Labor

Liberation Day's Bill Comes Due — and Workers Are Still Paying It

One year after Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs promised to resurrect American manufacturing and shrink the trade deficit, the numbers are in. Manufacturing lost 89,000 jobs. Families paid an average of $1,700 in extra costs. Crop farmers absorbed $34.6 billion in losses from retaliation. The policy was sold as economic nationalism. What it delivered was a hidden tax on the people it claimed to champion.

Apr 7, 20265 min read0070

A shuttered American factory floor, windows dusty and machinery idle, symbolizing manufacturing job losses following the Liberation Day tariffs

Prince- Technology

Oracle Just Fired 30,000 People to Buy More GPUs

Oracle laid off 30,000 employees — 18% of its workforce — to free up billions for AI infrastructure. The stock went up. Welcome to the new tech playbook.

Apr 3, 20268 min read009

Jack Smart- Politics

Show Me the Coalition: Missouri Progressives Are Building Something That Might Actually Last

In Jefferson City and Kansas City, a coalition of 24+ progressive groups — labor unions, reproductive rights advocates, LGBTQ+ organizations, and faith leaders — is mounting a unified fight against a Republican plan to eliminate Missouri's state income tax and replace it with expanded sales taxes.

Mar 31, 20265 min read007

Jack Smart- Politics

Missouri's Tax Swap: $850 More for Working Families, $40,000 for the Rich

Missouri's HJR 173 would eliminate the state income tax and replace it with expanded sales taxes by 2031. ITEP analysis shows middle-income families would pay $535–$850 more annually while the top 1% pockets about $40,000 in cuts. A 24-group progressive coalition is organizing to stop it — and testing a model for 2026 midterm politics in the process.

Mar 26, 20265 min read00

Big Guy- Sports

From $66K to $583K: How WNBA Players Finally Got Paid What They're Worth

The WNBA just ratified a landmark 7-year CBA with a 450% salary cap increase and real revenue sharing.

Mar 25, 20265 min read004

Jack Smart- Labor

Tua Tagovailoa Cost Miami $99 Million in Dead Cap. His Brain Cost More.

Tua Tagovailoa signed for $1.3 million this week after multiple concussions ended his Miami career. It's a sports story, sure. But look closer and you'll find one of the clearest case studies in American workplace injury — and the catastrophic failure of labor protections to keep up with it.

Mar 21, 20265 min read004

Jack Smart- Politics

TSA Workers Are Quitting Mid-Shift. The Administration Wants a Trophy Anyway.

The Department of Homeland Security has been in partial shutdown for 32 days — the longest in American history — as spring break descends on U.S. airports. TSA agents are calling out sick and walking off the job. The administration claims 700,000 deportations but can't account for 300,000 of them. And some Republicans are starting to ask out loud whether any of this is actually working.

Mar 21, 20265 min read00

Prince- Technology

AI Ate Your Job: Inside the 2026 Tech Layoff Bloodbath

Oracle, Meta, Amazon, and Block cut 45,000 jobs in Q1 2026 — none of them struggling financially. Wall Street cheered every round of layoffs. The AI efficiency narrative is covering up a shareholder-driven cost-cutting spree, and entry-level workers are getting hit hardest.

Mar 20, 202610 min read0010

Jack Smart- Politics

Day 27: The Federal Workers Washington Forgot to Notice

The DHS partial shutdown has quietly become the longest in American history — surpassing every previous record. While politicians debate immigration policy and procedural rules, TSA agents are screening spring break travelers without guaranteed pay, Coast Guard families are stretching budgets, and air traffic controllers are managing record traffic with frozen raises. This is a story about who actually pays the price when Washington turns federal workers into leverage.

Mar 17, 20265 min read00

Jack Smart- Politics

Corporations Got Tariff Refunds. Workers Got Pink Slips. The Math Doesn't Add Up.

After the Supreme Court's tariff ruling, corporations stand to recover billions in duties paid under challenged trade actions. But the workers displaced during that same period of tariff-driven supply chain disruption have no equivalent remedy. Progressive economists are pushing for 'tariff damage funds' — and the fight over whether that idea goes anywhere will define who trade policy is actually for.

Mar 16, 20267 min read00

Jack Smart- Politics

We Fired the Firefighters While the House Was Burning

DOGE gutted America's cybersecurity agency by nearly 40% — and now, with U.S. forces engaged in active military conflict with Iran, Tehran-linked hackers are probing U.S. critical infrastructure against a skeleton crew. Meanwhile the VA, IRS, and Social Security Administration are quietly collapsing. This is what "efficiency" looks like when it crashes into reality.

Mar 14, 20267 min read104

Ella Smart- Politics

Grading on a Curve: DOGE's New Layoff Rules Get the Principle Right, the Process Wrong

OPM's new Reduction-in-Force rules would make performance ratings the primary factor in federal layoffs, displacing seniority protections that have governed the civil service for generations. The principle is sound — merit should matter. But building that system on top of a new "forced distribution" rating requirement creates the conditions for exactly the kind of abuse the rules claim to prevent.

Mar 14, 20268 min read00

Jack Smart- AI

AI Did Your Job. The Company Kept the Money.

When Block fired 4,237 people in one morning citing AI efficiency, its stock jumped $8.7 billion by afternoon. Atlassian followed. Pinterest followed. Tech layoffs in early 2026 have surpassed 45,000 — with AI explicitly named as the cause. The productivity gains are real. The problem is who's capturing them.

Mar 14, 20267 min read006

Jack Smart- Politics

Six Crossings: Why Tariffing Canada Means Tariffing Detroit

A single engine part can cross the US-Canada border six to eight times before it ends up under a car hood in Michigan. Trump's 25-35% auto tariffs don't just hit Canadian factories. They hit American ones — over and over and over. The workers on those lines didn't vote for a tariff on themselves.

Mar 13, 20267 min read004

Jack Smart- Politics

45,700 Jobs Gone. The Profits Are Doing Great.

Tech companies are posting record profits while eliminating tens of thousands of workers in the name of AI efficiency. When the gains go to shareholders and the losses go to workers, that's not disruption — it's policy. And right now, Washington is choosing not to have one.

Mar 10, 20265 min read005