The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3554 Ice Murders Observer Labor Fights To Expect In 2026 W Keith Brower Brown

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

It's Hump Day on the Majority Report On the today's program: As Republicans continue to rewrite the history of January 6, we revisit footage from the riot and revisit the very different tone figures like Marco Rubio and Greg Gutfeld struck at the time. Labor-climate organizer and Labor Notes writer Keith Brower Brown joins the show to preview the biggest contract fights of 2026. In the Fun Half: The crew discuss an incident in which an ICE agent, while the show was live, shot a legal observer in the street—falsely claiming she attempted to run him over, despite video showing he fired as she passed by. As the right-wing media obsesses over the Somali daycare fraud story, Medhi Hasan highlights all of the convicted fraudsters that have been pardoned by Trump. An anti-war protestor in Grand Rapids, Michigan was arrested while talking to the local news. New CBS Evening News anchor, Tony Dokoupil continues his humiliating first week as Bari Weiss' lapdog. Tim Pool continues his milquetoast fence sitting while addressing Venezuela All that and more. Today's Sponsors: IQBAR: Text MAJORITY to 64000 to get 20% off all IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping. Message and data rates may apply. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% on their full lineup of CBD products to support your New Year wellness goals and Dry January aspirations at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

Hey, folks, holidays are behind us. Still got a lot of winter ahead of us. And let's be honest, it's rough. It's a little bit cold. It's dark. I mean, at least in these parts, right? Yeah. Although I literally had to say to my son today, hey, dude, don't worry, there's 62 seconds extra of light today.

He wasn't terribly impressed. Some people are doing dry January, which is probably the hardest, month of the year to get through and, uh, but going dry, but, uh, maybe you're also looking to make some, uh, healthy habit changes. So stop and drinking, not a bad idea. Well, our friends at sunset lake sabadea.com are trying to help you out and making it a little bit easier to get through this month. Right now, they're offering 25% off of all their gummies when you use the code Jan 26. That's J-A-N. Numbers 2 and 6. No spaces. You can try their good night gummies or their gummies with some Te-H-Sae, just a little bit, just enough to make things a little bit fun.

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Sunset Lake sabadea.com. The sale ends tonight at 11.59 p.m. Eastern. See their site for full terms and conditions. So check it out. Get there now. And now the show. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, January 7th, 2000, 26.

My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Keith Brower Brown, labor climate organizer and writer at labor notes, on the things to look for this year in labor in terms of contracts that are expiring a ton of them. Also on the program today, U.S. pirates, two more Venezuelan originated tankers, one flying a Russian flag. Meanwhile, Rubio says Trump only.

only wants to buy Greenland. New York, excuse me, Wyoming Supreme Court finds the abortion pill ban unconstitutional. Utah, meanwhile, launches a pilot program allowing AI to prescribe medication. Job opening slide to second lowest level in five years as hiring grows sluggish. It's even worse for blue collar workers. Democratic leadership says, no to a shutdown. This, as the window nearly closes on an ACA fix.

Good news, Chicago's violence falls to a historic low in 2025. Can you imagine murders down more than they have been in decades? It's almost as if we had a rise in crime from the... Once in a lifetime. pandemic, hopefully once a lifetime pandemic. Texas AFT Union sues the state over the 350 investigations of teachers over their Charlie Kirk social media posts. Trump freezes $7 billion in funding for temporary assistance for needy families and 2.5.5.5. billion for working parents all in five blue states.

And former turning point official negotiates a deal over voter fraud. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. It is hump day. It is, in fact, hump day, says Emma Vigland. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

I knew that the real problem I'd have with 2026 would not come in the first two days. I knew like it's starting now. Right, right. You're a little comfortable. Yeah. Well, it's just like on the first two days, you're really thinking about it. And then you, you. Yeah.

Is this like, now it's a week since January 1st, then you don't get to say happy New Year anymore, right? There was a whole Larry David bit about this. But I'm pretty sure. I think those are the rules, right? No more. That's not the way I do it. I do it whenever I see somebody for the first. time of the year. So it could be as late as September. Okay. Well, that is psychotic. I mean,

it's called being polite. Anyways, yesterday was the anniversary of January 6th. We talked about a little bit, but it took a while for me to catch up with just the level of delusion and intense, like, and I imagine this is somewhat comedic. I mean, Donald Trump was out there too, though, pushing this, but because at one point, you're like, look, I know what reality was. And they keep saying this sort of fake revisionist history. But at one point, you also realize, like, they're just so committed to this revisions. visionist history that that's what the history is going to be. I mean, I remember when there were people

saying, like, it was just a bunch of boomers. It was like Glenn Greenwald was saying that it was just a bunch of boomers who were walking through, like, as if 50-year-olds can't commit violent acts or whatnot. But it was a very violent day. I mean, you had, you know, one of the cops was like tased in his brain and had a lot. a heart attack and died. You know, a woman was shot who was trying to bust through the door to get to members of Congress. AOC was barricading herself in her office because of rape threats. I mean, you have images of Josh Holly running full speed to get the hell out of there. They were all afraid. But here's Representative Mike Collins. Where is he from Georgia? Is he

I mean, this is after Donald Trump is at a January 6th, I don't know, memorial or whatever it was. But listen to what Mike Collins said yesterday. On this day in history in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers and others gathered in Washington, D.C. to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized tour of the Capitol building. Grandmothers. This is a joke. Not grandfathers? is comedy writing. Yeah, there are elders. But here's the thing. He's, he's, it's, it's working in two

different ways. He can slough it off as some type of joke. I'm not sure exactly what the joke is. I mean, because he surely isn't being sort of like hyper sarcastic and making fun of the people who minimized it. But he is hoping that he knows that it's a significant portion of the people who read his tweet will buy that reality. And earlier that day, Trump had held a rally where supporters walked to the Capitol to exercise their First Amendment right about the irregularities of the 2020 election. Incidentally, there were no irregularities. This is only Republican lie.

That is also just total lie. All of it was adjudicated in court. Dozens and dozens of court cases and all the judges, every judge threw it out. Remember Sidney Powell? During this time, some individuals entered the Capitol, took photos, and explored the building before leaving. Some individuals in this case meant thousands and explored the building involved defecating, literally shitting in multiple, you know, places. On Nancy Pelosi's death. Again, beating cops in some instances to death that ultimately led to their death.

trashing the place, smashing windows. But we'll get to that. Getting one of them shot. Held in solid, afterwards, hundreds of peaceful protesters were hunted down, arrested, held in solitary confinement, treated unjustly, and crucified in the media. Countless hours and taxpayer dollars were spent pursuing grandmothers and raiding Trump's home, while terrorists and millions of illegal immigrants crossed our nation's borders, causing havoc in our communities. Fortunately, this version of the DOJ exists only in history.

I mean, so all of this is bullshit. And in fact, you know, Jack Smith gave some testimony in the past couple of weeks. And most of that's been buried. But maybe we'll try and find some of the deposition and talk about it. But just to give you a sense of how people responded in that time who are the, you know, now have completely changed their story. Marco Rubio, there's nothing patriotic. about what is happening on Capitol Hill. This is a tweet.

3 p.m. So as this is happening. This is third world style anti-American anarchy. He's like, because it was happening right as we were ending our show that day. Yep. I remember. And just that Mike Collins thing, can you go back to really briefly that first line of it? It just stands out to me like thousands of peaceful grandmothers and stuff.

He's relishing in lying about this. It's like when Trump says always. Put up number six. Well, I mean, my point is. is just that when I talk about, when we've spoken about how Trump provides some sort of, it's like catharsis for his supporters, this is what the whole MAGA movement is about, whether it's like about racism or transphobia or homophobia or whatever. They relish in the idea that these politicians align with Trump and Trump himself can lie all the time and get away with it. It's, and, and say horrific

things and get away with it. And they've been doing, I mean, they were denying that Elon Musk did that. Nazi salute. This has been over. over and over again, the character of this movement. And it gives the followers license to have a revisionist history. So they sort of know that there's maybe a lie that's going on, but it's a lie that allows them to live in the history they want. I mean, we were talking about that's why the whole Carl Reiner thing, Rob Reiner, rather, when he was murdered in the way that Trump reacted, did not allow for Trump followers to have

that sort of like air cover right in which they possible deniability exactly about his cruelty because it was not related to policy that they can hide behind or something like that it was just who we look nasty yes yes we're not the superior people and and so when collins or when trump or whatever uh whomever spouts these sort of like lies these revisionist history i mean it's it's really i mean the you know, maybe the model is, at least for this country, the, uh, of the, the myth of the lost cause of, uh, the Confederacy. Yeah, these are just modern clansmen. And, uh, but here is, I mean, here's some images from, uh, that time, just to remind you, uh, that in fact, no, it was not just a bunch of grandmothers or very well, they could be grandmothers, but, um, uh, not just a little

bit of like sort of gentle old ladies in that instance. It's over. You better run, cops! These grandmothers aren't in good shape. Oh, fuck. Well, they're all Maha, right? See how fast the cops turn around once they fucking saw the numbers game. Confederate flag in the bottom, right?

Yeah, you can see cops are being beaten down there. Put up, what was the other one that we had there? Six, what was that, six or eight? Or eight, yeah, number eight. This is when you had rioters. That is the chamber of the house. And people have smashed the windows, and you can see Congress people inside there. Go ahead.

They're just exploring. Oh, look at that grandma wearing that helmet. Socialist scum. That door, incidentally, is barricaded. Is that the one that Babick got shot? No, no. The one that she got. shot through was upstairs in a uh was uh on another level um in a different wing where they had

barricaded you know people had escaped to and they were pursuing them i mean you know unlike a tour right where uh they were actually pursuing other individuals um and in fact we showed you what uh marco rubio how he responded to he was really offended and here's gregg uh what's his last name Greg Godfeld, telling us about how not only is this a horror, but it's also an opportunity for people to understand that Republicans are more morally righteous than anyone else because of how much they perceive this to be wrong. So we must remain consistent. That's what makes us different from the rest.

We don't play favorites with mobs. The other side does, but we don't. It's hard for me personally because I was outraged over violence every single day this summer. I saw my neighborhood trashed. Still, I condemn this equally because we aren't them. We are better than them. To this point, I heard a pundits say that even Republicans are outraged by this behavior. Duh.

Republicans are always outraged by bad behavior because they're. consistently, consistently embrace law and order and condemn the destruction of private and public property. I do believe the capital is a sacred place. I also believe that the guy who invested his life savings in a small business, to him, that was a sacred place too. So it's consistency. By pointing out Republicans, I mean, you know, I can only imagine what Guttfeld was saying yesterday. I did. Does anybody want to bet that he was not talking about how horrific it was five years ago yesterday? But we are better than them. That's the money quote. It's it is the, the, the, what the lie about January 6 provides them is the thrill that they get from feeling superior. Like the, that's what the racist lies do. That's what the homophobic and transphobic lies do. It's the thrill of feeling superior. superior and not really having your material conditions change at all, but it's about wanting to be on top.

And at the time, I think it might have been Glenn Greenwald or other people saying, like, these were working class Trump supporters there, whatever. They did an analysis of these people. I think it was the Washington Post. I mean, some of these people chartered private planes. A lot of them were small business like pool owners or pool cleaning, whatever, owners from whatever, Missouri. Like, they flew in to do. do this. Many of them had these resources. And so the character of the people that they're talking about here as these victims, it doesn't match the reality. Let's look in on just one of the lucky people that, well, I guess you didn't really have to be lucky. All you had to have been was to actually be prosecuted for the beating up of cops or the destruction of the property or the federal offense of interfering with an election, et cetera.

etc, et cetera, et cetera. They all got pardoned. Every single one of them got pardoned by Donald Trump. And here is one of the, I mean, and, you know, every now and then you hear about a story about one or two of them getting arrested for pedophilia or, um, fraud or whatever it is. I mean, I suppose, which is sort of shocking just in terms of law of averages, because if there were so few people walking in there and they were all grandmothers, just it must be like the rest of the people with the,

The grandmothers, the sweet little old ladies, must have been criminals for that many people to get re-arrested. But here is one of those sweet little old grandmas out in front of where was he? This is in front of APEC headquarters in D.C. Yes. He was throwing chocolate coins at APEC. At APEC. And so here he is because probably because of his, well, it's either he's here because of his. deep-seated concern about the Palestinian people, or maybe just, you know, it's the Jews.

Go back. That's the APA. Oh, pause for a second. Incidentally. He's a big Elon Musk fan. My heart goes out to you guys. Yes, because first he's saying to the camera, my heart giving the Elon Musk, my heart goes out to the camera salute.

Or my heart goes out to you, the Elon Musk salute. And a mixed signal. He's protesting APEC, but he's giving him his heart. Also, he's probably isn't APEC for being two pro-race mixing, which you should look at what GreenBats said about. I'm sorry, but grandmothers are always loving like this. We should, we should give him the grass. My heart goes out to you, sonny.

Yeah. I knitted you at Afghan. Here we go. There's going to be some on-the-fly censorship. Yes, we're going to have to do this on the fly because the guy drops the N-word. Go back, A-PAC. Go back. That's the A-PAC building right there. White Christian men are not going to sit around while you turn our children.

So basically said white Christian men are not going to sit around while you turn our children into a bunch of N-word lovers. Just one of the many that Donald Trump pardoned on that day, one of the many tourists who went in to just see the capital, albeit in an authorized manner. Well, some of them also, to be fair, were bust in by Charlie Kirk. That's right. So some had free transportation. right way. Yeah. Thanks, Ezra. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Keith Brower Brown, Labor, Climate Organizer, and a writer at Labor Notes about the contracts that are coming up this year to look out for. In the meantime, this episode brought to you by IQ Bar.

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Pick me up. They're delicious. They got a bunch of different flavors. This one's almond butter chip, but I had a wild blueberry the other day. I mean, they got ones with, you know, peanut butter. They're all delicious. Thanks to IQ Bar for sponsoring today's episode. Right now, IQ Bar is offering our audience 20% off of all IQ Bar products, including

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We'll be right back. We are back, Sam Cedar on the Majority Report with Emma Viglin, sorry. Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin on Major Report. Joining us now, Keith Brower Brown, Labor and Climate Organizer, writer at Labor Notes. And full disclosure, I am a subscriber to Labor Notes as well. Happy to support that publication. It's a great resource. Keith, welcome to the program.

Glad to be here. So you've written a piece, one battle after another. There are big contracts fights coming in 2026. And this is, you know, these are going to be coming in an era where we don't really have a functioning National Labor Relations Board. There's, you know, the state boards are in some instances more functioning than others. But let's go through the different sort of sectors where we anticipate, where we know contracts are expiring and maybe get a sense of what we anticipate in terms of what union members are going to do there. You start with fiber and wires and a big contract coming up for Verizon.

And I seem to remember, what was it, like four or five, six years ago? maybe more, the Verizon workers were striking just down the street from us here. So give us a sense of what's happening on that end. For sure. So when a contract expires for a union is the most common time that a union is going to go on strike in the U.S. Their legal rights to strike open up big time. And it's the time when the most union members are kind of paying attention to what's happening with their contract for the next four or five years maybe. Verizon workers in the Northeast went on this huge strike, 20,000 members in 2016. And since then, the union officers have just kind of rolled over the contract.

They won then two cycles over. This is the first time they're bargaining a whole new contract. And a strike is totally possible. Last time was seven weeks. This also is not just communication workers, but also electrical workers, have a contract with Bryson coming up at the same time. So these are the workers who actually run the wires, build the physical infrastructure of Verizon's network.

What's, wait, if I remember correctly, I guess it was 2016, is 10 years now, it's crazy. But at that time, if I remember correctly, the issue was that Verizon wanted to sort of like shift its business towards wireless more because there was, the wireless workers did not have, were not unionized in the same way. And so they were trying to sort of basically take all the people who worked on copper

and who worked on the lines and slowly make them irrelevant in the context of their business. Where are we, do you know, in terms of that dynamic? Yeah, anytime you see a lot of management hype around new technology, you can bet the reason they're excited is getting the union out of the business as much as they can. And with the switch to more wireless network and more fiber optics for Verizon, that's been a big part of the strategy. So it's the older, you know, physical cable network pre-fiber optic tech that was heavily unionized, thanks to years and years of union fights to organize there. fiber and wireless is less, you know, workers needed overall. There's been declining kind of workforce in general at Verizon as they switch over to those

technologies. And that means a really big fight this year is with all these older workers, like the bulk of the workforce are getting closer to retirement age, what kind of health care are they going to get when they retire is a huge battlefield in this contract coming up? Right. because there's a significant number of them who are not eligible for retirement prior to age 65 when they would otherwise be on Medicare. So that gap in between, and this is coming at, of course, at a time where like literally

we are a week away from the ACA subsidy window to be completely closed. And you're going out there as a 55-year-old. you know, man or woman or 60-year-old, your insurance rates are going to be about as high as anybody's could possibly be. You know, you're talking possibly, you know, a couple of thousand dollars a month. And so, like, getting past that sort of, I guess, gap is a big, big issue there. What is the likelihood of them staying out on strike or going on strike? I'm not starting a betting pool here, but there are definitely some pretty organized units and a relatively organized membership in that union compared to lots of unions that would like to see that happen is all I think we can say for now.

All right. That sounds like we may see some activity there. There's other. I guess contracts coming up with the communication workers, CWA. What else in that sector do you think is one that we're going to hear a lot about? Let's see. There's a big AT&T contract covering this orange mobility division that they have with about 9,000 workers. And then there's another 5,000 in the Midwest doing landline and fiber that's coming up.

So there, yeah, all of these, it's a little soon to say whether we're going to see a strike in that sector. But there's a lot at stake for these workers to both, you know, win stronger benefits, wages that keep up with cost of living as well as, you know, take on some control over these sort of technological changes they're seeing in their industry. Teamsters have two other two major contracts coming up. One is in a couple of months just at the end of the first quarter on March 31st, 3,500 Teamsters at DHS, you write. And Teamsters first student contract expires, 17,000 school bus drivers. That's on that same day. How much does the fact that they're all Teamsters implicate their ability, I mean, you know, DHS schools, there's no. know, you know, like obvious sort of connection there other than maybe it's Teamsters.

But does that in any way implicate what they're going to do or what? I don't think one going on strike will affect the other. The Teamsters have a big budget for strike funds. And they've been, you know, amid all else willing to use it a lot more in recent years to their credit with the international backing locals to go out on strike. that school bus contract, 17,000 school bus drivers and other workers across the country. I'm always excited to see a national contract where a union can kind of raise the floor across its sector and all these different states at once.

How many states does that include? Does that include all states? I mean, that's not 17,000 school bus drivers. That can't be all the school bus drivers, right? I mean, that's a specific state. that uh that i would have to dig into some fine print for you okay all right no problem i mean these are you know what's been really helpful about this for us too is these are things that we're going to look for and anticipate um and you know i guess i'll ask you this is heard a general

question too in the back of my mind is may first 2028 and two years out like are there do you have a sense, and that's the UAW date that Sean Fane said, you know, encouraged other unions to negotiate towards and have their contracts come up then. How much as we go through this stuff, and we got a lot of other sectors to cover here, but how much, how much of that is in play? Like, are there unions out there going like, we're not going to end up getting a contract this go around? We're going to end up having a punt maybe, but if we punt, we're going to punt, we're going to punt to, we're going to punt to May 1st or, you know, we're going to create a cycle where we'll punt to May 1st, 2027, then to May 1st, 2028 type of thing.

Great question. Yeah. So this is in 2026, probably the last chance we'll see unions intentionally line up for May 1st, 28. And sneak preview, Labor Notes is about to launch in the next few weeks, a contract expiration tracker for 2028, looking at the big contracts that are lining up in the first part of the year through the summer. There are something like 800,000 different workers who are lined up in, you know, three months either side of May 1st. It's not only going to be that day, but it could be a real season of worker power flexing itself. This year, there are a few contracts, I think,

might be interested in lining up with that, although a two-year contract is pretty short for remote. That sounds pretty short. Yeah. In health care, it's a lot more common to take a short contract for nurses especially who are pretty powerful, fastest growing segment of the workforce is in health care for many years now. And so there's some real leverage to flex. there. And this year is a big one for health care. We've got right in the next week, the New York State Nurses Association, about 20,000 workers potentially going on strike across 12 hospitals and NYC. That's the 12th, I believe, is the date that they've set. And we're out to them, and hopefully we're going to hear from them one way or another. We'll be talking to them in the next

week or two. Awesome. Yeah, right to hear it. And I guess just on the health care, Just one more question on that front. How are these like hospital closures that are happening throughout the country playing into that? Because I'd imagine that that's a flashpoint for these negotiations. Absolutely. Yeah. So healthcare workers for many years now have fought to get safe staffing ratios and their contracts, which I think is sort of similar to teachers fighting for smaller class sizes to benefit their students. Nurses, other healthcare workers fight for safe staffing ratios to, protect their patients and ensure good care. Well, now all of a sudden with massive cuts coming down from Medicaid and then private insurance rates jacking up with the end of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, you're seeing this crisis across hospitals all over the country, especially rural ones and hospitals that serve more kind of working class, low-income people, have this huge pool of funding pulling out. So you're seeing layoff threats all over.

over the country rolling in in the last few weeks in these hospitals as management starts to try to prepare for them. So drawing a line against that and trying to, you know, reinforce safe staffing lines and their contracts will be a fight. Ultimately, funding, you know, filling that funding gap in a lot of places is going to be a battle to say, chop from the top, take it out of management's cut, you know, stop pulling out all this profit. Even if you don't call it that, like Kaiser has a big contract up this year in Northern California, 25,000. nurses come up in August. And, you know, Kaiser says they're a nonprofit.

It's all about patient care, but they siphon up billions of dollars every year out of their health care business into a foundation or, you know, into benefits for upper management. So chopping from the top will be important as well as trying to push the state in a lot of cases to come in and help fill that gap. And in California, lots of other states, there's plenty of money to do it if workers can force, you know, fickle. friends in office to do so. Let's turn to manufacturing.

30,000 steelworkers have a national oil refinery pattern agreement. I'm not sure I follow what that is. You can tell us, but that's going to expire in three weeks. Yeah, I'm excited about this one and a few other pattern agreements in the heart of kind of basic manufacturing in this country coming up this year. most of them with the United Steelworkers, who, as I said. What does that mean pattern agreement?

Yeah. So a pattern agreement is instead of one national agreement, like say the auto workers, UAW had a national agreements for everybody in one company. You know, everybody sort of bargains at once. Then you figure out other stuff locally. A pattern agreement is you do one company and that sets the pattern for a chain of other companies down the line. So in oil, for example, there's Chevron. There's a bunch of other companies in it. You don't literally bargain them all in the exact same document at once, but you

pick your target to set the pattern. You put a lot of pressure on them. You negotiate that first, and then you go to all the other companies and say, hey, Chevron gave us 12% raise over the next two years. If you don't do that, you could be in trouble. If Chevron can do it, why can't you? So this is a way to sort of flex solidarity across a whole industry at once. And yeah, the steel workers are doing that this year in oil and aluminum, in big rubber and tire, and in steel. And when a union determines like how I imagine my guess is, I mean, because this happens actually that's sort of analogous to what we see in mass tort cases, there'll be a plaintiff. case and a defendant case. And they'll average the sort of the outcomes of those two.

And that's how they'll set sort of at least the negotiation for, you know, what the, what the award's going to be for the entire class. How much does the union sort of say like, okay, we're going to go after a specific, specific plants or specific producers? specific companies because we have the most leverage there. And then that sets the, that sets a baseline, hopefully, for these other companies where we may not have the same amount of leverage, but we gain the leverage because we have a real world example of like, you know, if Alcoa can do it, then you guys can do it. Yeah, you nailed it. So unions typically

have a whole research department that's looking at how much is this company bragging to, its shareholders about how much they are pulling in and revenue and profit from different facilities. And then they can turn that back on them and say, you know, using public and private data, we know you're making this much money off our backs. We know you're sending this much off to shareholders and stock buy backs or whatever else. You can cut us in too. And so you pick a target based on, you know, who's most flush usually as well as like where workforce is growing or your assessment of like what are critical points in the supply chain where it's going to be really hard for this company to give up. So for oil, for example, in the last round of national

oil bargaining, pattern bargaining in 2022 with the steelworkers, this big Chevron refiner right near me in Richmond, California is one of Chevron's oldest facilities. It's biggest. It has this deepwater port that's pretty special to have that on the bay in northern California. And they knew like Chevron's going to hurt if we shut down this facility that ended up having the longest of the strikes, if I recall correctly. So they tried to set a pattern based on, you know, these facilities that are going to be really hard to lose and pulling a lot of money for the companies. You write that in May, 1,000 UAW members building heavy agricultural.

machines at Case New Holland in Iowa and Wisconsin, their contract comes up. I would imagine UAW members are the most attuned to the May 1st, 2028 thing. Also, you said expiring in May is the three-year contract for 200,000 city letter carriers, the NALC, who it felt like just. finished their last negotiations, and everything was retrospective, I guess. There are two letter carrier unions, at least as far as I know, one dealing with more urban situations, one dealing with more rural situations. So what do you anticipate with those letter carriers?

because I would imagine when they settled whatever it was a year or two ago, anticipating, you know, there was an anticipation that the Postmaster General would be a different guy. Biden never really came through in getting rid of Louis DeJoy. And now we're back in Trump world. Give us your sense on what's going on with that. Yeah, so the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of about five different unions within the postal workers, but as I recall, the second biggest, really important union. Or no, it's tied for the biggest with the APWU, the Postal Workers Union. And they just finally finished negotiating a contract that had been dragging on in negotiations last year for a few years already.

And now they have a new one coming up. And you've seen a member movement rise up in pretty quick fashion around that last contract to say, we're getting a raw deal at the table here. Union officers should be organizing and pushing for more instead of taking this deal from a very hostile management. But, yeah, as you said, still stems from a guy that Trump put in his first term. So now it's coming up again. Obviously, there are all sorts of legitimate. business magnates who want to, you know, sort of strangle the USPS and replace it with Amazon

and with other sort of non-union carriers. USPS is under a lot of sort of financial pressure from that outside of government as well as inside government now has a bunch of allies for that strategy. So trying to both hold the line to, you know, keep these good jobs that are worth fighting for for members and trying to help fight on the sort of reorganization of the system and automation in the system that the administration has been trying to push will be pretty important fights for them. And let's go to, I guess there are almost 20,000 UFCW local 99 members across 123 fry stores. Fries is like a

best buy type of situation, right? That's what I thought. Yeah, there's a fries in the Northwest that's electronics. This is grocery. Okay. Yeah. So UFCW, a huge private sector

union in the grocery sector especially. There are about 75,000 workers on different contracts coming up this year, including in New England at Stop and Shop, who had a big strike in 2019. as many of us remember that successfully beat back a management attempt to bump up health care costs by 90% for members. Arizona, Ohio, Michigan, all from February to June have these huge contracts, like 15,000, 20,000 workers out of go that come up across huge grocery change.

So this union has recently started, as in Colorado last year, in pockets, striking a lot more, but still kind of uneven. then there is a reform movement working on getting a kind of more fighting approach in this grocery sector because there's so many members in these big coordinated grocery chains that could yield a lot of leverage if they got their act together. Let's turn to education, particularly like universities. There's been a lot of, there's a lot of issues here, obviously, not just the sort of like classic underpay for, you know, adjunct professors, which has been a bit of. big part of a lot of our like union and labor activity over the past, I want to say,

decade and a half, as far back is like Wisconsin in 2010, a lot of University of Madison adjuncts and TAs, I think were sort of involved in a lot of like the the activity then. Now we have a sort of another sort of like element. of the Trump administration attacking these universities and workers looking for protection. You've got University of Illinois, 6,000 people who are going to be up for a contract. University of California, almost 30,000. That's a UAW represented. 7,000 research and public service professionals, 4,800 student service professionals fighting for first contracts at Brown, 1,000 grad student workers.

In June, another couple of thousand in Oregon across some community colleges there, and then 3,000 library technicians and others working at seven state universities. like how are we going to get a lot of activity this summer or what? I think these campus ones are some of the most likely to see strikes. And those, you know, there's some constraints on the leverage you have as a campus worker, you might think. But these are in many towns and even states the biggest employer around are these public universities or big campuses. And for example, the University of California system, you know, easily one of the biggest employers in state of California.

And this union, which I was actually steward in, that was my picket sign from the last time. Oh, we went on strike in 2022. You know, a huge set of workers, 29,000 grad workers who do a majority of the instructional hours for the university. So if you actually care about education happening at universities, They're really doing the lion's share of the work. And then there have been about 12,000 other categories of campus workers who have been organized

and are fighting for a first contract at the same time. So you got over 40,000 people pushing in this one huge employer at once. These are fights not just for, you know, raising the floor of wages and benefits and job security, but also right now fights over free speech are really huge. on campus where, you know, tons of people in the education sector have been fired for social media posts about saying the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk. And you also see this huge crackdown on research funding from the federal government right now, which is really like the sustaining mainstay of a huge amount of this workforce that is

the biggest workforce in a lot of states and cities. So this fight for, you know, academic freedom both to be, have the same free speech rights as anybody else in society when you're working at a campus, as well as to do research in the public interest, not just whatever is trendy with Stephen Miller, is pretty important and something that these workers on campuses, whether they're grad workers or long-term campus workers are taking on. Lastly, I got to ask you about the WGA contract. I used to be a member of the WGA that's been a while

I think it was honorably discharged as it were after it's been over a decade since I wrote a script under WGA or wrote a script for that matter but I can't believe this is we're coming back up on this on one hand I mean it seems crazy to me

on the other hand based upon everything that's happened over the past couple of years, I can completely understand how like it's a totally different terrain right now. And it's good that WGA is looking at this. But I also got to imagine based on what I know, uh, in terms of how much work there is that, that it's going to be tough for people to, um, uh, take action in this instance. Yeah.

So WGA went on strike, uh, three years ago now. and, you know, really captured a lot of public attention. A lot of other Hollywood workers were out at the same time, and this push against the incursion of AI and management saying we can use your likeness or we can use anything you've ever created for us to make new material. It was a big fight at the time. And WGA, to their credit, you know, stayed out on strike and won some significant first-time contract language saying,

we're drawing the line and how much of our material you can, you know, regurgitate as AI slop Netflix content in the future. This time around, they're trying to go even further in drawing the line on AI. What exactly that'll look like? Sell a bit up in the air. This is a fight we're seeing in multiple sectors right now around drawing lines on AI, the News Guild representing newsroom workers across the country. It's been fast growing and just.

did a launch a big campaign around, you know, getting limits on AI slap as news content, as demands they're going to push into contracts. And you've been coming full circle to manufacturing back in the oil workers we were talking about earlier, those 30,000 oil workers nationally, steel workers are pushing for limits on AI use as a surveillance tool in the workplace. So this is an important moment in labor history to have a union. union that fights and to have a union contract that's going to draw the line and say we're not letting AI take on more of our work, take on more of our creativity, or be used to discipline

us in some sort of automated totalitarian way. Great. Well, I mean, I think that, I mean, doesn't fully cover it, but it covers a lot of it. And we'll, of course, link to this piece so that people can get a sense of what might be happening in their part of the world. overall like do you do you have a sense of like where the union movement is in the context of like of of a world where we are sort of almost like post um we're almost like post labor law at this point right i mean like the national labor relations board is is you know um basically been put on ice um the there is no there is no it is a hostile administration. Fane and some of the UAW seem to have been like,

you know, are sort of like almost turned inward a little bit as there was a lot of like sort of turmoil, I guess, particularly around Neil Barowski, who was assigned to sort of oversee the UAW. and then this guy turns around and says, just as a buddy, you shouldn't be taking a position in terms of Gaza. I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening in that area. And Fain was the most prominent union leader, I feel like we've had in decades. So where, what's your sense where labor is right now? Well, we'll start with the UAW, which I agree is really important, and not just because I was a steward and active in trying to help get faint elected back when I was a member.

But this year is the first big battle in the auto sector in terms of a new contracts since the big three strike that happened in 2023. So auto parts used to be made by the Ford GM by the companies themselves. This year, they've split off for decades. to these much lower paid positions. And in 2008, in the recession, the really lousy UAW officers at the time agreed to concessions that cut wages from, say, $28 an hour to $18 an hour in a lot of these positions. And they still haven't caught up. So this is the first time since Fane has been in office and since there's been this revival

of fighting democratic spirit in a lot of the UAW, that those contracts come up across about 5,000 different auto parts, workers, seven different workplaces will come up this year. So that'll be a chance to really raise the floor for the lowest paid part of the auto industry. So I'm excited to see that sort of revive a focus on, you know, bringing the fight to the bosses. I think that has been a real, you know, continue to be a focus for the UAW in terms of doing new organizing. but there has been this whole federal interference into the union that's trying to make a mountain out of a molehill over an internal discipline of officers who in my personal view were not doing their job and we're trying to get jobs from family members. Disciplining people for doing that is not the same as the corruption and, you know, authoritarian culture that was there for many decades before. So that's a load of BS to me what the feds have done.

and I'm excited to see the UAW back on the fighting path. In general, I think a lot of union officers across the union movement were not super prepared for this moment of intense, both corporate offensive and federal attacks on union workers, really disappointing to see that, you know, with a million workers in the federal workforce declared no longer unions, supposedly, by Trump's executive orders saying to ignore contracts. You'd hope to see, you know, both those unions have this militant fighting response. You've seen pockets of that. And you'd hope to see other unions, you know, really having their back and saying we're going to find ways to push the federal

government to still honor those contracts. There are pockets of new kind of coordination you see across the labor movement. There's this effort called May Day Strong that a lot of teachers' unions especially, but others across the labor movement are helping out with. Labor notes is a space for a lot of more members and stewards across the labor movement. Increasingly, officers get together at this big conference we're doing in June, as well as online workshops and local ones. And I think the big question is going to be flexing these strike muscles and flexing other sorts of contract fights is when the most members pay attention and get active. So that's why this article looking at, you know, all these big manufacturing, education, healthcare, public sector, telecom, these are sectors where unions

could draw the line and say whatever the feds are doing, whether they're going to pick up the phone or not, when we say there's an unfair labor practice, they sell are sometimes. The point is we can force our employer to write new terms for a deal with us because we have leverage. They need us for this work. So that's why to me, this sort of lineup of contract fights is like the playoff schedule for working class power this year. It's like this is where, you know, we don't have to depend on representatives in Washington. It's about workers getting organized with direct kind of power we have our hands on. Keith Brower Brown, we'll put a link to that article. Really appreciate you coming in and laying this out for us at the beginning of 2026.

you know, the labor movement's going to be huge if we're going to push back upon this stuff. We're going to take a break and, you know, just 2,000 ICE workers, I should say, thugs sent to Minneapolis, and they've already apparently killed now an observer. So, you know, this is we're going to be entering. 2006, I think, is going to be a period where all sorts of organizing, whether institutionalized in the context of a union or just amongst labor or just amongst people in other ways is going to be really important. Really appreciate your time today. Any time. Thanks so much. Thanks, Keith. All right, folks. Let's go over what we know. I mentioned before we broke,

that the as of like the beginning of the year I sent in 2000 2000 thugs bovino of my understanding was either was slated to come there today or sometime this week I mean just to give you a sense of like how big of a presence that is 2,000 people we've got 10,000 Marines

off the coast of Venice well ostensibly as a threat to a country of 23 million people that is also heavily armed in terms of militias and whatnot. There were reports of people, you know, on Caracas, armed sort of like a paramilitary on the streets of Caracas. Minneapolis is how many people? I'm looking at this now. It's in the hundreds.

Hundreds of thousands. Oh, no, in terms of people, but sorry. hundreds of police officers. Like, yes, there's 2,000 feds brought in to a city of 428,000. 428,000.

So, I mean, it's a huge, huge force on the ground now. More than, my point is just more than double the entire police force of the city. Wow.

Really? The police force? That's, I mean, a cursory Google search basically says that, yeah, there were more than 800 sworn officers

at the beginning of 2020. now a city official say the number is currently 570 and that's 2024 so that's I not so not I mean my almost four times more at least three times more than the cops that are in the city um and apparently bovino is on the site uh of the killing and um it seems like this woman was a legal observer we have two eyewitness accounts just there in the do we have video here's one video and one statement. Maybe we'll just read the statement really quickly. I have it here.

Evan Hill has this of the Washington Post, but I think this is from local reporting. A witness to Wednesday's shooting in South Minneapolis told NPR News. That's local in Minneapolis. It's the first link I sent as well. I sent two.

That she saw a federal agent shoot a woman several times. She lives near this eyewitness here. 33rd in Portland and said she woke up to commotion outside her home. She said she saw a car blocking traffic on Portland Avenue that appeared to be a part of a protest against federal law enforcement operations. Heller said she heard ICE agents telling the driver a woman to get out of here.

She was trying to turn around and the ICE agent was in front of her car and he pulled out a gun and put it right in like his midriff was on her bumper. and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times, Heller said. Heller said it appeared the woman then accelerated and traveled about 100 feet before striking a utility pole and some other

vehicles. She could be seen slumped over inside her car. And this echoes this video too. You have another video? Yeah, let's... This is from a Facebook live and then the attorney, Ben Crump, tweeted this out. Now it's just worse than before.

So, and then she, her foot just went down to the, down to the gas and she slammed into those slumped over. They wouldn't let the MS through, they wouldn't, there's a physician here yelling. So murdered her. Can I take the pulse? Can I please get a pulse?

They wouldn't let anybody fucking through. And then when the EMS did get here, 10, 15 minutes later, they carried her out like a sack of fucking potato. How did you have that? They're down here, guys. I mean, this is, you know way to think she's gone.

I just got a fucking murder outside of my house. I mean, this is, you know, we were saying throughout much of the second half of last year, that this was inevitable. And there's going to be more. You cannot have a bunch of poorly trained. crypto, you know, fascist, maybe not crypto, um, those, you know, bounty hunters, whatever they are, uh, running around with absolutely no constraints on them, no accountability, weaponed up, buffed up with all sorts of like

gear they can, they can buy to make themselves feel like their commandos. and not have them going and shooting people. And the amazing thing is, is like, when have we heard in all of these supposed sort of like, you know, and it's not even worth at this point taking at face value the idea that they're going after the most dangerous people. It's absurd. You've seen them go after grandmothers. We've seen them go after parents and kids. And the largest percentage increase has been people with no criminal record in terms of who they're detaining.

It's a lie. It's a Nazi, Nazi lie. But not one single story. Not one single story of these ice thugs apprehending a disposed criminal element where these ice thugs lives were in jeopardy because one of these, you know, hardened criminals was firing at them. All of the violence has gone in exactly one direction. and it is emanated from these fascist thugs.

And make no mistake about it. Like they sent in, Trump sent in these fascist thugs into Minneapolis because they're on a role with demonizing Somalis. I mean, that, you know, like this is. Yeah. He doesn't have Colin Kaepernick to, to, to, um, you know, to incite the sort of like racist, racist fantasies of his followers. So now they have the Somali population in Minneapolis. I mean, 32 people died in ICE custody last year.

There was a story that I saw over the break about, I believe there was somebody that was working at one of these detention facilities who ended up getting fired because he was having sex with a I think it was a she might have been Guatemalan but a a detainee there and she was he was

she was asking for photos of her daughter and that's what was you know the sex that he was part of the trade and other things and you know he was fired I mean that's rape because it's coercive uh it's assault at the very least but you know just like

this is what's happening to people all across this country right now. These are fascist death squads. And the idea that there's deaths in ICE custody, of course, because that's, you know, it's too uneconomical to make sure that nobody actually dies when you start concentrating people in camps. Here it is. I mean, the Guardian.

The ICE is holding over 68,000 people in detention in mid-December, and nearly 75% of them have no criminal convictions. And that same month, Six people died in ICE custody. The just deadliest month so far and the deadliest year, of course, for ICE in custody. Remember what a year ago, Jank Yugar of the Young Turks was like, well, if it is just the criminals, then of course I want to see the criminals out. Has he like appended his statement on that?

The one he fired Francesca Furentine. Oh, that was over this exact same thing. It wasn't it. When she called it a gulag and she said that, you know, he was being a little bitch or something like that. How about a Mia Coppa? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, made a big spectacle about it too. A friend of the show, Francesca Fierintini, who was dead on, completely right.

Just unbelievable. All right, we will, we're going to take a break. We will be back with more as this develops. But this is where we're at. This is what, you know, I mean, in many respects, this is all going to be part of 2026. We're going to see more of this. They're going to get increasingly increasingly. increasingly desperate because Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, Bovina, all of these scumbags,

Holman, they all know that if the Democrats take control of the House, at the very least, their job gets marginally harder and more difficult. Not necessarily, you know, I don't have a tremendous amount of faith in the Democrats to go super hard on these things. They may or may not. Certainly some will. But they know it's not going to get easier. So there's going to be a, the intensity of all this stuff is going to be at its peak over the course of the next 11, 12 months. I mean, she, this, this legal observer was killed for practicing her First Amendment rights. The First Amendment isn't just getting to say racial and ethnic slurs and the R word on the internet. Just hate to break.

break it to the MAGA movement. It's actually about protest and standing up to the government. And legal observers in protest movements have served that purpose historically over and over again. This woman was murdered for practicing her First Amendment rights. Full stop. By the way, ICE is, of course, saying, you know, feared for his safety, blah, blah, blah. The ICE and ICE officer fearing for his life, the lives of fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public fired defensive shots. We're also hearing potentially that they were,

and that was what that eyewitness account said, blocking somebody who was trying to provide her with medical attention. Don't be a death squad. If you don't want to be afraid for your life is don't be doing things that, you know, people perceive you as a threat. All right.

We're going to take a quick break. Head into the so-called fun half of the program. He used his training and saved his own life. and that of his fellow officers. That's what ICE is publicly claiming right now. I mean, this is like the sovereignty of America's being hurt by Venezuela.

It's like the grandma's at Jan 6th. They know that what they're saying is a joke. Folks, your support that makes the show possible. You can become a member of Join the Majority Report.com. Also, don't forget just coffee.coop, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use a coupon code majority to get 10% off. Matt, Left Reckoning. Yeah, Left Reckoning, Venezuela yesterday, Jose Luis Granizzaa, and Nick Estes of the Red Nation.

A couple interviews took it up. All right, folks, see you in the second half of the show. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. but I think around 18 months out we're going to look back and go like wow what what is that going on it's nuts wait a second hold on for hold on for a second Emma welcome to the program

hey fun pack Matt Drew fun what is up everyone no me keen you did it Fun, crap. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Fun practice. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint.

Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this?

7-8. Yes. Yes, it is you. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to guess how like. Who libertarians? They're so stupid though. Common sense says of course. Gobbled euk. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21?

Challenge met. I'm positively clovery. I believe 96 I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 501. 1⁄.

380. 911 for instance. $3,400. $1,900. $6, $5, $4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making a think less. But let me say this.

Poop. You're going to call it satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. That's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah.

Sundow guns out. I don't know. But you should know. People just don't like that. entertain ideas anyway. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled folks.

I love it. I do love that. Got a jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro. 10 o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick.

So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye-bye.