RSN: Jamaal Bowman Is Just the Politician This Moment Need

25 June 20

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That should be your inspiration, your rational for supporting our work. That’s what we do well. Fundraising has become a real challenge, but it allows that work to continue.

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25 June 20

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WE HAVE TO - REALLY - FIGHT TO MAKE OUR BUDGET - It is very hard right now. In truth far harder than it should be. If even 10% of our readers were responding and helping fundraising would be totally painless. For real. Please be a bit more responsive. In peace and solidarity. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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Jamaal Bowman Is Just the Politician This Moment Needs

Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone
Bort writes: "On Tuesday, the 44-year-old former middle-school principal toppled longtime Democratic stalwart Eliot Engel in the party's primary for New York's 16th District."

EXCERPTS: 

Jamaal Bowman’s challenge is to make all this mean something.

On Tuesday, the 44-year-old former middle-school principal toppled longtime Democratic stalwart Eliot Engel in the party’s primary for New York’s 16th District. Engel was seeking a 17th term in office, having represented the district — a diverse swath of the Bronx and suburban New York that includes New Rochelle — since 1989. Bowman, who had never run for political office before entering the race last June, appears to have won by more than 25 points.

“Our movement is designed to restore that faith, to restore that hope, to bring back the belief in what is possible, to root our values in everything we do,” he told supporters after sealing the victory. Bowman was buoyed by a platform built around racial justice and community engagement. As the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum this spring, so did Bowman’s campaign. Now, he’s tasked with using his and the movement’s values to bring about real, systemic change.

He firmly believes this is possible, but as he explained to me earlier on Friday following a press conference in Co-Op City, in the Bronx, it’s going to take “full participation,” both from the community and every level of government, right down to the school boards. “I feel this time it’s different,” Bowman told me of the potential for change following the demonstrations. “I also understand people from the African-American community who don’t have that same amount of faith because we’ve been bamboozled and hoodwinked throughout this nation’s history.”

The nation’s relentless oppression of people of color, exacerbated generation after generation by the hollow promises of the American Dream and the politicians who peddle it, are why many are skeptical as they plead for the kind of engagement Bowman has preached. “They have all these rallies. Everybody wants justice, everybody wants peace, but nobody ever interacts,” Clarke said in front of Flowers’s home. “The only way you’re going to know about this side of town, is to interact with this side of town.”

Before the killing of George Floyd sparked a nationwide reckoning over police violence, Bowman wrote an op-ed for NBC News in March describing multiple occasions in which he was racially profiled and arrested. He went on to decry former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg for stocking schools in communities of color with police and metal detectors, effectively criminalizing the students.

After Henderson Clarke spoke in front of his slain brother’s home, the demonstrators in New Rochelle marched back to the park, chanting for Governor Cuomo to get the state’s attorney general to open an independent investigation into the circumstances of Flowers’s death. According to the police, Flowers fled the scene after a car he was in was pulled over. The police said Flowers pulled a gun when an officer — later identified as Alec McKenna — attempted to tase him. McKenna fired six shots, one of which struck Flowers fatally. Flowers’s family, and the New Rochelle NAACP, are skeptical, and want answers. Flowers was only 24 years old. His daughter is 6.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks before a crowd of 25,000 in front of the state capitol building on March 25, 1965, in Montgomery, Alabama. (photo: Stephen F. Somerstein/Getty)

Andrew Bacevich | Martin Luther King's Giant Triplets: Racism, Yes, but What About Militarism and Materialism?
Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch
Bacevich writes: "In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Americans are finally - or is it once again? - confronting the racism that afflicts this country and extends into just about every corner of our national life. Something fundamental just might be happening."
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People lined up to vote at Riverside High School in Milwaukee on Tuesday. (photo: Morry Gash/AP)

ALSO SEE: US Health Officials Believe 20M Americans Have Had Virus

US Virus Cases Continue to Rise at Near-Record Rate
Jennifer Peltz and Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press
Excerpt: "The number of new coronavirus cases per day in the U.S. stood near an all-time high Thursday at more than 34,000, hovering close to the peak reached in late April during some of the darkest and deadliest days of the crisis."
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Scottsdale, Arizona Republican councilman Guy Phillips. (photo: Reuters)

To Protest Face Masks, Arizona City Councilman Uses George Floyd's Words: 'I Can't Breathe'
Meagan Flynn, The Washington Post
Flynn writes: "He said it again, louder: 'I can't breathe' - echoing the dying words of George Floyd that have become a rallying cry in nationwide protests against police violence."

EXCERPT:

McSally, sharing a video of his comments, said, “This is a serious moment in history and it’s disgusting you are mocking the dying words of a murdered man.”

Martha McSally

✔@SenMcSallyAZ

Despicable. This is a serious moment in history and it's disgusting you are mocking the dying words of a murdered man. https://twitter.com/rexchapman/status/1275950050712211456 …

Rex Chapman

✔@RexChapman

Here’s video of Scottsdale City Councilman Guy Phillips shouting "I Can't Breathe" before removing his mask at today's Anti-Mask Rally in Arizona:

Mocking Eric Garner & George Floyd and many others in this moment is something I feel compelled to expose...

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22:13 - 24 Jun 2020

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McSally’s opponent in the Republican primary, Daniel McCarthy, spoke at Wednesday’s anti-mask rally in dramatic terms, describing the mask mandate as a “communist insurrection” and saying, “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees” before leading the crowd in anti-mask chants. President Trump has previously endorsed McSally.

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Border Patrol agents are pictured detaining and processing a group of migrants near the Paso Del Norte International Bridge. (photo: Paul Ratje/Getty)

The Supreme Court Just Allowed Trump's Expansion of Deportations to Go Unchecked
Nicole Narea, Vox
Narea writes: "The Supreme Court just issued a ruling with sweeping, immediate implications for the immigration enforcement system, potentially allowing the Trump administration to move forward in deporting tens of thousands of immigrants living in the US with little oversight."
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An unarmed Palestinian protester facing Israeli soldiers at the Tayasir checkpoint near the West Bank city of Tubas on 25 February. (photo: Reuters)

Saeb Erekat | Stop Treating Israel as a State Above the Law and End Annexation
Saeb Erekat, Middle East Eye
Erekat writes: "Trump and Netanyahu's plans and actions are an attack on the international community as well as Palestinians."
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Juneteenth commemoration at a burial site for enslaved people, located in a field where Formosa plans to build one of its facilities. (photo: Courtesy of Ron Moyi/Louisiana Bucket Brigade)

Louisiana Environmental Activists Charged With "Terrorizing" for Nonviolent Stunt Targeting Plastics Giant
Alleen Brown, The Intercept
Brown writes: "Civil liberties attorneys are calling the charges a dramatic escalation of a years long effort by the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries to criminalize efforts to halt the expansion of polluting facilities in the state - part of a nationwide trend of cracking down on dissent around climate change issues."

EXCERPT:

The accusations against the activists, Anne Rolfes and Kate McIntosh, stem from a seemingly innocuous activist stunt carried out in December, the day after a festival designed to draw attention to the environmental misdeeds of Formosa Plastics. The Taiwanese petrochemical company plans to build a massive plastics manufacturing complex in a largely Black Louisiana community that has already suffered health problems linked to local industry. In October, Formosa agreed to a $50 million settlement for dumping pollutants, including the small pellets that form the building blocks for plastic products known as nurdles, into Texas’s Lavaca Bay — the largest settlement of a Clean Water Act lawsuit filed by private citizens.

With a key environmental permit still pending for Formosa in Louisiana, the action — dubbed “Nurdlefest” — was meant to pressure the state’s Department of Environmental Quality to scrutinize the company’s record. Boxes of the plastic pellets, used as evidence in the Texas case, were carted to the front of the agency, where around 75 people gathered in the rain.

What apparently terrorized community members, however, was a container of the pellets that appeared on the porch of an oil and gas lobbyist, with a detailed note attached, explaining what they were and their Texas origin. “We have delivered this package of nurdles as a reminder – Louisiana does not need anymore pollution, plastics or otherwise,” the letter said. “We demand that LDEQ DENY Formosa’s air emissions permit application.”

The letter was signed by Concerned Citizens of Louisiana and included the phone number of Bill Quigley, the activists’ pro bono attorney. It also included warnings against leaving the nurdles around children or pets and a Formosa phone number for safely recycling the contents.

Rolfes and McIntosh, who are respectively the director of and a program assistant at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which provides support to groups of community members living near polluting facilities, face a maximum of 15 years in prison and $15,000 in fines for so-called terrorizing — defined as “the intentional communication of information that the commission of a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist” — with the intention of causing members of the public to fear for their safety.

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Texas fights the virus and its skeptics

BY RENUKA RAYASAM

Presented by Facebook

With help from Myah Ward

TEXAS HOLDS ’EM — Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott learned today that there’s no such thing as a middle path through the pandemic . For months, Abbott has tried to reuse the playbook that helped make him governor — appeasing a raucous far-right flank while trying to maintain the GOP’s grip on the increasingly Democratic suburbs — to handle a public health disaster. It hasn’t always worked, and now it seems to have backfired completely.

Cases in Texas have nearly doubled to more than 131,000 since the state moved to Phase 3 of its reopening plan on June 3. Public health experts and local officials are warning that Houston and other pockets of the state are on the brink of disaster. The economy is likely to take another hit: Even without statewide orders, restaurants are shutting down as cases grow.

Abbott froze the state’s reopening plan today. That makes him only the second Republican governor, after Utah’s Gary Herbert, to press the pause button. Later today Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey became the third. Still, much like in March, Abbott has said publicly that he doesn’t want to reimpose statewide restrictions even as he’s acknowledged Covid is “rampant” in the state and people aren’t voluntarily following social distancing guidelines.

Today he halted elective medical procedures in four populous counties — which include Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — over fears that Covid cases would swamp the state’s hospitals. That comes after he backed down last week from his statewide order banning local governments from mandating mask wearing.

What went wrong — In an effort to navigate treacherous Texas politics, Abbott sent a series of mixed messages at the outset of the pandemic. First he let city and county leaders impose pandemic restrictions, then claimed local government overreach and took over the response. He caved to pressure from Lt. Gov Dan Patrick and other voices who questioned the virus threat when he lifted stay at home orders in May despite rising Covid caseloads. When Dallas salon owner Shelly Luther became a celebrity for violating Abbott’s executive orders, the governor removed restrictions on hairdressers.

As a result, health officials said, there has been confusion about the importance of stay at home orders, the benefits of mask wearing and how contact tracing can help keep the virus contained. Politically, Abbott’s attempt at a middle-road response has been rejected by not just Democrats who criticize his every move, but also by the far-right wing of his party, which has used the confusion to push a new (and wrong) “masks are harmful” message.

“This is not the kind of crisis where you can split the difference,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.

Renewed urgency — Abbott’s struck a different, more urgent tone in recent days. He’s defied Trump and Patrick by showing up to press conferences in a mask and pleading with state residents to stay home and to wear face coverings when they don’t.

Like other Republican governors, Abbott has been trying to argue that businesses can remain open if people follow social distancing measures and wear masks. But the far-right faction has disavowed such restrictions completely. The state’s Republican Party isn’t planning to require masks at its in-person convention in mid July.

Hospitalizations are rising around the state. Some public health experts expect that the state’s death toll, which has remained relatively low, will start growing as Covid patients deteriorate and case counts continue rising. Lina Hidalgo, Harris County’s top elected official, said that she’s trying to get permission from Abbott to issue new enforceable Covid restrictions, which she described as “something other than another stay-at-home order.”

“I hope we can take an aggressive enough approach,” said Hidalgo. “This curve will not flatten itself.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. The Dixie Chicks dropped the Dixie. They’re just The Chicks now. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

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FIRST IN NIGHTLY

‘THERE ARE NOT OUTBREAKS’ — When state leaders got on a conference call Monday with Trump’s coronavirus task force, a sense of alarm over the spike in cases sweeping the South and West was palpable, health care reporter Adam Cancryn and eHealth reporter Darius Tahir write. The task force officials’ posture on the calls is consistent with Trump’s long-telegraphed desire to shift responsibility for managing the outbreaks to the states. But it’s prompted rising frustration among state officials and the public health experts advising them. They expressed a desire for more extensive federal guidance on how to identify hotspots and reduce infections, along with better data tools and more on-the-ground resources to track cases.

In some major metropolitan areas, like Kansas City, Mo., the funding for testing and contact tracing that was approved by Congress in April is only now starting to trickle down. Kansas City was scheduled to get its slice of the federal aid — about $4 million — for the first time today. Patty Hayes, the public health director for King County and Seattle, Wash., said that states and counties continue to compete against each other to purchase sufficient testing supplies and protective equipment. “We’re still struggling,” she said. “We have to find our own way a lot of times.”

BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE - A DIFFERENT KIND OF NEWSLETTER : Are you interested in creating a sustainable future for generations to come? Our sustainability newsletter, "The Long Game," is designed for executives, investors and policymakers who lead crucial conversations about how society can continue to thrive. Join the sharpest minds for a discussion about the most significant challenges from pandemics to plastics, climate change to land use, inequality and the future of work. Winners play the long game, subscribe today.

PALACE INTRIGUE

WHAT TRUMP IS THINKING — Covid-19 is no longer front and center for Trump or most of his White House, in part because it’s viewed as an unwieldy and losing issue for a president who has always felt much more comfortable playing economic cheerleader than delving into the nuances of health issues, according to interviews with half a dozen current and former senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House, White House reporter Nancy Cook writes.

Aides insisted there would be no change in White House strategy to fight the pandemic, and no additional money or new resources given to states dealing with spikes in cases. “In only 3 percent of the counties across the country are we are seeing an increase in cases,” said one senior administration official. “The vast majority of the country is not experiencing that. When they turn on the TV and see maps full of red and then they go out into their communities, that is not what they see.”

TALKING TO THE EXPERTS

Nightly’s Myah Ward discussed mask effectiveness with Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, infectious diseases physician and vice chair of the Global Health Committee at the Infectious Diseases Society of America

When is wearing a mask the most effective?

Given the context of the current pandemic, it would be most effective if you’re out and about running errands — you’re not going to be able to appropriately physically distance yourself from other people. So if you’re doing things like going to the supermarket or the pharmacy. If you’re going to be around other people, I think it’s very important to be wearing a mask because we’re currently in a situation where we have to assume everybody has Covid-19.

Also, making sure you use hand hygiene before you touch your face covering or your mask. One of the things we get concerned about is we know that the virus can live on countertops, light switches, it can live on surfaces. What we would hate is for somebody to touch something, get the virus on their hand and then touch their mask.

Is one type of mask best?

The whole idea behind the wearing of a mask is to prevent any of your droplets from spreading to anybody else. So anything that you can put over your nose and your mouth that's going to prevent spreading of droplets is going to be optimal. Nobody in the public really needs to be wearing an N95 mask.

Is it still effective when people cover their mouths with the mask, but not their noses?

It’s better than nothing, but it’s defeating the purpose because we know this is an upper respiratory tract infection so you can inhale in droplets.

What about claims that masks are dangerous for people with certain health conditions?

I can’t come up with any medical condition that would make it inappropriate for you to be wearing a mask. What’s becoming challenging is people are trying to come up with all these, for lack of a better word, loopholes, to get around it. I think the one I hear the most is: “I have asthma. I can’t wear a mask.” There’s no reason you can’t wear a mask if you have asthma. I have friends who are surgeons who have asthma who have not had problems wearing masks for years and years.

How often should you wear one?

If you’re by yourself in your car and nobody’s been in your car, there’s no reason to be wearing a mask. If you’re in your car and you're with somebody else, depending on who that person is, it is a good idea to be wearing a mask. Because, let’s say, I’m in the car with my 80-year-old grandmother. We’re potentially breathing the same air, we’re in close proximity to each other.

In certain cases depending on your risk, it may be a good idea to wear one at home, depending on what you’re doing, the people who are living in your house and their risk factors as well.

The longer we don’t adhere to the recommendations, the longer that this is going to go on. And so I guess my plea to everybody would be: really think about not just yourself but other people.

 

FOUR SQUARE

THE ZOOM PANEL — Eugene Daniels, Tim Alberta, Ryan Lizza and Laura Barrón-López discuss Black voters and the Democratic Party, and if Democrats can get this key voting bloc to head to the polls in November, on the latest episode of Four Square. Watch this Nightly clip, and find the entire discussion Friday on POLITICO.

FROM THE HEALTH DESK

‘MALPRACTICE’ — That's what Rajiv Shah, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, called the CDC’s lack of testing guidance when he dropped by POLITICO for a virtual roundtable this afternoon, health care reporter Dan Diamond wrote to us. Shah, a physician who led the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration, blasted the federal health department for leaving hospitals, doctors, business leaders and Americans confused over who should get tested for coronavirus and how frequently.

“It’s so shocking,” Shah said. “The first function of the federal government is to protect its people. … And there’s no guidance” on myriad situations, like the role of businesses to screen their employees, or whether people who don’t have any symptoms should be getting tests.

Shah has spent weeks touting Rockefeller’s national coronavirus testing plan . He said the Trump administration should do more to enlist community leaders to help with the fight against coronavirus, especially in populations that have been hard-hit by the outbreak.

One piece of evidence: The lessons Shah learned during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak when winning over local leaders in places like Liberia — who then became advocates for the U.S. public health message. “We should be building the [U.S.] community leader infrastructure to communicate trusted messages — now,” Shah said, adding that has to include communities that are medically underserved. “When the vaccine’s available, that’s your sales force.”

AROUND THE NATION

‘THIS IS NOTHING NEW’ — National political reporter Laura Barrón-López emails us:

Former Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, said in an interview with POLITICO that his home state of Texas “should do a statewide mandate” for masks to be worn in public.

“I say that because for rural communities, even though it’s true that the density, of course, is less and you see a lower infection rate, they also have a lot less hospital capacity,” Castro said. “And what we’re concerned about in many communities is the hospital capacity once infections start rolling.”

As infections started to surge in states like Texas and North Carolina this month, the Trump administration floated a theory that the recent outbreaks were caused by travel from Mexico — a claim, Castro and public health experts said, there is no evidence to support.

“I always get suspicious when sometimes politicians begin to use people coming across the border as the boogeyman,” said Castro. “We had a long history in this state of people suggesting that immigrants are bringing over disease and all sorts of things. So this is nothing new. And I have not seen any evidence that that’s true.”

Castro will be talking with Laura again on June 30 at 1 p.m. ET for a POLITICO Live virtual town hall on police reforms and the protests against systemic racism. Sign up here to join them.

ON THE HILL

SENATE GOP’S FRUSTRATION — Senate Republicans are pressing the administration to show a little urgency, write Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine. The latest outbreaks are reshaping the GOP’s political and legislative strategy, with Republicans planning to focus more on health care in the next coronavirus relief bill. And they’re flashing rare frustration at the Trump administration for its decision to wind down federally supported testing sites. “Frankly I didn’t really understand what they were thinking. … At a time cases are spiking, we’re gonna pull back?” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wrote a letter to the administration along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urging them to change course.

ASK THE AUDIENCE

Nightly asks you: If you were going to erect a statue in the place where you live, who or what would you choose? And why? Send us your thoughts through our form, and we’ll feature answers in our Friday edition.

FOR CRITICAL NEWS AND CONTEXT YOU NEED IN 15 MINUTES OR LESS, LISTEN TO POLITICO DISPATCH: Coronavirus cases continue to spike as states take steps to reopen. Americans are demanding action from lawmakers to address racial injustice and police reform. How do you keep up with the never-ending news cycle? For quick analysis on the essential news of the day, listen to POLITICO Dispatch, our short daily podcast that keeps you up to date on the most important news affecting your life. Subscribe and listen today.

NIGHTLY NUMBER

610 percent The increase in demand by Vizient member hospitals for dexamethasone, a commonly used corticosteroid, in the week since the initial trial results of a clinical study conducted in the United Kingdom showed it reduced the mortality of patients who are severely ill with Covid-19, according to data from the health care company.

THE GLOBAL FIGHT

NÃO OBRIGADO — The Portuguese government announced the end of a nationwide “state of calamity” today but also reintroduced lockdown restrictions for almost 700,000 people living around Lisbon, where the coronavirus is staging a tenacious resistance.

“Everybody has to understand that this additional effort is essential: Covid has not disappeared,” Prime Minister António Costa said. “The only effective way to control it is to do what we did very well during the state of emergency, which is to stay at home as much as possible, to maintain social distancing as much as possible,” he said.

The government confirmed other rollback measures across the rest of greater Lisbon, including reducing the size of gatherings from 20 to 10, ordering shops and cafés to close by 8 p.m. and banning alcohol sales from gas stations. Policing is being stepped up, with fines of up to €5,000 for infringements of the rules.

Trump’s China seesaw — First, he praised President Xi’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, he’s blaming China (again). Dan breaks down Trump’s back and forth on China in the latest episode of POLITICO Dispatch — and how John Bolton’s explosive memoir sheds new light on the White House’s pandemic response.

PARTING WORDS

COVID’S THREAT TO DEMOCRACY — The future of liberal democracy is under threat because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as even democratically elected governments have accumulated emergency powers that restrict human rights, numerous prominent figures argued in an open letter published today.

“Parliaments are being sidelined, journalists are being arrested and harassed, minorities are being scapegoated, and the most vulnerable sectors of the population face alarming new dangers as the economic lockdowns ravage the very fabric of societies everywhere,” says the letter, commissioned by IDEA, a Stockholm-based think tank.

It was signed by such well-known Americans as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Vice President Walter Mondale, former Trump national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle and Gary Hart, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt.

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RSN: FOCUS: Bernie Sanders | Progressive Candidates Up and Down the Ballot

25 June 20

---

We Have to - Really - Fight to Make Our Budget

It is very hard right now. In truth far harder than it should be. If even 10% of our readers were responding and helping fundraising would be totally painless. For real.

Please be a bit more responsive.

In peace and solidarity.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

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Update My Monthly Donation

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If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611

25 June 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE ARTICLES, IT’S ABOUT PROGRESSIVE CHANGE - People lose sight of why they are donating to Reader Supported News. It’s not about the articles. Our mission, what we do, what your donations are used for is an all-out effort to bring about Progressive social change through information. That should be your inspiration, your rational for supporting our work. That’s what we do well. Fundraising has become a real challenge, but it allows that work to continue. Patience and vision please. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

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FOCUS: Bernie Sanders | Progressive Candidates Up and Down the Ballot

Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
Sanders writes: "Together, we are effectively taking on big-money interests and the political establishment, transforming American politics and creating a movement that fights for working families, not just the 1 percent."

hank you so much for the volunteer efforts and financial support you are providing for great progressive candidates up and down the ballot. Together, we are effectively taking on big-money interests and the political establishment, transforming American politics and creating a movement that fights for working families, not just the 1 percent.

As you know, in yesterday's Democratic primary elections we were actively involved in a number of important races — from U.S. Senate to District Attorney.

Because of the pandemic, and the huge increase in absentee ballots that were cast but not yet counted, most of the final election results will not be known until next week. But, I did want you to know that based on the votes that were tabulated yesterday, some of our progressive candidates have already won and others are doing very well and stand an excellent chance of winning.

One major election that has been decided is a great victory for our progressive movement. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been a leader in Congress on virtually every major issue facing the American people — workers' rights, climate change, health care, immigration reform and so many others — was opposed by a very well-funded establishment opponent. Nonetheless, she won a landslide victory with, at this point in the vote count, some 72 percent of the vote. Congratulations, Alexandria.

Another hotly contested race was in NY Congressional District 16. Jamaal Bowman, a New York City school principal and strong progressive, took on Eliot Engel, a 16-term incumbent actively supported by the entire Democratic establishment and a reactionary super PAC. At this point in the vote process, Bowman is leading Engel with 60.9 percent of the vote to Engel's 35.6 percent.

In NY Congressional District 17, Mondaire Jones is leading with 44.8 percent of the vote in an 8-person race. This was a crowded race and Mondaire is showing that the people in his district want real progressive leadership.

All six of the New York state legislative candidates we endorsed did incredibly well in their primaries last night. Julia Salazar, Jessica Ramos, Mike Gianaris, Ron Kim and Yuh-Line Niou won big, and Jabari Brisport has opened up a wide lead as ballots are still coming in. We also endorsed Matthew Toporowskifor Albany County District Attorney and absentee ballots are being counted for his race.

In Kentucky, we are still awaiting results for Charles Booker who is running for Senate to defeat Mitch McConnell. Charles has gained a ton of momentum in the race and closed the gap with his Democratic primary opponent. Kentucky will be processing absentee ballots with another race update to come early next week.

Let me be very clear: we are making great progress because supporters like you got involved to make a big difference in these races.

These are candidates who believe that health care is a right, not a privilege, that climate change is an existential threat to the planet, that the time is long overdue for us to end institutional racism in this country.

These are candidates who understand that all of our people, regardless of income, deserve the ability to get a higher education and that we need to strengthen public education all across the country. They understand that we need real immigration reform and we need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage to end the absurdity of half of our people living paycheck to paycheck.

These are candidates who are prepared to take on the billionaire class of this country and continue our struggle for justice.

If we're going to bring about transformative change in this country — if we're going to take on the powerful special interests — we need to elect more great candidates at the grassroots level.

Last night was a big night for our movement and while we are still awaiting final results, it looks like we are doing very well. But let us not forget that there is still much to be done to carry out the goals of our movement and create a government that works for all of our people, not just the wealthy.

Let's roll up our sleeves. Let's keep up the good work. Let's continue electing progressive candidates all across this country.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

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Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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500 DELTA EMPLOYEES TEST POSITIVE FOR COVID-19

Five hundred employees with Delta Air Lines reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, and 10 of them died due to the virus, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

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500 Delta employees test positive for COVID-19

Five hundred employees with Delta Air Lines reportedly tested positive for COVID-19, and 10 of them died due to the virus, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

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