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Progress Report
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News, events, and must-read analysis from the Progressive Policy Institute.
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** Why Britain is watching Biden’s ‘blue-collar blueprint’
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By Claire Ainsley
Director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal
For The Hill ([link removed])

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If President Biden delivers on his promise to bring a new era of jobs and prosperity to blue-collar America, it could be a game changer with working-class voters in the U.S. and beyond.
The Democrats may hold the presidency and, narrowly, the Senate, but their declining vote share among working-class voters and places means they face a much narrower path to victory. Combined with their falling support among Hispanic voters, and an electorate not confident that the country is on the right path, the Democrats face significant challenges ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
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New from the Experts

Here’s how the debt limit fight could impact the banking crisis, ft. Ben Ritz
⮕ The Hill ([link removed])

Hello, high oil prices, my old friends, ft. Paul Bledsoe
⮕ Politico ([link removed])

The insulin cap is great news for patients — but employers may see even higher premiums, ft. Robert Popovian
⮕ Employee Benefit News ([link removed])

Erin Delaney, Director of Health Care Policy: Texas Court Rules to Pull Abortion Drug, Showing the Right’s Next Move in their Anti-Choice Playbook
⮕ Medium ([link removed])

Tressa Pankovits, Co-Director of Reinventing America's Schools: Shocking Violence in Denver Re-Opens the School Resource Officer Debate
⮕ Medium ([link removed])

Nick Buffie, Senior Policy Analyst, Center for Funding America's Future: Five Tax Loopholes That Congress Should Close
⮕ PPI ([link removed])

Trade Fact of the Week: Multinationals employ three out of every 10 American workers
⮕ PPI's Trade Fact of the Week ([link removed])
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** More Bank Failures If Congress And Biden Can’t Cut A Debt Deal
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By Paul Weinstein,
PPI's Senior Fellow
For Forbes ([link removed])

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Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen recently tied the failure to raise the debt limit in time to the prospect of more bank failures. The Secretary is absolutely right that if Congress wants to prevent more government bailouts of banks in the short-term, it can ill afford to wait to enact a clean debt limit increase. But in order to help bring down the inflationary pressures that helped undermine Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), President Biden and Democrats must find common ground with Republicans to stabilize the national debt.

While liberal Democrats point to the 2018 banking regulatory relief law and MAGA Republicans to so-called “woke” investments as the culprit of SVB’s collapse, the reality is that neither were to blame. First, SVB’s commitment to investments in renewable energy, community development, and affordable housing was about $16.2 billion, only 8% of its total assets. And these assets were not the ones “underwater.”
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Why Ukraine Fights
By Tamar Jacoby
Director of the New Ukraine Project
For The xxxxxx ([link removed])

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One of the most popular memes circulating on Ukrainian social media in the past year used an image, first popularized on Russian social media, of a grotesque creature with the body of a fish and the snout of a pig—a shvino karas, or pig fish. “A few decades ago, almost all Ukrainian popular culture was derivative of something Russian,” online meme curator and web developer Bohdan Andrieiev, 32, explained. “Before independence and for more than a decade afterward, we had no popular culture of our own.” This has changed dramatically in recent years, culminating in a burst of new Ukrainian creativity since the Russian invasion in February 2022. Social media, meme culture, pop music, and viral jokes have emerged as powerful tools of national solidarity—the bottom-up, ironic Ukrainian equivalent of old-style totalitarian propaganda.

According to Andrieiev, virtually none of this new popular culture draws on Russian sources—that’s now widely seen as inappropriate. “But this is an exception,” he said, “because we’re inverting the reference. It’s like the word ‘queer.’ What was a slur is now a badge of pride. Russians call Ukrainians pigs and pig fish and look down on us. But if we’re so pathetic, how come we’re beating them on the battlefield?”
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ICYMI: A French lesson for American pols
By Will Marshall, President and Founder of PPI; Ben Ritz, Director of PPI's Center for Funding America's Future
For New York Daily News ([link removed])

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The good news is that the fixes Congress must make to save Social Security and Medicare probably won’t trigger anything like the social turmoil in France. The bad news is that denial and delay will dramatically heighten the economic and political pain of reform.

Macron was elected promising to curb the unsustainable growth of social welfare spending and boost economic productivity. He was determined to bump up France’s retirement age closer to European norms — it’s 66 in the U.K. and 67 in Germany. Fearing that his centrist coalition partners in the National Assembly couldn’t muster enough votes to pass the measure, Macron invoked a constitutional provision allowing him to bypass the legislature.
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Join PPI in Australia!

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Join Guardian Australia Editor Lenore Taylor on April 19th at Sydney’s Unions NSW Auditorium as she asks three of the best brains in the business whether the progressive political resurgence is a new norm and how the ALP, U.S. Democrats, and UK Labour can build winning coalitions that last.
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Staff Spotlight: Claire Ainsley

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Claire Ainsley
Director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal
Claire Ainsley is the Director of the Project on Center-Left Renewal at the Progressive Policy Institute. Prior to joining PPI, Claire was the Executive Director of Policy to Keir Starmer, Leader of the Opposition and U.K. Labour Party. Claire also served as the Executive Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, where she led JRF’s work on the social and political attitudes of people with low incomes. She is the author of "The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes," which was published in May 2018.
RSVP for Tomorrow!
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Listen Up

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MOSAIC MOMENT:

Internet Access As We Know It

According to The International Telecommunications Union, two-thirds of the world now has internet access. On this month’s episode of the Mosaic Moment, PPI’s Ed Gresser sits down with two of the nation’s leading broadband experts, Meagan Bolton and Christine O’Connor to discuss where connectivity gaps remain and what U.S. policymakers are doing to bridge this digital divide.
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THE NEOLIBERAL PODCAST:
Giving Effectively, Giving Well ft. Buddy Shah

How can we understand which charities do the most good?
GiveWell's Managing Director Buddy Shah joins the show to discuss GiveWell's work and all the complications that come with trying to recommend the best charities in the world.

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