The Show-Me state shows Republicans who's in charge

Good day! It’s Wednesday, Aug. 5. It’s National Underwear Day, designed to encourage body positivity. If anyone saw me in my underwear, the only thing they’d be positive of is that I should always wear slacks.

Last week’s Fast Forward examined Trump’s plan to ruin a beloved public park in D.C., a treatment plan that could prevent ovarian cancer, and a look at the new Women’s Pro Baseball League. You can read it here. Find all past newsletters on the Fast Forward homepage.

In today’s newsletter, we look at Missourians’ rejection of GOP excess, Susan Collins is concerned again, Jack Smith back before Congress, Rosie O’Donnell’s spot-on Trump song, and the padded bra controversy in the racing world.

The sun rose in Boston at 5:40 a.m. and will set at 7:58 p.m. for 14 hours and 18 minutes of sunlight. The waning moon is 52% full. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has released its fall weather forecast, and it says it will be cooler than usual on both coasts and warmer than usual in the interior, with above average rainfall in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Here are the nitty-gritty details. The bottom line is that we all should move to Honolulu.

🗳 Missouri voters aren’t fooling around

You gotta hand it to those Missourians: They’ve got grit.

Over the past several years, activists have collected enough signatures to get some significant citizen-sponsored issues on the ballot: Voters have approved measures that raised the minimum wage, instituted paid sick leave, expanded Medicaid, guaranteed the right to abortion, and legalized both marijuana and sports betting.

Predictably, that didn’t sit well with the GOP-dominated state government, where Republicans hold the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature. So much like their Orange Godfather, they set about to thwart the will of the people.

Take the paid sick leave provision. It required employers to give their workers 1 hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked. So if you worked 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you would be eligible for about 8.5 sick days a year. If you work fewer than 52 weeks (because you take a vacation or days off for other reasons), or less than 40 hours (as many service workers do), then you’d get fewer sick days.

But GOP lawmakers, outraged that Missouri voters wanted to give workers a reasonable benefit, killed that provision last year.

So much for direct democracy, which has been part of our nation’s governance since its founding. In fact, 26 states and the District of Columbia have some sort of citizen initiative and/or referendum process.

Cities and towns sometimes have their own; look at the six New England states, where nearly 900 cities and towns (out of a total of about 1,500) use town meetings to pass local laws.

Anyway, back to Missouri, where Republicans aren’t done trying to subvert democracy. Right now they’re going after abortion rights with a referendum on the ballot in November that would repeal a citizens’ petition that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution two years ago.

Naturally, they’re being sleazy about it. Their amendment is deliberately worded to confuse voters, saying nothing about banning abortion but rather saying the measure would allow abortions — in very, very limited cases.

Given that the 2024 ballot question passed with 52% of the vote, Republicans are hoping they can flip that this time.

But trying to overturn previously approved ballot measures isn’t all they’re doing. On the ballot yesterday was a question that would make it much, much more difficult for citizens to get a question on the ballot.

Instead of needing approval from a majority of voters statewide for a measure to be enacted, Republicans tried to change that threshold to a majority of voters in every one of the state’s eight congressional districts. This new criteria wouldn’t apply to questions put on the ballot by lawmakers, of course; only those placed by citizens.

It would have been the strictest limit on citizen-sponsored questions in the country.

I said “would have been” because those savvy Missourians buried the question yesterday: 80% of voters said NO.

BTW, an even bigger majority rejected GOP plans to drop the state income tax and instead increase and expand the sales tax, which is a quite regressive tax. First, it’s a flat rate, the same for everybody regardless of income. Second, those with low incomes spend most of their money on taxable goods. High-income spenders save or invest much of their income.

Missourians saw through the ruse, rejecting the ballot question by a margin of 83.3% to 16.7%. Wow.

The official state motto of Missouri is Salus populi suprema lex esto, a Latin phrase that means, “The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.” Missouri is also known as the Show-Me State. I would say Missourians lived up to both. Bravo.