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"In exchange, California leaders promised to support legislation that will drastically reduce expensive insurance coverage mandates borne by ride-hailing companies, which Uber and Lyft say have inflated fares in the state while eating into drivers’ incomes."
BREAKING: California lawmakers have reached an agreement with Uber and Lyft that will open the door for app drivers to form unions and organize for increased pay and better benefits. www.politico.com/news/2025/08...
Great talking to Hard Reset about how we came to "be ubiquitous online" and the process of "shining a light on the way that our unequal society is increasingly tilted toward the powerful." hardresetmedia.substack.com/p/the-bernie...
The City of Atlanta is opening its first municipal grocery store today. The city is spending $3.5 million in partnership with a neighborhood grocery chain in an effort to eliminate a downtown food desert. www.wsbtv.com/news/local/a...
Medicare will start requiring prior approval for certain procedures — and will hire private AI companies to determine if patients are covered. The AI companies would have financial incentives to deny claims, because Medicare plans to pay them some of the savings from rejections.
Trump’s top housing regulator wants to allow crypto to be used as collateral for mortgages. The FHFA has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop proposals allowing them to 'count cryptocurrency as an asset for a mortgage' during the application process. prospect.org/economy/2025...
Walgreens has officially been bought out by private equity. Walgreens Boots Alliance has become a private company, with private equity firm Sycamore Partners acquiring the retail pharmacy giant.
The @uaw.org has claimed a narrow victory in a union election at the BlueOval battery plant in Kentucky, a historic win. The tally is 526-515 for unionization. Ford is contesting 41 ballots, a challenge the union is urging them to drop.
The Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens, down from eight. Monitoring for the other six pathogens is no longer required for the 10 states that participate in the program. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
The federal-state partnership that monitors for foodborne illnesses at the CDC quietly scaled back its operations nearly two months ago — eliminating tests for 75% of the pathogens it was monitoring.
The family of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who took his own life after ChatGPT helped him write a suicide note and advised him not to disclose a previous attempt to his parents, is suing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman for wrongful death. fortune.com/2025/08/27/a...
Rocket also recently conducted a $1.75 billion acquisition of real estate brokerage and home search platform Redfin. www.housingwire.com/articles/fhf...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is allowing Rocket Companies, the largest mortgage lender in the United States, to move forward with a deal to acquire Mr. Cooper — the nation’s largest mortgage servicer.
The average home price is now about twice what it was in 2009.
not to mention that 400,000 federal workers lost their union contracts
FEMA has suspended over 20 workers who criticized the agency's new direction under Trump. These staff signed an open letter calling out Trump officials and funding cuts. In their letter they warned that another "national catastrophe" like Hurricane Katrina is possible. www.bbc.com/news/article...
The Justice Department’s investigation into UnitedHealth Group is larger than previously known. The DOJ is looking into the company's prescription management services and its reimbursement of its own doctors, in addition to possible Medicare fraud. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
A Hopkins rep says the hospital network is trying to “avoid aggressive claim denials that delay necessary care, excessive red tape that forces patients to wait for treatments, and significant payment delays that strain our ability to provide care.”
60,000 patients who have UnitedHealth insurance have lost their in-network coverage at Johns Hopkins, because after 8 months of negotiations the two sides can’t reach an agreement.
Lynda and Stewart Resnick, the agricultural billionaires known for privately controlling a large chunk of California's water, are selling an Aspen property for $300 million. If it sells for anything close to that, it will set a record for the most expensive house in the country.
Melania Trump has announced an "AI challenge." The national K-12 competition encourages students “to solve real-world problems in their communities using AI-powered solutions." In a video the first lady encourages young people to "discover, develop and expand AI’s potential."
Stanford researchers have found that employment for younger workers in AI-impacted jobs has dropped 16% since 2022. www.axios.com/2025/08/26/a...
We'll have video coverage coming soon, be sure to follow @moreperfectunion.bsky.social for updates on this developing story.
BREAKING: Workers at Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks just won their union elections. They are the first national parks to unionize in several years.
Big tech companies are pouring over $100 million into a network of PACs and organizations to advocate against AI regulations leading up to the 2026 midterms – the PACs are led by former Schumer, Cuomo and Romney staffers. www.wsj.com/politics/sil...
The Trump administration will ultimately kill 300,000 federal jobs this year, according to the director of the Office of Personnel Management. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/u...
New cars have become so expensive that more and more customers are taking out 7-year loans to finance the purchase. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military in the streets of Washington, D.C. is costing upwards of $1 million each and every day, and that number could rise even higher. theintercept.com/2025/08/20/t...
SMART Union member Kilmar Abrego Garcia was detained by ICE this morning during a routine check in. This comes just three days after a federal judge released him from custody. The Trump administration is now threatening to deport Kilmar to Uganda.
BREAKING: Trump announces that the CEO of Intel has agreed to give the U.S. government a 10% stake in the company.
Waymo has received official permission to start testing cars in New York City. The company will initially test eight of its autonomous vehicles in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with a driver behind the wheel.
Sony has announced that due to a "challenging economic environment" resulting from Trump's tariffs, the cost of a Playstation will go up $50 this month. Nintendo and Microsoft previously raised the prices of their video game consoles, citing the impact of Trump's tariffs.
American worker pay increased by just 3.6% in 2024. CEOs, on the other hand, saw their pay rise twice as fast -- over 7.7% increase. Median total pay for bosses at the biggest corporations rose to $19 million last year.
"A report released Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that the Trump administration has halted or ended a third of misconduct investigations and enforcement actions targeting technology firms — including behemoths such as Meta, Tesla..." truthout.org/articles/tru...
Trump withdrew or suspended enforcement actions against 165 companies in just the first six months of his term. Big Tech was the biggest beneficiary.
Via the Bureau of Labor Statistics: www.bls.gov/news.release...
The price of vegetables rose 38.9% in July.
The US Steel plant where two workers were killed and ten injured in an explosion had a history of chemical accidents — but the Trump EPA, scrubbed a tracking tool listing dangerous facilities from its website are lobbying from the chemical industry. jacobin.com/2025/08/us-s...
He is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family, and his friends — while gutting health care and raising prices for the rest of us.
Approximately 75% of all food imported into the U.S. will now be hit with the Trump tariffs. That's $163 billion worth of food currently facing tariff rates ranging from 10% to 30% or higher.
Over half of laid off workers submitted 50 applications or more before finding a new job, while 20% had to submit over 100 applications to land a new role, according to a recent survey. www.cnbc.com/2025/08/13/1...
Trump and his family have made approximately $3.4 billion thanks to his two terms as president. This includes profits from crypto, MAGA merchandise, Mar-a-Lago and more. www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...
Nearly 1 in 5 student loan borrowers who are 50 or older became seriously delinquent on their payments in the second quarter of 2025. www.cnbc.com/2025/08/13/o...
In the same interview, Antoni said: " You're not going to be able to sustain a Ponzi scheme like Social Security. Eventually, you need to sunset the program."
Trump's choice for the Commissioner of the Bureau Labor Statistics called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" in an interview: " Unfortunately you'll need a generation of people who pay Social Security taxes, but never actually receive any of those benefits..."
"In an interview with FOX Business ahead of Monday’s nomination announcement, Antoni criticized the data behind the monthly jobs report as unreliable and frequently overstated..." www.foxbusiness.com/politics/tru...
BREAKING: E.J. Antoni, Trump's candidate to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is now suggesting suspending the agency’s monthly jobs report.
18 million children will lose free school meals because of the Republican cuts to food assistance. time.com/7308619/trum...
U.S. corporations are on pace to conduct over a trillion dollars in stock buybacks this year, breaking all previous records. Apple, Google, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley are among the companies buying back the most stock to enrich shareholders. www.tipranks.com/news/apple-a...
Nearly 1 in 6 Americans say they don't have enough food to eat.
"The surge in layoffs in 2025 is due to a mix of government downsizing, corporate restructuring and the growing effects of artificial intelligence. Public agencies, tech firms and retailers are leading the cuts." www.newsweek.com/us-hits-high...
BREAKING: U.S. layoffs have surged to their highest level since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Director of the White House Office of Personnel Management just said that all government workers should be “at will” employees. This comment comes as the Trump administration attacks federal unions and tries to erode workers' rights. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-...
Four states changed their child labor laws this year to add protections for content creators who are minors. Arkansas, Montana, Utah and Virginia have amended their regulations to mandate trusts and other measures for "kidfluencers." virginiamercury.com/2025/08/08/t...
Mark Zuckerberg is pulling his money from the school his foundation has been funding. The school, which serves 443 low-income students from preschool through seventh grade, will shut down at the end of next year. sfstandard.com/2025/04/23/p...
The White House is partnering with PragerU. The conservative, biased education company is already making AI content in a series launched with the Trump administration. And new reporting suggests the White House could be eying PragerU as a substitute for PBS. www.vox.com/today-explai...
The Trump Department of Agriculture is asking states to turn over information about SNAP recipients such as names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, addresses and more. Now advocates in many states are urging their local officials not to turn over the data.
Illinois has banned AI therapy, making it the first state to regulate the use of AI in mental health services. www.engadget.com/ai/illinois-...
A Canadian province is taking legal action for job applicants who are 'ghosted' by companies after multiple rounds of interviews. Companies in Ontario will soon be forced to inform candidates about their hiring status within 45 days of their final interview.
The Trump admin is terminating most contracts with federal unions at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This illegal union busting and violation of union contracts will affect 400,000 workers and is one of the most aggressive anti-labor moves the administration has made so far.
Food prices increased 23.6% from 2020 to 2024. This is higher than overall inflation, which was at 21.2% during this period (and which was already near a record high). www.thestreet.com/retail/tarif...
I'll be at the DSA convention in Chicago this weekend, repping More Perfect Union. Whether you have a good story that needs to be told or just want to say hi, send me a DM, hit me on Signal (jordanz.97), or come by our table!
The Trump Department of Justice just let UnitedHealth buy home care company Amedisys for $3.3 billion. Amedisys is one of the largest home health providers and second largest hospice care provider in the United States. UnitedHealth will now grow even bigger.
"The call center staffing meltdown appears to have happened because of an administrative bottleneck created by the Trump administration." Read more: www.npr.org/2025/08/07/n....
The federal aid hotline was unavailable to people going through devastating flooding in Texas for 5 days because Kristi Noem and DHS let funding lapse. Noem personally signs off on all funding requests for more than $100,000, and it took her five days to do so for the hotline.
Amazon Web Services says they're providing the federal government with up to $1 billion in discounts through 2028, in the latest Big Tech attempt to court Donald Trump.
New polling shows that 69% of New Yorkers would be more likely to support a candidate who backed rent stabilization, and 68% would be more likely to support a candidate who backed public investments in social housing. www.cityandstateny.com/politics/202...
BREAKING: Student loan delinquency rates have hit a record high. The share of student-loan debt entering serious delinquency was 12.9%, the highest in 21 years of data. finance.yahoo.com/news/record-...
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/b...
The entire supply of fire retardant, the vital liquid dropped from planes to combat wildfires, is controlled by one company. That company, Perimeter Solutions, charges 20-30% more than it did four years ago. So our government pays them more and more in an effort to save lives.
Uber has not released data for the years since then, though the court records indicate reports of incidents have increased. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/b...
From 2017 to 2022, a total of 400,181 Uber trips resulted in reports of sexual assault and sexual misconduct in the US, court records show. The company had only disclosed 12,522 accounts of serious sexual assaults for that same time period.
RFK Jr. has cancelled $500 million in funding for vaccine development. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
The FAA will now let commercial drones fly beyond the operator’s line of sight. The move will "unleash American drone dominance," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. As a result, Duffy said, " You may get a Starbucks cup of coffee from a drone."
BREAKING: A federal judge just blocked the Trump administration from taking $4 billion from FEMA. The money is meant to help protect infrastructure around the country from storm damage. Trump wanted to take the money allocated by Congress and use it elsewhere.
The class action was filed after Tesla's first public test of its robotaxis in Austin, Texas. That test showed the vehicles speeding, braking suddenly, driving over a curb, entering the wrong lane, and dropping off passengers in the middle of multilane roads.
Elon Musk and Tesla are being sued by shareholders who accuse them of securities fraud for concealing that the company's self-driving vehicles, including the Robotaxi, are dangerous. www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
The people are sick of being lied to. We can’t afford NOT to do it. #MedicareForAll
Americans owe a collective $1.21 trillion in credit card debt — tying last year's all-time high.
New polling shows that 53% of Americans consider the price of groceries to be a major source of stress. www.axios.com/2025/08/04/g...
New polling shows that 1 in 7 Americans report using Buy Now, Pay Later service like Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay to get groceries. www.axios.com/2025/08/04/g...
GOP Rep. Mike Flood at a town hall: "Do you think that people who are 28-years-old, that can work, & refuse to work, should get free healthcare?" Crowd: "YESSSSSSSSSS!"
Concession workers at Fenway Park are now warning of an indefinite strike. First these workers who feed Red Sox fans struck for three days, but if food and beverage vendor Aramark doesn’t offer a new labor contract the next walk out could be much longer. www.yahoo.com/news/article...
Elon Musk's wealth has declined by about $80 billion this year, primarily because Tesla stock is down 20%. fortune.com/2025/08/04/b...
The Click to Cancel Act has been introduced in Congress. The bill would outlaw subscription practices that make it easy to sign up, but difficult to cancel a subscription.
DuPont has reached a landmark deal with New Jersey where the company will pay over $2 billion to remedy "forever chemical" contamination across the state.
Read more: fortune.com/2025/08/04/l....
You love to see it.
Elon Musk has been given a pay package worth $29 billion by Tesla. A previous package, worth $56 billion, is in legal limbo. “Retaining Elon is more important than ever before,” the company said. “We are confident that this award will incentivize Elon to remain at Tesla.”
We’re about to do this for the economy
NBC confirms that the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics has now been fired. www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...
"The payout includes $129 million in compensatory damages, and $200 million in punitive damages against Tesla." www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/t...
BREAKING: Tesla was just hit with a $329 million verdict in a trial over a fatal crash that a Miami jury found was caused by Tesla's defective autopilot.
BREAKING: Trump says he has told his team to fire the Commissioner of Labor Statistics. This announcement comes after worse than expected jobs numbers in July, and a downward revision of -258,000 jobs for the May and June jobs reports.
Amazon's CEO wants to put ads into Alexa conversations. On an earnings call Thursday CEO Andy Jassy said that "as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations" there is an opportunity "to have advertising play a role" and drive revenue for the company. techcrunch.com/2025/07/31/a...
"That number is expected to rise to 399 billion gallons by 2030, nearly 7% of the state’s total projected water use." techiegamers.com/texas-data-c...
Texas data centers are projected to use 49 billion gallons of water this year, as the state faces a prolonged drought.
Colorado is suing PetSmart for using dog grooming school to ‘trap’ workers. PetSmart ads claimed that its grooming academy was free. In reality, it cost up to $5,500. The company held these costs over workers' heads, coercing them into staying at the job. www.denverpost.com/2025/07/31/p...
The EPA plans to reverse the ban on forever chemicals in drinking water. Now states are rushing to pass their own laws. At least 250 bills to regulate the hazardous chemicals have been introduced this year in more than two dozen states.
The U.S. Army has given Palantir a software contract worth up to $10 billion over the next decade. www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...