The Progressive Midwesterner

I'm going to limit myself to not more than two North Dakota-related blog posts on The Progressive Midwesterner this year, but this is a blog post that I would encourage elected officials from across the country to read, as they may be able to learn how to use social media more effectively as an elected official. North Dakota State Representative Karla Rose Hanson (DNPL-Fargo), the Assistant Minority Leader of the North Dakota House of Representatives, has proposed, as of this writing, five bills in the current session of the North Dakota State Legislature. Two of Hanson's bills are proposals to have the North Dakota State Legislature meet annually instead of every two years. One of Hanson's bills would, if it were to become law, implement a pretrial services pilot program in three of North Dakota's judicial districts. Another of Hanson's bills would allow North Dakota taxpayers to voluntarily contribute to a veterans' services fund. Another of Hanson's bil...

U.S. Representative and white nationalist Steve King (R-IA) has been stripped of all of his committee assignments by an unanimous vote of the steering committee of the House Republican Conference in response to disgustingly bigoted remarks that King made, which were published by The New York Times in an article by the Times 's Trip Gabriel: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?...Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” Those words are not mine, and they are not those of Gabriel. Those words are those of Steve King. Before I explain the significance of Steve King losing all of his committee assignments, I will directly address King's offensive remarks. There are major reasons why white nationalist, white supremacist, and Western civilization are offensive terms. Those terms are all offensive because they are used to describe a political system in which...

One of the most high-profile victories for the Democratic Party in this year's midterm elections was Sharice Davids's election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 3rd Congressional District of Kansas, which includes much of the Kansas portion of the Kansas City metropolitan area. Davids became the first Democrat to win election to either house of Congress as a Democrat since 2008, and Davids became one of the first two Native American women to be elected to either house of Congress from any state (Deb Haaland of New Mexico was the other Native American woman elected to the U.S. House in 2018). Now, Democrats in Kansas are flipping state legislative seats after the votes have been counted in this year's elections. That's because two state senators and one state representative have switched their party affiliation from Republican to Democratic in recent days. The two state senators who have defected to the Democrats are Dinah Sykes, who represents State Senate...

Ten score years ago, on December 3, 1818, Illinois became the 21st state to be admitted to the Union. Now, with the great State of Illinois celebrating its 200th birthday, here are 20 of the most defining moments in Illinois political history, one for each decade that Illinois has been a U.S. state (although not all decades are represented, and some are represented more than once) and presented in chronological order: Illinois's admission to the Union - During much of the year 1818, what was then the Illinois Territory went through a lengthy process to become what is now the State of Illinois . On April 18, 1818, the U.S. House of Representatives was officially notified that President James Monroe had signed an Act of Congress titled "An Act to Enable the People of Illinois Territory to form a constitution and state government and for the admission of such state into the Union on an equal footing with the original states" into law. In July of 1818, delegates to a sta...

President Donald Trump is floating a political trial balloon for potentially launching a government-run media outlet that, if launched, would serve as a taxpayer-funded, pro-Trump propaganda outlet that would be comparable to, for example, state-run media in authoritarian dictatorships like North Korea: President Trump on Monday suggested the government start its own television network as he voiced frustration with the way CNN in particular has covered his administration. "Throughout the world, CNN has a powerful voice portraying the United States in an unfair and false way. Something has to be done, including the possibility of the United States starting our own Worldwide Network to show the World the way we really are, GREAT!" Trump wrote on Twitter. It's important to note that Trump is already the beneficiary of pro-Trump propaganda from a segment of the corporate media, including Fox News, Sinclair-owned television stations, and right-wing talk radio. Furthermor...

Here's a couple of interesting points of analysis about the elections in North Dakota earlier this month, which included a whopping 13 (!!!) statewide elections in North Dakota this year (two federal legislative elections, six state executive elections, one state supreme court election, and four state referenda). First, soon-to-be-former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (DNPL-ND) got a similar percentage of the vote in her unsuccessful U.S. Senate re-election bid this year to the percentage of the vote that she received in her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2000. Here's a set of maps, courtesy of J. Miles Coleman of Decision Desk HQ, comparing the 2018 U.S. Senate election in North Dakota to the 2000 gubernatorial election in North Dakota: The #NDSen result this year was very similar to 2000, when Heitkamp ran for Governor. She lost to John Hoeven by 10% then. Most of her gains in 2018 were around Fargo & in American Indian counties. The western region, however, has gotten...

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) is considering a bid for U.S. House Speaker , as it's not clear if the presumed Speaker-designate, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), has enough votes to be elected speaker in the upcoming Congress that will be sworn into office in January of next year. While I'm open to the idea of new leadership of the House Democrats (I believe that U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) would be a fantastic House Speaker, although, if I recall correctly, she is running for Democratic caucus chair instead of the Democratic nomination for House Speaker), nearly all of the serious opposition to Pelosi within the House Democratic caucus is ideologically to the right of Pelosi, meaning that, if Fudge or anyone else who is supported by the faction of anti-Pelosi Democrats who want to shift the Democratic Party rightward is elected Speaker, there will be immediate criticism towards Fudge or whoever else the new Speaker would be from progressives and Pelosi loyalists, two factions...