2025 Archives

In 1935, Congress passed, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed, the National Labor Relations Act, often referred to as the Wagner Act, legalizing labor unions in the United States for the first time. It was referred to as “the most radical piece of legislation ever passed by the United States Congress.”[lvii] New York’s Democratic Senator Robert Wagner was the new law’s main author, and his legislative aide, Simon H. Rifkind, told Theodore J. St. Antoine in 1986 that there were several reasons for the law. First, there was considerable labor unrest across the nation; it had been particularly bloody over the preceding fifty or so years since the labor movement first emerged in a big way in the 1880s. Employers would hire private security companies or pay off local politicians and police to harass, beat, and often even kill workers to prevent unionization. One of the most infamous examples was the Ludlow Massacre in 1914.

This is no accident. It's a coordinated attack on science, safety, and the truth—just in time for hurricane season… This disaster has me so angry I can barely type straight. Elon Musk and his phony "Department of Government Efficiency" — which isn't even a real government department, by the way — are systematically destroying the agencies that keep Americans alive when Mother Nature comes calling. And for what? Some twisted ideological experiment that's going to cost lives. The National Weather Service is falling apart right before hurricane season. They have 155 empty positions that should be filled with forecasters working around the clock to track storms and save lives.

As Republicans slash Medicaid to fund tax breaks for the morbidly rich, America must decide: Do we honor our social contract or abandon it to greed? Here we are again, my friend, watching the age-old story play out before our eyes. The Republicans are preparing to hand out trillions in tax cuts to their billionaire benefactors, and how do they plan to pay for this latest giveaway to the oligarchy? By ripping healthcare away from 13.7 million Americans, including millions of our most vulnerable seniors who depend on Medicaid for their very survival. But this isn't just about healthcare policy. This is about the fundamental question that's defined America since the New Deal: Are we a society that believes in the common good, or are we returning to the brutal Social Darwinism of the Gilded Age?

AI is not just another tech revolution. It's the perfect storm of surveillance, manipulation, and digital obedience — and the far right already has a head start… Pope Leo XIV just labeled AI one of the main threats facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to "human dignity, justice and labor." He's right, but it's even worse than that: it represents, unless it's rigorously regulated, a threat to democracy itself. In every generation, the enemies of democracy change costumes, but their playbook remains eerily familiar. They lie, divide, intimidate, and exploit every available tool to consolidate power. In the 1930s it was radio, in the 2010s it was social media, and now, in 2025, the newest and most dangerous weapon in the authoritarian arsenal is artificial intelligence. Make no mistake: AI is not just another technology. It is power, scaled. And in the hands of the far right, it becomes the most effective tool for dismantling democracy ever invented.