The reason building a domestic electric car manufacturing network made sense is because it could nurture a technology cluster and give battery producers a built-in local market. Destroying it has implications for everything else that uses batteries. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/c...

@lfelizleon.bsky.social: “When union leaders like O’Brien signal that immigrant workers are expendable, it erodes the power of the entire working class.” lowerfrequencies.substack.com/p/the-teamst...

Long article that tries to synthesize lots of history and ideas, but the main point is militancy without politics isn’t enough. Link below. open.substack.com/pub/lowerfre...

Shaming rarely works on most people, so I will simply say: follow the facts, both scientific and economic, for they tell the same story: The pandemic is far from over. SARS-CoV-2 is still spreading; COVID-19 is still disabling millions today. It's never too late to align one's conduct with reality.

If you are using AI slop for your history-themed podcast/blog/social media, you are doing us a disservice. Just looking at these photos, there's so much misinformation, it's disheartening. If you are committed to telling history, stick to authentic and original content, don't cut corners with AI!

Of course he did. A core goal of the Trump Administration's strategy is to discourage working people from gathering *anywhere*, whether that be at a Home Deport parking lot or a picket line.

Update:

Greg Bovino of the U.S. Border Patrol showed up at the picket line of Teamsters Local 705 in Chicago today. The workers have been on strike against manufacturer Mauser since June. When workers are intimidated by federal agents, it chills worker organizing! inthesetimes.com/article/maus...

>Police body cameras equipped with artificial intelligence have been trained to detect the faces of about 7,000 people on a “high risk” watch list in the Canadian city of Edmonton, a This is terrifying.

“U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Friday terminated the collective bargaining agreement covering 47,000 Transportation Security Administration officers, the department said in a statement.” www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

BREAKING: NY Gov. Kathy Hochul gutted an AI regulation bill awaiting her signature and replaced it wholesale with a weaker version sought by Big Tech firms. At least two of the groups lobbying on the bill held fundraisers for Hochul in recent weeks. prospect.org/2025/12/11/h...

Congress Quietly Kills Military “Right to Repair,” Allowing Corporations to Cash In on Fixing Broken Products theintercept.com/2025/12/09/c...

I'm almost done with my fundraising goal for Labor Notes, one of the most vital institutions in the U.S. labor movement, but I'm short $3,000 of meeting my fundraising goal. Anyone want to help me close the gap with a one-time donation? Hit me up!

"There’s an aphorism that the mark of insanity is doing things over and over and expecting a different result. But that is also the definition of courage."

“Movements do not result from the first or second outrage but from an accumulation of injustice that brings people to a breaking point.” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“This week, China’s trade surplus — the excess of exports to imports — officially surpassed $1 trillion, a level no country has ever reached.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/w...

Dealers at the Horseshoe Indianapolis Casino in Shelbyville have voted to join Teamsters Local 135! They'd mounted a recognition strike, a rare, courageous, throwback tactic that was mainly how unions were formed 90 years ago, our editor Al Bradbury reported labornotes.org/2025/11/indi...

Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?" Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

This op-ed summarizes much of this thread www.ms.now/opinion/infl.... 17/

Last month, voters repudiated MAGA in elections large and small across the country. Those of us on the left need a clear-eyed assessment of the political terrain and a vision that can look beyond the current fight. inthesetimes.com/article/firs...

“Ideas incapable of shocking the world are incapable of shaking it.”https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii151/articles/perry-anderson-idees-forces

“Ms. Tocci, the professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that supporting right-wing parties antagonistic to the European Union would divide and weaken the continent, leaving a “fractured Europe which is easily colonizable” by the globe’s great powers.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/06/w...

“We can’t possibly know what principles will be active in political situations ahead of time. To know about them in their specificity, we have to conduct investigations which begin from the recognition that workers think.” RIP Asad Haider. viewpointmag.com/2018/09/24/s...

Essential reading from @alexhan.bsky.social!

These are good moments to remember that the CEOs of all the biggest companies in America are happy to go to White House dinners and slap this guy’s back. They do not care about this. Remember this, years from now, when they want you to forget.

Reminder that as Trump dehumanizes and slanders Somali-Americans, this is what his administration is doing to Somalia.

Trump dozes while Marco Rubio speaks to him directly next to him. Just insane optics.

New: While the head honchos of major educational and legal institutions, along with national leaders in construction unions, publicly wring their hands about how much lower to stoop to Trump’s demands, farmworkers bend over California fields, picking fruit. www.thedriftmag.com/ripe-for-abu...

“Rolling back MAGA will require speaking to popular needs and aspirations and delivering on them. It will also require developing our capacities to work together in a spirit of democratic cooperation and public exuberance.” dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

A $30 annual subscription gets you 11 issues each year! Subscribe by Tuesday, December 9, to start getting the Labor Notes Magazine in 2026 labornotes.org/subscribe

Not coincidentally this is a pretty good list of Most Important Companies to Unionize.

I have an article about the threats to class unity we face today, particularly from within organized labor. Who wants it?

On the cover: The 11,000-member NYC DSA spearheaded a canvassing operation that marshaled 104,400 volunteers to knock on 3 million doors, driven by Mamdani's affordability platform and his stand against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, @lfelizleon.bsky.social reports labornotes.org/2025/11/zohr... 2/5

“'No one paid attention to the fact that people were living here without heat before ICE came,' said Infiniti Gant, a housing organizer with Southside Together. 'People were living here with mice and roaches and flea infestation before ICE.'”

@jamellebouie.net has a great piece in NYT about Trump’s war of attrition. I made similar argument in @inthesetimes.com in February. inthesetimes.com/article/labo...

Mamdani’s victory should put to rest the lie that workers are drawn only to simpleminded economic populism that casts social justice questions as distractions, wrote @Lfelizleon labornotes.org/2025/11/zohr... 1/2

this is your brain when your entire politics is just a set of aesthetics

During the drive to the station, prosecutors say she made statements to officers about immigration enforcement, including, “Why are you doing this to your people?” and “What are you going to tell your children about what you do?” gothamist.com/news/us-post...

A day of reckoning is coming. These are Border Patrol agents putting a Latino restaurant worker in Charlotte in a headlock. 📸Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

They lied about it. All of it. A thug cop shot an unarmed woman five times without justification, boasted about it to his colleagues, and then this administration tried cover it all up by arresting her and charging her with felonies.

"What's shocking is the escalation of attacks on immigrants, civil rights, unions, federal workers. It can be hard to think of a positive vision if we're defending the little we have." —Brandon Mancilla, Director of UAW Region 9A Watch the livestream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=niZH...

Smart people of BlueSky: Do you know where the majority of foreign direct investment has flowed for the past two decades? Are these flows going from high-wage countries to low-wage countries? Or are the inflows staying within the United States?

"Iran is facing its worst water crisis in decades. With no end in sight and authorities warning they may even have to evacuate the capital of 10 million people, residents like Ensani are scrambling to respond." www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/i...

As of October 17, the dealers at the Horseshoe Indianapolis Casino in Shelbyville, Indiana, were on strike for union recognition. Read the story by our editor Al Bradbury: labornotes.org/2025/11/indi... 3/3

With an emboldened Trump in the White House for a second term, the ground has shifted dramatically for unions. What tactics and strategies can help organize more new members and best survive an all-out assault on labor and other rights? Register now! www.tickettailor.com/events/hayma...

“There are no clocks in a casino, so the dealers all set their phone alarms for noon. Everyone was a bundle of nerves. Before work, a couple of people threw up.” labornotes.org/2025/11/indi...

After 59 years in Mexico, arriving in the country in 1966, Nissan has closed its first auto plant in Cuernavaca, Morelos, leaving three plants open in the country. The independent union CATEM represents Nissan workers. www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2025...

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

Bovino went into popular Carniceria Aguascalientes in heart of Little Village. “They said they were just here to buy something,” said Elizabeth Gutierrez. “I told them we wouldn’t serve them and escorted them out. Bovino seemed upset, but I don’t care.” www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/08/c...