Newsom Supports Trump's Attacks On Immigrant Students
Campus jobs for undocumented students blocked by Newsom veto
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-20/california-campus-jobs-undocumented-students-newsom-veto
Demonstrators wearing matching blue shirts hold protest …signs
Students and supporters of undocumented students rally and chant outside a meeting of the UC Board of Regents in 2023. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Jaweed Kaleem staff headshot at LA Times Photo Studio in El Segundo, CA on Thursday, July 24, 2025.
By Jaweed Kaleem
Staff Writer

Sept. 20, 2026 5:05 PM PT

Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed Assembly Bill 713, blocking paid campus jobs for undocumented college students.
Advocates and student leaders had pushed for the bill, saying that campus jobs and internships are crucial for undocumented students’ futures.
UC and CSU remained neutral on the bill.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday vetoed a bill that would have opened paid campus jobs to undocumented students at California’s public colleges and universities.

Assembly Bill 713 would have barred the University of California, California State University and state community colleges from disqualifying students from campus employment because they could not show federal work authorization.

It was the second time in two years that Newsom struck down such a bill. In his veto message, Newsom said he was concerned about “potential criminal and civil liability for state employees” if the bill became law.

Newsom rejected a similar bill in 2024, after UC regents reversed their support for the policy and as fears grew that the state could face federal repercussions by justifying the hiring under a theory developed by UCLA legal scholars.

“Unfortunately, my concerns about its unintended consequences have only grown,” Newsom said in Sunday’s veto message. “The current federal government has shown it is quick to wreak destruction for political spectacle — attacking California’s public higher education institutions and terrorizing immigrant communities, including students, with reckless disregard for consequences and a desire for chaos.”

“California remains committed to economic opportunity and tuition affordability for all students, including leading efforts to support undocumented students who face growing barriers and threats under this cruel federal administration,” Newsom said.

The UCLA professors argued that a 1986 federal law banning employers from hiring undocumented workers does not apply to state governments. That theory underpinned the bill, but Newsom warned that proceeding before federal courts established its legality was a risk.

“The federal courts must resolve the legality of the novel legal theory behind this legislation before we proceed,” Newsom said.

Days after Newsom’s 2024 veto, an undocumented UCLA alumnus sued the university. A state appeals court ruled last year that UC’s no-hire policy “facially discriminates based on immigration status” and ordered the university to reconsider it. The state Supreme Court in October declined to hear a UC appeal.

UC has not changed its policy.

Responding to the veto, UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham — who developed the legal theory along with law professor Hiroshi Motomura — said Newsom’s decision was “misguided.” Arulanantham and Motomura are co-directors of the Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA law school.

“Rather than stand with undocumented students, the governor asks for another suit,” said Arulanantham, who also represented plaintiffs in the lawsuit against UC. “Ironically, the governor’s failure to do what is right will not protect the university, but instead leave it even more vulnerable without the backing of the explicit state law that the Legislature overwhelmingly favors.”

Newsom’s latest veto comes as the Trump administration presses California and its public universities over immigration. The Justice Department has sued California and 20 other states over in-state tuition for undocumented students. Courts have blocked the in-state tuition laws in five states.

UC and Cal State did not take positions on this year’s bill. Both raised concerns about the 2024 version, telling state lawmakers that the universities could face criminal penalties, civil fines or the loss of federal contracts.

In a statement released before the veto, UC said it was a “leader in supporting undocumented students, who are vital members of the UC community and make significant contributions to our economy and society as scholars, researchers, and future leaders.”

The Cal State Student Assn. and UC Student Assn. voiced support. The Faculty Assn. of California Community Colleges and the Student Senate for California Community Colleges also said they were in favor.

Between 2,000 and 4,000 undocumented students attend UC, which enrolls nearly 301,000 students. About 9,500 attend Cal State, out of 471,000. Roughly 70,000 undocumented students attend community colleges.

Advocates for AB 713, dubbed Opportunity for All, gathered Sept. 4 at the UCLA Labor Center’s James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center near MacArthur Park to push for its passage. Speakers included Assemblymember José Luis Solache Jr. (D-Lynwood), who wrote the bill.

“The safest place for our undocumented students to be at work is on campus,” Solache said.

Candice Phan, president of the UC Student Assn. and a UC Davis student, said the ban reaches far beyond what is typically viewed as work.

Trump cut grants for Hispanic-serving colleges. Now California campuses are losing programs

Phan said it blocks students from paid internships, research and teaching assistant jobs and student government posts that include stipends — positions she called “vital to advancing their future careers.”

UC Regent José Hernández, who backed the bill, also spoke at the recent rally.

“Talent does not have an immigration status. Ambition does not have an immigration status, and a student’s ability to contribute to California should not be determined simply by the circumstances under which the student arrived in this country,” he said.

“As regents, we have a responsibility to protect the university, to respect the law, and to carefully evaluate the legal consequences of the decisions we make,” Hernández said. “I take that responsibility seriously, but caution should never become an excuse for complacency.”

Campus jobs for undocumented students blocked by Newsom veto

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed AB 713, the Opportunity for All Act, blocking a measure that would have opened paid campus employment to undocumented…

www.latimes.com

Current Labor Film Festivals
Bilbao, Spain: LAN Festival Audiovisual Obrero
Bristol, South West England: Bristol Radical Film Festival
Buenos Aires, Argentina: Construir Cine Film Festival
Canada: Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLIFF)
Dublin, Ireland: Dublin …Workers Film Festival
East Lansing, MI: The MSU Film Collective
Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir: Turkey International Labor Film & Video Festival
Madrid, Spain: Muestra de Cine y Trabajo (Labor Film Program)
Malmö, Sweden: Nordic Labour Film Festival
Milan (Sesto San Giovanni), Italy: Labour Film Festival
New York City, New York: Workers Unite! Film Festival
Rochester, New York: Rochester Labor Film Series
San Francisco, California: LaborFest International Working Class Film and Video Festival
Santa Cruz, Monterey & Santa Clara, California: Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival
Tolpuddle, UK: Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival
Vicenza, Italy: Working Title Film Festival
Washington, DC: DC Labor FilmFest

ON HIATUS/INACTIVE
Barre, Vermont: Labor Film Night at the Socialist Labor Party Hall
Dublin, Ireland: Progressive Film Club
Dundalk, MD: Epic Moments In U.S. Workers’ History
East Lansing, Michigan: MSU Film Studies Series on “Work/Place”
Glasgow, Scotland: GMB Glasgow General Apex Branch Labor Films
Haifa, Israel: Haifa International Labor Film Festival
Homestead, Pennsylvania: Battle of Homestead Foundation Movie Program
Honolulu, Hawaii: LaborFest Hawaii
Huntington, West Virginia: Blair 100 Labor Film Festival
Liverpool, England: North West Labour Film Festival
London, UK: London Labour Film Festival
London, UK: London Socialist Film Co-op
Madrid, Spain: Muestra de Cine y Trabajo (Labor Film Program)
Missoula, Montana: Montana Labor Film Festival
New South Wales, Australia: Australian International Labour Film Festival
New York City, New York: Labor Goes To The Movies
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Americans in Struggle
Pioneer Valley, MA: Pioneer Valley Labor Film Festival
San Diego, California: May Day Workers Film Festival
Santa Fe, New Mexico: New Mexico Labor Film Festival
Sao Paolo, Brazil: Brazilian International Labour Film Festival
Seattle, WA: MayWorks
Taipei, Taiwan: Taiwan International Labor Film Festival

A Call To Accountability A Challenge To LA Unite Here Local 11
The labor movement is built on a simple, sacred promise: You don't leave anyone behind. Yet with one a n o t h e r- n o t at one another.
This is a call to accountability. It is not anti-union; it is pro-worker, …pro-justice, and fiercely pro-solidarity, We canot demand dianty rod comporations while tolerating behavior that
I. A Leadership Shift-And a Vanishing Black Staff
When Local 1 moved to a three-co-president leadership structure, many hoped the change would usher in broader participation and shared power. Instead, Black staff members began leaving-some pushed out, some choosing to walk away from what they described as an
increasingly hostile, racially exclusionary environment. Today, the near-absence of Black staff in an organization that claims to speak for low-wage workers across a multiracial region raises a painful question: Whose voices count?
Let's be clear: whether departures resulted from direct firings, restructuring, attrition, or an intolerable climate, the impact is the same. When Black leadership or staff is virtually nonexistent the ability of any union to understand and represent Black workers is diminished.
Representation is not optics-it's infrastructure.
Accountability Steps
1. Commission an independent racial equity audit (not internally overseen) with clear
2. Commit to rebuilding Black staff representation at all levels, with transparent hiring
3. Establish a protected, third-party reporting channel for current and former Black staff to
raise concerns without retaliation; publish aggregated findings annually.
II. Pandemic Priorities: Raises at the Top While Members Were Out of Work
During the pandemic, hospitality and food service workers across Southern California faced mass layoffs, furloughs, and the insecurity of not knowing when— or if-their jobs would return.
In the same period, compensation for Local 11's top leaders rose.
Documented Pay Increases
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• Ada Briceño (Local 1 Co-President): Gross salary reported to the U.S. Department of
Labor (DOL) rose from $118,005 (2021) to $130,431 (2022) an increase of roughly
10.5%. Subsequent filings show continued increases: $138,229 (2023) and $144,493
(2024).
• Kurt Petersen & Susan Minato (Local 11 Co-Presidents; also, senior officers in
UNITE HERE Local 11): Gross salaries reported in DOL filings rose from $116,587
(2021) to $135,122 (2022)-about 16% growth year-over-year. Both continued to see
raises in later filings (data available through 2024).
• Family Employment: Public filings and watchdog reviews show that relatives of top officers (e.g., Petersen's daughter, Minato's spouse) received union payments or staff salaries that increased through the pandemic and recovery period. Petersen's daughter
received a 7% pay increase.
Context Matters. While leadership pay grew, union-represented housekeepers, dishwashers, banquet servers, cooks, airport concessions workers, and others were lining up at food distributions, navigating unemployment insurance, and worrying about rent. In those conditions, labor leaders must model shared sacrifice and financial transparency.
Accountability Steps
1. Publish a transparent, member-facing financial dashboard showing officer compensation trends pre-pandemic (2019), peak pandemic (2020-2021), and recovery (2022-2024), with separate lines for Local vs. International pay where applicable.
Pair any officer raises with a Member Hardship Offset Fund automatic per-dollar allocation to direct member relief (food cards, rent bridge grants, strike hardship
stipends).
3. Adopt a Leadership Pay Equity Policy capping top-officer salary multiples relative to median member wage (e.g., 5x cap unless membership votes otherwise).
III. "Protest" or Harassment? Actions at the L.A. Grand Hotel While Unhoused Angelenos
Were Sheltered
Mayor Karen Bass made confronting homelessness a governing priority. Emergency placements— including at the L.A. Grand Hotel, a major Inside Safe site-brought vulnerable, disproportionately Black Angelenos indoors. Local 1 has legitimately fought for the Grand's workers, who endured difficult conditions and were paid low wages. But loud, high-impact actions (drums, noisemakers, prolonged picketing) at or near the site have, at times, collided with the needs of traumatized residents trying to stabilize their lives.
Call it pressure politics if you like; we call it punching down when vulnerable people become collateral damage. Those residents are not management. They are people-many Black people coping with mental health, addiction, or trauma.
Repair Steps
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1. 3. Issue a public apology to residents and service providers for any actions that disrupted
care or recovery services.
2. Negotiate a Community Impact Protocol-quiet hours, buffer zones, coordination with service agencies-before staging actions at shelters, interim housing, or similar sensitive sites.
Jointly (union + city + providers) create a rapid-response mediation team to de-escalate conflicts when labor actions intersect with human services.
IV. Turning on Allies: Local 11's Picket of Long Beach's First Black Mayor
Long Beach voters made history by electing Mayor Rex Richardson, the city's first Black mayor. Richardson partnered with Local 1 on Measure RW, a wage standard that lifted hotel workers.
Yet after benefiting from that alliance, Local 1 staged a picket line at his State of the City address amid a dispute over convention-center wages and subcontracting.
We all have walked more picket lines than we could count. They are powerful when aimed at intransigent employers. But when a union turns its fire on a proven ally—especially a barrier-breaking Black elected official who helped deliver wins for workers it sends a damaging message: Loyalty is a one-way street. Movements keep score.
Rebuild Trust
1. Convene a reconciliation summit with Mayor Richardson, impacted workers, community clergy, and regional labor leaders to reset relationships around shared pro-worker,
pro-racial-justice goals.
2. Develop criteria for escalation against allies (cooling-off, direct leader-to-leader conversation, mediation) before public confrontation.
3. If escalation proceeds, message the distinction between employer policies and elected champions to avoid collateral political harm.
V. Dues Increases with Too Little Transparency
Members deserve to know why they are being asked to pay more and how the additional moneywill be used. Local 1 encouraged members to support dues increases during and after the pandemic; top-end dues reportedly moved from the $80 to the $90 per month range across
2022-2023, and an increase to $100 in 2025. Initiation fees have also climbed.
For low-wage, often immigrant workers in a cost-of-living crisis, dues hikes without crystal-clear budgeting erode trust.
Transparency Now
• Publish an annual plain-language budget explainer (1 page, infographic style) breaking out: member services; strike/hardship benefits; organizing; political/legislative; administrative overhead; officer & top staff compensation (Local + International where applicable); payments to affiliated nonprofits/consultants; reserves & debt service.
3
• Require a member vote for any dues increase above CPI unless tied to a time-limited, purpose-restricted fund (e.g., strike reserve).
• Launch a Dues Back Guarantee—if a promised program tied to a dues hike is not delivered within the stated period, members can vote to roll back the increase.
VI. Ada Briceño's Troubling History Against Labor in Orange County
Despite holding the title of co-president of UNITE HERE Local 1 and Chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County, Ada Briceño has consistently acted against the interests of the broader labor movement in Orange County.
During her tenure as Chair of the Democratic Party of Orange County, Briceño routinely endorsed candidates who were at odds with those backed by the Orange County Labor Federation (OCLF). Rather than fostering unity within the labor movement, she often used her
political influence to divide it-undermining solidarity among unions and weakening the collective power of working people in the region.
But perhaps the most egregious example of Briceño's hostility toward labor-backed candidates was her role in the political targeting of Anaheim City Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava. Ada used the OCLF logo on one side of a flyer to recall Rubalcava. The conflict reportedly began during discussions around a minimum-wage ballot initiative. In a meeting that included Briceño, Rubalcava declined to pressure her fellow council members to adopt the union's entire proposal.
Instead, the council passed an ordinance requiring hotels to provide workers with panic buttons, which was a significant safety win for workers, but not the full scope of what UNITE HERE had demanded.
Rubalcava's measured approach, however, was met not with dialogue or continued advocacy, but with retaliation. According to Rubalcava, Assembly member Avelino Valencia-her then- boss-later informed her that Briceño had declared: "Natalie is public enemy No. 1, and I will
stop at nothing until she's recalled and politically ruined forever. "
Shortly afterward, Rubalcava was terminated from her role as district director for Valencia's office, with no explanation. Though Valencia refused to comment on the firing, the timing raised serious concerns within the labor community about political retribution and internal sabotage.
Rubalcava, a Latina leader who has supported working families and public service throughout her career, was left deeply hurt-not only by the political attack itself, but by the fact that it was led by another Latina in leadership. "I try not to talk negatively about women," she said, "but I
just think that we tear each other down far too often."
Ada Briceño declined to respond when asked directly about her alleged threats toward Rubalcava.
The recall attempt was more than a political disagreement—it was a targeted campaign that used union resources and political influence to silence and remove a local elected official for not falling completely in line. This kind of intimidation undermines the democratic process, the
4
independence of elected officials, and the very values of worker-centered leadership that the
labor movement is supposed to uphold.
Councilmember Rubalcava summed it up best: "I can't be bullied by anybody. "
Labor leaders must hold each other to a higher standard. True solidarity means standing with workers and allies, even when we disagree. It means building power collectively, not destroying it from within. And above all, it means ensuring that our movement is led by those who serve- not silence-the voices of working people.
VII. The Coming Olympics, the Talk of a General Strike, and the Fair Games 2028 Platform Los Angeles will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028. Mega-events bring money and risk. Local 1 has advanced a platform under the banner "Fair Games 2028: A New Deal
for Los Angeles." Core demands that many of us share include:
1. 2. 3. Union jobs that support families with living wages and benefits.
50,000 units of worker housing for UNITE HERE Local 1 members.
Strict limits / moratorium on speculative short-term rentals that cannibalize long-term housing.
4. Safe, dignified treatment of immigrant & migrant communities.
Local 1 leaders have warned that if the IOC, LA28, public officials, and corporate beneficiaries fail to meet workers' needs, members are prepared to escalate including discussion in movement circles of a May Day General Strike on May 1, 2028.
We support the vision of union jobs, and guardrails against displacement. We wholeheartedly support protections for immigrant workers. We do not support 50,000 units of workers' housing
for UNITE HERE Local 1 members. These are righteous demands. But moral authority matters. A house divided on racial equity cannot credibly lead a region-wide call to action.
VIII. Path to Credible Leadership Before 2028
To earn broad labor and community backing for high-stakes Olympic leverage— including any talk of strike action-Local 1 must rebuild trust now. Below is a six-point pathway we urge the union to adopt (with timeline benchmarks suggested in brackets; refine after internal discussion):
1. Independent Racial Equity Audit & Action Plan (launch within 60 days; publish within 6
months) Hire an external firm with labor + racial justice credentials. Publicly release findings; set corrective action timelines covering recruitment, retention, promotion ladders, anti-bias training,
and culturally competent supervision.
5
2. Restore Black Representation (reach 2027 FTE baseline within 12 months; parity with regional Black workforce share within 24 months)
Set transparent hiring goals; publish quarterly progress. Pair with mentorship pipelines and career ladders into leadership, senior organizers, and political roles.
3. Financial Transparency Dashboard (beta in 90 days; quarterly thereafter) Interactive, member-login tool showing revenue sources (dues, grants, reimbursements), expense categories (organizing, member support, strike fund, political, admin, officer/staff comp),
liabilities, and reserves.
4. Community Impact Protocol (negotiate within 90 days; pilot at next high-impact action) Co-created rules for picketing near shelters, interim housing, schools, clinics, and other sensitive sites. Include quiet hours, notification timelines, and mitigation supports.
5. Partnership Council for LA28 (convene by Q1 2026)
Shared governance table: cross-union delegates; community orgs; faith leaders; tenant associations; immigrant-rights, unhoused-advocacy, disability, and Black worker representatives.
Co-draft regional bargaining agenda tied to Olympic timeline milestones.
6. Democratic Strike Authorization Standards (adopt bylaws amendments by end of 2026)
Before any call for a regional May Day or Olympic-related strike:
• Verified majority participation of impacted bargaining units.
• Documented bargaining impasse.
• Cross-union ratification vote.
• Hardship funds in place (target: 2 weeks of average wages per participating worker).
• Public equity certification from the Racial Equity Audit team.
IX. What Real Solidarity Should Not Look Like
• Solidarity that excludes Black workers is not solidarity.
• Solidarity that terrorizes unhoused people with drums and noisemakers is not solidarity.
• Solidarity that punishes Black and Latina elected allies for doing the right thing is not solidarity.
• Solidarity that excludes other labor unions or community partners that selfishly only promotes UNITE HERE Local 1 interest is not solidarity.
UNITE HERE Local 1 can do better. They must do beter— because millions of workers across Los Angeles and Orange County are counting on the labor movement to rise to the challenges ahead: the cost-of-living crisis, housing insecurity, corporate consolidation, climate disruption,
6
and a once-in-a-generation global event coming to our doorstep in 2028. This cannot happen
when one local union is diametrically opposed to what other unions fight for each and every day.
X. A Conditional Yes
Will we stand with a May Day 2028 General Strike under the banner of a New Deal for the Games? Yes—if the effort is rooted in real racial justice, transparent democracy, and a commitment to uplift (not exploit) the most vulnerable among us.
If Local 1 takes the steps outlined here—if it recommits to an inclusive, accountable, multi-racial movement—we will gladly lock arms in the streets for union jobs, worker immigrant dignity, and protections against displacement.
Until then, consider this a loving but unflinching challenge from labor and community partners to UNITE HERE Local 11:
Bring your practices into alignment with your principles. The world will be watching in 2028.
Let's show them a union movement worthy of Los Angeles.
Sources & Notes
• DOL LM-2 filings (Local 1 & UNITE HERE International) 2021-2024 for officer
compensation trends.
Center for Union Facts / Eyes On 1 compilations of DOL data
Reporting: Los Angeles Times; ABC7; Long Beach Post; Long Beach Watchdog;
updates on Olympic Wage; UNITE HERE Local 1 "Fair Games 2028."

Sikh truck driver survives harrowing stabbing attack at Wyoming rest stop
Suspect charged with attempted murder as driver, identified by surname Singh, reportedly stabbed 17 times
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/18/wyoming-truck-driver-stabbing-attack

Uwa Ede-Osifo
… Fri 18 Sep 2026 18.20 EDT
A Sikh truck driver survived a harrowing attack in which he was beaten then stabbed 17 times in a rest stop off a Wyoming highway on Sunday, according to news reports.

The suspected assailant, Andrew Kris Bzdak, reportedly fled the scene, before Wyoming highway patrol troopers arrested him, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Bzdak has been charged with attempted first-degree murder. As of Friday, he was being held at the Sweetwater county detention center on a $1m bail, according to an inmate roster.

“I don’t know why this happened,” the truck driver, who was identified only by his last name Singh for security reasons, told NPR. His lawyer could not be immediately reached for comment.

“I thought that now my final time had come,” the driver told the Bee.

The driver praised a Good Samaritan family, who tried to pursue the attacker and also brought Singh towels as blood seeped from his wounds, the Bee reported.

The motive for the attack remains unknown, said Jeff Sheaman, a public information officer for the Sweetwater county sheriff’s office.

Several prominent south Asian civic and political figures have drawn a link between Sunday’s events and a recent controversial Department of Homeland Security post depicting a Sikh driver.

In a since deleted post to X, DHS officials shared a movie poster-style image of a man with a bandana facing off a Transformer from the popular toy and movie franchise, with the words: “Self deport or Find Out.” At the bottom of the image, it also read; “Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive Mr Singh.”

DHS officials responded to criticism that the post was xenophobic, saying it was a pointed reference to an Indian-descent truck driver who was accused of making an illegal turn before crashing an 18-wheeler into a minivan, killing its occupants.

Sikh truck driver survives harrowing stabbing attack at Wyoming rest stop

Suspect charged with attempted murder as driver, identified by surname Singh, reportedly stabbed 17 times

www.theguardian.com

Another battery fire erupts at Moss Landing, where some units are still charged
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-18/another-battery-fire-erupts-at-moss-landing-where-some-batteries-are-still-charged
By Blanca Begert
Staff Writer
Sept. 18, 2026 2:21 PM PT

…Almost two years after a massive battery fire in Monterey County displaced 1,200 people and smoldered for days, spewing toxic gas into the air, the same facility is burning again.

Fire crews responded to a structure fire at the Moss Landing Power Plant, owned by Vistra Corp., around 6:15 a.m. Friday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Officials advised residents in zones nearby to shelter-in-place until further notice, with windows and doors closed and air conditioning systems turned off. Shelter-in-place orders for several areas were lifted around 10:30am, but remained in place for one zone.

The building in question had been damaged in a fire at Moss Landing back in January 2025, and Friday’s fire involved batteries that remain charged inside while the building had been taken off the grid, CAL FIRE public information officer Josh Silveira said.

The facility was evacuated and no civilians or fire personal were injured in the fire response. Fire officials on a noon press call said this fire was much smaller in scale and complexity than last year’s and was no longer actively burning, but that conditions could change.

“At this particular point in the incident, there is no active fire. It is hot, smoldering at this particular point, but the incident is still within a scope that it could decrease or continue going,” North Monterey County Fire Protection District Chief Jess Cortez said on the call.

Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Monterey Bay Air Resources District said on the noon call they were monitoring for particulate matter pollution, known as PM 2.5, and hydrogen flouride but had not detected levels exceeding health screening levels.

“There’s a few [sensors] that have edged into moderate air quality, but we expect those probably to go back to green as we get better wind flow through there,” said Richard Stedman, an air pollution control officer at the air district. “Basically, we’re not seeing anything that indicates that there’s a problem with air quality and would result in exposure at the facility at this time.”

The 2025 Moss Landing battery fire, which was still in the process of being cleaned up when today’s fire broke out, sparked a battery backlash in California, where state officials are pursuing an aggressive goal of 100% clean energy usage by 2045 to increase the grid’s capacity and address climate change consistent with what scientists say is necessary.

The plant, one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage sites, was an older facility that launched in 2020. Experts have noted that lithium battery safety has improved dramatically in the years since it was built.

Officials last year said cleanup would proceed slowly, because of the risk of igniting another fire while removing the thousands of charged batteries that remained on site.

Cortez said there were 1,500 fully energized batteries against the north wall of the building that burned Friday. Crews have been working towards removing and delinking them, said Cortez, but had not been able to get to them because the wall they were against could have collapsed. “Those batteries spontaneously ignited this morning,” he said.

Another battery fire erupts at Moss Landing, where some units are still charged

Almost two years after a massive battery fire south of Santa Cruz displaced 1,200 people and smoldered for days, the same facility is burning again.

www.latimes.com

SF SEIU1021 SF City Worker Leaders Protest Concession Contract & Call For NO Vote By Membership
https://youtu.be/neQzn3opV3c
San Francisco city workers are angry about a concession contract that the City Union leadership negotiated with the billionaire mayor Daniel Lurie.
Augusto …Guerra, SEIU 1021 SF Mental Healthcare chapter chair and SEIU 1021 Brenda Barros , Community Healthcare chapter chair both talked about the lack of protection from from AI, an actual wage cut and the
privatization and contracting out of public worker jobs by Mayor Lurie. with no opposition from the SEIU 1021 SEIU leadership. Several
public clinics in San Francisco were closed by the city and the work was contracted out to private non-profits.
The SEIU City nurses at SF General Hospital and Laguna are also against the contract.
The City has contracted out over 1 billions of dollars to outside contracts destroying public service jobs. Thornton also charged the SEIU 1021 Executive Director David Canham threatened her and others not to
publicize their concerns and opposition to the contract.
Additional Media:
SEIU1021 SF Workers & Clients Rally To Stop Killing Cuts By Mayor Lurie At Mission Geriatric Clinic
https://youtu.be/4SAhyrvGhYc
SF Mayor Lurie & DPH Threaten To Close 3 Healthcare Center Including For Seniors
https://youtu.be/BcNmJTAPeJ0
‘We can shut down the city’: SF Mayor Lurie’s budget cuts spark a showdown with labor
https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/12/can-shut-city-lurie-s-budget-cuts-spark-showdown-labor/
STOP SF Mayor Lurie's Union Busting & Contracting Out Jobs! SEIU1021 Unionists Speak Against Cuts
https://youtu.be/_qA_r_hPBl0
SEIU1021 SF Workers & Clients Rally To Stop Killing Cuts By Mayor Lurie At Mission Geriatric Clinic
https://youtu.be/4SAhyrvGhYc
STOP SF Mayor Lurie's Union Busting & Contracting Out Jobs! SEIU1021 Unionists Speak Against Cuts
https://youtu.be/_qA_r_hPBl0
SEIU 1021 & IFPTE 21 Officials Protest SF Mayor Lurie's Contracting Out & Layoffs Of City Workers
https://youtu.be/HVxNAHBEk94
SEIU1021 & IFPTE21 City Workers Rally At SF Gen Against Mayor Lurie's Union Busting Layoffs & Prop D
https://youtu.be/-8If3hYKhF8
SF Mayor Lurie & DPH Threaten To Close 3 Healthcare Center Including For Seniors
https://youtu.be/BcNmJTAPeJ0
SEIU1021 & IFPTE21 City Workers Rally At SF Gen Against Mayor Lurie's Union Busting Layoffs & Prop D
https://youtu.be/-8If3hYKhF8
Black Workers Bullying Privatization & SEIU 1021 With SF DPH Licensed Therapist Blue Williams
https://youtu.be/HyyfoWDhAH0
Terrorism Racism & Union Busting Against SEIU1021 SF General Hospital Workers By CCSF HR/DPH & Mayor
https://youtu.be/gUpZqFxFplI
STOP Discharges At Laguna Honda Hospital: Discharges = Deaths Say Labor, Community & Families
https://youtu.be/z1TL2yQv6IQ
WW 8-9-22 SF Laguna Honda Hospital Discharges & The Deaths With Pat McGinnis Of CANHR
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-8-9-22-sf-laguna-honda-hospital-discharges-the-deaths-with-pat-mcginnnis-canhr-8-9-22
WorkWeek 8-4-22 Fight To Save SF Laguna Honda & SEIU 1021 SF Tenderloin Housing Clinic Workers
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-8-4-22-fight-to-save-sf-laguna-honda-seiu-1021-sf-tenderloin-housing-clinic-workers
Patients' Families, Supporters Hold SF Rally to Keep Laguna Honda Hospital Open
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco-rally-laguna-honda-hospital/2976789/
SF Laguna Honda Doctors And Whistleblowers Speaks Out At SF Health Commission Hearing
https://youtu.be/OgQfINEQSwo
SEIU 1021 SFGH Workers Speakout! Stop Racism, Union Busting & Privatization Of SFGH Pharmacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1XzRrzB9ZI
SF City Dr. Kerr From SF Laguna Honda Hospital Discusses Bullying In The Workplace
https://youtu.be/_shGLuXU9uk
California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR)
http://www.canhr.org
Hundreds of SEIU 1021 SF Non-profit Tenderloin Housing Clinic Workers Strike For Living Wages
https://youtu.be/yCARCOMpFE0
EPIC, LEAN, SF General, Privatization & SEIU 1021 Contract Negotiations: Interview With John Wadsworth
https://youtu.be/eTRAzcbj-yo
Reign Of Terror Against SF SEIU 1021 DPH Members & Other City Workers: Speakout At SF Labor Council
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JN-f8HeN3w&t=7s
Racism, Outsourcing and Retaliation At SF Civil Service Commission With HR Director Micki Callahan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNhPRQeHGk&t=34s
Production Of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net

Labor Media – Labor Media

Bezo’s WP Likes Mamdani’s Suit Stop Bonus Of Teachers Aids $10000 bonuses teach Mamdani a lesson about the teachers union The New York mayor sues to…

www.labormedia.net

What a "Temporary Removal" of Negro Bar, Sacramento County means to CA Gold Rush Heritage
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/09/14/18888545.php
by edited by Khubaka, Michael Harris (blackagriculture [at] yahoo.com)
Mon, Sep 14, 2026 9:50PM
Restoring the authentic 1854… Negro Bar townsite and recognizing the regions early leaders such as Sacramento County’s first Board Chair, who operated the Negro Bar Hotel and Store and supported the largest Chinatown, Gaam Saan, outside of San Francisco
1854 Survey Map for Sacramento Valley Railroad.jpeg
original image (2044×1047)
An extended temporary removal of Negro Bar from California State Parks official landscape is more than an administrative act; it is a profound distortion of Gold Rush heritage, years of study and millions of tax-payer resources cannot fix in silence.

The authentic 1848–1855 mining town—once a vibrant, multi‑ethnic transportation hub apart of Rancho Rio de Los Americanos, the Mexican land grant entitled to Hon. William Alexander Leidesdorff Jr., Afro‑Caribbean, Danish Jewish U.S. Vice Consul to Alta California Mexico, has been replaced by a modern fabrication known today as Black Miners Bar. This DEI‑era substitution obscures the original geography, community, and economic significance of the initial Pan‑African inspired township "crown jewel" along the vast American River Basin.

Negro Bar, Sacramento County, nor the Sacramento Valley Railroad Roundhouse was ever submerged beneath Lake Natoma. Its erasure emerged through a 2022 Juneteenth administrative commission decision that relocated, renamed, and ultimately distorted a traditional heritage within the Folsom Lake Recreational District, managed on behalf of the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.

On the south shore of Lake Natoma, once the staging ground for building the Sacramento Valley Railroad, Inc. and 100 years later Folsom Dam, today, remains a bustling corridor of free enterprise still linking Californios, Nisenan, Pan‑Africans, European, Chinese, and global immigrants who still forge a path to California seeking gold.

Removing Negro Bar from Sacramento County’s working landscape does more than hide geographical coordinates; it falsifies Folsom’s foundational identity. It erases the contributions of free and enslaved people of African ancestry yearning for a greater measure of freedom, long before the 1849 Gold Rush. Thousands of people of Pan African ancestry participated in the International Underground Railroad Network to Freedom, and shaped early California statehood during the California Gold Rush until the 1852 Fugitive Slave Law forced many to flee, hide or once again relocate.

Scrubbing California history reinforces the myth that "manifest destiny" was a “white‑male only domain,” diminishing the international diverse reality that defined the California Gold Rush. It also supports reparative justice efforts by ignoring documented harm and land loss tied to Leidesdorff’s estate and erases entire townsites along the American River Parkway.

Restoring the authentic 1854 Negro Bar townsite and recognizing the regions early leaders such as Sacramento County’s first Board Chair, who operated the Negro Bar Hotel and Store and supported the largest Chinatown, Gaam Saan, "Gold Mountian" outside of San Francisco, thousands of "Gold Rush" immigrants from the South China Sea, is essential and cannot be erased for recreational sport By reclaiming our authentic April 1848 – December 1855 heritage can California showcase our international origins and traditions presenting an honest narrative today and for distant future generations around the world.

Commemorating The 150th Anniversary Of St. Louis Commune & General Strike
https://stlouiscommune.org
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
JULY–SEPTEMBER 2027
HOME
HISTORY
2027 EVENTS
SPEAKERS
PHOTOGRAPHS
RESOURCES
CONTACT
A CITYWIDE PUBLIC-HISTORY COMMEMORATION
…
1877
St. Louis
General Strike
In 2027, St. Louis marks 150 years since workers across the city joined a national railroad uprising and created what became known as the St. Louis Commune.

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Lectures and discussions will take place across the St. Louis region from July through September 2027.

VIEW THE SCHEDULE
THE COMMEMORATION

Remembering a city transformed by collective action

The Commemoration Committee seeks to highlight and commemorate the 1877 St. Louis General Strike on its 150th anniversary—and to involve the public in learning about this important event in St. Louis history.

Read the history →
SEVEN PUBLIC EVENTS

Leading historians. Places across St. Louis.

The program brings lectures and a panel discussion to libraries, a museum, Saint Louis University, and St. Louis Community College.

Explore 2027 events →
1877 St. Louis General Strike
150th Anniversary Commemoration

1877 St. Louis General Strike — 150th Anniversary

Free public events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the 1877 St. Louis General Strike and St. Louis Commune, July through September 2027.

stlouiscommune.org

Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine | Full Documentary

Ghost in the Machine, directed by Valerie VeatchArtificial intelli…

www.youtube.com

Fascists Like SF Mayor Lurie's Homeless Policy
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/cicero-institute-homeless-san-francisco-22416361.php
Why a pro-MAGA think tank is cheering a new S.F. homelessness policy
By Anna Bauman,
Staff Writer
Sep 13, 2026

Cicero …Institute founder Jon Lonsdale at his home in Woodside. Lonsdale relocated to Austin, Texas, in 2020, but has still focused attention on California.
Cicero Institute founder Jon Lonsdale at his home in Woodside. Lonsdale relocated to Austin, Texas, in 2020, but has still focused attention on California.
Christie Hemm Klok/Washington Post via Getty Images

A new effort by San Francisco officials to fund homelessness service providers based on measurable results drew support this month from an unlikely source.
The Cicero Institute, a Trump-aligned policy organization founded by tech billionaire and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, called Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new policy “exactly right.”
“Every city should follow San Francisco’s lead here,” the organization said in a post on X.
The praise was striking after years of scorn for San Francisco’s approach to homelessness from President Donald Trump and conservative groups, including Cicero. The Texas-based think tank — whose agenda includes involuntary mental health or drug treatment for people and statewide camping bans — has played a key role in shaping federal homelessness policy under the Trump administration, according to reports in the New York Times and Washington Post.
The group’s praise for Lurie placed the mayor in an uncomfortable position of defending his new approach while distancing it from a controversial organization. Lonsdale drew criticism last year when he called for public hangings for repeat violent criminals.
Housing advocates disrupt the Cicero Institute’s June conference in Washington.
Housing advocates disrupt the Cicero Institute’s June conference in Washington.
Joy Asico-Smith/Associated Press Images
“I don’t know anything about this organization other than what the Chronicle shared with me,” said the mayor’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak. “But I do know that San Franciscans across the city want government to finally tackle homelessness and addiction — to help people who need it and to provide safe, clean streets for everyone in our city. That’s not partisan, and it’s not ideological — it’s common sense.”
But the exchange highlighted how certain strategies to address homelessness have been embraced by both Trump-aligned organizations and moderate Democrats in California, such as cleaning up streets by sweeping homeless encampments and prioritizing treatment and recovery programs.

In an announcement earlier this month, Lurie said his administration will seek new contracts with all of the city’s homelessness service providers over the next several years in a shift toward outcome-based contracting based on new, as-yet unreleased criteria. The city is now seeking input from community partners, advocates and other residents on how to best measure nonprofits’ success.
“We are not going to continue spending $1 billion of taxpayer money on a failing system — we’re fixing the system so we can deliver the safe and clean streets every San Franciscan deserves,” Lurie said.
Devon Kurtz, director of public safety policy at Cicero, said in a statement to the Chronicle that Lurie was “absolutely right to demand accountability,” and “San Francisco’s homelessness system has been failing for decades.”
“While the Cicero Institute has not advised him on these policies, his recent announcement shows that better homelessness policy is not a partisan issue,” Kurtz said. “If he successfully fixes broken incentives, addresses the addiction crisis, and delivers better outcomes, every San Franciscan will benefit.”
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, a nonprofit advocacy group, said Cicero’s support for San Francisco was an unfortunate and disappointing sign.
“If you look at the Trump administration, the policies favor the billionaires,” Friedenbach said. “I see this (San Francisco) administration doing a lot of the same, where they are demonizing poor people, cutting services instead of investing in a vibrant San Francisco for even the most low-income.”
Lurie’s emphasis on measurable results echoes a longtime Republican critique of California’s homelessness policy. For years, state Republicans have called for annual reporting and audits of homelessness spending and outcomes.
A crew from San Francisco Public Works cleans the streets during a sweep on Sixth Street in October 2024. A spokesperson for Mayor Daniel Lurie said that he was unfamiliar with the Cicero Institute, and that the city was focused on providing safe, clean streets.
A crew from San Francisco Public Works cleans the streets during a sweep on Sixth Street in October 2024. A spokesperson for Mayor Daniel Lurie said that he was unfamiliar with the Cicero Institute, and that the city was focused on providing safe, clean streets.
Gabrielle Lurie/S.F. Chronicle

To some observers, the idea of making sure millions of dollars in funds are tied to measurable outcomes is logical. Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University who researches addiction, said “probably most normal people would think it makes some sense.”
“What’s happening now is not really swinging right so much as kind of going back to sensible stuff that lots of people agree with even if they’ve never even voted in their life,” Humphreys said.
The challenge of a pay-for-performance model, he said, is making sure providers can’t game the system and aren’t incentivized to avoid serving the populations with the most challenges.
But some local groups worry that the recontracting process will result in cuts to permanent supportive housing, which offers long-term housing and services for people who have experienced chronic homelessness, at a time when demand is high.
“We want to see high-quality, effective services, but we don’t want that to come at the expense of shrinking down and losing units and beds,” Friedenbach said. “The city is affluent enough to afford to do both.”
Christin Evans, a former member of the San Francisco Homelessness Oversight Commission, said homelessness nonprofits in the city are struggling to keep up with the need from the community amid surging rents.
“There are a lot of people that have been working on homelessness for many years, and we are focused on creating real solutions for San Francisco to address homelessness,” Evans said. “We shouldn’t be distracted by right-wing talking points that are not based in reality.”
Evans described Cicero as a “very problematic political operation that’s trying to undermine scientific and public health solutions for addressing homelessness.”
“It’s in service of a billionaire agenda to undermine the safety net,” she said.
Cicero was founded in 2018 by Lonsdale, a Bay Area native who served as the editor of the Stanford Review, a conservative student publication, in college. He cofounded the defense and surveillance company Palantir and venture capital firm 8VC, which he relocated to Austin, Texas, in 2020.
Lonsdale told the New York Times that he decided to focus on homelessness after an incident in San Francisco when a homeless person allegedly harassed his wife and child on a walk.
In addition to paying nonprofits based on results, the Cicero agenda on homelessness includes pushing for laws that make it easier to commit people to involuntary mental health treatment and statewide bans on street camping with an emphasis on arresting violators.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, center left, listens as Gov, Gavin Newsom makes remarks during a January press conference about homelessness funding in San Francisco.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, center left, listens as Gov, Gavin Newsom makes remarks during a January press conference about homelessness funding in San Francisco.
Benjamin Fanjoy/For the S.F. Chronicle
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has long been aligned with conservatives on encampment sweeps, pushing cities to aggressively clear homeless encampments in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2024 that gave cities more authority to do so.
Cicero has also taken a hard stance against “housing first,” a long-standing policy in the U.S. and California that prioritizes providing housing to people without imposing required mental health or substance abuse treatment, employment or other conditions.
Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has tried to defund permanent supportive housing, although the effort has been challenged in court. San Francisco was among a cohort that sued the Trump administration over new restrictions on federal funding, saying the changes “will push our most vulnerable citizens out of their homes without a place to go.”
Lurie has meanwhile shifted local resources toward treatment, recovery and enforcement. The city opened its first sober homeless shelter last year, added hundreds of new treatment and recovery-focused beds and approved legislation requiring new city-funded permanent supportive housing facilities to be drug-free.
San Francisco has also recently moved away from harm reduction, a public health approach meant to reduce overdoses without requiring abstinence. Lurie banned city-funded programs from handing out some drug supplies in public or without providing counseling or connecting users to treatment.
City officials have also indicated they intend to close several supportive housing sites, although details of the plan were scarce.
Ariel Fortuna, left, who is 58 and homeless, stands by his tent on 17th Street in the Mission in 2024.
Ariel Fortuna, left, who is 58 and homeless, stands by his tent on 17th Street in the Mission in 2024.
Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
Lauren Hall, the co-CEO of a permanent supportive housing operator in San Francisco, said during a recent homelessness commission meeting that the city’s plan to overhaul contracts with providers offers “an incredible opportunity to reshape the system.”
But the perception that nonprofits were irresponsible with funds is “incredibly demoralizing,” she said.
“I’ve been working at this for a long time, and it’s really frustrating when we’re looking at someone to blame for the problem as opposed to coming together as a city to fix this,” Hall said.
Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a moderate Democrat, said Lurie’s metrics-based approach to funding homelessness service providers, which he supports, reflects a broader demand for accountability.
“We owe it to our taxpayers to make sure that the money we’re asking them for is doing what we say it’s going to do, especially when it comes to homelessness,” Dorsey said. “In the end, I think this is good politics and good policy.”
While Dorsey, who is in recovery for addiction, said he did not know enough about the Cicero Institute or its motivations, he said drug policy, which intersects with homelessness policy, is an issue that sometimes defies ideological lanes because “it’s personal to so many people.”
“The Democratic Party is the party that believes in government and what good government can accomplish,” Dorsey said. “If Cicero Institute wants to come along and embrace that too, that’s fine.”

Why a pro-MAGA think tank is cheering a new S.F. homelessness policy

A new effort by San Francisco officials to fund homelessness service providers based on measurable results has drawn support from an unlikely source:…

www.sfchronicle.com

UFT Teachers unions urge Labor Supported NY Gov. Hochul to reconsider participation in 'school choice' program
https://gothamist.com/news/teachers-unions-urge-ny-gov-to-reconsider-participation-in-school-choice-program
By Jessica Gould
Published Sep 16, 2026 at 5:24 p.m. …ET

UTF President Michael Mulgrew speech at United Federation of Teachers (UTF) Teacher Union Day in October 2019. The UFT is among the largest unions currently without a contract.
Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
Teachers unions are calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul to reverse plans to join the Trump administration's “school choice” program, warning the program will siphon students and money away from New York’s public schools.
The program, and New York's intention to participate in it, represents a major victory for those who have spent years lobbying for tuition vouchers under the banner of “school choice.”
“These credits have the potential to expand academic opportunity for public and private school students across our state without diverting resources from public schools or state and local budgets,” Jonah Allon, a spokesperson for Hochul, said in a statement on Wednesday. “All stakeholders should work together to ensure this program can be implemented to maximize benefits for all New York schools, including our public schools."
Echoing their long-held opposition to such programs, labor leaders said the tax credit would unfairly deprive the neediest students.
“ It is meant to actually take money out of public schools,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said at a press conference Wednesday.
Weingarten said that while private schools can skim off high-performing and wealthy students, students with disabilities, students learning English and students from high poverty backgrounds would be left behind.

“ Vouchers are about allowing private schools to pick and choose who they admit, leaving the most vulnerable children behind,” she said.
Congress passed the new tax credit last year as part of its legislative package that came to be known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It allows taxpayers to claim up to $1,700 in credits on their federal taxes for donations made to scholarship-granting nonprofit organizations. Trump administration officials have said those nonprofits can include private schools, after-school programs and organizations that support public schools.
Hochul, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year, signaled her interest in signing on to the program last spring during a meeting with leaders of Agudath Israel of America, a Jewish organization that supports religious education. She said at the time that she expected it would benefit New York parents, but that she was awaiting more information.
Under the federal legislation, families who earn up to 300% of the local area median income are eligible. In New York City, that works out to a cap of around $500,000.
The federal government is expected to release more details about the program later this month.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers union, said that he hoped that Hochul would reconsider her support for the program, but said his union would not withdraw its support for her.

Teachers unions urge NY Gov. to reconsider participation in ‘school choice’ program

Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she plans to join a federal “school choice” program. Teachers unions hope she will reconsider.

gothamist.com

The Republican Party has a neo-Nazi problem.
The G.O.P. Has Gone Off the Deep End
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/16/opinion/republican-party-alt-right-neo-nazis.html
Sept. 16, 2026

By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist
The Republican Party has a neo-Nazi problem.

… This is not slander or pejorative or innuendo; it is the plain truth of the matter, a conclusion drawn from simple observation. And the problem has been getting worse.

Consider a few of the people staffing the Trump administration.

There is Paul Ingrassia, acting general counsel of the General Services Administration, who withdrew his nomination to serve as special counsel of the United States after Politico published a trove of offensive remarks from his social media and group chats. “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” Ingrassia, who is 31, wrote in a text in 2024. “We need competent white men in positions of leadership,” he wrote in another message. “The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal … We need to reject that part of our heritage.”

There is Nate Hochman, a young Republican operative who was fired from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign after promoting a pro-DeSantis video that used a Nazi symbol. He now works as speechwriter for Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (In 2022, Hochman wrote a feature for this newspaper’s Opinion section.)

And there are the young staffers responsible for the Trump administration’s social media presence, who use their large and influential platform to share Nazi-inspired rhetoric and post Nazi-inspired memes. In January of this year, for instance, the Department of Labor posted a video with the caption “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American,” a line that echoes the Nazi slogan of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”: “One people, one realm, one leader.”

Social media accounts for the Department of Homeland Security show a steady stream of memes and images drawn from neo-Nazi and white supremacist agitprop. One post, a recruitment ad for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, read “WE’LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN,” the title of a song written by the Pine Tree Riots, an a cappella group associated with an explicitly white nationalist group. The song is popular with online neo-Nazis and white supremacists. It is unlikely to have been an accident. Another post, also an ICE recruitment ad, was captioned “Which way, American man?,” a direct reference to “Which Way Western Man?,” a virulently racist and antisemitic book published in 1978 and later sold and publicized by the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group.

Keep in mind that these are not staffers’ private accounts; these posts are reaching the public through the official organs of the U.S. government.

If this weren’t disturbing enough, consider some of the people working for Republican candidates and running for office under the Republican standard.

In Georgia, the Republican Senate nominee Mike Collins has had to answer for a former staffer who posted Nazi images online as well as a photo of himself in full Ku Klux Klan regalia. And Collins’s son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, is a white nationalist and online influencer with a history of posting Nazi imagery. Senator Jon Husted, an Ohio Republican running to retain the seat to which he was appointed after Vice President JD Vance left for the White House, recently fired his 25-year-old political director after learning that he had used a photograph of Nazi soldiers as a social media profile picture.

You’ll notice that most of these people are in their 20s and 30s. That is no coincidence; it is clear that among the young staffer and operative class of the Republican Party are people with neo-Nazi sympathies and white supremacist views. Last year, for example, leaked messages from a group chat of Young Republicans from chapters across the country — who ranged in age from 18 to 40 — included racial slurs, support for Nazi ideas and a declaration of admiration for the leader of the Third Reich, all framed as jokes. “I love Hitler,” wrote Peter Giunta, then the chief of staff to a New York State assemblyman. Asked if he was watching an N.B.A. playoff game, Giunta, who was also the chairman of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, replied, “I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball.” If these were jokes, they revealed a taste for both cruelty and casual bigotry.

The University of Florida’s College Republicans chapter was disbanded after two members were seen performing a Nazi salute on social media. Elsewhere in the state, 34-year-old Marshall Rawson is set to take a seat in Florida’s House of Representatives nearly 10 years after marching alongside neo-Nazis at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

In March, 30-year-old Brandon Herrera won the Republican primary for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District. A far-right YouTube personality, Herrera has published videos that feature Nazi imagery and Nazi military anthems, joke about the Holocaust and showcase Nazi weapons. He can even be seen goose-stepping. And one of the most prominent neo-Nazis in the country is 28-year-old Nick Fuentes, a far-right provocateur and political commentator whose supporters are known as “Groypers.” Fuentes dined with President Trump between his two terms and in the past year sat for a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson, still arguably the most important figure in the right-wing media ecosystem.

As the historian David Austin Walsh makes clear in “Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right,” there is a degree of self-flattery in the old conventional wisdom that traditional conservatives successfully policed the borders of their movement in the past. Despite his influence, a figure like William F. Buckley Jr. could not actually expel people from the conservative movement or define “conservatism” to fully exclude people and groups that occupied the dark margins of American politics. “American conservatism,” Walsh writes, “resembled the fragmentation of the Protestant churches, with various factions and sects vying among themselves over who was ‘truly’ conservative.”

The upshot of this dynamic is that there have always been points of political, social and ideological overlap between the far right and more mainstream conservatives. At National Review, the spiritual and institutional home of movement conservatism through much of the late 20th century, writers like Joe Sobran “flirted with the avowedly racist right,” Walsh writes. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the neo-Nazi leader David Duke would make his home in the Louisiana Republican Party and win nearly 40 percent of the vote in the 1991 governor’s race. The next year, in the Republican presidential primary, Pat Buchanan would launch a spirited challenge to George H.W. Bush even after Buchanan was condemned for trafficking in Holocaust denialism.

For a time, the institutional Republican Party was strong enough to keep these views, and the underlying forces that fueled them, away from its center of gravity. It is with the total collapse of the traditional Republican “establishment” — and the extent to which it was supplanted, over the course of the 2000s and the 2010s, by conservative media and assorted billionaire donors — that the party lost any ability it had to police its boundaries. The apotheosis of this phenomenon is Donald Trump, who fully bypassed conservative and Republican gatekeepers on the strength of his celebrity and media savvy, and whose victory in the 2024 presidential election opened the floodgates of the party to the far right.

But where even Trump once had to create the sense of distance between himself and the alt-right, now it is hard to think of it as “alternative” at all. Now it is simply the Republican right.

There is every reason to think, in fact, that the Republican Party’s neo-Nazi problem is spreading.

Just look at the way that House Speaker Mike Johnson defended Herrera after being confronted with evidence of his abhorrent views, treating him as just another Republican candidate with an outsize online persona. “Brandon Herrera has been out running a very effective campaign,” Johnson said.

Or look to last week’s Republican midterm gathering in Dallas, where the vice president echoed far-right tropes about the alleged crime and disorder produced by immigrants. “We were tired of being called racists,” Vance said to the cheers and approving nods of the audience, “for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous.”

The vice president is nothing if not shrewd and opportunistic. He sees where his fellow young conservatives are headed. He does not plan to be left behind.

Perhaps there will be some seismic shift that derails the far-right capture of the Republican Party. But this feels like wishful thinking. If the past decade is any guide, then the fever, if that is what we want to call it, is only going to get worse.

Opinion | The G.O.P. Has Gone Off the Deep End

The Republican fringe is becoming the Republican mainstream.

www.nytimes.com

Solidarity Statement with AFT GEO Graduate Employees' Organization

https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/SlOO3J8fMEkcf-KMUUGxystttmmZfFGGFwZwPgdKKFc/

Solidarity with the Graduate Employees' Organization: Federal Government Attack on Labor Solidarity Movement

Find… this letter here: https://go.geo3550.org/solidaritystatement

On August 11, 2026, the federal government served a federal grand jury subpoena to the Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) Local 3550, the graduate workers union at the University of Michigan. The subpoena demands a huge swath of documents dating back to January 2023; like many subpoenas, this scope is incredibly broad and the intent to gather this information is unclear. The subpoena was issued by prosecutor Maggie Smith and FBI special agent Kara Phipps, who are connected with the Michigan 8 case that is seeking to criminalize protest activity and escalate the use of federal criminal charges against protest. In addition, the subpoena was signed the day we defeated politically motivated and baseless charges against our Union President, Hiab Teshome.

This is the latest attempt within a broader effort to intimidate and repress GEO, and is part of the larger campaign the Trump administration is taking against organized labor and resistance. GEO is a proponent of labor and Palestine solidarity, and has organized in ways that the federal government no doubt finds detestable–and 100% constitutionally protected. From Ann Arbor to Prairieland to Minnesota to New York, the federal government and their allies have declared war on anyone resisting the rising tide of fascism. In the NSPM-7 era, the Trump administration has already come after workers connected with the Minnesota 15 who have organized against ICE, and now they are coming for GEO for standing in solidarity with targets of political repression. Whether you resist ICE, speak out against genocide, or are dedicated labor organizers, they are coming for us all — if not now, then soon.

It is not the first time the labor movement has come under attack by the federal government. The American labor movement was born in struggle and repression of the worst type. Time and again, the federal government has stepped in to execute the most extreme, cruel forms of workplace repression on behalf of our Bosses. Just as labor organizers have done for over a century, we must remember that an injury to one, is an injury to all. The Trump administration is organized and views various repression efforts as one singular offensive. They know this is an attack on workers, an attack on the people, for them this is one big campaign. Together, we must be organized and mount one defense across workers and unions as a unified labor movement to fight back and defeat this regime.

No matter where you are coming from in our movement, we can be united by the disgust we feel for a regime as violent as the Trump administration attempting to intimidate workers. This is just one battle in a much larger war, one that no one singular member can win alone, but solidarity makes us strong. There is no doubt that we will win; we have defeated every other attempt to beat down the labor movement, but this is only possible together. We ask you to stand with us as we fight to protect our members and movement and rise to the moment as the Trump Administration intensifies its attacks on workers.

Solidarity Forever.

Sign onto this letter as an organization or individual: https://go.geo3550.org/signsolidaritystatement
Read GEO's public statement on the federal grand jury subpoena​​​​​​: https://go.geo3550.org/subpoenastatement
Contribute to GEO's Worker Solidarity Fund to send your support: https://go.geo3550.org/solidarityfund
U-M professors Adi Saleem and Yarden Katz provide additional context on the case in a Mondoweissarticle: https://mondoweiss.net/2026/09/the-u-s-government-is-going-after-a-michigan-labor-union-over-its-palestine-activism/

We the undersigned stand in solidarity with the Graduate Employees' Organization against federal repression of the labor movement.

Organizational Signatures
SAFE (Students Allied for Freedom and Equality)
Industrial Workers of the World, Ypsilanti branch – An injury to one is an injury to all
United Asian American Organizations
The Ann Arbor Tenets Union – Solidarity always with the Michigan 8 and the Graduate Employees' Organization!

Individual Signatures
Hiab Teshome – I stand in solidarity with the Palestine and labor movement
Jeff Horowitz
Adi Saleem
Elysia CHou
Amber Walters
Phil Christman
Jessie Milne, MPH '18
Michael Mueller
Michael Mueller
Cora Galpern
Nathaniel Ibrahim – Free Palestine, an injury to one is an injury to all.
Amir Fleischmann, PhD
Craig Smith – U-M's leaders have chosen, over and over again, to side with fascism and racism and bigotry as the the US and countries around the world are led, more and more, by ultra-rich authoritarian murderers. Universities should be among the institutions that lead the fight for freedom and act on the side of the most vulnerable, but U-M has repeatedly and proactively taken the opposite stance, including its attacks on GEO and other organizations that are resisting the trump regime. U-M's disgusting and transparent pattern of seeking wealth over justice is a horrifying moral failure, and I am honored to stand with GEO and thousands of others in the fight for justice and democracy.
Christa Ventresca
Mandy Mitchell (UM Alum)
Jared Eno
Dave Zeglen
Sarah Moncada
Jesse Holloway
Sophia Mo
Alex Huddleston
rach sajdak
Mark Dilley
Fatma Muge Gocek
Ted McTaggart
Orven Mallari
Shreya Chowdhary
Natalie ChenFree Palestine, free the MI8, labor for Palestine forever
Madeleine Aquilina. Solidarity forever!
Evelyn Smith
Leah Bernardo-Ciddio
Angie C. Baecker, PhD (ALC, 2020)
Grace Viscito
Bailey Sullivan
Larry Wentzel
Nick Geiser (UM-PRO)
C. McGhee
Kaitlin Karmen
Laura Murphy, PhD
Carmela Romano
Todd Ziegler
Dianne May. The right to organize and protest injustices must be protected.
Ellery Hendrix, M.S. '25
Taylor Lewis
Sean Harris
Danielle Le-Tran
Elliott Fluty
Natalia Facio
Narcedalia Ramirez
Nicholas Sebastian
Lucille V Dentice
Liam McGoldrick
Thomas Alling
Julia Goode
Nathan Kim
Major Stevens -I stand with the fight for collective liberation
Tom Alter -Hands off GEO. Stop the investigation and respect union rights.
Sara Yenzer

The U.S. government is going after a Michigan labor union over its Palestine activism

The U.S. government is criminalizing a campus labor union at the University of Michigan for supporting Palestine. We are calling on fellow labor…

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