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What Trump Delivered for Amazon
www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-02/amazon-trump-settlement-win-showed-just-how-tough-deli…
The feds were pushing a landmark case about Amazon’s control of its contract drivers. Then the president put Amazon’s former lawyer in charge.
Johnathon Ervin stands outside the Amazon warehouse in Palmdale, California from which drivers for his business, Battle-Tested Strategies, delivered millions of packages.
Johnathon Ervin stands outside the Amazon warehouse in Palmdale, California from which drivers for his business, Battle-Tested Strategies, delivered millions of packages.Photographer: Stella Kalinina for Bloomberg Businessweek

By Josh Eidelson
June 2, 2026 at 3:00 AM PDT

When government officials shut down major roads and highways in Southern California during a record storm in the winter of 2023, it seemed obvious to Johnathon Ervin that his delivery drivers should stay home. Ervin was the owner of Battle-Tested Strategies in Palmdale, one of thousands of small businesses Amazon.com Inc.has hired over the years to deliver its packages. Palmdale is on the north side of Los Angeles County, which was experiencing an unusual winter storm. Snow circled the Hollywood sign. The mountains near Palmdale received their first blizzard warning in 34 years, and other parts of the county were warned to expect flash floods. Flights to LAX were briefly grounded, beaches and parks shut down, and Disneyland’s “Magic Happens” show didn’t go on. But the decision about whether to brave the storm wasn’t up to Ervin, he says — the manager of Amazon’s local warehouse ordered him to send his drivers out.

“I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’” recalls Ervin, a US Air Force veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. “The roads are closed.” He sent the Amazon rep videos he’d shot on his phone that showed snowy roads blocked off by orange cones, with the flashing lights of a police cruiser standing guard. “He was like, ‘Well, we still have to attempt delivery,’” Ervin says. “‘Central Ops said we must attempt delivery.’” The manager wouldn’t refer Ervin to anyone at Central Ops, he says, and when he stressed that sending out his drivers would put them in danger, the rep kept repeating, “Delivery must be attempted.”

Ervin, who was in the middle of an escalating series of conflicts with Amazon, says he felt the company was leaving him no choice. If his drivers didn’t head out into the storm, Battle-Tested Strategies’ contract with Amazon, its sole customer, would be at risk. “We are still going to send your drivers,” the manager had told him, according to a lawsuit he later filed in California state court. In the end, he says, his team ended up trying to follow the order. A couple of months later, Amazon informed him it was canceling the contract anyway, and Ervin’s business soon went kaput.

“They control everything,” he says. “You’re just a cog.”

In response to a detailed inquiry from Bloomberg Businessweek, Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson said in a statement: “We closely monitor our nationwide operations 24/7 to help prevent weather-related disruptions from impacting our employees, partners, and customers.” He said the company uses a “best-in-class, Amazon-developed tool” to flag expected severe weather events, “establishes a clear plan” for delivery vendors to make adjustments as needed, and can communicate directly with drivers to ensure they can seek shelter or take breaks, “depending on conditions.” In its statement, Amazon also said that people in Ervin’s position “have full control over their operations” and that “the vast majority of them tell us that they love being entrepreneurs who create good jobs and have a positive impact in their communities.” The company said Ervin is an outlier whose contract was terminated for “repeated safety violations.” In his California lawsuit, Ervin says Amazon’s stated reasons for terminating him were “unsubstantiated,” and that the company cut him off in retaliation for being a whistleblower. In a filing, the company denied “generally and specifically, each and every allegation” in that suit.

Amazon calls businesses like Ervin’s its delivery service partners. Over the past decade, Amazon has built a network of thousands of DSPs to deploy hundreds of thousands of drivers who deliver some 20 million packages daily across 19 countries. This network has played a crucial role in cementing the company’s dominance in speedy deliveries. It’s also made Amazon one of the most extreme examples of a phenomenon that has swept through the American workforce in recent decades, in which ground-level workers core to a given brand — from Google coders to McDonald’s cashiers to Uber drivers — are employed on paper by someone else. Increasingly, companies get to have their cake while off-loading the calories and messy crumbs.

For Amazon, this “Who’s the boss?” arrangement offers a liability shield against complaints both involving workers (auto accidents) and brought by them (wage theft). It’s also made it much simpler for the company to avoid negotiating with drivers who want to organize — or at least that was the case until it parted ways with Battle-Tested Strategies. In 2023, while Amazon was winding down its business with the company, Ervin’s staff signed up to unionize with the Teamsters, setting off a yearslong legal battle to prove that Amazon was legally their boss along with Ervin (what’s known as a joint employer). The eventual goal: becoming Amazon’s first US contract drivers to be deemed its employees, and the nation’s first workers to force the company to bargain with them collectively.

The drivers’ odds were always long. Four years after employees at an Amazon warehouse in New York City voted to organize, no negotiations have taken place, and Amazon is asking a federal court to override a series of rulings requiring the company to come to the table. But until this spring, the Palmdale drivers were making landmark progress. Even after President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term last year, the US government kept arguing that Amazon was the boss of Ervin’s workers, and that it was obligated to negotiate with them. Then in April, the government moved to end the case on terms favorable to Amazon, under orders from Trump’s newly appointed general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, previously an outside attorney for the company. The NLRB declined to comment on the settlement.

Portrait of Johnathon Ervin outside the Amazon warehouse in Palmdale, California.
“You’re just a cog,” Ervin says of life as a DSP owner.Photographer: Stella Kalinina for Bloomberg Businessweek
Whatever happens next, the trial has gone on long enough to open an unprecedented window into the extent of Amazon’s control over its supposed subcontractors. Businessweek used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain thousands of pages of confidential company records secured by the US government via the case. They lay bare Amazon’s intimate and intensive regulation of workers it insists aren’t its employees, including governing which drivers DSPs can hire, when they work, where they drive, what they say, how they smell and much more. Among the new details the records reveal are the extent to which Amazon emphasizes that drivers are expected to act as ambassadors to its customers; the plethora of ways it tracks drivers’ progress and performance, marking in red places where it believes they’ve lingered too long and showing each DSP owner which of their employees it rates the worst; and the scripts and gag rules it gives DSPs about talking to drivers, customers, vendors and the public.

“They’re control freaks, because it’s central to their business model,” says David Weil, the US Department of Labor’s head of wage and hour enforcement during the Obama administration. “If you are that deeply involved, congratulations, you have responsibility for the employment relationship.” Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work under the law, says Weil, who’s now a professor of social policy and economics at Brandeis University. He says he worries that Amazon’s apparent victory in the NLRB case, in spite of evidence demonstrating that its control over the operations of its subcontractors is historically extreme, will open the door to other companies micromanaging workers to a similar degree even as they abdicate the responsibilities of an employer. “It will become more and more of a model, to the extent that companies like Amazon are allowed to create this illusion,” Weil says.

Amazon says DSPs’ independence is very much real. “The DSP Program was founded on the fact that small business owners know their communities best,” the company said in its statement. “They make decisions about who they hire and how they operate their businesses, and our contract standards are common across the delivery industry.” Amazon also denied wrongdoing in the NLRB case. “We’re glad to put it behind us so we can focus on supporting our team, our partners — including Delivery Service Partners — and the communities we collectively serve,” the company said.

At trial, an Amazon attorney argued that Ervin was behaving “like George Costanza,” alluding to the Seinfeld episode in which the character quits his job and then tries to go back like it never happened. By the time Ervin recognized his drivers’ union, Amazon argued, he knew his contract was being terminated early, so the organizing effort amounted to a poorly veiled revenge plot, one the company says never secured legitimate majority support. Ervin and his former drivers say he just let them choose for themselves.

In interviews, a dozen drivers who’ve worked for other DSPs in three states describe them as Potemkin businesses that enforce Amazon’s extreme rules, constant surveillance and grueling quotas that in some urban areas can reach 30 stops an hour. One says her DSP manager suggested a funnel she could use to pee into a bottle in her van. Others say their managers told them they must precisely follow any route Amazon’s software lays out for them, even if it makes no sense, to help the algorithm learn. (Amazon says that such characterizations “are false, and the views expressed aren’t representative of most DSPs or their employees,” and that drivers don’t have to obey its suggestions on the order of their deliveries.) As with other teaching jobs, the pay isn’t great: Last year, Amazon announced it would contribute an additional $1.9 billion that it predicted would help DSPs hike drivers’ average pay to nearly $23 an hour. In contrast, hourly pay for full-time Teamsters drivers at United Parcel Service Inc. ranges from around $23 to $48.

While the union fights the NLRB settlement, it has continued trying to organize other Amazon drivers. It’s also pushing for legislationthat would upend Amazon’s contracting model in city councils such as New York’s. Workers say the unionization Ervin cleared the way for has boosted their efforts, as have the disclosures he’s helped bring into the public record about Amazon’s behavior and controls. But the most important factor, many say, is the treatment they face day to day. Driver Matt Multari says Amazon forces him and his colleagues to perform with the dexterity of Olympians and the stamina of robots.

“They always hide behind this huge cloud of bureaucracy. They would say, ‘There’s nothing we can do’ ”

Ervin says the rise and fall of his drivers’ legal case proves his point: Amazon is really the one at the wheel. In his California lawsuit, he’s alleging that Amazon controlled him and his business so utterly that even he should have been classified as an Amazon employee. Owning a DSP wasn’t real entrepreneurship, he says — it was like being a hapless Star Trek ensign who got absorbed into the Borg. “You’re not a partner,” Ervin says. “Resistance is futile.”

Ervin had always wanted to be his own boss. As a teen in Flint, Michigan, where his grandparents raised him after his mom died, he tried and failed to launch a mail-order delivery business. In 1997 he joined the Air Force straight out of high school. He served on active duty for a decade before becoming a reservist and taking a job with a military contractor, which brought him to Kuwait and Iraq. Then, in 2018, Ervin saw an ad from Amazon that he says sounded enticing. The company was seeking “veteran leaders” interested in running their own business and making as much as $300,000 a year as a DSP. (He says he never managed to make that amount.)

“They recruited me to be a leader,” Ervin says. “I was like, ‘Wow, I like Amazon. They’re pretty tip-of-the-spear.’”

Battle-Tested Strategies started delivering to customers in October 2019. Ervin was an early star of the DSP program, scoring high ratings, gracing promotional materials and recruiting more would-be business owners. In 2020, citing Ervin’s “proven leadership,” Amazon asked him to transfer his operations from Pasadena to a warehouse it was opening in Palmdale, an hour north of LA. “We would love to have a strong owner like you help us launch DAX8 and be a pioneer in creating a customer and driver obsessed culture in our new location,” an Amazon rep told Ervin in an email viewed by Businessweek. He agreed to take on the challenge.

But Ervin says he slowly began to realize the program wasn’t what it seemed: The more he tried acting like a leader, the more his relationship with Amazon soured. When he suggested the company adopt the Air Force’s standards for protecting troops from excessive heat, Amazon ignored him. When he suggested boosting drivers’ health and morale by instituting periodic surprise lower-quota days, one of the Amazon reps he’d been working with rejected the idea out of hand. “They always hide behind this huge cloud of bureaucracy,” he says. “They would say, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’”

In November 2021, Ervin, who’s Black, filed an internal complaint alleging racial bias by an Amazon manager who he says refused to communicate directly with him and had falsely labeled him “aggressive.” (According to Ervin’s California lawsuit, the manager accused him of “physically cornering” her, “even though they had never been alone together.”) Ervin says Amazon did nothing about his complaint. In its statement, Amazon said that it doesn’t tolerate discrimination or harassment and that it thoroughly investigates such misconduct.

According to Ervin, one day in 2022 when temperatures reached 107F, an Amazon rep complained that his drivers were falling behind on their delivery quotas. When he responded that Amazon had failed to apply its own policy easing workloads during extreme heat, he says, the rep replied that it was too late to change the day’s assignments, and that if some drivers were too sick to perform he’d need to provide written affidavits to prove it. Ervin says when he told the rep some of the day’s cargo would just have to wait, the rep threatened him with breach of contract.

Ervin stands next to an Amazon delivery truck in 2023.
Ervin at work in 2023.Photographer: Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Around the same time, Ervin’s employees began circulating a petition documenting their own workplace grievances, including about the quotas, suggesting the sort of collective action that can turn into a union drive. An Amazon rep called Ervin and told him they’d heard his drivers were planning a walkout, then referred him to attorneys from Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, a law firm specializing in labor strife whose costs Amazon was helping DSPs cover. Ervin called a meeting with his drivers to discuss their grievances, then told them that he would “do my best” to help, but that “my hands are sort of tied,” he would later testify.

“Basically, he was just telling us that he’s a puppet,” and that “his strings are being pulled by Amazon,” former employee Rajpal Singh recalled at the NLRB trial. He testified that Ervin added, “If you guys want changes, you guys can form a union.”

Starting in late 2022, Amazon tagged Ervin’s company with a series of alleged breaches of contract, including failing to pay vendors on time and letting vehicles that should’ve been out of service stay on the road. He says that the alleged infractions were based on faulty information or caused by Amazon’s own mistakes, and that they were clearly retaliating against him and his drivers. Around then, Ervin says, Amazon repeatedly suggested he pull out of his contract, close to a year ahead of schedule. Channeling Charlton Heston, he told the company it could take his DSP “from my cold, dead hands.”

In February 2023, Ervin received an email from “DSPuniformstandards@amazon.com” saying Amazon would be slashing its per-package payment rate to Battle-Tested Strategies, because the share of staff obeying Amazon’s uniform rules had fallen below 95% for the prior several weeks. “I believe we are being targeted,” Ervin wrote back. “What are the standard operating procedures that you’re using?” The Amazon account pointed him back to its “program policies.” When Ervin said the company wasn’t following its own rules, Amazon didn’t budge.

“I want to speak to your boss,” Ervin said in a follow-up email on March 15. “You folks are purposefully not listening and causing undue stress by not having a proper discussion on this issue. … I’m telling you I’m being targeted and you’re not listening. Who are you? What is your boss’s name and phone number?” A month later, Amazon told Ervin it was cutting him loose, effective in June. Within a week of that news, Ervin had let Teamsters organizers come speak to his drivers at the start of their shift and sign them up on the property. He then became the first DSP owner to negotiate and sign a collective bargaining agreement. He says he saw no reason not to.

In its statement, Amazon denied Ervin’s account of pushing for heat protections and reduced workloads and said that he violated its safety rules by failing to maintain air conditioning in his vans. The company said it canned Battle-Tested Strategies for violations including using vehicles with faulty brakes: “Safety is our top priority and when there were clear violations to their contractual obligations to maintain this standard, we did what any reasonable company would do and took action to end their contract, well before they had engaged with the Teamsters.” In his California lawsuit, Ervin claims he was the one who raised concerns about faulty A/C in the vehicles and says Amazon failed to address the issue.

In September 2024, Joe Biden’s NLRB issued a complaint against Amazon, arguing that the company wielded enough control over Ervin’s drivers to be legally considered their boss and that it was therefore obligated to collectively bargain with them once he recognized their union. The landmark federal complaint also accused Amazon of illegally threatening, coercing and retaliating against drivers during the months between their organizing and the dissolution of Battle-Tested Strategies, including by singling out their warehouse for stricter inspections, delaying their deliveries and deploying security guards to the property. (Something it hadn’t bothered to do, driver Michael Leib would later testify, when someone was stealing the catalytic converters from their vehicles.)

Portrait of Amazon driver Michael Leib.
Former Amazon driver Michael Leib says he was bitten by dogs four times on the job.Photographer: Stella Kalinina for Bloomberg Businessweek
A week after Inauguration Day 2025, when Jeff Bezos sat stage left of Tim Cook and Elon Musk and in front of incoming cabinet members, President Trump fired the NLRB general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who’d brought the case alleging Amazon was a joint employer. In a letter Businessweek obtained via FOIA, Trump toldAbruzzo and another terminated top appointee he was concerned about their “disfavoring the interests of employers large and small,” and he specifically cited their position on joint employment. To replace Abruzzo on an acting basis, Trump tapped William Cowen, who’d served as an NLRB member under President George W. Bush.

With Cowen in charge, the agency abandoned a slew of claimsAbruzzo had been prosecuting, including against Apple Inc. and SpaceX. (Both companies have denied wrongdoing in those matters.) But Cowen forged ahead with some of her initiatives, including the case about Ervin’s DSP. In an interview with Businessweek late last year, he said companies that want to limit their liability have a simple solution: “If an employer wants to avoid being a joint employer, stop sticking your nose in another employer’s business.” The Palmdale case, he said, presented “a huge question both for the Teamsters and for Amazon.” Over the years, he said, other companies have changed their business models to directly employ workers once the government determined they’d be held liable for their treatment regardless.

People on all sides of the dispute should want to see the case proceed so the question of Amazon’s responsibility can get a clear answer, Cowen argued: “It is a big issue, and it has implications all over the country. And if I, for example, were to say, ‘OK, well, I’m not prosecuting that, I’m not buying into that theory,’ that doesn’t really get anything resolved.”

Amazon opened the labor board trial by telling the judge it was refusing to comply with the government’s subpoenas. “Amazon is not willing to participate in the misuse of the NLRB’s processes,” attorney Brian Stolzenbach said at the hearing in Los Angeles last September, accusing Cowen’s team of subjecting the company to a “fishing expedition” in service of a broader agenda. Amazon announced it wouldn’t share the documents the NLRB was seeking to help establish whether it was a joint employer of Ervin’s drivers. But with Ervin’s cooperation, plenty of evidence came out anyway.

A 2023 version of Amazon’s DSP contract entered into evidence showed that the company requires its supposedly independent contractors to adhere not only to Amazon’s program policies at the time but also to whatever future ones the company unilaterally imposes, which would then become “a part of your company’s contract with Amazon as if they were written in their entirety in this Agreement.” (Similar provisions are in an earlier version of the contract that Bloomberg News reported on back in 2021.) Amazon also dictates which vendors DSPs can use for everything from oil changes to tire rotations, as well as when and how vendors can be contacted, according to the records released in the case. Amazon assigns which packages drivers deliver and the routes they drive to do it, and instructs DSPs to tell drivers to “trust your delivery route,” even if it “may seem circular,” because each is designed to minimize “inefficient maneuvers” such as left turns. And it knows how those routes are going, because DSPs must give Amazon access to a vast array of data, including the live locations of their drivers, which it can use “without restriction.”

Amazon requires that DSPs make drivers sign nondisclosure agreements, submit to arbitration in the event of a dispute and take drug tests when an Amazon rep deems appropriate. On the job, drivers — each of whom the retailer told DSPs “represents Amazon to our customers” — are required to wear Amazon polos and Amazon pants or shorts, with the options of an Amazon hat (never to be worn backward) and an Amazon coat. Amazon also requires that drivers be “neat and clean,” including “prevention of unpleasant breath or body odor, modest perfume/cologne, and clean teeth, face/ears, fingernails and hair.” If Amazon isn’t satisfied with a particular driver, it can “deactivate” them, unilaterally terminating their authorization to deliver its packages.

“The delivery service partners, including BTS, are essentially captive delivery companies”

The documents disgorged by the Battle-Tested Strategies case also suggest how drivers can fall out of favor. According to company records released in the legal case and then obtained by Businessweekvia FOIA, Amazon also formulates performance rankings of DSP drivers and creates leaderboards for each DSP owner, ranking each of their staff. Amazon’s systems also use bright yellow, orange or red to mark “areas where a driver has spent excessive amounts of time.”

When things go awry, drivers are supposed to call a support hotline staffed by Amazon, not their DSP. A DSP must immediately notify Amazon following “any negative interactions with customers or the general public,” or any other “occurrences that may impact customer trust of your company or of Amazon.” If property is damaged, the DSP is barred from further contact with the property owner after letting the owner know what happened.

Per a 2022 operations manual revealed in the case, Amazon told DSP owners to be careful what they call their company, because “Amazon may require you to change” any name it finds offensive or too close to its own lingo — for instance, using the word “Smile.” And along with providing talking points for DSP owners to use at morning meetings with drivers, it directs them to save time during those huddles for any presentations Amazon wants to make directly to their staff.

The newly revealed documents show that Amazon offers templates for job postings DSPs can use to recruit drivers and that it has to sign off on any new hires hauling its stuff. But it insists that the DSPs avoid saying “Amazon is hiring” and specifies that “Amazon cannot be mentioned” if the job ad refers to the background checks it requires and insists on reviewing. Amazon can reject candidates DSPs wanted to hire, based on the retailer’s own confidential criteria, “because the decision being made is whether the individual is eligible to deliver to Amazon customers’ homes.” Those who make the cut must undergo a multiday training program facilitated by Amazon.

Amazon choreographs its deliveries with care, listing seven steps and specifying that photos of packages can’t include “any part of a human.” It says DSP employees should “help validate the customer’s investment by greeting them with a smile, being enthusiastic and thanking the customer for choosing Amazon.” According to records shared at trial, Ogletree Deakins, the law firm whose costs Amazon subsidized to help DSPs handle labor strife, told Ervin in an email that its attorneys helped “mitigate against” the prospect of unionization and noted: “Since Amazon’s requirements and operations are the cause of many if not most of the driver’s issues and concerns, we need to work with them to address those and cannot do it without them.”

Despite all this, Amazon instructs DSPs to “emphasize to your employees that they work for your company and aren’t Amazon employees,” and to ensure those drivers are careful on social media to “avoid the mistaken impression that they work for Amazon.” DSPs are barred from issuing press releases or promotional materials that mention Amazon without permission.

“The DSPs, including BTS, are essentially captive delivery companies,” NLRB attorney Sanam Yasseri told the judge in September. A parade of ex-employees echoed her. One, Leib, recalled learning Ervin needed to go to Amazon to ask for money when Leib wanted a raise (he didn’t get it), and said that Amazon promised it would remove one of the houses where dogs bit him from his route, but never did. Another, Deion Steppes, described getting marked down by Amazon for delivering packages too slowly on a day when a customer threatened him with a shotgun. Steppes also recounted being taken off the road by Amazon for not completing a required five-minute training video, struggling for days to log back into Amazon’s portal so he could watch it, then going weeks without pay while he waited for Amazon to reactivate him.

Michael Leib walks hand in hand with his young son.
Leib with his son.Photographer: Stella Kalinina for Bloomberg Businessweek
Later, when Amazon attorney Stolzenbach pressed Steppes to agree that he’d never been an Amazon employee, Steppes responded, “I thought I was employed by Amazon.”

Wasn’t Ervin’s company his employer, the lawyer asked? “I didn’t know they were separate entities,” Steppes answered.

But wasn’t Battle-Tested Strategies the name on his paycheck? At that point, Steppes lifted his hands in the air and said, “I usually get direct deposit.”

Drivers across the country tell similar stories in interviews. They say their DSPs turned out to be powerless to fix their working conditions, such as quotas that some days left them an average of two minutes per stop. In Amazon parlance, one “stop” can include multiple drop-offs of packages at a series of nearby homes, or carrying a set of dumbbells up several flights of stairs. Amazon also controls the AI-powered cameras in drivers’ vans, which are supposed to flag unsafe driving. Drivers say the cameras can tag them with undue infractions — for yawning, or drinking water, or just having breasts that obscure their seatbelt — and generally creep them out. Years after Amazon drivers became notorious for having to urinate in bottles as they hustled to make their assigned deliveries, another testament to the unforgiving quotas, many drivers say the bottle move remains de rigueur. To obstruct the camera’s view of their genitals, some say, they rearrange boxes before relieving themselves.

According to records unearthed in the Battle-Tested Strategies case, in talking points Amazon provided to DSP owners about the initial introduction of the cameras, they’re instructed to tell drivers, “I can assure you that Amazon has taken privacy seriously with this rollout.”

In its statement, Amazon said that drivers are able to use the restroom as needed, that its app tells drivers where they can find a public bathroom, that its routes include several breaks, and that those routes account for geography, traffic and the complexity of stops. “There are no fixed quotas, and the vast majority of routes are finished on-time or early,” the company said. “DSPs determine how many routes they run, who they assign those routes to, and they’re able to work with their teams to adjust stop order if they choose.” (The company said its message about telling drivers to trust their delivery routes was a recommendation, not a mandate.) Amazon emphasized that the cameras are meant to protect drivers, saying their footage is “only reviewed by a limited number of trained personnel after a specific safety event” and that they can be turned off during breaks. “DSPs and drivers can dispute any items they feel are an inaccurate representation of events,” the company said. It also said it doesn’t expect drivers to deliver at places where they don’t feel safe, and provides dog avoidance training and a way to flag the presence of dogs in its app.

As for its contract terms, the company said, “DSPs run their own businesses, and the contracts that we have with them are pretty common across the industry to ensure safety and reliability.” It said it doesn’t prevent DSPs from having additional clients beyond Amazon, or from keeping drivers who aren’t allowed to deliver Amazon packages on their payroll doing something else.

When Ervin took the stand last fall, he described the stress of trying to meet Amazon’s daily quotas, knowing his pay per package would drop if the company rated his performance merely “fantastic” rather than what it calls “fantastic-plus.” He recalled Amazon questioning him during drivers’ shifts about why they were falling behind, telling him they’d “stopped too much” and sometimes going over his head to redeploy other drivers to help fulfill their quotas. He testified that his deputy, who went on his behalf to a training held by Ogletree Deakins, told him the instructor there warned that “your contract would be in danger if your drivers unionized.” (Ogletree Deakins didn’t respond to inquiries.)

Ervin also testified that Amazon “coaches” regularly dictated his company’s business targets. “They’d say, ‘We think this is a good goal,’ and I’d say, ‘I don’t,’ and they say, ‘Well, you need to do it anyway,’” he said.

After Ervin testified about Amazon’s extensive access to Battle-Tested Strategies’ financial records, a Teamsters attorney asked, “Do you have reciprocal access to Amazon’s?” Ervin answered, “No.”

During cross-examination, Stolzenbach, the Amazon attorney, pointed out that, though Ervin had told drivers who’d asked about raises that he needed to check with Amazon about getting more money to afford them, nothing in Ervin’s contract stopped him from bringing worker pay up to $25 an hour by handing them the difference out of his own pocket. Stolzenbach suggested Amazon’s relationship with Ervin had been, in a way, like Ervin’s relationship with contractors he hired for various tasks. “When Battle-Tested Strategies contracted for services or products from another company, did Battle-Tested Strategies expect that other company to live up to the contract?” he asked.

“The expectations that I would have if I purchased something would be, yeah, they give me the item,” Ervin answered. “But I wouldn’t bully them.”

The agency’s prosecutors were closer than they’d ever been to securing a ruling that would hold Amazon liable for its contract drivers. Then they abruptly retreated.

A week before Christmas, the US Senate confirmed Crystal Carey, a partner at the management-side law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, to take over for Cowen as the NLRB’s general counsel. Carey had represented Amazon as an attorney at Morgan Lewis, where Amazon is still a client. Her nomination drew condemnation from the Teamsters union, whose president had given a high-profile speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. It also attracted skepticism from Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri, who questioned whether Carey would enforce precedents such as a landmark 2024 ruling against her former client Amazon that banned mandatory anti-union “captive audience” meetings. (In the end Hawley voted for her too.)

In a February interview with Businessweek, Carey said the ethics agreement she signed when she took the NLRB job didn’t require her to recuse herself from Amazon controversies including the Battle-Tested Strategies case, because a year had elapsed since she’d represented the retailer and, though her firm still did, it wasn’t doing so in that particular case. Recusal, she said, was “matter-specific.” Asked if she considered that standard sufficient, Carey said she’d been “working very closely” with the agency’s ethics office and getting its staff’s recommendations “to the extent that I have a question.”

While Morgan Lewis doesn’t represent Amazon in the NLRB case, it’s defending the company against Ervin’s California lawsuit, which also alleges the company wielded extensive control over Battle-Tested Strategies. (Amazon has gotten that case moved into arbitration.) An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment further.

On April 12, the day before testimony was set to resume in the NLRB trial, one of Carey’s attorneys sent the judge a proposed settlement her office had hashed out with Amazon. Under the agreement, Amazon would give Ervin’s former drivers two weeks’ pay and post a notice at the warehouse promising not to threaten or retaliate against workers there, without conceding anything about whether it employed them. It wouldn’t admit any wrongdoing and wouldn’t be considered a joint employer.

A hastily organized Zoom hearing the next day gave off light hostage-video vibes. Yasseri, the NLRB lawyer who’d opened the trial with tough talk about accountability, now explained that “at the direction of the general counsel” — Carey — she was seeking approval of the settlement, which Amazon had already blessed. Yasseri’s voice quivered, and she mostly looked down at her notes as she spoke. Midway through, she shook her head a bit and paused for a few seconds before saying even though Amazon wouldn’t be found liable as a joint employer, that was no reason to reject the settlement, because a finding of liability wouldn’t necessarily lead to any specific remedy anyway. While the labor board had ruled that Amazon broke the law elsewhere — including violating a settlement— she noted that there had been no such judgment about that particular Palmdale warehouse.

Ervin stands near a parking lot with Amazon trucks in the background.
“I’m telling you I’m being targeted, and you’re not listening,” Ervin told Amazon before the company terminated his contract.Photographer: Stella Kalinina for Bloomberg Businessweek
Stolzenbach echoed Yasseri’s arguments, saying it was in the workers’ best interest to get paid now rather than let the case go on several more years as Amazon went through as many appeals as necessary. He added: “If the Court of Appeals didn’t agree with Amazon, Amazon would ask the Supreme Court to consider the case.” Settling would save the agency’s “strained resources” for other cases, he argued.

When it was her turn to speak, Julie Gutman Dickinson, a lawyer for the Teamsters, denounced the settlement as an “ambush,” an “ineffectual” deal that “capitulates” to Amazon, courtesy of a general counsel “beholden to corporate billionaires including her former client.” Rather than helping triage, Gutman Dickinson said, letting Amazon keep evading responsibility for its drivers would undermine labor law enforcement nationwide: “This unilateral settlement makes clear to workers across the country that Amazon is above the law.”

On May 18, the agency judge considering the case ruled that the deal should be approved, noting that under NLRB precedent “the General Counsel’s support for the settlement agreement is an important consideration.” On May 28, the union filed a motion to appeal that ruling to the labor board members in Washington — a panel that is mostly made up of Trump appointees.

The evidence Amazon was a joint employer “is unusually strong,” says Boston University law professor Andrew Elmore, a former section chief in the New York attorney general’s office who’s reviewed hundreds of companies’ vendor and franchise contracts. “I am unaware of any other case that has revealed so much about the relationship” between Amazon and its DSPs, he says. “Failing to arrive at that final determination seems to be a signal to companies that they can go ahead and create contractual relationships like this without fear.”

For now the Teamsters union and its allies are pushing bills in New York City and Chicago that could destabilize the DSP model in a different way, by requiring companies such as Amazon to classify delivery drivers who work within their city limits as direct employees. The New York bill has been sponsored by the majority of the city council and is endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s worker protection agency. Amazon said in its statement that it’s concerned the New York legislation would endanger jobs and harm customers by “forcing us to consider relocating delivery operations outside of the city.”

Jerome Sloss speaks at a rally on the steps of New York City Hall. A crowd stands behind him holding signs that read Pass the Delivery Protection Act.
Jerome Sloss speaks at a rally on the steps of New York City Hall ahead of the reintroduction of the Delivery Protection Act in February.Photographer: Alex Moore/International Brotherhood of Teamsters
In April, hundreds of Amazon drivers and activists — some supporting the bill, some opposing it — showed up in Manhattan to hold dueling rallies and then pack the city council’s chambers as lawmakers heard testimony from both sides.

In interviews outside the hearing, several DSP owners said that they saw themselves as partners with Amazon and that the company had been responsive when they suggested changes. “Amazon, they do check to make sure we’re being compliant with all the laws and everything,” said DSP owner Christine Chan. “But I run my own business.” She compared the relationship to fast-food franchising.

Several delivery workers outside the hearing told Businessweek that they’d been paid and encouraged by their DSPs to demonstrate against the bill, and that they were worried they’d lose their jobs if it passed. “I was informed that my livelihood was at stake, and I had to show up,” said one driver, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “It’s hard to get a job out here.”

The rallies took place a couple of weeks after Amazon launched a contest for DSP drivers around the country, offering $1,000 prizes and “VIP experiences” for those with the best stories about why they love their job. The contest rules said winning entries would be chosen based on criteria including “genuine, specific details that feel real and lived-in.” Amazon said in its statement that the contest is meant to celebrate drivers around the country. The company said it has never intended to use workers’ submissions to oppose legislation or legal proceedings.

Some drivers have continued trying to organize with the Teamsters, who’ve announced they’ve signed up majorities of employees at a couple dozen DSPs in California, Georgia, Illinois and New York for union drives. No other DSP owners, however, have agreed to recognize the union, nor has Amazon. Workers say Amazon and DSPs have responded with a barrage of tactics to dissuade them from unionizing, including by deploying anti-union consultants to ride along with drivers, posting propaganda above the warehouses’ urinals and giving away $20 Amazon gift cards. Ervin and the Teamsters say they hear from other frustrated DSPs who aren’t ready to publicly knock the company. In November a group calling itself DSPs for Equitable and Fair Treatment went public, aiming to organize like-minded business owners, but its organizers remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

In its statement, Amazon said that the vast majority of DSPs “run successful, profitable businesses,” and that the percentage who voluntarily leave the program “remains in the single digits.” The company said that, to help workers get the truth in the face of pro-union misinformation or intimidation, it brings in experts “to share objective facts about what it actually means to have an external party take their voice.” It said there is “no evidence” showing the Teamsters have secured union cards from majorities of workers at any DSP.

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The Teamsters have filed complaints with the NLRB accusing Amazon of terminating contracts with several DSPs because the workers organized. The fate of those cases now also rests with Carey, whose other recent pivots on the agency’s behalf include overriding the United Auto Workers’ objections to settle a case over alleged union-busting by Mercedes-Benz Group AG before a high-stakes election in 2024, and abandoning a push by Cowen to overturn a union’s defeat at a Wells Fargo & Co. branch because of the bank’s alleged illegal interference with workers’ rights. (Mercedes-Benz and Wells Fargo have denied wrongdoing, as has Amazon.)

One of the DSP drivers pushing for the New York bill, Jerome Sloss, has spoken in front of City Hall about being homeless while working for Amazon. “There’s no way to do it safely and on time,” Sloss says. He’d started organizing at his DSP because he realized Amazon’s official channel for driver input “might as well be toilet paper that they wipe their ass with,” and he figured drivers needed to take matters into their own hands: “Nobody was coming to save us.” (Amazon said in its statement that it values and acts on driver feedback.)

Portrait of Jerome Sloss sitting inside a delivery truck.
“Nobody was coming to save us,” Sloss says.Photographer: Don Brodie for Bloomberg Businessweek
Ervin says his ordeal as a DSP owner upended his life and his finances. “I’ve gone through a lot in the last few years,” he said during cross-examination, including losing his house. “I’m a little in shambles, even though it may not look like it.” His California lawsuit alleges he suffered “humiliation” and “anguish” because of his dealings with Amazon. But Ervin says he’s glad he stood up for himself and his drivers: “Those Pearly Gates, whoever’s up there, if somebody’s up there, they’re not like, ‘Hey, man, how many packages did you deliver?’”

He says Amazon’s narrow fixation on being “customer-obsessed” comes with major costs. “A lot of my drivers are Amazon customers too. It would be fantastic if Amazon were obsessed with them.”

While navigating the ups and downs of the legal cases, Ervin has also been working to get a new business off the ground, one he calls Battle-Tested Foods. He recently got his first big break: He’ll be a popcorn supplier for Walmart Inc. … See MoreSee Less

What Trump Delivered for Amazon

www.bloomberg.com

The feds were pushing a landmark case about Amazon’s control of its contract drivers. Then the president put Amazon’s former lawyer in charge.

United Public Workers for Action

3 days ago

In San Francisco, a Divided Left Eyes Nancy Pelosi’s Seat
BY ABE ASHER
jacobin.com/2026/06/sf-congress-election-chan-chakrabarti
Two progressives — Justice Democrats cofounder Saikat Chakrabarti and union-backed city hall veteran Connie Chan — are fighting to advance past the primary for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat. Their race has become a referendum on the SF left’s future.
Candidates for San Francisco's Congressional District 11 seat, from left, Saikat Chakrabarti, Connie Chan, and Scott Wiener debate at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, on Tuesday, March 31, 2026..jpeg
San Francisco’s primary to determine who gets the chance to succeed Nancy Pelosi has turned into a progressive showdown between Saikat Chakrabarti and Connie Chan. In that contest, the SF left sees a referendum on the city’s future. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez / San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
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Saikat Chakrabarti would, on the surface, appear to be a slam-dunk progressive choice to succeed retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi as San Francisco’s representative in Congress.

In just more than a decade, the forty-year-old Chakrabarti has built a redoubtable record in left-wing politics: he worked on Bernie Sanders’s first campaign for president, cofounded Justice Democrats, and then wrote the Green New Deal bill when he served as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s pugnacious first chief of staff. He supports Medicare for All, tuition-free public universities, raising taxes on millionaires, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and terminating all military aid to Israel. He has the backing of Represenatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and has promised to take on entrenched interests in the Democratic Party. Last month, he and influencer Hasan Piker filled a club in SoMa for a rally. Chakrabarti may be a centimillionaire, flush with cash from helping to found the payment processing platform Stripe, but he identifies proudly as a class traitor. “I grew up with this simple idea,” Chakrabarti said. “If you get lucky, it’s your duty to help.”

But while Chakrabarti has received the vocal support of a segment of the city’s young and progressive voters, who have plastered signs around the Mission District touting his opposition to the Gaza genocide, other progressive voters have tilted toward Supervisor Connie Chan — leaving Chakrabarti in a fight just to finish second in Tuesday’s primary and qualify for a November runoff against moderate State Senator Scott Wiener. It’s a race that has raised questions not only about the bona fides of each candidate, but also about what San Francisco has become after decades of skyrocketing housing costs and Silicon Valley encroachment and what its embattled progressive community most values in its torchbearers.

Chakrabarti’s wealth, and the extent to which he’s utilized it in his campaign, has been a millstone with some voters. But perhaps nothing has harmed Chakrabarti with his would-be allies on the Left like his thin record in local politics — and, in particular, his support of Bilal Mahmood in a race for the Board of Supervisors against democratic socialist Dean Preston two years ago.

You might assume that Chakrabarti, given his campaign rhetoric and work in national politics, would have stood in Preston’s corner. But he did not.
Preston was not only the most progressive member of the Board of Supervisors, but he was also during his term of service the only socialist holding elected office in what is — or was — one of the country’s most progressive cities. For the coalition of tech barons and real estate interests intent on remaking San Francisco, ousting Preston became an obsession in much the way that ousting reformer District Attorney Chesa Boudin and a trio of Board of Education members had been previously. Elon Musk, ever understated, tweeted multiple times that Preston should be “in prison.”

Just one day after the 2022 election, the tech-backed political organization GrowSF, which had helped fund the efforts to recall Boudin and the school board members, filed papers to register a campaign committee aimed at defeating Preston for reelection. By the next summer, the “Dump Dean PAC” had raised more than $300,000 — with Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator and a ringleader of local moderates, announcing that he’d personally donated $50,000. Chris Larsen, a blockchain billionaire, pitched in $50,000 as well. Musk pledged $100,000.

You might assume that Chakrabarti, given his campaign rhetoric and work in national politics, would have stood in Preston’s corner. But he did not. Not only did Chakrabarti endorse Mahmood, but he also donated $10,000 to his campaign. And it wasn’t just Mahmood: Chakrabarti lined up behind moderate candidates up and down the ballot, supporting Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie for mayor and Michael Lai’s bid for supervisor against progressive Chyanne Chen. In each of those races, Chan, who was also a target of GrowSF’s, lined up on the opposite side. She endorsed Preston, Aaron Peskin for mayor, and Chen to join her on the Board of Supervisors.

Unlike Tom Steyer, another obscenely rich candidate who has courted the Left in his race for governor, Chakrabarti has not issued a mea culpa for his past actions and alliances. In fact, at a Working Families Party forum in February, Chakrabarti defended his support of Mahmood — telling an audience member that Mahmood is a “progressive” because he supports the city’s tax on any large corporation whose best-compensated employee makes more than one hundred times its median employee. Whether or not Mahmood qualifies as a progressive, his replacing Preston has resulted in what is likely one of the largest single swings to the right in the modern history of the Board of Supervisors. A San Francisco Chronicle analysis found that while Preston was one of the most progressive supervisors serving between 2020 and 2025, Mahmood was one of the two most moderate.

Of course, mapping ideologies in the context of city politics can be challenging — and in San Francisco, where progressive policy is still generally popular, candidates like Mahmood have used housing politics as a cudgel against more progressive candidates. Mahmood and Preston’s other opponents spent months arguing that Preston’s insufficient support of market-rate housing construction effectively made him an impediment to tackling the city’s affordability crisis, and it’s this point on which Chakrabarti appears to have been swayed.

Unlike Tom Steyer, another obscenely rich candidate who has courted the Left in his race for governor, Chakrabarti has not issued a mea culpa for his past actions and alliances.
In a more extensive explanation of his support for Mahmood on social media last year, Chakrabarti wrote that while he voted for Preston in 2020, he soured on Preston’s approach to housing and felt Mahmood took the crisis “more seriously.”

“Over time, I came to believe that [Preston] was not interested in making the sweeping changes that are needed to tackle the housing crisis in SF, and to solve many other issues either,” Chakrabarti wrote:

I believe SF has a deep housing shortage that will require us to build new housing at a pace we have never done before. I don’t believe cutting red tape alone will do it — I also believe we need massive amounts of public finance and social housing and a proactive approach that makes sure housing actually gets built at all income levels. . . . I didn’t back Bilal as part of some larger tech plot — I just backed him because I thought he was the better candidate.
Suffice to say that the city’s most progressive voters did not agree with Chakrabarti’s assessment. Preston, a former tenant attorney and tenants’ rights activist, had a robust housing record of his own, albeit with different points of emphasis than the YIMBY movement’s: he authored bills to protect renters from eviction during the pandemic, pushed to acquire sites to house homeless people, and, perhaps most significant, introduced a successful ballot initiative to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for affordable housing measures annually by increasing the transfer tax on property sales of more than $10 million.

Roots, Money, and Allies

Whether Chakrabarti’s local political record particularly matters in a race for Congress may be debatable, but there is perhaps another reason why he has struggled to endear himself to a segment of the city’s progressive base: he is, like so many of the men responsible for financing the right-wing takeover of the city in recent years, is a centimillionaire who attended Harvard, began his postgraduate life at the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, moved to Silicon Valley, and made a fortune helping to found Stripe.

For some of those dismayed by San Francisco’s transformation into an increasingly exclusive, sanitized tech enclave, there is a disquieting quality about Chakrabarti’s biography. Likewise, there’s something unnerving about his transience, having vacated and returned to the city several times over recent years. It’s a vulnerability Wiener and his allies have repeatedly attempted to exploit in both mailers and the side of a van, and it’s likely why Chakrabarti has used one of his final advertisements to remind voters not of his position on Palestine or health care but of his San Francisco credentials. The spot features old photographs of Chakrabarti at the Golden Gate Bridge and on Baker Beach. I’m one of you, it seems to say.

Chan does not need to convince anyone of that. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Taiwan, she arrived in the city at thirteen and initially lived with her mother, brother, aunt, and uncle in a one-bedroom Chinatown apartment. Chan didn’t go to Harvard, but rather to the University of California, Davis, an hour and change away. She spent the first years of her career working not for a start-up in Silicon Valley but for the Community Youth Center of San Francisco.

None of that necessarily means that Chan would make a better representative than Chakrabarti, but it has given her campaign a certain symbolic weight for people concerned that the San Francisco they love is in danger of slipping away: a city where a child can arrive without English, attend public schools, make a career in public service, raise a family, and go to Congress. It fits the narrative all too neatly that Chakrabarti, who has given his campaign nearly $10 million of his own fortune, has outraised Chan by a margin of nearly twenty to one.

For some of those dismayed by San Francisco’s transformation into an increasingly exclusive, sanitized tech enclave, there is a disquieting quality about Chakrabarti’s biography.
More than that, perhaps, Chan is a known quantity. She has racked up endorsements from teachers, nurses, and firefighter unions, the San Francisco Labor Council, and a broad array of local progressive organizations. She has been backed by Preston, Peskin, and Chen, the candidates Chakrabarti overlooked two years ago, as well as by Sen. Adam Schiff and Pelosi herself. Chakrabarti, though his platform may go further than Chan’s, does not list a single union endorsement on his website. He has not been endorsed by a single active member of the Board of Supervisors or a single member of the California legislature. He does, however, boast the support of New York Councilman Chi Ossé.

Pelosi, whose animus for Chakrabarti seems to date at least to 2019, when he compared moderate House Democrats to segregationists over their support for a border aid package, has taken to publicly suggesting he’s a carpetbagger: “I don’t have any idea who he is,” she told KQED in a recent interview. “I’ve never seen him at a homeless shelter, or a food bank, or at an immigration center. I’ve never seen him in the community.”

San Francisco voters will have to decide how to weigh it all — whether an energetic candidate who cofounded Justice Democrats but has a questionable local record is worthy of left-wing votes, or whether a candidate backed by Schiff might well be the safest progressive bet. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has routed hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Super PAC supporting Chan, though its motivations for doing so are not entirely clear, given that Chan is a vocal opponent of Israel’s assault on Gaza. AROC Action, the political organization of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, issued a joint endorsement.

California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) did not recommend a vote for either candidate, calling both “decent but flawed” choices, and DSA San Francisco likewise abstained. Aditya Bhumbla, cochair of DSA SF, told Jacobin that both candidates were “deeply imperfect,” calling Chakrabarti entrenched in tech circles and Chan entrenched in the machinery of the Democratic Party. Bhumbla characterized Chakrabarti as “spending tens of millions to blanket the airwaves in the absence of a long-term connection to local organizing” and criticized Chan for bad votes related to policing and homelessness. “The absence of a true socialist in the race is an indication that the Left has work to do if we’re going to be able to exert power in Congress,” Bhumbla said.

Polls suggest Chan and Chakrabarti are neck and neck, though Chan’s campaign has insisted that some surveys have missed her robust support among Chinese speakers. Whoever triumphs will likely face Wiener, who, in some respects, is an even better avatar of modern San Francisco than Chakrabarti is. Wiener, who was raised in southern New Jersey and came out as gay while attending Duke University, landed in San Francisco in the late 1990s. He has been a fixture of the city’s political life for the better part of two decades — first representing a district including the Castro on the Board of Supervisors before winning election to the state senate a decade ago.

Wiener has carved out a reputation in Sacramento as one of the legislature’s most productive members, and he has championed the kind of deregulatory, abundance-style YIMBYism that has gained rapid popularity in recent years. He also has close connections to major real estate interests and Silicon Valley players, including Larsen, who has donated $100,000 to a Super PAC supporting him. Perhaps not coincidentally, Wiener opposes both a San Francisco tax on CEOs who make more than one hundred times what their median employee makes and a onetime tax on California billionaires. Even Pelosi supports the latter measure, which will be on the ballot in the fall when Wiener faces either Chan or Chakrabarti.

That race, too, will be a referendum on San Francisco’s political direction. Whoever triumphs between Chakrabarti and Chan will need the other candidate’s validation and supporters. With San Francisco continually under threat from big money interests, the Left cannot afford to be divided — or pick the wrong candidate to elevate. … See MoreSee Less

In San Francisco, a Divided Left Eyes Nancy Pelosi’s Seat

jacobin.com

Two progressives — Justice Democrats cofounder Saikat Chakrabarti and union-backed city hall veteran Connie Chan — are fighting to advance past the primary for Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat….

United Public Workers for Action

3 days ago

California advances $12 billion bond for science research in rebuke to Trump cuts
Long legislative path, and voter approval, still ahead for state’s latest attempt to stopgap federal cuts
missionlocal.org/2026/05/california-science-bond-nih-cuts-ucsf/
by SARAH HOPKINS
May 27, 2026, 5:30 pm
People exit the UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights, some using mobility aids, under a sign for Medical Building 1 at 400 Parnassus Ave.
People walking in and out of the UCSF Medical Center, Building 1 at 400 Parnassus Ave on May 4, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen
Dr. Anita Hargrave’s study cleared one of the toughest funding hurdles in medical research: It received a perfect score from the National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.

At any other time, a perfect score would typically guarantee funding. But Hargrave has been waiting for more than eight months, caught in a federal slowdown.

California is now hoping to step in. Today, state lawmakers advanced Senate Bill 895, a $12 billion research bond proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener that University of California, San Francisco researchers say would help close funding gaps and safeguard them from what they describe as politically motivated cuts.

The bill passed the State Senate in a 29-9 vote, sending it to the State Assembly; all nine “no” votes were cast by Republicans.

SB 895, co-sponsored by the University of California, would require passage in the assembly, sign-off from the governor and, ultimately, voter approval. It would create a state-led foundation for science and health research to fund grants and research facilities throughout California.

President Donald Trump’s gutting of NIH funding in February 2025 has led to a national slowdown in new grants: The agency is on track to award far fewer grants than in previous years.

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The bill would not fully replace federal research funding in California, but supporters say it would create a state backstop to keep some projects, staff and facilities afloat as federal dollars are delayed or frozen.

Dr. Vanessa Jacoby, UCSF’s associate vice chancellor for clinical research, said that would make all the difference for someone like Hargrave.

Hargrave, a UCSF researcher, has been waiting for the final word on a $1.5 million grant from the NIH, which would fund her work investigating why smoking remains the leading preventable cause of death for women in the United States.

And for UCSF, the stakes are high, researchers say. The university is one of the country’s largest recipients of NIH funding for medical research, and San Francisco’s second-largest employer.

According to Jacoby, NIH funding accounts for about a third of UCSF’s research funding overall, and the impacts of federal cuts and delays are already being felt. Research staff have faced layoffs, community-based organizations that partner with UCSF have lost funding and some patients are waiting for clinical trials that have been delayed, downsized or canceled.

UCSF is not alone in this. Federal research spending has slowed sharply across the country. An analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that, as of March 20, the NIH had committed 34 percent less funding for research grants compared to 2024. New awards were 63 percent behind the prior five-year average.

Dr. Lauren Haack, a clinical child psychologist at UCSF, said one of her NIH-funded studies, which has been going for over 10 years, has been on pause for about five months — not due to the merits of the research, but because the NIH issued a policy halting funding for studies that incorporate research in other countries.

Her study focuses on the mental health of immigrant youth in the United States, and incorporates research on the mental health of children in Mexico. Haack said the new policy left her team uncertain about whether they would keep their jobs, prevented her from hiring new staff and forced hours of contingency planning.

For Haack, the bond would give California researchers a funding lifeline at a time when federal research dollars have become vulnerable to sudden political shifts.

Wiener said the bill grew out of frustration over the Trump administration’s cuts to research.

City College Summer Journalism Workshop.jpeg
“I woke up one day and I was reading yet another article about Trump and Musk gutting federal science agencies and cutting scientific research funding,” Wiener said in an interview with Mission Local. “I just got really angry.”

Wiener acknowledged that the bill could face a difficult path. Bonds require broad support in the legislature; agreement between the State Senate, State Assembly and governor; and voter approval.

“Bonds are always very hard, politically, in the Legislature,” Wiener said. “It’s not guaranteed.”

The bill also comes as California faces a budget deficit and, as lawmakers are weighing other bond measures, including one that would finance affordable housing.

But UCSF researchers said the effects of federal cuts and delays go far beyond research universities. Funding cuts are threatening lives, Jacoby said. Clinical trials for metastatic cancer, pulmonary disease, sexually transmitted infection prevention and air quality monitoring have been slowed, reduced or stopped.

Pride Month Disco Party.jpeg
Cuts to federal funding also threaten the careers of researchers, Haack said — especially those from less privileged backgrounds who rely on paid research positions and internships to launch their careers at UCSF.

“I fear that we’re going to lose a whole generation of researchers,” she said. … See MoreSee Less

California advances $12 billion bond for science research in rebuke to Trump cuts

missionlocal.org

UCSF researchers say the bond could help protect studies, jobs and clinical trials from delays in federal NIH funding

United Public Workers for Action

4 days ago

UCSF interns, residents kick off 10 days of protest for union contract
missionlocal.org/2026/06/ucsf-interns-residents-protest/
by DUNCAN AGNEW
June 1, 2026, 10:12 am
View through a window into an urgent care waiting room with chairs, a wheelchair, and people seated; a sign with an arrow points to the urgent care entrance.
The exterior of the UCSF Medical Center, Building 1 at 400 Parnassus Ave on May 4, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.
The union that represents thousands of physicians training at hospitals across the country said Monday that its University of California members will protest for a new contract at sites across the state over the next 10 days.

Starting Tuesday, June 2 at UC Davis Health in Sacramento and concluding on Thursday, June 11 at UCSF Parnassus, residents and fellows will hold “unity breaks” — where they will gather for press conferences with elected officials outside their hospitals — at 17 different locations.

UCSF residents first unionized in 2017. Their existing contract expired at the end of June 2025 and was extended for a year to give each side more time to negotiate. Unlike prior contract talks, however, residents at all University of California hospitals are now negotiating as a single collective, comprising the largest unionized group of doctors in the nation.

According to the union, the Committee of Interns and Residents, these actions are a response to “executives’ insistence on rolling back benefits won in previous contracts and ignoring safety issues voiced by residents,” including emergency room conditions that doctors and nurses say are endangering patients and staff.

University of California leadership, the union said, is also threatening to take away residents’ fertility benefits. Under their existing contract, residents receive a lifetime $30,000 benefit to cover qualifying expenses, including IVF procedures, medications, ultrasounds, freezing eggs or sperm, adoption fees, surrogacy and even a doula to assist with prepartum and postpartum care. But UC has proposed phasing out that benefit in 2027.

Instead, UC’s proposal would replace these benefits and an existing $3,600 yearly meal stipend with $5,100 total annually starting in 2027 for fertility care, meals and other expenses like educational experiences.

“It feels like an attack on our ability not just to have a family, but to survive our training with a small child,” said Dr. Gloria Tavera, a UCSF gastroenterology fellow active in the union since 2021. “It’s a huge issue, and UC and California have been heading in the right direction, but this is a big step back.”

University of California did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tavera added that, separate from this issue, the union is fighting for more affordable childcare in general, since the median monthly cost of childcare in San Francisco “is well over 50 percent of [residents’] monthly salary.”

Both Tavera and a spokesperson for the union said university leadership has delayed negotiations and failed to come to the table despite the contract extension expiring in a month.

“Enough is enough. We’re tired of being disrespected at the bargaining table,” UCLA chief resident Dr. Diana Dayal said in the press release. “Residents routinely work 14 and even 24 hour shifts for weeks on end. If we can arrange our packed schedules and show up to bargain, then UC negotiators should be able to make sure they can, too.”

According to Tavera, about 100 incoming residents recently filled out a union survey asking if they would have thought twice about choosing UCSF if they knew they could lose fertility benefits.

“The vast majority of them said yes,” she said.

The union is also arguing that UCSF should not need to cut costs right now. As Mission Local reported, the hospital system turned a net surplus of $809 million in 2025, just two years after running a net loss of $116 million. … See MoreSee Less

UCSF interns, residents kick off 10 days of protest for union contract

missionlocal.org

UCSF physicians in training are gathering at 17 different hospitals for the next week and a half to urge a new union contract.

United Public Workers for Action

5 days ago

Canadian Pacific railroad receives strike notice from signals workers' union
www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/canadian-pacific-receives-strike-notice-signals-workers-un…
By Reuters
May 27, 20267:06 PM PDTUpdated May 28, 2026
A Canadian Pacific Kansas City rail yard in Port Coquitlam
Freight rail cars sit in a Canadian Pacific Kansas City rail yard, as seen from an overpass, in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada August 22, 2024. REUTERS/Jesse Winter Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Companies
Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CP.TO), opens new tab ​said on Wednesday ‌it had received a 72-hour ​strike notice ​from the International ⁠Brotherhood of ​Electrical Workers union (IBEW), ​which represents about 300 signals and ​communications employees ​across Canada.
The company said ‌it ⁠has prepared contingency plans that will allow ​it ​to ⁠continue. … See MoreSee Less

Canadian Pacific receives strike notice from signals workers' union

www.reuters.com

Canadian Pacific Kansas City ​said on Wednesday ‌it had received a 72-hour ​strike notice ​from the International ⁠Brotherhood of ​Electrical Workers union (IBEW), ​which represents abou…

United Public Workers for Action

5 days ago

‘I felt like I wasn’t learning’: Community college students struggle with online education
www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-31/why-california-community-college-students-struggle-wi…
A close-up shot of a woman wearing a black dress working on a laptop on a small table next to the window of a restaurant.
A woman works on a laptop in a restaurant.
By Adam Echelman
CalMatters
May 31, 2026 3 AM PT

California’s vast community college system has embraced online classes, now about 40% of offerings, leaving campuses noticeably emptier even as remote courses become a lifeline for working adults and parents.
Students and instructors describe a trade-off: Online courses expand access but often feel lonely, less rigorous and easy to game, with prerecorded lectures, recycled assignments, AI tools and even bots undermining real learning.
Colleges are investing in training and virtual support, yet counseling backlogs, large asynchronous classes and uneven teaching leave many students struggling, while some faculty warn entire subjects like foreign languages are being hollowed out online.
California’s community colleges represent the largest higher education system in the country — more than 2 million students, or 60 times the undergraduate population of UC Berkeley. But walking around a community college campus, it’s often hard to tell.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, cafeterias and local coffee shops are quieter, fewer students are sitting on the quad and, with less foot traffic, the grass is lush. Even after campuses returned to in-person classes, many students are still working from their dining room table: About 40% of all community college classes are online, according to Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.

The state’s community colleges are funded based largely on the number of students they enroll, and since students prefer online courses, there’s an incentive for schools to expand them.

Ask students or professors about the merits of online education, and they’ll often say it’s more accessible, especially for students who have kids or are working a full-time job. The same argument is often true at the University of California and California State University campuses, which offer considerably more online courses than before the pandemic, though far fewer than the community colleges.

Ask students or professors about the problems of online education, and they’ll point to any number of familiar complaints: a lack of engagement, a sense of loneliness, impersonal lectures, and the temptation to move the Zoom window aside and click on something else.

In online classrooms where the majority of students keep their cameras off, bots and scammers have become a systemwide problem: They use AI and other algorithms to mimic real students, submit assignments and steal financial aid. Even real students are using AI to submit online assignments, while teachers are using it to grade.

Researchers say it’s hard to know how the quality of online education compares to in-person courses because it’s subjective and because of the wide diversity of courses and teaching methods.

In Lupe Archundia’s microeconomics class at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, all the lectures were pre-recorded, in some cases more than a decade ago. The professor gives students the answers to the quizzes — before they take the test — and all the quizzes are in a multiple-choice format that a computer grades.

“I am a 39-year-old woman,” Archundia said. “It’s not like I just finished high school and I want easy test answers.”

Archundia has two kids and a full-time job as a secretary, so she studies in the evenings, turning her dining room table into a standing desk with the help of a few cardboard boxes. She wants a bachelor’s degree to help her move up in her career.

In the beginning of the course, she said she would study for three hours before completing each quiz, but once she discovered the professor had made the answers available, she started cutting corners. She said there are still certain concepts, such as elasticity, that she doesn’t fully understand, even though she aced the online exam.

She feels conflicted about it. “I’m responsible, too,” she said.

What the research does — or doesn’t — say
The research into online education is generally inconclusive. One 2025 study found that students consistently perform worse in online classes than in-person ones, though the gap is decreasing. Online courses also make it easier for students to hold a job while in school and complete their degree in the long term, said Di Xu, a professor at UC Irvine’s School of Education.

When asked about students’ concerns with online education, Alex Breitler, a spokesperson for Delta College, said these classes expand “access to higher education for working adults, parents, caregivers and other students balancing significant responsibilities,” including many students who “simply would not be able to pursue college without online options.”

A person wearing a blue shirt and glasses works on a laptop at a kitchen table, with books and school materials scattered.
Tina Rocha sorts through her classwork at her home in Stockton on May 7. Rocha is a student at San Joaquin Delta College, where many of her classes are online. (Larry Valenzuela / CalMatters)
Delta is not alone — the idea that online courses increase access is a common refrain among college officials. Xu pointed to one empirical study of an online master’s program at Georgia Tech that proved this point, though the students are very different from those at California’s community colleges, where many are seeking short-term career training or an associate degree.

What researchers do know is that online education has inherent challenges. It requires “self-directed learning skills,” including a “very high level of self-time management,” said Xu. “In an in-person environment, interaction happens naturally,” she said. “But in an online environment, especially asynchronous, that opportunity needs to be embedded. Otherwise, the student will feel very lonely.”

The majority of online classes at California’s community colleges are asynchronous, meaning that the content is all pre-recorded and students can study at their own convenience. Students prefer asynchronous classes too, even compared to online courses where the instructor is live, according to a survey by the RP Group, an education research nonprofit.

Archundia said she always opts for in-person classes but there are few available, especially for the English classes she wants to take and during the evening hours that she’s available. Her dream is to become a writer, and she wants to switch her major to English, instead of her current major, business administration, though she isn’t sure what classes are necessary to make that happen.

In April, when she reached out to a college counselor for help selecting classes, the next available appointment was about three weeks later. Archundia still hasn’t been able to find an appointment that works with her work schedule.

A close-up shot of a person's hand pointing toward a laptop screen displaying an email on a small table in a restaurant.
Lupe Archundia shows an email exchange with the San Joaquin Delta College counseling office on her laptop at a Panera Bread in Stockton on May 7. (Larry Valenzuela / CalMatters)
One-on-one advising and support structures, such as guidance counselors, are essential for online students, said Rebecca Ruan-O’Shaughnessy, the director of program and strategy at College Futures Foundation and a former executive at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office — but schools also need to adapt.

Online courses are fundamentally different, and schools need to redesign their courses, not just retrofit them, she said. She pointed to some programs that have new and promising approaches to online education, such as shortening the length of the class or trying to integrate adults’ work experience given so many online students have a full-time job.

“That is the difficult part for community colleges and other institutions,” Ruan-O’Shaughnessy said. “Frankly, they don’t have the incentive to do that level of work, because that’s a lot of work.”

Breitler, with Delta College, acknowledged that counseling appointments are often booked “weeks in advance” because of high demand. He said the college is trying new solutions, such as letting students submit questions to counselors online and creating drop-in hours where an appointment isn’t needed.

Remedial education in foreign languages
Cyndi Cunningham enrolled at Palomar College in San Marcos, on the northern edge of San Diego County, in 2022, after the pandemic forced her local shopping mall to close temporarily, making her longtime retail job suddenly seem precarious. Starting college for the first time, she was taking general education and introductory courses, mostly online, and struggled to pay attention and manage her time. “I only ended up taking one class in person per semester — not because I didn’t want to take in-person classes — but because I couldn’t find them,” she said. “I felt like I wasn’t learning; I was just kind of doing tasks.”

She saw professors cutting corners too: Two of her classes in Chicano studies were taught by the same professor and she once noticed he was using the exact same lecture in both classes.

Cunningham has since transferred from community college to Cal State San Marcos, where she’s majoring in ethnic studies and plans to become a high school teacher. “Even engaging with other students is so much different in person than on a discussion board,” she said. “I realized more how much of a disservice the online classes did.”

To an extent, online classes can save costs for colleges because they don’t require a physical space and they can enroll many more students, said Xu. But she said adding support systems — such as specialized counseling for students or professional development for faculty — can create additional expenses.

Online education “has the potential to save a lot of cost,” she said, but only if colleges are “willing to sacrifice a lot of the quality elements that are important for students.”

Foreign language courses are particularly costly for universities, said Julia Simon, a professor of French at UC Davis and the chair of a task force on languages for the university. Language courses are typically small, meet regularly, and many less popular languages enroll only a handful of students. Facing a structural budget deficit, the university recently asked her task force to develop a plan for slashing courses in the event of cuts.

Meanwhile, she said both the nearby community colleges and the UC system are expanding online foreign language classes, which can operate at a larger scale. Sacramento City College, for instance, is offering four French classes in fall 2026 — all of them are online and fully asynchronous.

“It’s an enormous problem,” she said. In her view, the students who take online courses lack the same opportunities to practice their speaking and miss out on vital cultural lessons that don’t fit in a strict language-learning curriculum. Once they enter UC Davis, they’re unprepared, she said. “We can’t make them repeat courses they’ve already had.”

She said she’s considering creating a set of conversation classes that would amount to remedial education.

‘It all depends on the professor’
California legislators and education officials have poured millions into improving online education since the pandemic and have introduced new rules meant to encourage more interaction between faculty and students. All across the state, faculty routinely train on ways to improve their online instruction, and colleges have hired staff members to help with online course design and scheduling.

But the 2024 survey by the RP Group found that among faculty who had taught at least one online course, the majority still preferred in-person instruction.

A view of a whiteboard with a schedule written on it in various colors of marker hanging on the wall of an entryway of a house.
A close-up shot of a person wearing a blue shirt and glasses working on a laptop on a kitchen table inside a house. In the foreground, out of focus, is the back of the laptop with decorative stickers and a colorful glass of water as the person types on the keyboard.
Tina Rocha’s creative writing professor at San Joaquin Delta College recently took a sabbatical, learning how to improve teaching for people with learning disabilities. It paid off, said Rocha, who is 55 and started college in 2024 after recovering from three back-to-back strokes in 2020. Because of her disability, she occasionally needs reminders from the instructor to submit assignments. Sometimes she asks for accommodations to avoid certain noises or lights that distort her vision and make her twitch, she said, but her professor is understanding and accommodating. Online education can be a “wonderful alternative,” she said.

Rocha studies every night at her dining room table, which is often scattered with her notebooks. A calendar hangs from her wall, with notes covering every corner of white space, and a white board sits at the entrance to her home, listing out in color-coded lines each of the week’s responsibilities.

“It all depends on the professor,” she said. Her online film class this semester has been much worse than her creative writing course, she said. The film professor has a lava lamp in the background that reflects psychedelic patterns on the ceiling. When Rocha asked him to turn it off, he said he tried but was unable to, without offering an explanation. Now, to prevent symptoms, she places a sticky note on the screen whenever the professor starts talking.

Rocha said she tried to switch to an in-person film class but was too late. Only online classes were available. … See MoreSee Less

‘I felt like I wasn’t learning’: Community college students struggle with online education

www.latimes.com

About 40% of California’s community college courses are online now, redefining education. These courses are more accessible, college officials say, but they come with serious drawbacks.

United Public Workers for Action

6 days ago

Super PAC Network Backing Labor Supported Connie Chan Received Hundreds of Thousands from AIPAC
www.dropsitenews.com/p/aipac-connie-chan-san-francisco-primary?r=emsp8&utm_medium=ios&triedRedire…
AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, along with its offshoot DMFI, has funneled money to a network of Super PACs now backing the San Francisco supervisor.\\
JULIAN ANDREONE AND RYAN GRIM
MAY 30, 2026
Drop Site is reader-funded. No paywalls. No advertisers. No billionaire owners. Just journalism that answers only to you. If you value this work, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today.

San Francisco Supervisor and congressional candidate Connie Chan speaks at a rally on May 29, 2026 in San Francisco, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Adam Schiff look on. Photo by Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images.
San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan has pledged not to accept support from “AIPAC or its lobbyists and representatives” in her bid for California’s 11th congressional district, but federal campaign records show that the pro-Israel organization is working behind the scenes to funnel money to support her candidacy.
The money from AIPAC and its offshoot Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), which is approaching $500,000, has taken a circuitous route to San Francisco. Following the money trail requires sifting through several layers of complexity, but the picture that emerges at the end is clear.
On April 13, DMFI sent $22,500 to a super PAC called EDW Action Fund, which has been used in previous campaigns as a front for AIPAC spending. Ten days later, on April 23, it gave another $15,250, bringing the total month’s transfer $37,750.
AIPAC sponsors its own super PAC, called United Democracy Project, and UDP got into the game too, dropping $250,000 into EDW Action on April 14, a day after DMFI’s initial dump. EDW Action thus received $287,750 from AIPAC-aligned super PACs that month.
But EDW Action had previously been exposed by Drop Site and others as a known AIPAC pass-through. On May 1, a new PAC was formed, called Pro-Choice Majority Action. That PAC is legally affiliated directly with EDW Action.
Given that Pro-Choice Majority Action registered with the FEC on the first of the month, its first disclosure date falls on June 20, allowing the organization to evade filing requirements until more than two weeks after the California primaries conclude on June 2. Such vehicles are known as “pop-up PACs,” since they can pop up right before an election, spend huge sums of money, and avoid disclosing donor records until it’s too late to matter to voters.
Pro-Choice Majority Action has already spent a total of $475,000 supporting Chan, with much more likely to come through Election Day on Tuesday. Because the new PAC is formally affiliated with EDW Action, the two can transfer unlimited sums of money between themselves. As of April 30, EDW Action’s largest contribution had come from the “Kimbark Foundation,” a nonprofit that itself popped up just before moving money to EDW, which has raised only $1.25 million for the cycle. Kimbark’s only other contribution, also for $500,000, was to 314 Action Fund, another known AIPAC vehicle, which spent heavily to support Ala Stanford in her failed bid against Chris Rabb in Philadelphia. AIPAC has consistently denied it played a role in that race.
Though AIPAC’s Twitter account spent much of Saturday complaining about Drop Site News, the organization did not respond to a request for comment on its newly discovered spending. On Twitter, AIPAC argued that scrutiny of its shell PACs was “[p]art of an orchestrated campaign to single out and demonize individual pro-Israel Americans for supporting candidates of their choice,” representing a “level of scrutiny not applied to any other group of citizens.”
EDW Action Fund previously spent just over $500,000 supporting Laura Fine in a Chicago-area congressional race. Fine had the backing of AIPAC but lost. EDW Action used Symmetry Media LLC to make its ad buy in that race; the documents show that Symmetry Media was also used to make the new expenditures on behalf of Connie Chan.
Chan, who has the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, faces state Sen. Scott Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder of Justice Democrats and the former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Chan’s campaign recently picked up momentum after receiving the key endorsement from Pelosi, whose retirement opened up the vacancy. For most of the race, Chan has been polling in third place behind Wiener and Saikat Chakrabarti. Recent polling, however, shows Chan moving into a close contest with Chakrabarti for second place and a spot in the general election against Wiener.
The latest poll from EMC Research places Wiener firmly ahead of the pack at 38% support, with Chan and Chakrabarti trailing behind at 22% and 21% respectively.
While serving as Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, Chakrabarti clashed privately and publicly with Pelosi, urging her and the party to move faster and push harder. Animosity toward Chakrabarti among the party leadership remains intense. An advisor to Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Drop Site the party brass was glad to see him go, and isn’t interested in seeing him return as a member of Congress. “Frankly, the problems we had with her in the beginning were more her chief and not her,” he said, referring to AOC and Chakrabarti. “Then he left and everything got much better.” … See MoreSee Less

Super PAC Network Backing Connie Chan Received Hundreds of Thousands from AIPAC

www.dropsitenews.com

AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, along with its offshoot DMFI, has funneled money to a network of Super PACs now backing the San Francisco supervisor.