractor!

On Tuesday, Brian Cates, a columnist with the far-right Epoch Times, posted a warning for people to be careful about the conspiracy theories they believe.

“Just like many people instantly bought into Maxey’s claims about the 450 GB of new material he’s discovered on the laptop he got from Rudy G., many people will also instantly buy into ‘there is no virus, 100,000 people across America entered into a massive conspiracy to poison us all with local water supplies,” he wrote on Telegram.

Cates also pleaded with QAnon conspiracy-minded folks to not listen to “authority figures who appeal to your confirmation bias.” The Qronicles writes itself folks!

Meanwhile, we all know the story of Michael Protzman—the QAnon-affiliated guy who convinced a sect of Anoners that John F. Kennedy, his son, and possibly Jesus were all going to appear down in Dallas, Texas a few months back. Snake, have you met your tail?

Stew Peters is what passes for a “reporter” in the QAnon world. He’s brought up his Q-rating [boom] by way of being a COVID-19, “plandemic” conspiracist. Real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff—like, deep state bioweapon COVID-19, MyPillow-truther stuff. It is hard to say if Stew’s numbers are going down or if he’s feeling sad face emoji that Trump’s new faketriot free speech app Truth Social has “censored” him, but he’s figured it all out y’all. Nothing is real… except… wait for it. Wait… for… it…

STEW!!!!

Meanwhile, how’s the anti-vaxxer crowd dealing with their decision to not inject the Fauci ouchie? WARNING: Guy in the video below reportedly injects old pee into his arm on camera, and by “old pee,” I mean “aged urine.”

What do the Republican Party’s QAnon panderers and molestation-complicit representatives have to say?

Take a breath and enjoy your families!

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In the debate on the causes of recent inflation, some Democrats have pointed a finger at corporate profits: If profits are rising, doesn’t that mean that companies are deciding to raise prices? In response, some extremely savvy economists and pundits who like to pretend they’re experts on whatever’s being discussed have insisted that’s not the case. Inflation is complicated, for sure, but the Economic Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution are out with reports suggesting that, yup, corporate profits are a huge factor.

“Since the trough of the COVID-19 recession in the second quarter of 2020, overall prices in the [non-financial corporate] sector have risen at an annualized rate of 6.1%—a pronounced acceleration over the 1.8% price growth that characterized the pre-pandemic business cycle of 2007–2019,” EPI’s Josh Bivens writes. “Strikingly, over half of this increase (53.9%) can be attributed to fatter profit margins, with labor costs contributing less than 8% of this increase. This is not normal. From 1979 to 2019, profits only contributed about 11% to price growth and labor costs over 60%.”

Over half. Interesting, don’t you think?

RELATED STORY: Biden takes new action on gas prices as report shows inflation spiking

Here’s what that looks like:

And, Bivens notes, this data means that the traditional explanations for inflation many economists are proffering now should be taken with several grains of salt. “The historically high profit margins in the economic recovery from the pandemic sit very uneasily with explanations of recent inflation based purely on macroeconomic overheating,” he writes. “Evidence from the past 40 years suggests strongly that profit margins should shrink and the share of corporate sector income going to labor compensation (or the labor share of income) should rise as unemployment falls and the economy heats up. The fact that the exact opposite pattern has happened so far in the recovery should cast much doubt on inflation expectations rooted simply in claims of macroeconomic overheating.”

Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast with David Nir and David Beard

At DC Report, Dean Baker draws a similar conclusion. “A popular line on our recent surge of inflation is that an over-tight labor market has led to rapid wage growth, which in turn forces companies to raise prices. Higher prices in turn lead workers to demand higher wages, which will give us a wage-price spiral and soon lead to double-digit inflation,” contrasting with today’s reality. 

Baker points out, “While this was a story that plausibly fit the data in the 1970s, it is very hard to make the wage-price spiral fit the current situation for a simple reason: The wage share of income has fallen sharply since the pandemic.” The wage share had recovered slightly since the Great Recession, until “we see a sharp reversal in 2021, with the wage share falling from 76.1% to 73.7%, a decline of 2.4 percentage points.” Baker does point to supply-side disruptions from the pandemic, rather than corporate profits, as the culprit in inflation. And Bivens, too, notes, “Non-labor inputs—a decent indicator for supply-chain snarls—are also driving up prices more than usual in the current economic recovery.”

The new report from Brookings looks at 22 major companies, finding that “across all 22 companies, the average real wage gain, factoring in inflation, was between 2% and 5% through October 2021. Unless these companies raised wages substantially since then, fast-rising inflation would have eroded most, or even all, of the 2% to 5% average wage gains. And at most, only seven of the 22 companies are paying at least half of their workers a living wage—enough to cover just their basic expenses.”

By contrast, those same companies made sure their shareholders did very well, spending five times more on dividends and stock buybacks than they did on paying their workers better. Directed to the workers who kept the companies running, that money could have made a big difference: “The 16 companies that repurchased nearly $50 billion of their shares could have raised the annual pay of their median worker by an average of 40% if they had redirected that money to employees.“ The overall effect of how these major corporations handled their finances during the pandemic was unsurprising: “Workers experienced the brunt of companies’ losses, while executives and shareholders generally avoided them.”

So when someone tries to tell you that it’s a simplistic, unsophisticated take to wonder if inflation might be linked to corporate profits … feel free to push back. It’s not the only story, and supply chain problems are a significant factor. But with corporate profits contributing more to rising prices than they had from 1979 to 2019, and with companies sending large piles of money back to shareholders and protecting executives from pay loss in the pandemic while giving workers stingy raises, no one who denies that corporations bear responsibility for rising prices and their effect on working people should be taken seriously.

RELATED STORY: Unemployment is down. Wages are up for those who need it most. The March jobs report is strong

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The Justice Department announced on Friday that it had reached a proposed settlement with Schnitzer Steel Inc., a manufacturing and scrap metal recycling company with a history of environmental violations. Under the settlement, Schnitzer must “pay a civil penalty of $1,550,000, implement compliance measures worth over $1,700,000 to prevent the release of ozone-depleting refrigerants and non-exempt substitutes from refrigerant-containing items during their processing and disposal and complete an environmental mitigation project.” For a company that is one of Oregon’s richest, with revenues of $846 million in Q4 of 2021 alone, this isn’t exactly asking a lot—especially since this isn’t the first time that Schnitzer has incurred a penalty for its practices.

This time, the Justice Department focused on the alleged Clean Air Act violations Schnitzer Steel had incurred at 40 of its facilities in Alabama, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, and Puerto Rico. According to a complaint, the company failed to adequately recover refrigerants from small appliances and motor vehicle air conditioners. The EPA has stringent guidelines for safe refrigerant disposal, as refrigerants can contribute significantly to ozone layer depletion and greenhouse gas emissions. According to a fact sheet from the California Air Resource Board, just one pound of the most common refrigerant used, R-22, “is nearly as potent as a ton of carbon dioxide.” The refrigerant listed in the Justice Department’s press release, R-12, is even worse: It contains chlorofluorocarbons that further deplete the ozone layer and has more than 10,000 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.

The Justice Department released a consent decree that Schnitzer must follow if it agrees to the settlement. Laid out in 39 pages, the document allows Schnitzer to not admit to any liability, though it does force the company to clean up its act by taking steps to properly recover and dispose of refrigerants by properly training employees and ensuring that the necessary signed documents needed to verify refrigerant disposal aren’t falsified—the latter of which the Justice Department absolutely accused Schnitzer of accepting in its complaint. Key information on paperwork at some facilities appeared to be missing when inspectors were able to investigate Schnitzer, and, in some cases, those facilities didn’t even have any protocol in place for refrigerant disposal in the first place. It’s worth noting that many of the facilities listed in the DOJ complaint are in areas with high poverty rates that exceed the national average. Some of these facilities have more problems than just how Schnitzer handles its refrigerant disposal, too.

A complaint filed last month revealed that one of the facilities listed in the DOJ complaint was part of a handful of Schnitzer facilities the company has been sued over due to its “dangerous” disposal of heavy metals that have harmed the Merrimack River, according to a complaint filed by the Conservation Law Foundation. According to Violation Tracker, Schnitzer has had to pay more than $5 million in penalties for more than a dozen environmental complaints, including its many high-profile settlements. One 2021 settlement in Oakland over its pumping toxic emissions into the West Oakland neighborhood cost the company $4.1 million. So egregious were Schnitzer’s Bay Area violations that there’s even a Schnitzer Tracker website that was set up to monitor its battle with the Oakland A’s, who sued the company over the handling of its massive amounts of toxic waste. A DOJ settlement isn’t the most encouraging development if this is that status quo for Schnitzer, but it’s at least a step towards accountability in a sector that badly needs it.