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As we celebrate the recent win by Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, we thought it only fitting for The Good Fight column to speak with the international president of the two million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Mary Kay Henry.

Known for a number of successes, Henry may be most celebrated for the historic “Fight for $15 and a Union” movement, which has helped 24 million working Americans win increased wages.

In 2010, Henry was the first woman elected to lead SEIU and has since earned numerous honors for her tireless work.

RELATED STORY: ​​‘The day I found Harvey Milk’s dead body was the moment I knew’: Cleve Jones, famed LGBTQ activist

Henry spoke with Daily Kos via email, answering questions about the future of unions,  President Joe Biden and holding him to his promises of support, and what inspires her to keep pushing forward and fighting the good fight.

Henry tells Daily Kos that workers across the country have walked off the job, raised their voices, and demanded more over the last two years. She says approval ratings of unions in America are at a 60-year high, and younger workers are coming together to unionize at millennial media companies such as Starbucks, Amazon, video gaming companies, and beyond.

“Young people and workers of color are leading a national movement, refusing to return to the status quo and making bold demands to be respected, protected, and paid a living wage.”
But to understand unions, Henry says, it’s also important to understand workers.

“The problems facing unions are one and the same with problems facing workers, because workers are the union,” Henry says.

She explains that gig companies, such as Uber and Lyft, have denied workers minimum wages and essential benefits by “abusing the law” and “misclassifying drivers as independent contractors.” She adds that unions have additionally sustained a “40-year attack from corporations,” and “some politicians who are set on putting corporate profits ahead of the workers who make those profits possible.”

When it comes to the conversation around what’s been dubbed the “Great Resignation” in the last couple of years, Henry calls it the “Great Reckoning,” saying that workers are “exercising their power in creative ways” to “improve their workplaces and demand more from their employers.” She applauds workers, saying they have shown “tremendous courage and determination” as companies have continued to “squeeze workers” and tried to shut down unions.

When I ask Henry about Amazon specifically, she writes that “the workers in Staten Island stood up to one of the largest, most powerful companies in the world and won—even in the face of their bosses’ relentless, multimillion-dollar union-busting campaign. This victory will spread like wildfire and continue to fuel the passion and the fight of workers everywhere demanding a voice on the job.”

Of course,  we all know that there’s no comparison between President Trump and President Biden. But Henry reflects that while on the campaign trail, Biden promised to support unions and has since been the “most pro-union president in history,” joining with workers to put companies such as Amazon and McDonald’s on notice.

“The Biden Administration has delivered real change, from signing an executive order raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal contractors to flipping the switch at the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], to passing serious investments that support the creation of good, union jobs—despite extremist opposition from members in the Republican Party hell-bent on destroying unions and our democracy. It’s astounding that not one single Republican is backing efforts in Congress to lower costs for American families, create good union jobs and invest in the caregiving economy that all of us depend on.

“Yet, even with a supportive President and Congressional leadership, we know we need to fully transform the rules for workers to build power. And we know what real recovery looks like: It means seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in care solutions that will lift up the Black, brown, and immigrant women who power our economy and our families. We need good jobs, with good pay, and workplace protections for those who have been traditionally excluded. With these investments, we can create an economy that can support the needs of all in our country. It’s up to our leaders to make the choice to build a strong foundation for an equitable recovery.”

Despite the many challenges to unionizing some of the nation’s largest companies, Henry says she remains hopeful and inspired by the workers themselves.

“Even in the face of unyielding corporate opposition, are mobilizing every day to create an economy that works for working people. Nearly ten years ago, fast-food workers with the Fight for $15 and a Union laid a marker by walking off the job to demand $15 and a union, and their relentless mobilizing continues to this day and is being carried forward by a renewed generation of working people at Starbucks, Amazon, across major airports and hospitals, and so much more. If you are paying attention to the voices of working people exercising their power, you will always find inspiration and hope for the future.”

The Good Fight is a series spotlighting progressive activists around the nation battling injustice in communities that are typically underserved and brutalized by a system that overlooks them.

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If you happened to catch last month’s debate-stage chest-bumping altercation between two Ohio GOP candidates running for the state’s open Senate seat, then you have a point of reference for the man who apparently thinks middle-class Americans aren’t paying enough in taxes.

Mike Gibbons, who narrowly leads the Republican primary, remarked last fall that “the middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share.”

Gibbons, a millionaire investment banker, made the comment during a September podcast produced by the local business journal, Crain’s Cleveland Business. But the remark is being newly scrutinized due to a recently released 11-point Republican agenda in which Senate GOP campaign chief Rick Scott said Republicans plan to raise taxes on working families by more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

In the video, Gibbons, seated in front of a campaign backdrop, explained, “The top 20% of earners in the United States pay 82% of federal income tax—and, if you do the math, and 45% to 50% don’t pay any income tax, you can see the middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share, depending on how you want to define it.”

It’s one of those comments that doesn’t read any better in context. Gibbons goes on to accuse Democrats of spinning a narrative that “the middle class is getting screwed” because they need middle class votes to win elections, according to the Washington Post. Gibbons states he has nothing against a progressive structure but concludes, “How much of the total tax bill can a very small percentage of the nation pay and still be a democracy?”

Gibbons’ comments have a similar feel to Scott’s declaration that everyone needs “skin in the game” on taxes, although his campaign was quick to deny that he has any intention of raising taxes on middle-class Americans.

“Mike Gibbons does not support tax increases on any American—and never has,” campaign spokesperson Samantha Cotten said in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is likely dying a slow death over the whole situation. Scott released the tax hike agenda in defiance of McConnell, who had explicitly planned to release exactly no information about what Republicans planned to do if they won back the Senate Majority this fall.

Now the Ohio Senate race, which in regular times should be a gimme for Republicans, is awash in the debate over raising middle tax classes. If Scott hadn’t released his memo, Gibbons’ interview might have gone unnoticed—or simply been considered a singular gaffe. But in the context of Scott’s GOP agenda, the question of Republicans raising taxes on working Americans has become a focal point for the moment.

One of Gibbons’ opponents has even reposted the video to his YouTube account under the caption “Tax Hike Mike Gibbons.”

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We seem to be having Russian History Month. There has been the head of the Russian orthodox church reaching back 900 years to claim that neither Ukraine nor the Ukrainian church is “real.” Vladimir Putin has insisted that Ukraine is not a country because it “illegally left” the USSR. And on Tuesday, Russian diplomats insisted that Japan pay them back for gold supposedly stolen in 1920.

Over the last few weeks, Kos has written several times about the importance of logistics and how Russia’s issues on this front ensured that their plans to march into Kyiv didn’t just fail, but were doomed to fail. Kos has also taken a look at Russia’s multiple issues of communications and why it doesn’t have the experienced NCOs to hold together things on a tactical basis. Russia is also short of clear lines of command to maintain strategic goals, is saddled with a lot of poorly maintained equipment, and is utterly lacking in the intelligence necessary to predict the actions of their opponent at any scale.

On Tuesday, as ever more Russian forces are crowded into eastern Ukraine, President Zelenskyy desperately seeks the materials to keep his nation afloat, and everyone braces for a battle that will define the future. Let’s take a quick look at two battles where all those issues facing Russia were true. Except we’re not looking at Russia, we’re looking at the United States. And we’re not looking on the European steppes but at the Pacific Ocean.

On August 7, 1942, a massive U.S. fleet approached the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands. There the fleet successfully landed Marines, captured two airfields under construction, annihilated a small Japanese base, and drove construction workers into the jungle. After two days of hard fighting, U.S. forces stepped down from high alert on the evening of August 8. They had control of the islands, two large naval forces standing in the strait between Guadalcanal and Tulagi, a screen of destroyers guarding the entrance to the area, a carrier fleet providing air cover, and reconnaissance planes making loops to warn of any Japanese approach. The admiral in charge even expressed a wish that someone would attack, showing confidence in their position.

That night, a much smaller Japanese fleet sailed into the area under cover of darkness, opened fire on the southern half of the fleet, and either sunk or sent into flight every major ship. Then it turned to the north, did the same to the northern fleet, and escaped beyond small Savo Island after taking only light damage. On the U.S. side, four heavy cruisers were utterly lost. Another was seriously damaged and left adrift. Two destroyers were also left with serious damage, unable to continue the fight. 1,077 men were killed—almost as many as the Marines would lose on Guadalcanal over the course of that whole infamously terrible campaign. And all those troops onshore would be left without air cover, without cover from the sea, and short on supplies, setting up everything that was to come.

What went wrong? What didn’t. A U.S. spotting plane had seen the Japanese fleet—in fact, two planes spotted them while approaching. But those planes were under a different command. Since the naval operations were secret, the planes didn’t know the U.S. ships were off to their east and weren’t all that concerned about the course the Japanese fleet was taking. It took more than 8 hours for the first message to reach the U.S. ships. Even when it did, everyone misinterpreted what the spotting planes had seen. 

It wasn’t just the planes that were under a different command. The naval fleet was actually split up among different admirals, and after the landing, the commander of the carrier fleet unexpectedly announced he was taking his ships and leaving the area. Surprised, the overall commander of the landing fleet called in his next in command for a conference. That next in command failed to put anyone in charge of the southern fleet, where he had been stationed, and no one bothered to notify the northern fleet of what was happening. In fact, no one bothered to notify the northern fleet that anything was wrong even after the Japanese sailed into the strait and attacked the southern fleet. The Japanese got to stage two separate surprise attacks because no one on the U.S. side thought to pick up a radio. And all during the fight, the two guys really in charge were somewhere else, complaining about the other admiral and the carrier fleet. They didn’t even see the action.

Command, control, logistics, communications … they failed every test. And the result may have added a year to the war in the space of just minutes.

What may seem stranger is that this battle came just after the resounding U.S. victory at Midway, a battle where combined groups of bombers operating from multiple carriers came together to sink three Japanese carriers and genuinely turn the tide of the war. How is it possible that the U.S. could be so coordinated at Midway and so utterly hapless at Savo Island? The answer is that it wasn’t.

There’s one more big factor in warfare that Kos hasn’t really discussed: luck.

As Kos has covered, Russia’s lack of NCOs, inexperienced soldiers, and top-heavy management style makes it hard for them to coordinate more than two or three battalion tactical groups (BTGs) at a time. In fact, most of Russia’s actions seem to be single BTGs, or even partial BTGs, being flung around Ukraine without the support they need to actually hold a position, or contest a position against dug-in opponents.

At Midway, the U.S. had exactly that same problem. The U.S. kept trying to get off waves of planes, but each carrier was having its own set of difficulties, resulting in planes going up in small clusters all morning, rather than forming a coordinated attack. A handful of fighters here. A slightly larger grouping of attack bombers over there. Some dive bombers who took a wrong turn and came from another direction.

None of it was working as designed, and the Japanese defenses took out these flights almost as soon as they arrived. Throughout most of the morning, not one bomb or torpedo reached a single Japanese ship, while several of the U.S. flights were wiped out to a plane.

However, that chaos turned out to be just what the U.S. needed. The Japanese had already launched half their planes and needed a 45-minute window to recover them, get them stowed away, and get another flight ready on deck. U.S. planes kept hitting them every time it seemed they were about to get that window. Not by design. By luck. 

And when the Japanese finally managed to get all their planes landed, stowed, fueled, and re-armed for a response, that was when two separate flights of U.S. bombers—launched in different directions at different times—just happened to show up at once, hitting the Japanese fleet from opposite sides of the sky. Exhausted and frustrated by a morning of constant attacks, the Japanese watched as a handful of bombs went right through openings in the Japanese carrier decks and found all those planes. With their fuel. And their bombs. Japan lost three carriers, lost any chance at taking Midway, and may have lost the war. In about eight minutes.

That happened despite U.S. issues with command, control, and communication. Sometimes, things just do.

As all those tanks in the Donbas get ready to roll, just hope that Russia has all Savo Islands, no Midways.

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As Daily Kos has covered in the past, The Walt Disney Co. is finally taking a stand against the hateful, discriminatory Don’t Say Gay law in Florida. While at first the company’s response to the legislation was quite lackluster, CEO Bob Chapek has recently come around and promised more advocacy and action to repeal the legislation, in addition to putting a pause on all political donations in the state. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis seems unconcerned with Disney’s promise to better the state of Florida.

Sadly, this hateful legislation is not an outlier. We’ve seen countless anti-trans bills pop up around the nation, as well as several copycat bills eerily similar to the Don’t Say Gay legislation. We’re also seeing conservatives push the grooming angle in a way that’s deeply reminiscent of decades past. With all of this in mind, Charlee Disney, an heir to Disney, recently publicly came out as transgender and promised to do more to help their community. 

RELATED: Family service investigators are resigning instead of doing Greg Abbott’s dirty work

Disney, who is thirty years old and works as a biology teacher, told the Los Angeles Times they’ve been openly trans for the last several years, but came out more publicly last month while at a gala for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). 

“I don’t call senators or take action,” Disney told the outlet, saying they felt they hadn’t done much to help the community previously, and knew they could be doing more as an activist. Disney pledged a donation of $250,000 to the HRC, and from there, Disney’s parents (Roy P. Disney and his wife, Sheri Disney) promised to double their child’s donation. 

While Charlee is very brave for coming out, and no one is ever obligated to do so, it’s also worth addressing that privilege exists across identities. Clearly, the Disney family is extremely well-positioned both financially and socially, and not standing up for your community in spite of your privilege is a choice. It’s great they’ve come around and are working to fight this legislation in a real way now, but it’s important to keep in mind that, say, a trans sex worker or a trans unhoused person does not have the same access to living peacefully.

In the bigger picture, the Tennessee Senate recently passed two bills seeking to oppress and discriminate against trans folks, as reported by the Tennessean. Both bills are sponsored by Republican Sen. Joey Hensley and both target trans girls who want to participate in girls’ sports. SB 2153 bans trans women from participating in sports at the college level and SB 1861 establishes financial consequences for public schools that opt out of determining a student’s gender as assigned at birth when it comes to what sports team they can play on. 

He admitted he did not discuss the legislation with any trans people. He also admitted he does not know of situations in Tennessee that the bills would actually address.

If you’re thinking, “Wait, doesn’t Tennessee already have anti-trans legislation signed into law?” It does! These bills are efforts to make it even harder for trans people. 

Times are dark right now when it comes to trans rights, but people are still fighting. For example, as highlighted by the Alabama Reporter, families in Alabama have already filed a federal lawsuit over the anti-trans law in their state banning safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care for trans youth. The suit alleges that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by denying trans youth health care, the absence of which will lead to mental and physical distress.

Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed the legislation into law last Friday, so it’s heartening to see the suit move quickly, though we continue to have a long fight ahead of us. 

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

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Today on The Brief, my and Kerry Eleveld’s weekly show/podcast about politics, our guest is Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, and the nation’s foremost expert on the pernicious effects Fox News has on our democracy. 

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You can watch the show live right here on Tuesdays at 1:30 PM PT/4:30 PM ET, while the podcast version goes live Wednesday mornings at all the usual places, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. A full list of places to download the show is available here.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s retribution for the Biden administration’s just decision to stop enforcing Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum Title 42 policy at the southern border is resulting in massive delays for commercial truckers, rotting food, and worries from businesses leaders that disrupted trade will lead to empty shelves.

The right-wing official last week claimed that he would forcibly bus asylum-seekers from Texas to Washington, D.C., to punish the administration for its correct move to end use of the white supremacist policy. This was a cruel, disgusting stunt that Abbott then quickly backed down from, stating that it would actually be voluntary. Thanks for the free rides, Greg.

But in another part of his retaliation, Abbott announced that commercial vehicles would have to undergo additional inspection at ports of entry, even though these vehicles are already inspected by the federal government. But even these added checks are a stunt, because The Texas Tribune reports troopers can only do mechanical checks, not cargo checks.

RELATED STORY: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott peddles horrific plan to kidnap immigrants, then backtracks

The unnecessary checks have now resulted in delays lasting for as long as several days, and warnings that consumers may soon pay the price of Abbott’s politicking.

“’One of our customers canceled the order because we didn’t deliver on time,’ said Modesto Guerra, sales manager for Sterling Fresh Inc., which imports broccoli from Central Mexico via the Pharr bridge before shipping it to the Midwest and East Coast,” The Texas Tribune reported in another recent piece. One Mexican trucker told a Spanish-language outlet that would normally make “two crossings into the U.S. a day,” the report continued. “Now, he’d be lucky to have one or two a week given the long delays at the bridges.”

“We are losing just as much as them,” he said in the report. “When they start needing more produce, the prices are going to go up.

The Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge has been the site of a protest by Mexican truckers, who have blocked traffic in both directions over Abbott’s shenanigans. We’ll see if mainstream media touts and promotes this protest as much as the one at the northern border. In one photo shared by The Monitor reporter Dina Arévalo, a handful of state vehicles and one commercial truck are seen on an otherwise empty port that the reporter said is usually one of the busiest in the nation. 

“For the 6th day, @GovAbbott has disrupted trade, which will affect businesses & lead to higher prices,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro. “These political stunts have already militarized the border & harmed Texas guard members. Now, he’s going to make it harder for families to put food on the table.”

Similar warnings came from conservative Democrat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who told The Texas Tribune that Abbott’s “unnecessary secondary inspections are killing business on the border.” Both Gonzalez and Rep. Henry Cuellar had previously joined Republicans in opposing the Biden administration’s Title 42 decision.

Abbott’s Democratic opponent for governor, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, shared a nearly 20-minute video from the Laredo-Colombia Solidarity International Bridge. Behind him was a very visible line of trucks, all stuck due to Abbott’s policies. Another video shared by O’Rourke showed truck after truck after truck. “This is inflation,” he tweeted. “Higher prices at the grocery store. A supply chain crisis that is killing businesses along the border. This is what Greg Abbott is doing to Texas.”

A concerned Texas International Produce Association (TIPA) issued a letter to Abbott on Friday that complained of hours-long delays, noting lines “at a stand-still” and that “many carriers and brokers are reporting hours of non-movement.” TIPA President Dante Galeazzi said he fears that business will get sick of Abbott’s bullshit (my words, not his) and move operations to Mexico or neighboring states.

”Warehouses have staff sitting idle, with no trucks to unload,” Galeazzi said. “Buyers in other parts of the country cannot understand why their product is not available. US trucking companies are losing money as they sit around for days with no loads to haul. I have even heard from a member that a trucking company is refusing to send trucks south of San Antonio out of concern there will be no cargo available. This is destroying our business and the reputation of Texas.”

But that’s Greg Abbott, who has sunk $2 billion in state taxpayer money (and counting) into his Operation Lone Star border scheme, which has been such a supposed success that the governor’s office won’t hand over all the data proving it’s been such a success.

What we can say the Operation Lone Star border scheme has done is continue to illegally imprison asylum-seekers and other migrants without any charges (which he doesn’t give a shit about) and force deployed soldiers to deplorable conditions. Some soldiers tied to the operation have also died, some by suicide. But Abbott’s reaction was to blame President Biden and to scapegoat a department leader. 

“If a person is a soldier or a migrant, he doesn’t care,” El Paso Rep. Veronica Escobar recently told Border Report. “For him, they represent an opportunity to advance his politics of hate and cruelty. He’s not focused on solutions or on working with Congress to really help Texans; he’s focused on winning (re-election) at any cost.”

RELATED STORIES: Escobar says Abbott’s plan to get asylum-seekers out of Texas is more ‘politics of hate and cruelty’

Texas refuses to be transparent about Operation Lone Star. Probably because it’s all a scheme

Texas’ corrupt attorney general is using the courts to sabotage Biden’s immigration agenda

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The three former Minneapolis cops convicted of violating George Floyd’s federal civil rights turned down plea deals in the state case against them, the Minnesota attorney general’s office told CNN after The Associated Press reported the news on Monday. Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane were charged with aiding and abetting manslaughter and murder when they assisted their former peer, Derek Chauvin, in responding to a call regarding a twenty-dollar bill that a teen clerk suspected was fake. 

Chauvin ended up kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes in a murder—recorded in a witness video that went viral—on May 25, 2020, outside of the Cup Foods store in Minneapolis. Kueng held Floyd down with Lane, while Thao blocked bystanders from providing Floyd with any aid. The office of Attorney General Keith Ellison told CNN the accused men were offered plea deals on March 22, but prosecutors would not detail the specifics of those deals.

RELATED: Three ex-cops who watched Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd convicted of violating his civil rights

Earl Gray, Lane’s attorney, told The Associated Press the delayed federal sentencing hampered his ability to negotiate a deal. The news wire reported that all three former cops remain out on bail with no sentencing date scheduled. Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, the presiding judge in the case, told lead prosecutor Matthew Frank to file the proposed plea deals after the jury is seated, a process that is expected to take about three of the estimated eight trial weeks, according to the AP.

The offered pleas came up during a hearing Cahill held primarily to determine whether the officers’ state trial would be livestreamed. Federal court rules prevented the option in the ex-officers’ federal case, but the decision rests with Cahill in the state case. The judge allowed Chauvin’s trial to be livestreamed in a rare exception to normal court rules because of the pandemic.

“COVID-19 is less of a pandemic and more of an endemic issue now,” Cahill told the AP. He also emphasized that while he has publicly stated he believes televised trials should be allowed, that is not the rule of the court yet and he is “still sworn to uphold the law.”

Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu told The Star Tribune she initially opposed allowing a livestream of the trial of former Brooklyn Center officer Kimberly Potter, but she changed her position because of the pandemic. Chu wrote in a court order that her decision to allow the livestream was “based solely on concerns for public health and safety given the ongoing pandemic.” After the trial, she told the newspaper that she didn’t regret the decision and that cameras weren’t disruptive to Potter’s or Chauvin’s trials.  

“I thought it was appropriate in the two cases and it went very smoothly, but I’m going to leave it to others as to what the parameters should be,” Chu said. “I forgot they were even there.”

Potter was ultimately convicted and sentenced to two years in the death of Daunte Wright, despite claims she was reaching for her Taser when she accidentally shot Wright with a gun. Chu called the case “the saddest” she has had in 20 years. 

The judge turned in a letter announcing her retirement on Feb. 15, three days before she sentenced Potter, The Star Tribune reported. Chu could have pursued a re-election bid for another six years on the bench, but Minnesota’s mandatory retirement age of 70 years old would have forced her to retire only a year and a half into her term, according to The Star Tribune.

She said her fellow judges have been “so supportive” during and after the Potter trial. Cahill, too, seems to be relying on his peers and other court administrators, specifically regarding whether he will allow the live recording of the state trial for Thao, Lane, and Kueng. The judge said he wouldn’t make a decision until the Minnesota Judicial Council meets on Thursday to weigh in.

Attorney Leita Walker, who represents several media organizations including the AP, asked Cahill to allow video coverage. “The public is just not going to understand why they got to watch that one gavel to gavel and they won’t be able to watch this one,” Walker said.

The state trial for Thao, Lane, and Kueng is set to begin in June, the AP reported.

RELATED STORY: ‘Mob rule and politics’ are to blame for indictments in Floyd’s death, defense attorneys claim

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In poll after poll over the past year, President Joe Biden’s economic plans have proven enormously popular, yet the same polls showed that barely any Americans knew what they were.

New polling from the progressive polling consortium Navigator Research finds that less than half of Americans are hearing about Biden’s economic plans. Just 15% said they had heard “a lot,” 31% reported hearing “some,” and 54% said either not much or nothing at all.

Navigator writes, “Independents and economically persuadable Americans are the least likely to have heard about the plan (65% and 67%, respectively).”

At the same time, the polling showed the economic plans of Biden and Democrats hitting an “all-time high level of support.” The Navigator question centers around Democratic efforts to expand Medicare for seniors to include hearing coverage, lower health care costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, and invest in clean energy like wind and solar power.

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But the problem all along with Biden’s Build Back Better agenda has been the fact that the massive economic package is simply too broad to message in discrete ways that were easy for most Americans to digest.

Democrats have structured several bills like this for a strategic reason: They needed to pack everything into a budget bill that could be passed by 50 Democratic senators alone, because Republicans were never going to back an economic agenda that helped Americans and was so broadly popular.

In other words, Democrats were doing their level best to deliver actual legislation that would help working families across the country. But as we all know, two recalcitrant Democratic senators have singlehandedly stymied the promise of improving the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

So it’s time for a total reset. We are now in the thick of election season, and the White House absolutely must restructure their legislative priorities in a way that shifts the burden of passage away from Democrats (48 of whom are trying to help Americans) and onto to Republicans (some 50 of whom have proven they have no desire to help Americans).

Practically speaking, that means the White House would pick several enormously popular policies—such as capping insulin prices and the child tax credit that recently expired—and take them up individually in the Senate, where they will automatically require 60 votes to pass. Moving away from the 50-vote reconciliation scheme to the 60 votes required to overcome a GOP filibuster shifts the burden of passage from Democrats to Republicans in an electoral year.

As former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told The Focus Group podcast this week, “Look, if I was them, I would pick a fight on a few of these things. So you’re not going to get a $3.5 trillion piece of legislation, get into a fight about a larger prescription drug pricing bill, right. Run the vote on that.”

Exactly: Run the vote and get congressional Republicans voting against some very popular items, likely in lock step or close to it.

Importantly, all of the issues mentioned above can be framed around an effort to address voters’ No. 1 concern right now: inflation. The child tax credit, for instance, is an effort to help families who are struggling to pay for the rising costs of food, gas prices, and child care.

Capping insulin prices at $35 per month has the benefit of already being in process. House Democrats passed the Affordable Insulin Now Act two weeks ago, with 193 Republicans voting against it—nearly the entire GOP caucus.

Despite the bill’s unanimous Democratic support, a CBS News article summed up the next steps in the Senate this way:

For the legislation to pass Congress, 10 Republican senators would have to vote in favor. Democrats acknowledge they don’t have an answer for how that’s going to happen.

That’s where the messaging comes in: Democrats shouldn’t be answering for why Republicans won’t provide a mere 10 votes to pass popular bills through the Senate. When a reporter asks the question, Senate Democrats should respond, “Why don’t you ask Republican senators why they won’t vote for the bill?”

Senate Democrats must constantly drive home the fact that Republicans are filibustering these very popular common-sense items. But in order to do so, they must have single-issue bills and then run the vote in the Senate rather than strategically trying to attach them to some bigger bill.

Yes, it’s going to require a little showmanship and messaging discipline on the part of Democrats. But if the White House were driving the message from the top, it would trickle down through Congress and perhaps all the way into the districts and states that will ultimately decide who controls Congress in November.

The other benefit of the White House leading the fight is that it gives President Biden a chance to be out there championing policies that matter to working Americans—people he genuinely cares about. In both polling and focus groups alike, Americans constantly say they don’t hear enough from Biden, they don’t know what he’s doing, etc.

If Democrats and the White House were all singing from the same song sheet on several popular items, it would create a self-reinforcing echo chamber. Suddenly Biden wouldn’t seem so absent from the conversation because the White House messaging would be reverberating through Congress.  

Election season has begun in earnest, and Democrats must adjust to it in the legislative arena. Every day spent talking about Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is a bad news day for Democrats and the White House.

If the White House sets its sights on two or three items specifically designed to help Americans weather inflation and then makes a spectacle of them, that would provide congressional Democrats with the contrast they need to prosecute an electoral campaign against Republicans and the big-money interests that control them.

One of Biden’s items, by the way, could be student debt relief, which the president could do by executive order. And if that executive action ends up in the courts, it’s another fight worth having on behalf of Americans struggling to emerge from crushing debt and the nation’s broken student loan system.   

On the Focus Group podcast, host Sarah Longwell noted that student debt cancellation comes up “all the time” in the Democratic focus groups. “Especially among young voters, nothing comes up more than that,” said Longwell, who routinely conducts the groups.

In short, Democrats need to show some fight, and to do so they must restructure their legislative battles in the Senate so the main feature becomes the contrast between Democrats fighting for working Americans versus Republicans protecting the interests of wealthy individuals and corporations. 

And by the way, if you want to see a real loser at the polls, GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s plan to raise taxes on roughly 100 million working Americans garners 27% support and 59% opposition in the latest Navigator survey.

That dystopian hellscape of a plan offers the perfect contrast for Democrats. Let Republicans fight over whether or not they would actually enact Scott’s 11-point plan if they regained their majorities. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet to articulate an alternative vision—Scott’s is the only one in writing. 

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GOP majority states are taking jab after jab on abortion rights. States across the country are passing their own versions of Heartbeat Bills or abortion bans that not only limit when abortions are possible but imprison doctors who perform them. While Texas has made headlines for its ban, Oklahoma has taken its ban even further.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday signed a bill that not only bans abortions but threatens those who perform abortions with prison time. The legislation, HB 4327, bans doctors in the state from performing abortions no matter how early in the pregnancy it is. The only exception would be if an abortion is necessary for saving a pregnant woman’s life. There is no exception for rape or incest.

“I promised Oklahomans that I would sign every pro-life bill that hits my desk and that’s what we’re doing today,” Stitt said. “We want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country. We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma.”

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The bill “in support of protecting lives of unborn children in Oklahoma,” was first passed in the Senate last year and the House earlier this month. In addition to banning abortion, it threatens health care providers with up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine, The Washington Post reported.

Oklahoma legislators have been after abortion for some time, partially due to an increase in abortion-related travel in the state. Last month, an Oklahoma Senate committee passed five anti-abortion measures, including one that barred abortion 30 days after conception, a time in which most pregnancies are not yet detected, the Associated Press reported.

The increase in abortion travel is in part to other state laws banning abortion. Daily Kos reported that Oklahoma saw a nearly 2,500% increase in Texas patients compared to the previous year after Texas’ law was enacted.

Unlike other states, the ban does not have an emergency clause that allows a bill to take effect as soon as the governor signs it. Instead, it is scheduled to take effect this summer—if the courts do not first block it.

“The ban signed today is cruel and if it takes effect this summer, will have a devastating impact on people in Oklahoma, neighboring Texans, as well as an entire region facing attacks on their rights to abortion access,” Melissa Fowler, the National Abortion Federation’s chief program officer, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

According to The Washington Post, if Oklahoma stops providing abortions, women in Texas and Oklahoma will have to seek the procedures in Arkansas, Kansas, or New Mexico. Clinics in those states are reportedly already fully booked.

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The South Dakota House of Representatives has voted to impeach state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg in a 36-31 vote. Ravnsborg, a Republican, struck and killed a man while driving home from a Republican fundraiser on Sept.  12, 2020 but didn’t report the death until the next day, claiming that he believed his car hit a deer.

Investigators were immediately suspicious of that delay, both because it meant that Ravnsborg’s blood alcohol levels weren’t tested until long after the accident, and because Highway Patrol officers investigating the crash found the victim’s glasses inside Ravnsborg’s car. After nearly a year of delay, Ravnsborg pled no contest to misdemeanor charges, but faced no jail time. Ravnsborg had a prior history of traffic offenses and of using his position to avoid tickets when pulled over. A later investigation found evidence that he was reading a conspiracy website on his phone while driving.

Ravnsborg’s support inside the Republican-controlled House, however, continued to crumble, and when “new evidence” was presented that clarified the graphic details of “the length of time [the victim’s] body was on the AG’s car with his head inside of the AG’s car’s window,” the House reversed a March decision not to impeach. State Rep. Charlie Hoffman said the presentation by Highway Patrol officers included “irrefutable evidence” that Ravnsborg “knew exactly what he hit.” Republican Gov. Kristi Noem also called for Ravnsborg’s impeachment.

Ravnsborg will now be temporarily removed from office while the state Senate prepares for his impeachment trial. A two-thirds majority of senators will be necessary to convict him. Ravnsborg has been belligerent in his defenses, insisting both that he truly did not know that he had struck his victim and that calls for his impeachment are politically motivated.

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