Podcasts about unions

1210 - Side - associated with tattoos 1230 - Ryan Walters, Chief Executive Officer of Teacher Freedom Alliance, kicks us off this week after the Teachers' Unions went crazy at their rallies over the weekend. Is the bible anti-Semitic? Who is spouting that craziness? Why is it so important to get federal funding for school choice? Why are behavioral changes in the classroom and proper training by teachers important for better students in any school? 1250 - Who did Bryson DeChambeau call out to to overturn a golf ruling in The Open? Your calls.

1210 - Side - associated with tattoos 1230 - Ryan Walters, Chief Executive Officer of Teacher Freedom Alliance, kicks us off this week after the Teachers' Unions went crazy at their rallies over the weekend. Is the bible anti-Semitic? Who is spouting that craziness? Why is it so important to get federal funding for school choice? Why are behavioral changes in the classroom and proper training by teachers important for better students in any school? 1250 - Who did Bryson DeChambeau call out to to overturn a golf ruling in The Open? Your calls. 1 - PA Treasurer and candidate for Governor Stacy Garrity joins us today. How ridiculous is is that PA Congresspeople will not reconvene in order to prevent a ruling that would re-open thousands of second degree murder cases in the Commonwealth? How is this bipartisan issue not getting any traction? Why is it so important to flip the house to bring common sense back to the state? Why are men favoring Stacy Garrity in the latest polls?How hard is it going to be to stomp out Iran as they attack our bases in other countries? What's next regarding AI in PA? 120 - Your calls. How much is New Jersey taking with their “jock tax”? 130 - Mike Inganamort, Assemblyman from District 24 in New Jersey, joins us today. Should New Jersey be entitled to a cut of selling the grass from the final at Metlife Stadium? While tourists enjoyed the US, they spent all their money in New York! So was this worth it for New Jersey? Should Mikie Sherrill look to correct problems here at home before trying to be a national figure? Will New Jerseyans ever pump their own gas? 150 - Dom Giordano Presents: Progressive Women Gone Wild! 2 - Why is “protected species” the hot phrase in the WNBA? 205 - What standard is women's tennis introducing tomorrow? 215 - Dom's Money Melody! 220 - Where are housing prices in New Jersey bound to soar? 225 - More calls. 235 - Should President Trump get credit for a dropping murder rate in Camden? Your calls. 250 - The Lightning Round!

Kevin Boston-Hill speaks with Dr. Melissa Lyon, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at SUNY Albany, about a recent study by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute regarding the declining strength of teachers unions in this country.

Capellan, Frank www.deutschlandfunk.de, Informationen am Morgen

Engels, Silvia www.deutschlandfunk.de, Informationen am Mittag

Capellan, Frank www.deutschlandfunk.de, Informationen am Mittag

Engels, Silvia www.deutschlandfunk.de, Informationen am Mittag

Jens Spahn hat die Konsequens aus der Debatte um seine Elternschaft gezigen. Bahnmitarbeiter stürzt aus dem Zug. Von Ariana Gordjani.

This week we're pulling back the curtain on one of Hollywood's most misunderstood subjects: film financing. Where does all that money come from? Who gets paid first? Why are movie stars earning $20 million upfront while some actors work for union minimums? And why does a movie's box office total tell only a fraction of the story?Check us out on...Twitter @TSMoviePodFacebook: Time SensitiveInstagram: @timesensitivepodcastGrab some Merch at TeePublicBig Heads Media  

In OVERTIME, we talk to Ben Burgis about his debate about unions with Jillian Michaels.✦ ABOUT ✦The Valley Labor Report is the only union talk radio show in Alabama, elevating struggles for justice and fairness on the job, educating folks about how they can do the same, and bringing relevant news to workers in Alabama and beyond.Our single largest source of revenue *is our listeners* so your support really matters and helps us stay on the air!Make a one time donation or become a monthly donor on our website or patreon:TVLR.FMPatreon.com/thevalleylaborreportVisit our official website for more info on the show, membership, our sponsors, merch, and more: https://www.tvlr.fmFollow TVLR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheValleyLab...Follow TVLR on Twitter: @LaborReportersFollow Jacob on Twitter: @JacobM_ALFollow TVLR Co-Creator David Story on Twitter: @RadiclUnionist✦ CONTACT US ✦Our phone number is 844-899-TVLR (8857), call or text us live on air, or leave us a voicemail and we might play it during the show!✦ OUR ADVERTISERS KEEP US ON THE AIR! ✦Support them if you can.The attorneys at MAPLES, TUCKER, AND JACOB fight for working people. Let them represent you in your workplace injury claim. Mtandj.com; (855) 617-9333The MACHINISTS UNION represents workers in several industries including healthcare, the defense industry, woodworking, and more. iamaw44.org (256) 286-3704 / organize@iamaw44.orgDo you need good union laborers on your construction site, or do you want a union construction job? Reach out to the IRONWORKERS LOCAL 477. Ironworkers477.org  256-383-3334 (Jeb Miles) / local477@bellsouth.netThe NORTH ALABAMA DSA is looking for folks to work for a better North Alabama, fighting for liberty and justice for all. Contact / Join: DSANorthAlabama@gmail.comIBEW LOCAL 136 is a group of over 900 electricians and electrical workers providing our area with the finest workforce in the construction industry. You belong here. ibew136.org Contact: (205) 833-0909IFPTE - We are engineers, scientists, nonprofit employees, technicians, lawyers, and many other professions who have joined together to have a greater voice in our careers. With over 80,000 members spread across the U.S. and Canada, we invite you and your colleagues to consider the benefits of engaging in collective bargaining. IFPTE.org Contact: (202) 239-4880THE HUNTSVILLE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD is a union open to any and all working people. Call or email them today to begin organizing your workplace - wherever it is. On the Web: https://hsviww.org/ Contact: (256) 651-6707 / organize@hsviww.orgENERGY ALABAMA is accelerating Alabama's transition to sustainable energy. We are a nonprofit membership-based organization that has advocated for clean energy in Alabama since 2014. Our work is based on three pillars: education, advocacy, and technical assistance. Energy Alabama on the Web: https://alcse.org/ Contact: (256) 812-1431 / dtait@energyalabama.orgThe Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union represents in a wide range of industries, including but not limited to retail, grocery stores, poultry processing, dairy processing, cereal processing, soda bottlers, bakeries, health care, hotels, manufacturing, public sector workers like crossing guards, sanitation, and highway workers, warehouses, building services,  and distribution. Learn more at RWDSU.infoThe American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union proudly representing 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers nationwide and overseas. Learn more at AFGE.orgAre you looking for a better future, a career that can have you set for life, and to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself?   Consider a skilled trades apprenticeship with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. Learn more at IUPAT.orgUnionly is a union-focused company created specifically to support organized labor. We believe that providing online payments should be simple, safe, and secure.  Visit https://unionly.io/ to learn more.Hometown Action envisions inclusive, revitalized, and sustainable communities built through multiracial working class organizing and leadership development at the local and state level to create opportunities for all people to thrive. Learn more at hometownaction.orgMembers of IBEW have some of the best wages and benefits in North Alabama. Find out more and join their team at ibew558.org ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

The Green Party wants all new workers to automatically be enrolled in unions. Their election policy would mean the onus is on workers to opt out. The first Labour government brought in compulsary union membership in 1936, but in 1991 National's Employment Contract ended compulsary unionism. Green's co-leader Marama Davidson spoke to Lisa Owen.

For more on this Donal Moriarty, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Aer Lingus and Hazel Nolan, National Secretary of Fórsa.

The Greens have made an election pledge to make union membership automatic for new employees. Co-leader Marama Davidson says this members bill and policy would make union membership the default setting for new employees, who could choose to opt out. Davidson explained that unions are a critical way for workers to get better pay and conditions and this bill will make it easier for them to get involved. "This is a good idea, and of course we need to protect privacy - at the same time, normal accountabilities will apply." LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

National's Matt Doocey and Labour's Dan Rosewarne joined John MacDonald for Politics Friday this week. Doocey rejected claims the Woodend Bypass has been put on the back burner, while Rosewarne accused National of over-promising and under-budgeting, and said Labour would prioritise its construction. However, when repeatedly asked whether Labour would deliver it sooner than National, Rosewarne couldn't provide a clear explanation of how that would be achieved. They also covered some of the other biggest stories from the week, from David Seymours idea to ban smartphones for under-sixteens, to the Green's new policy to make union membership opt out rather than opt in. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

FIRST WITH YESTERDAY'S NEWS (highlights from the long weekend on Newstalk ZB) For the Lowest Common Denominators, Anyway/Remember Co-Governance?/Unions Are Easy/Podcast RouletteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A property developer has revealed to Michael McLaren why he's made the surprise decision to call on various unions, including the ACTU to block the sale of the Victoria Barracks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

REDIFF - Marie évoque une relation compliquée avec son père, marquée par des paroles et des attitudes blessantes durant son enfance. Elle exprime aujourd'hui un profond malaise face à la pression familiale et à la culpabilité que lui renvoie sa mère. Marie cherche à préserver sa santé mentale tout en expliquant son besoin de distance. Chaque soir, en direct, Caroline Dublanche accueille les auditeurs pour 2h30 d'échanges et de confidences. Pour participer, contactez l'émission au 09 69 39 10 11 (prix d'un appel local) ou sur parlonsnous@rtl.frHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

00:00:28 – Intro & Bobby's Handheld Shopping Spree 00:08:02 – Mina the Hollower: Credits Rolled on a Game of the Year Contender00:10:50 – TerraTech Legion: Vampire Survivors With Wheels and Guns00:20:38 – Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Gets One Last Chance00:26:03 – Everybody's Golf Hotshots: Controls, Cameras & No Don Pappas00:55:27 – Microsoft Layoffs, id Software & the Unreal Engine Mandate01:02:09 – Sony's Physical Media Fumble & PSN Frustrations01:04:44 – Golden Parachutes, Unions & the Death of the Game Pass Promise01:09:13 – Wrap-Up, Retro Recommendations & Plugs------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This Week on The Casual Hour…The games industry continues to burn around us, but thankfully, we have a few interesting titles to insulate us from the bleakness. Bobby polished off Mina the Hollower before getting down to the nuts and bolts of TerraTech Legion. And Chase hit the links in Everybody's Golf Hot Shots. Is it up to par or stuck in the rough? You'll have to tune into the newest edition of The Casual Hour to find out! // T W I T C H  &  Y O U T U B E------------------------------------------------------------------------------------M W F @ 9 PM CST⁠twitch.tv/thecasualhour⁠⁠youtube.com/thecasualhour⁠// S U B S C R I B E------------------------------------------------------------------------------------⁠https://www.youtube.com/thecasualhour⁠We post Casually Considereds and VODs from previous streams weekly!// F O L L O W------------------------------------------------------------------------------------One link to rule them all:⁠ www.thecasualhour.com⁠// T H E   C A S U A L   H O U R------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bobby Pease -⁠ ⁠https://linktr.ee/bob_ombyChase Koeneke -⁠ http://Linktr.ee/chase_koeneke⁠// M U S I C------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Love our theme music? It was created by Patric Brown. You can follow his antics on Twitter⁠ @insaneanalog⁠ or check out more of his music and download our theme at⁠ www.insaneanalog.com⁠

Listen to Something Rather Than Nothing one of the world's biggest indie podcasts!Explore ways to creativity, paths to philosophy, ideas to transform and introductions to life's most fascinating creators.Find dancers, painters, thinkers, musicians, esoteric conceptualists, physical contortionists, baseball stories, poets, s^xy movers and shakers, movie directors and, maybe, FIND YOURSELF!?Website Here

"The only time people notice what a cleaner does is when she doesn't do it."They disinfect hospital wards, scrub office floors, and sanitise the spaces we all rely on. Yet cleaners are among the most invisible workers in Europe.In this first episode, we pull back the curtain on a typical day in the life of a cleaner. From the marble corridors of the European Parliament to a high-dependency hospital unit in Ireland, we hear what it really means to do essential work that almost no one sees.In this episode, we hear from:

Trade unions across Europe are pushing for new measures to help employees working in extreme heat.Among the precautions are workplace thermal limits, mandatory site heat risk assessments and rights to heat breaks. It's estimated that there are 230 workplace deaths a year which are linked to high temperatures.Environmental commentator John Gibbons speaks to Matt on The Last Word.Hit the ‘Play' button on this page to hear their chat.

The Firm of Harris & Marang 7.8.26 Hour 1 - Could Dame Play Less than 25? + Unions Pulling Endorsement full 2840 Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:19:24 +0000 6OBbjYqKosgGyz2p1rw2QxPYlblpKk8w sports The Firm of Harris and Marang sports The Firm of Harris & Marang 7.8.26 Hour 1 - Could Dame Play Less than 25? + Unions Pulling Endorsement Fast paced and local, giving in depth insights to the Trail Blazers, baseball, college football and the NFL. With the right kind of weird to get Portland through the workday. © 2025 Audacy, Inc. Sports

This Day in Legal History: Vermont Bans SlaveryOn July 8, 1777, delegates meeting in Windsor adopted the Constitution of the Vermont Republic—and in doing so, Vermont became the first place in North America to write the prohibition of slavery into its founding law. At a moment when the newly declared United States tolerated and protected human bondage, a small, unrecognized republic on the frontier put a very different principle on paper.The relevant language was striking for its era. The Vermont constitution declared that all people are born equally free and independent, and it provided that no adult could be held as a servant, slave, or apprentice against their will—specifically, no man over twenty-one and no woman over eighteen. It was not a complete abolition; the age limits meant the document did not immediately free everyone, and enforcement in practice was uneven and incomplete for years afterward. But as a matter of constitutional text, it was the first time on this continent that a government's foundational law declared slavery inconsistent with the very idea of being born free.The context matters. In 1777, Vermont was not yet a state—it wouldn't join the Union until 1791—and it existed in a kind of legal limbo, claimed by both New York and New Hampshire and recognized by neither. That outsider status may have given its drafters room to be bolder than their contemporaries. While the framers of the national government were negotiating the compromises that would embed slavery in American law for another four generations—the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave clause, the twenty-year protection of the slave trade—Vermont's drafters wrote the opposite conviction into their first article.The significance of July 8, 1777 is partly symbolic and partly practical. Symbolically, it established that abolition was not some later invention imposed on a reluctant founding generation, but a principle that existed at the founding itself, chosen by people who could see the contradiction between declaring all men free and holding some in bondage. Practically, Vermont's provision became an early data point in the long argument that would run through the Northwest Ordinance, the gradual emancipation statutes of the northern states, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and finally the Thirteenth Amendment. It's a reminder that constitutional law is not just handed down from the most powerful actors—that sometimes the boldest legal principles come from the margins, from a place that wasn't even sure it counted as a state, writing down what it believed the law ought to be.A former Milwaukee County judge, Hannah Dugan, has been sentenced in federal court after being convicted of obstructing an immigration arrest outside her courtroom—a case that became a flashpoint in the fight over the Trump administration's use of courthouses to stage immigration enforcement. Dugan, who is 67 and was an elected circuit court judge, was found guilty of obstructing a federal proceeding, though a jury acquitted her of a lesser concealment charge.Federal immigration agents came to Dugan's courthouse to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican man who was scheduled to appear before her on misdemeanor assault charges. Prosecutors said Dugan directed him out through a non-public “jury door” in an effort to help him avoid the agents waiting in the public hallway. It didn't work—Flores-Ruiz walked through a public hallway with his attorney anyway, and agents arrested him outside after a brief foot chase. But the government charged Dugan criminally for what she did inside the courthouse, and a federal jury convicted her in December.Think about the competing principles colliding here. On one side is the idea that no one, not even a judge, gets to physically obstruct federal law enforcement carrying out its duties. On the other is a real institutional worry that animated a lot of the coverage: if immigration agents stake out courthouses, people with pending cases—victims, witnesses, defendants—may stop showing up at all, which grinds the ordinary work of the state courts to a halt. Dugan's defenders framed her actions as protecting the functioning of her courtroom; prosecutors framed them as obstruction of a federal operation. The jury sided with the government on the core charge.At sentencing, the two sides were far apart. Federal prosecutors declined to recommend a specific term but argued the guidelines called for fifteen to twenty-one months in prison. Dugan's lawyers disputed that calculation and asked U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman for time served—no prison at all. The significance of the case goes well beyond one judge. It's a marker of how aggressively the administration is willing to pursue anyone perceived to interfere with immigration enforcement, up to and including a sitting judge, and it sends a message to state and local officials everywhere about the personal legal risk of getting between federal agents and their targets.Ex-Wisconsin judge to be sentenced for obstructing immigration arrest | ReutersBayer is moving to bring an end to the sprawling federal litigation over its Roundup weedkiller, following a significant win at the Supreme Court. Late last month, the Court ruled 7-2 in Bayer's favor, and the company is now trying to convert that decision into the dismissal of the failure-to-warn claims that have driven nearly a decade of lawsuits.Thousands of plaintiffs have sued Bayer alleging that Roundup, and specifically its active ingredient glyphosate, caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that the company violated state law by failing to warn them of that cancer risk. Bayer's winning argument was about federal preemption—the principle that when federal and state law conflict, federal law wins. Bayer argued that because the Environmental Protection Agency has concluded glyphosate poses no cancer risk and requires no cancer warning on the label, plaintiffs can't use state failure-to-warn law to demand a warning the federal regulator affirmatively says isn't needed. The Supreme Court agreed, overturning a $1.25 million Missouri verdict in the process.Consider why this is such a powerful tool for Bayer. A failure-to-warn claim says, in essence, “you should have told me this was dangerous.” But if the federal agency in charge has studied the product and decided no warning is warranted, then a state jury ordering the company to warn anyway would effectively be overriding the federal regulator. Preemption resolves that conflict in favor of the federal standard. The practical effect is that the single most common theory in the Roundup litigation—failure to warn—is now largely off the table in the cases this ruling reaches.The significance is real but, importantly, not total. This should let Bayer dismiss current warning-based claims and block future ones, which is exactly why the company is now pressing courts to wind down the federal litigation, and it's pairing that push with a proposed $7.25 billion class-action settlement to sweep in remaining Roundup users. But the decision doesn't make every claim disappear. Plaintiffs may still pursue theories that don't depend on a failure to warn—like defective design—and the settlement obligations remain. So this is a milestone in Bayer's long campaign to contain its liability, not the final word. It's also a notable example of how federal regulatory findings can become a shield against state tort law, a doctrine with implications well beyond weedkiller.Bayer seeks end to federal Roundup litigation after Supreme Court win | ReutersFederal judges are sounding skeptical of a California law that bans employers from forcing workers to attend so-called “captive audience” meetings—mandatory gatherings where a company shares its views on political or religious matters, most often its opposition to unionizing. The law has already been blocked by a district court, and the signs from the bench suggest that skepticism may carry through on appeal.Here's what a captive audience meeting is and why it's contested. When a union organizing drive is underway, employers have long held mandatory meetings where attendance is required and workers listen to management make the case against unionizing. Unions call these coercive; employers call them protected speech. California's SB 399 tried to ban compelling attendance at meetings covering “political matters,” a category defined broadly enough to include unionization. Judge Daniel Calabretta of the Eastern District of California blocked the law, and his reasoning is the crux of the whole fight.He gave two independent grounds, and it's worth separating them. The first is federal preemption—the same principle at work in the Bayer story. Calabretta found that the National Labor Relations Act, which governs labor relations nationwide, occupies this field and preempts California's attempt to regulate it under the Machinists and Garmon preemption doctrines. The second ground is the First Amendment: he held that the law was a content-based restriction on employer speech, singling out “political” and “religious” topics, and that it couldn't survive strict scrutiny—the most demanding test in constitutional law, which almost nothing passes. In his view, banning all speech on those topics in mandatory meetings swept far too broadly.The significance here is that this is a collision between the labor movement's priorities and employers' free-speech claims, and right now the free-speech and preemption arguments are winning in court. A number of states have passed captive-audience bans, so how the Ninth Circuit ultimately rules—California and Attorney General Rob Bonta are expected to appeal—will shape whether this entire category of worker-protection law survives. It's a reminder that even popular labor legislation has to run a gauntlet of federal preemption and the First Amendment, and that employer speech, including anti-union speech, gets substantial constitutional protection.US judges leery of California ban on workplace captive-audience meetings | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

On this day, 7 July 1864, Filipino labour leader Isabelo de los Reyes was born in Vigan. He became a journalist and opponent of Spanish colonial rule, for which he was jailed and tortured. He was then deported to Spain and held in the infamous Montjuic Castle in Barcelona, alongside many anarchist political prisoners.In 1901 he was allowed to return to the Philippines, and he brought with him a library of books by socialists like Karl Marx and anarchists like Mikhail Bakunin. He founded the Unión Obrera Democrática Filipina, and helped organise several strikes.See our timeline of his life and activism on our Stories app, including sources and maps: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/tag/9461/isabelo-de-los-reyesOur work is only possible because of support from you, our listeners on patreon. If you appreciate our work, please join us and access exclusive content and benefits at patreon.com/workingclasshistory.See all of our anniversaries each day, alongside sources and maps on the On This Day section of our Stories app: stories.workingclasshistory.com/date/todayBrowse all Stories by Date here on the Date index: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/dateCheck out our Map of historical Stories: https://map.workingclasshistory.comCheck out books, posters, clothing and more in our online store, here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.comIf you enjoy this podcast, make sure to check out our flagship longform podcast, Working Class History

Brenda Hilbrich, Executive Vice President-SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, joined Vineeta on The WCCO Morning News.

Reviewing the exponential takeoff of industrial robots.

Whether it's the cost of farming, the overtime laws, the CCA fuel tax, or the unionization of agricultural workers, growing food in Washington state is not easy.

TEACHERS UNIONS SEE TEACHERS AS PIGGY BANKS That is the claim made by longtime teacher Priscilla Rahn in this column. She joins me today at 1 to talk about it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former Missouri Senator John Lamping joins Marc and Kim to expose exactly who's funding the deceptive war against Amendment 5 — and the answer will make your blood boil. Lamping reveals that the "no" campaign is backed almost exclusively by realtors and government unions, while everyday taxpayers who'd actually benefit are too busy working to fund a counter-campaign of their own. He breaks down the cold math: a family of four making $100,000 could save nearly $5,000 a year, even in the worst-case sales tax scenario — and explains why the bill's intentional vagueness opened the door for fear-driven lies to spread unchecked. Marc and John also tackle the retiree pushback head-on, showing how this reform spreads the tax burden fairly across every visitor and vendor doing business in Missouri — not just the working families currently footing the whole bill. With early voting already underway and turnout expected to be razor-thin, this is the conversation every Missouri conservative needs to hear before they vote. Hashtags: #MarcCoxMorningShow #JohnLamping #Amendment5 #YesOnFive #MissouriTaxes #EndIncomeTax #ConservativeValues #STLNews #TaxTruth #ProtectYourPaycheck #MissouriElection2026 #FiscalConservative #VoteYes

For the first time in eight years, Utah is almost certainly sending a Democrat to the U.S. Congress: former Congressman Ben McAdams. Host Ali Vallarta asks him about key issues impacting the state.   ICYMI: Listen to our primary election results breakdown. Get more from City Cast Salt Lake when you become a City Cast Salt Lake Neighbor. You'll enjoy perks like ad-free listening, invitations to members only events and more. Join now at membership.citycast.fm.  Subscribe to our daily morning newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram @CityCastSLC. Text or leave us a voicemail with your name and neighborhood, and you might hear it on the show: (801) 203-0137 Looking to advertise on City Cast Salt Lake? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads.

A resolution targeting the Anti-Defamation League. Accusations of antisemitism. Calls for political activism in schools. How did America's largest teachers union become involved in these debates? David Osborne welcomes Clifford Smith of the North American Values Institute to unpack the controversies surrounding the NEA, the influence of activist movements in education, and the ongoing fight over the purpose of public schools and teachers unions in America. 

Greg Brady spoke with Vanmala Subramaniam, Reporter for the Globe and Mail about Fifteen months into his tenure as Prime Minister, Carney is drawing the ire of union heads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Show Me The Money Club live show with Sergio and Chris Tuesdays 6pm est/3pm pst.

durée : 00:38:04 - Questions du soir : le débat - par : Quentin Lafay - Depuis le 7 juin 2026, la France est censée avoir transposé dans son droit une directive européenne imposant la transparence salariale, afin de mieux lutter notamment contre les inégalités entre les hommes et les femmes. Une obligation à laquelle la France ne s'est pas encore conformée. - équipe : Stéphanie Villeneuve, Mathias Mégy, Diane de Vanssay, Antoine Ayral, Léa Racine - invités : Bruno Mettling Président-fondateur du cabinet de conseil Topics, ex-directeur général adjoint en charge des ressources humaines chez Orange, Paul Sauveplane secrétaire général et DRH de la société Alan Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

On this episode of The Truth with Lisa Boothe, Lisa sits down with Defending Education founder Nicki Neily to expose how teachers unions have spent more than $1 billion on political activism while America’s education system continues to decline. Nicki breaks down the rise of woke ideology in schools, the battle over school choice, gender policies in classrooms, and why parents began fighting back after COVID lockdowns. They also discuss declining test scores, union influence, Title IX battles, and the growing movement to restore accountability in education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Health New Zealand faces a $190 million bill to process holiday pay owed to tens of thousands of current and former workers. Collectively, $1.8 billion is budgeted to repay those affected by the miscalculations. Unions are scathing of the cost of meeting the repayments, and of the process itself, which has been plagued by delays. But Health NZ said the work is complex and time-consuming and requires to comb through years of records on the different payroll systems inherited from district health boards. Jimmy Ellingham reports.

Teacher unions have long dominated education politics, but their influence is waning. Amber Northern of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute joins Freedom to Learn to discuss a new report ranking teacher union strength across all 50 states. She explains why union membership declined in almost every state, which states remain union strongholds, and how the […]

Welcome to the first episode of our new series all about workers' rights. My guest this week is Christina Hajagos-Clausen who is the IndustriALL Global Union's director for the Textile, Garment, Shoe and Leather Sector. Our interview was recorded during the organisation's 4th Global Congress held in Sydney at the end of last year, at "a critical moment. Workers everywhere are being hit by converging crises, growing inequality, the climate emergency, digital disruption and the increasing concentration of corporate power." So how can workers ensure get to help shape a future that is fair, democratic and just?This is an expansive conversation that covers everything from: Why are trade unions necessary to the New Industrial Revolution, automation and AI. We explore what unions doing in the global textile & garment sector to shape a just transition. We look at specific garment producing countries and stories - including whether or not to boycott Made in Myanmar - plus the whole idea of the Labor movement as a check on fascism everywhere.If you find the interview valuable, please help us share it.Find links and further reading at thewardrobecrisis.comSupport the show on Substack - wardrobecrisis.substack.comTell us what you think. Find Clare on Instagram @mrspress Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Uber model is finally coming for healthcare. Katie J. Wells joins Paris Marx to discuss how much the healthcare gig apps resemble Uber's rollout, why they aren't being properly regulated, and the effects they're having on staff and patients alike.Katie J. Wells is a Senior Fellow at AI Now Institute and a co-author of Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris asked listeners to fill out a survey. It will only take a few minutes!Here is Katie's most recent work examining the gig model for healthcare.Support the show

Your daily reminder to opt out of the teachers' union as membership dues used to fight sane voter initiatives. Republicans try to lean into ballot harvesting as Dems surge in late counting. Failed homeless authority will live to see another day. Finally, it's primary day in Maine. 

Rideshare Rodeo Podcast June 8th, 2026 Delivery Network Company Driver Transparency & Protections Act https://www.change.org/p/delivery-network-company-driver-transparency-protections-act Rideshare Rodeo Brand & Podcast: https://linktr.ee/RideshareRodeo   

An important explanation of the major events happening right now. Things are getting hot in Paris, but it's normal. They don't use foam fingers. When they need the clicks, they make loud moves. Let's say it again, always listen to your President. Research always leads to rabbit holes. Truth gravitates like reforming DNA. Sponsors are always the people. Getting into the nitty gritty vids. Who's watching your banking account? A deeply complex look at a new scene. Tax refunds and digital tools. California's smart meters are a child's play level of control. At the birth of what was then the latest new tech. Now, it's more approachable. The Dept. Of War is key. The Fourth Amendment has been out the window for decades. It's not about a linear history. It all happens at once. If you can't explain it simply, then you don't know the topic. Contracts, graft and corruption. The Nexus 7 lineage. FOIA releases and the hidden powers. Travelling with no tech. June has been a bucket of ooze. The majority of public people are part of the show. Don't fall into their structured pockets of thinking. Always remember that God has got this, and there is nothing for us to fear.

In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins sits down with author Frank Hayde to explore his latest book, Hoffa's Connection. Hayde, a Kansas City native and noted mob historian, brings forward a largely overlooked figure in organized crime history—Sylvia Pagano. The conversation centers on Pagano's rise from Kansas City to Detroit, where she operated at the intersection of organized crime and labor unions under Jimmy Hoffa. Known for her effectiveness as a union organizer, Pagano infiltrated workplaces, signed up members, and quietly maintained ties to powerful mob figures. Her ability to navigate both worlds made her a key behind-the-scenes operator during a volatile era in American labor history. Hayde details Pagano's role in helping broker alliances between the Mafia and the Teamsters during a turbulent strike, marking a turning point in the relationship between organized crime and labor. Drawing from FBI wiretaps, he reveals candid conversations that shed light on her relationships with influential mob leaders like Tony Giacalone and Moe Dalitz, emphasizing her strategic importance across multiple crime families. The episode also explores the life of Chucky O’Brien, who grew up surrounded by Hoffa and organized crime figures. Through Hayde's research and interviews, listeners gain insight into the generational impact of mob ties, as well as the strict code of silence that governed both mother and son. Beyond individual stories, the discussion expands to the broader national network connecting crime families and labor unions. Pagano's reach extended well beyond regional boundaries, illustrating how organized crime leveraged union influence across the country. This episode offers a fresh perspective on the enduring mystery surrounding Hoffa's disappearance by examining the deeper historical context—and the overlooked players like Sylvia Pagano who helped shape it. It's a detailed look at power, loyalty, and survival within the American Mafia. The book is Hoffa’s Connections:The Story of Sylvia Pagano: the Kansas City Girl at the Center of the Mafia’s Alliance with the Teamsters Union  xxx [0:00] Hey, all you wiretappers out there, good to be back here in the studio of Gangland [0:03] Wire. This is Gary Jenkins. I’m a retired Kansas City Police Intelligence Unit detective, later sergeant. I have this podcast, Gangland Wire. I’ve got a website. If you want to go check my website out, I’ve got a few things for sale on there. And you can go rent the documentaries I’ve done about the Kansas City mob on Amazon. Just search my name. I’m all over the internet. Just search my name and mafia and you’ll find more you ever wanted to know about me and the mob and what I’ve done. And today I have a really a former Kansas City boy, a Kansas City native who has done several books on the mob, particularly the Kansas City mob. And he’s got a most recent one that I find just really fascinating. It’s a little known story that will help shed the light on Jimmy Hoffa, a little bit more light than most of you ever knew. There’s some questions that I had myself that’s not really in the in the popular culture about Jimmy Hoffa. It’s Frank Hayde. Welcome, Frank. Thanks, Gary. Great to be with you again. All right, Frank. We’ve done Mafia Dreams and Mafia and the Machine. So tell the guys a little bit about yourself and your books. [1:13] I grew up in Kansas City. My family stretches way back in Kansas City, and they were involved in the political machine under Pendergast, and so I heard a lot of stories about those days growing up. Later in my career with the National Park Service, I worked a short stint at the Harry Truman National Historic Site, where I learned more about local history, more about the political machine and the mob in Kansas City. So that’s where my interest started. [1:39] And then many years later, I wrote The Mafia and the Machine, and then followed that up with some of these other books, including this most recent one, Hoffa’s Connection, the story of Sylvia Pagano, the Kansas City girl at the center of the Mafia’s alliance with the Teamsters. You know, that’s the mouthful, I know. You know how it is with the subtitle. You can try to get the, summarize the entire book in your subtitle. So, that’s what that is. Yeah. When you look up a book or you see it online or whatever, you want to know quickly what it’s about. So I see that title, Hoffa. Oh, that’s interesting. I thought everything was done about Hoffa. Then you got this subtitle in here and you say, oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know about this. And I didn’t myself, this Sylvia Pagano. And the story starts in Kansas City. It’s a fascinating story, guys. I want to tell you, it is a fascinating story. [2:31] But before we get started, Frank was a park ranger, a law enforcement park ranger for the National Park Service for 20 years. And he has a really interesting mob interaction when he was in, I believe you run a temporary assignment out in California. Tell the guys about your mafia interaction as a law enforcement officer. [2:53] Yeah. So I was actually at the park service 32 years. 20 of those were law enforcement and just retired. But in the summer of 2024, I got to go out to Redwood National Park on what we call a detail, which is a temporary assignment. They were shorthanded and needed a little extra help. And I knew the place pretty well because I had worked there earlier in my career. So I went out there and it’s a beautiful place. And I was on patrol and I came upon a campsite and there was some violations going on. Nothing major, just the typical stuff that we see as park rangers. And I contacted the occupants of this campsite and I got their licenses and I was back in my vehicle running the licenses. There was a male and a female and the female, I noticed it was a New York license and Brooklyn address and last name is Scarpa. I said, no, that can’t be. That’d be too much of a coincidence. And ran the information, recontacted the subject. And I asked the female, I said, by any chance, are you related to Greg Scarpa? She said, oh, yeah, that was my grandfather. And Greg Jr. was my father. [4:02] And I guess I had to laugh. And by then, I had already written a ticket or two, I think, for just petty offenses. And so I handed her ticket and then asked her if she’d take a picture with me. But she was real nice. She understood that people don’t mind, and she was great. She took a picture with me, and she was more than happy to talk about her father and her grandfather. And it was all very interesting and just quite the coincidence. Yeah, really. That was quite a coincidence. Not only the main coincidence was that you knew her. And then a lot of people might know the name. You really knew the name. Yeah, no. And you had this whole interest in it to talk about. Yeah, I can tell you that 99% of park rangers, you have no idea. Now, if you’re a Brooklyn cop, that’s different. But I was probably the only park ranger alive that would have made that connection because of my interest in the topic. I’ve been trying to get Greg Scarlett Jr. to come on. He’s made some intimations to somebody else. He followed my Facebook group, and I followed his. And so I don’t know. I reached out indirectly. I don’t know exactly how to get a hold of him. Maybe I’ll package this little story up and I’ll send that to him. Maybe that’ll get him to come on the show. Except you wrote the tickets, damn it. That’s the problem. I hope he won’t come after me to write in his daughter’s tickets. Yeah. [5:25] All right, Frank. So let’s go in this most recent book, Hoffa’s Connection. How did you, Sylvia Pagano, how did you even get onto that name other than, did you start, she’s Chucky O’Brien’s mother, who most guys know if you’re really into Hoffa at all, or even on the little bit, Chucky O’Brien was, everybody thought he was like his illegitimate son a lot of times or his surrogate son. And he was really close to Hoffa and drove him around. I was going through your book. He was a guy that Hoffa could send around to other mob people because he was half Italian himself and both sides trusted him to carry messages and do meetings and things like that. So how did you get onto this originally? So I got a call from Jack Goldsmith, who’s a very interesting man because he is the learned hand professor of law at Harvard University, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, former assistant attorney general under President Bush. But for me, the most interesting thing about him was that he is Chucky O’Brien’s stepson. [6:29] And he was working on his book, Inhofe’s Shadow, when he contacted me. It’s a great book. I would recommend it to all the wiretappers. But it’s about Chucky. And he wanted to know if I had come across any information on Chucky O’Brien in my research for the Mafia and the Machine, because Chucky was from Kansas City. I said, what? Chucky O’Brien was from Kansas City? Because I knew all about Chucky O’Brien, but I had no idea he was from Kansas City. So that shocked me. And I don’t think very few people knew that. His Kansas City roots were scarcely known. Everybody just thought of Chucky as a Detroit guy. But when I finally read Goldsmith’s book, it’s about Chucky, but he touches on Sylvia. And I found what he wrote about Sylvia to be completely fascinating, especially because she was Kansas City. And so I thought, shoot, she’s in my wheelhouse. I thought, wow, she would make a great subject for a book. But I balked at it because she was so secretive that she left hardly anything information, hardly any documents exist about Sylvia. It’s just she wasn’t like the men that she associated with who were so extensively documented. There was just very little known about her, not even very many photographs in existence. [7:44] But fortunately, I got together with Pat Faisal in Kansas City. He’s a terrific researcher. You’ve worked with him a lot, Gary. You’ve had him on your show, I think. I think he’s written a couple of really important books on local history, and he had come across her independently of me, and through his own research, he had stumbled on just a brief mention or two of Sylvia Pagano in various FBI documents. [8:09] And so we decided to put our heads together, and Pat helped me with the research, did the lion’s share of the research, fed it to me, and then I would write the story. And that’s how it came together. [8:21] Interesting. And Frank, one of the coolest things, the research that Pat found was those wiretaps or bugs that the illegal bugs the FBI had in her house. And so they got a lot of really great conversations and they’re all transcribed and out there for somebody to find. So to me, that was fascinating. [8:45] Yes, that was probably our best source are these transcripts from the illegal microphones that the FBI placed in homes and businesses of organized crime associates all over the country back in the 60s. Got some great information from those. Sylvia talking freely in her apartment. Candidly, because she doesn’t know anybody’s list. And they had him in Tony Giacalone’s home juice company in Detroit also. And Sylvia was often a topic of conversation over there as well. By the way, Tony Giacalone was Sylvia’s paramour for many years. They had a long affair. People who think that Sylvia had an affair with Hoffa that produced Chucky O’Brien, [9:28] And that is not accurate. Chucky, we know who Chucky’s father was. He was a criminal out of St. Louis from the time he was a boy and went to prison when he was a young guy, was recruited from prison to come to Kansas City and work as a driver, for none other than Charlie Banagio. And so that put him right at the center of the action. [9:53] And Sylvia, having married the young man that put her right, she was already at the center of the action because she knew all the movers and shakers in the North End at that time already from the time she was a girl. But they became very much a part of Banagio’s network. And this was one fact that really blew me away that I didn’t know. And I don’t think you know it or Owsley or O’Malley or really anybody in Kansas City that Charlie Banagio was Chuckie O’Brien’s godfather. Yeah, I didn’t know that. Yeah. That is interesting. So Sylvia Pagano, she lives down there in the North End, what we call the North End folks, which is our little Italy. There’s a big church that anchors that neighborhood. And that’s where all the people came from Southern Italy and Sicily, moved into Kansas City and were associated with the church down there. After them, the Vietnamese came in and the church sponsored a lot of the Vietnamese and settled in that same neighborhood as it became a shifting neighborhood. So she’s down over there in Little Italy or the North End. And she meets a guy named Michael. Was it Three Fingers? [11:03] Oh, yeah. Frankie. Frankie Three Fingers. Coppola. Coppola, yeah. So tell us about that relationship. Yeah, that’s really interesting because Frankie Three Fingers… Hasn’t really been chronicled much as part of the Kansas City family. Because he was a roving guy, he had a lot of clout in both Italy and the U.S., and he had memberships in multiple families, and he was a high-ranking status too. So wherever he went, whether it was Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York, New Orleans, he was all over the place, and he was well-respected wherever he went. But he was in Kansas City for quite a long time. He was strongly associated with Padagio. And it appears from all the evidence, as well as testimony from organized crime experts in Detroit, that Frankie Three Fingers escorted Sylvia to Detroit after her marriage with Charles O’Brien ended in about 1941 in Kansas City. [12:13] So Sylvia arrives in Detroit on the arm of Frank Coppola, and that put her on the fast track to getting to know the upper echelon of the Detroit family and mobsters, top mobsters beyond Detroit. Coppola was associated with Costello in his slot machine racket down in New Orleans. [12:36] And later, after he got deported back to Italy, He worked with Lucky Luciano to put together the whole narcotics syndicate network that included the French Connection. So tremendously influential as a mobster. Sylvia could really not have picked a more influential and well-connected guy as a boyfriend. That really put her on the fast track to getting to know a lot of the most powerful guys in the country. Really interesting guy. Frank Copeland. I’ll just say it and maybe someone else can run with it. I don’t know if it’ll be me or not, but he would make a great subject for a book. Yeah, he’s not very well known. And the mob used to have this guy, Nikolai Gentile. He traveled around to different families and brokered different deals. I think back before communication was so fast and you didn’t fly from one city to the other, you had to take a train. That’s a whole day on the train to get one city to the other. Telephone communication wasn’t that good. You didn’t hardly make long distance phone calls back there in the 20s and 30s. I don’t think they were hard. So you have guys like this that then travel around and take messages that are trusted by the different cities. And so he had to be one of those guys. [13:52] You’re exactly right. In fact, he knew Nicola Gentile. [13:58] Gentile is also, I speak about him in this book also. He plays a role, a pretty important one, and he describes some events that are really fascinating. This story actually doesn’t begin in Kansas City. It begins in Pueblo, Colorado. There’s three geographic areas that are really emphasized in this story. Pueblo, Colorado, Kansas City, and Detroit. But Nicola Gentili and Frank Coppola knew each other in the United States, and they knew each other in Italy. And you’re exactly right, they had a similar role as traveling diplomats within the mafia. Very interesting. Not too many other guys, especially later on. They had Johnny Roselli, who was really well-traveled, and some others. But in those early days, a couple of these guys, Coppola, Gentile, I don’t know if there was any others or not, but that was what they did. They were all over the place, and they were so well-connected, and they really had memberships in multiple families. And that seems to have faded away later. You didn’t hear too much about guys that had more than one member. So occasionally somebody would switch families, but yeah, they were really interesting, [15:11] real, what you would call international mystery men, I think. Interesting. So she had an affair with him, and he brought her up to Detroit and started making connections in Detroit, if I remember the story right, with the Jackalones. And so what. [15:27] Take us on from there. How does she then move in with Hoffa? And she’s like in the middle between the Peckerwood truck drivers and the Italian mob, which they both needed each other and they worked well together for a long time. So how does she end up in the center of that? Yeah, she’s still quite young when she gets to Detroit. She’s just early 20s, maybe mid 20s at that point. But and here she is she’s immediately meeting all of the wise guys but she was still she needed a job she needed work i’m sure coppola helped her out to some extent but he had his own wife he had his own he probably had another mistress or two as well i mean she needed to make a she needed to make a living and raise her son chucky and um she got a job with the teamsters at that time in In Detroit, unions were strong. There was a lot of unions, and it was the capital of industrial unionism at that time. And so that just became a natural choice. She ended up meeting Burke Brennan initially, actually, even before Hoffa. Brennan was Hoffa’s right-hand guy. [16:36] And he gave her a job with the Teamsters as a salter. She was an organizer, and a good one, and a legit organizer. But her specialty was salting. Now, what’s that? So she was a union representative, and she would get a job in a factory or a warehouse, just an ordinary job. And she would go to work, just like everybody else, punch the clock. But while she was there, her real objective was signing other people up to join the union. So she’s like a secret agent in a way, buried into the normal workforce, but with a real different agenda. And she was real good at it. And the union guys noticed that she worked really hard and she was loyal and that she would keep her mouth shut. And so those were the same qualities that the mob guys admired. So this was at the time, though, and this is very important, when most of the unions and the mob were still at odds with each other. Back then, the gangsters were getting hired by companies to break strikes and to oppose unions. [17:47] And there was a particularly bad strike going on. It lasted a long time. The Teamsters were striking the Detroit Lumber Company. This was at about 42. And it was violent. And Hoffa could see the writing on the wall that the Teamsters were losing the battle. It went on and on. It was violent. And that’s where Sylvia Pagano stepped in. Burt Brennan told Jimmy Hoffa he should talk to Facci. Facci was Italian for face. And that was Sylvia’s nickname that she got when she was young back in Kansas City. Had a very pretty face. And so they called her the face. So Hoffa talked to Fauci and she set up a basically like a summit meeting peace conference, more or less. And they brokered a deal where the mob switched sides and became allies with the Teamsters against the Detroit Lumber Company. So that was really the moment that changed history, brought the mafia into the Teamsters orbit and vice versa. And that’s all traceable right back to Sylvia Pagano. [18:55] Wow. That’s interesting. I always wondered what the genesis of that was with Hoffa and the mob. And of course, we can see how it developed, but what that actual birth of that was. I think you’ve stumbled across the birth of it. You also… [19:11] We’re able to stumble across the birth of the Eastern families and New York families connection to Hoffa, which that that gets even bigger. Tell us a little bit about that. She was involved in that, believe it or not, guys. And just like in Detroit, back in New York, there’s Johnny Dio. He was busting up labor union strikes for the companies. Yeah, I think that to some degree in New York, New Jersey, that some Teamsters locals had already been infiltrated by the mafia independently and maybe unbeknownst to Hoffa in Detroit. But it really became a big thing with Hoffa and with Sylvia’s brokering that alliance. Little isolated examples of mob infiltration, I think, were already happening in Detroit. But once again, as Hoffa’s progressing in his career, moving up the ranks, he always had his eye on the top job. He wanted to be the president of the IBT. And of course, he knew he needed help in the Northeast for that, to realize that goal. And so with Sylvia helped set up meetings with Tony Ducks Corral Johnny Diagordi Tony Provenzano and Sylvia had gotten to know Provenzano in Detroit because he had strong connections to Detroit let’s see his cousin was married to. [20:39] Tony Giacalone’s cousin was married to Tony Pro, I believe, or vice versa. That’s your book. Yeah. I’d have to go back and read my own book. Yeah, it’s hard to keep up. Hard to remember all the details. All these players. Giacalone’s cousin was married to Provenzano. And so Sylvia had already met Provenzano in Detroit. And Chucky, her son, had already started calling him Uncle Tony. And so she had this great connection to Provenzano. And so she helped facilitate the Teamsters Mob Alliance in New York and New Jersey, just as she had in Detroit. And then it goes on from there. Then she later, we’re moving forward now, but she would later become the link between Hoffa and his closest contact in Cleveland, which was Moe Daylitz. She became the link between Hoffa and Alan Dorfman in Chicago. And she became the link between Hoffa and the Sevilla brothers in Kansas City. So she really was, and this is all, they taught, there’s a, from those FBI tapes, those illegal FBI tapes, we have Tony Zarelli and Nick Sevilla in Florida speaking about Sylvia Pagano and her relationship as a liaison between the Detroit family and between the Kansas City family. Like, there’s your proof right there. Not that you need it. She was really… [22:09] The guys, a lot of them really liked, adored her in the sense of she did have an affair with a couple of them, and she was a good-looking woman. A lot of them had, Moe Dalitz was known to have a crush on Sylvia, possibly an affair with Sylvia. But she was more than your mob mole, right? She was a dealmaker. She was an advisor. She was a liaison. She brought money to the table. She did deals with the guys. She helped broker some pension fund loans, all these things. So what I like to say about Sylvia is that we all know that the mob never inducted women into their ranks. But if they had, Sylvia Pagana would have been their first choice because she worked hard. She was loyal. [22:56] She kept her mouth shut. And she really lived truer to the code than some of the men did. She was 100% omerta. She really was. and she learned that in the north end of Kansas City, where Umerta was extremely strong even up into this century after it wasn’t so strong in other places and so she passed that on to Chucky O’Brien. He was also a real strong adherent to the code of silence. Yeah, I think we have to remember Chucky O’Brien was half Italian. His father was Italian. No. [23:33] So his mother, Sylvia, was the Italian. Mother, Sylvia, yeah. Yeah, his dad was Irish. Yeah, I got that mixed up. Exactly, asked backwards. But yeah, he was half Italian. And so he really talked the talk, and he moved right in. All these guys were like his uncle, Uncle Nick, Uncle Quirk, and that kind of thing. So he came back to Kansas City. Tell a little bit about Chuckie O’Brien and Kansas City. Yeah, so in 1950, he’d been in Detroit for about nine years by that point. 1950, he’s getting into high school age, and Sylvia sent him back to Kansas City to live on Independence Avenue with his grandparents, and he went to Cardinal Glennon High School. [24:13] And became a good athlete, started dating a gal from the old neighborhood who was a lot like Sylvia. I think that’s really interesting because Chucky really idolized his mother, but he never really, when he was young at least, got to spend as much time with her as he wanted. He spent a lot of time back in Kansas City. He spent a lot of time at his uncle’s house in Detroit because Sylvia was so busy with Hoffa and with the mob. So here’s Chucky in Kansas City. He meets a gal from Sylvia’s old neighborhood who has other things in common with Sylvia and who even looks, in my opinion, quite a lot like Sylvia. And he would eventually take her back to Detroit and marry her and have a family together. But his main objective, it really in Kansas City wasn’t so much going to school. It was becoming a truck driver. He wanted to become a truck driver so that he could put himself on the path to becoming a union organizer like his hero and surrogate father, Jimmy Hoffa. And according to Chucky, Uncle Nick and Uncle Cork got him his first job as a driver and got him his first union card with local 541. [25:23] And this was right at the time when Local 541 was becoming ground zero for labor strife and union corruption in the United States. And Gary, you said a key word earlier, which was Peckerwood. And that’s who was running the Kansas City Teamsters at the time. It was dominated by Peckerwood guys, country boys, basically, and like Hoffa. And these guys were just as bad as the Italian gangsters who were more famous. They ran those locals with intimidation and terror, and they were violent, and they were very ambitious. They had political power. [26:08] Make a long story short, in 1953 in Kansas City, we had an inter-union labor war. And it was the Teamsters versus almost every other union in town. And Teamsters were trying to dominate a lot of these other unions is what it was. And so you had a complete paralysis of the entire construction industry for three months. Imagine just all construction stopping for three months in any metro area and how devastating that is to the economy. 23,000 Kansas Citians were out of work. The Teamsters were refusing to pick up or deliver supplies. And that eventually morphed into violence and sabotage. You had guys going into battle at construction sites. People were getting badly injured. People were getting kidnapped. It was, and then furthermore, we had four military defense projects centered in the Kansas City area, and this is right at the height of the Korean War. So these military installations were suffering work stoppages also. So this was unacceptable in Washington. And Congress swooped in with hearings and an investigation. [27:17] And they called this, basically, it was, I think the exact language was something like the most forbidding chapter in the history of American unions, something like that. It was a big deal. This history has been mostly forgotten. But Kansas City was [27:32] completely paralyzed for about three months. And that was the union that was the local mainly primarily local 541 which chucky was a young member of he was too young at that time to get drawn into the politics of the union i don’t believe that he was on the front lines of these these battles and violence that was happening he was just a brand new truck driver at the time but he was part of that in the sense that he was a local a member of the local at the time this stuff was happening so yeah that’s that’s what happened when Chucky came back to Kansas City. [28:07] Interesting. And that must have been the time when Roy Williams started moving up the ladder and the mob was moving in and they moved this auto ring and some of his people out. And Roy Lee Williams must have, with the support of Nick Civella and the local mob, must have moved right on in. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. The main guy behind all the strife and violence I was just talking about was Orville Ring, classic quintessential Peckerwood guy and then after all this happened Hoffa swooped in and helped negotiate an end to these conflicts in 1953 and, And Nick Civella and his crime family, they were all watching all this from the wings, planning and scheming. Wow, there’s a lot going on here. How can we capitalize on this? [28:50] So in the aftermath of it all, the Savellas basically intimidated Orville Ring out of the Union. He went back to his farm. Later, he was killed in an accident on his farm, which a lot of people thought was the mob, that the mob did it. But it looked probably just an accident. And I think a tractor rolled over on him or something like that. But yeah, Roy Williams. So at this time, just basically the Italians were taken over from the Peckerwoods. There were still some useful Peckerwoods, and they worked together. And Roy Williams was the key guy there. This is when Nick Civella and he started working together to take over the Teamsters in Kansas City. You’re exactly right. And the rest is history. Really? really. Roy Williams is an interesting guy. He was a war hero from World War II. He had several bronze stars and he was a huge war hero, but he knew which side of the bread got the butter. And so he went with that and he went with Nick Civella. And he did, he bucked up to him a few times, but Nick Civella, actually in a famous scene, Nick Civella had him picked up and driven somewhere and shined a bright light in his eyes and said, you will go along with this scheme. [30:05] So it’s, but he kept going along to almost, he almost, he did become the president of the union for a short period of time, almost right there at the end of his life and when everybody was going to jail. But he was Nick Civella’s protege and Nick Civella’s puppet for his whole life and the whole Teamsters union was. [30:24] Yeah and that story you mentioned with the white spotlight shining in his eyes they kidnapped him and took him into this empty warehouse and i always point to that as just one of those. [30:34] Terrifying stories about how the mob used to work and yeah man and that wasn’t the only time that they intimidated roy williams in that manner so he like you said he was this tough guy war hero He was a big guy, and yet even a guy like that can get intimidated into doing whatever these guys tell him to do because his tactics that they used were just terrifying. Yeah. I read one thing where he later on, he claimed when he turned and gave evidence and talked to the Bureau that he claimed that they also threatened his wife and children during one of these sit downs with him. I mean, they did the same thing to Alan Glick out in Las Vegas. Tuffy DeLuna was out there, and he read off Alan Glick’s name of his wife and his children. He said, you may find yourself expendable, but I don’t think you’re going to find your family expendable and read off their names. So there’s two good examples of them. Say that Bob never messes with your family. There’s two good examples of them using the family and family as threats. Yeah. [31:40] It’s very tough. Yeah, it is. I heard knowing Mo Dalitz, to me, that was key because he was such a mover and an operator. Talk a little more about that. He had been in Cleveland. He had to set her up with Bill Presser. And that was primarily Jewish mobsters in Cleveland, seemed to me like. And then he also had all those connections to Chicago to get to Red Dorfman, his son, Alan Dorfman. Talk a little more about that relationship with Mo Dalitz. In Mo Dalitz’s biography, I can’t think of the name of the author at the moment, but that author states that Sylvia was one of Mo Dalitz’s lovers. I’m not sure if that’s true or not. I do think that Mo Dalitz, at the very least, had a crush on Sylvia, but also respected her very much. And she, just as she had with the Detroit family before, she brokered an alliance with Daylitz. What happened was Daylitz had a laundry empire, was a rum runner and a racketeer and a leader in the Jewish mob. But he also had a lot of legitimate businesses, including a laundry empire in Detroit and Cleveland. [32:53] And while he was still in Detroit, before he really made his move to Cleveland, his permanent move to Cleveland, his laundries, along with other laundry owners, they bonded together in an association. And they were very anti-union. And they were basically at odds with the Teamsters. And until Sylvia swooped in. And Sylvia had her own connections by now to the Laundry Workers Union also. So she’s working for the Teamsters, and she’s very close to Hoffa, but she then married a guy named John Paris, who was the head of the Laundry Workers Union. [33:32] So Sylvia knows Hoffa, and she knows the head of the Laundry Workers Union very closely, and she knows Dalitz. So she’s the one who’s positioned to bring these people together, sit them down at the same table, and start working together, start negotiating. And that’s what she did with Daylitz. And so that led to Daylitz paying off Hoffa, basically, to settle this contract on terms that were favorable to Daylitz and the other laundry owners. [34:07] But you could say that Hoffa, in that case, sold out his members, at least at that time. Now, I do want to make it clear that most rank-and-file teamsters for many decades loved Hoffa because he definitely did negotiate some great contracts that brought truck drivers into the middle class, got them very good pay and benefits. And it’s only fair, it’s only right to give him credit because as somebody once said about Hoffa. [34:33] He was always a criminal, but also always a teamster. And he worked very hard for his membership. He never stopped working. And it was sincere, I do believe. But there were times when he, the ends justified the means and he did whatever he had to do to keep the union alive, but also to serve himself and enrich himself. And that was one of those cases where the membership lost out a little bit when Hoffa and Daylitz formed their alliance with the initiation and the help of Sylvia Pagano. Interesting. So let’s go back to Chucky O’Brien for a minute. He goes back up from Kansas City. He ends up back up in Detroit and working very closely with Jimmy Hoffa. And you talked to his son. Yeah. And to make that, and he was probably a huge help and some insight into what his father was like. So talk about Chucky O’Brien when he got back with Hoffa. Yeah, so he goes back to Detroit. [35:31] And he steps right back into the Hoffa family circle because Sylvia became part of the Hoffa family. She was Josephine Hoffa’s best friend. Jimmy Hoffa relied on her not only for important work in the union and for important connections to the mob, but he also relied on her heavily as Josephine’s personal assistant and caretaker. Sylvia worked extremely hard serving other people. And she was an excellent caretaker to Josephine who needed a lot of care, had very poor health, made worse by severe alcoholism. And Sylvia was a wonderful caretaker. But Chucky stepped right back into that family orbit. Later, when his own kids were small, Chucky and his wife and his kids moved into the Hoffa house. They’d all lived under the same roof for quite a few years. But Sylvia was really the glue that kept it all together and Chucky’s son who’s also named Chuck O’Brien he was a young boy at this time so his memories of his grandmother. [36:42] And Jimmy Hoffa started when he was a young boy and continued up until Sylvia died when he was in his late teens, but he was a great source for the book helped out a lot I really appreciate him And it was interesting to have direct access to someone who actually lived under the same roof with Jimmy Hoffa. So he was not privy, young Chuck was not privy to any inside information or any mob dealings or anything like that. But he later moved to Kansas City and went to work in the River Key for his uncle at the Godfather Lounge, which just a couple of years later was torched in the River Key War. And then young Chuck had worked in professional hockey for a while. And then he became a truck driver and joined Local 41. And so all this history just comes full circle and repeats itself. And I was a little fascinated by these Sylvia’s grandkids who were born and raised in Detroit. They both ended up back in Kansas City in the land of their parents and their grandparents. And they ended up in the same neighborhoods that Sylvia had been born in many years before. [37:57] Interesting. And Chucky O’Brien, then he’s kind of Hoffa’s driver sometimes. And Aaron Renner on up to the end of Hoffa’s life was even implicated at the very end. Some people claim that he helped set Hoffa up because he was the one person that Hoffa trusted. And that one movie, The Irishman or whatever, really threw a lot of shade on Chucky O’Brien. So how did you deal with that. [38:21] Yeah, I think Chucky got a real bad rap, and as I used to study Hoffa and read all the Hoffa books, I always thought, I always had a very low opinion of Chucky O’Brien, and he became the butt of a joke, and he was portrayed as this blundering, not-too-bright guy who either helped kill his surrogate father or was duped into giving him a ride to where he was killed without knowing what was going on and without being able to, realize it to the point where he could have maybe helped Hoffa. I think Jack Goldsmith put all that to rest. He really changed my opinion of Chucky in his book, but I realized that Chucky had been misunderstood in many ways. Was he involved in Hoffa’s disappearance or not? I think Goldsmith basically vindicates Chucky. [39:15] However, I do believe that there’s still some evidence that could strongly suggest that even in light of what Goldsmith wrote, that Chucky could still have known more than he let on. But he was so committed to Emerita that he took a lot of secrets to his grave, I believe. What’s interesting is some of the other co-conspirators in the Hoffa thing ended up dead, like Sally Buggs, and got killed in Little Italy a few years later, and the prevailing wisdom, at least, was to, keep him quiet about the Hoffa case. And they would have probably done the same thing to Chucky if Chucky could have pointed the finger at anybody or implicated anybody. And I’m sure he could have. I’m sure he knew some things about that. He was so close to Giacalone. Chucky was very close to Tony Giacalone and to Tony Provenzano. [40:07] And I think that Chucky survived because Giacalone trusted him 100% just as Sylvia Pagano’s son. Giacalone’s trust in Chucky to not give anybody up was just so rock solid. And he loved Chucky. And I think that he was also honoring Sylvia by allowing Chucky to stay alive. So I know I’m straying from your initial question, Gary. There’s so much going on with the whole Chuck O’Brien thing and his involvement. It gets very interesting. You have to get really down in the weeds with it to understand all of it. But I think that Goldsmith’s book is a great read for anybody who’s interested in Hoffa and the whole case. I definitely would recommend it. So it may come down to Chuck O’Brien. And was he more loyal to the mob, to the mafia and their code? Or more loyal to Hoffa and the Teamsters? as Hoffa as an individual, not to the teams or his union, but Hoffa as an individual. Was he more loyal to Hoffa or more loyal to the union or more loyal to the mob? And giving up those guys, he has to turn his back on everything. [41:21] The union and the mob. And so I can see where he, whatever he knew, [41:25] he was not going to say a word. It would be to his advantage. He has no, they didn’t have a hammer on him. Wasn’t a criminal. They didn’t have a life sentence hanging over his head for anything. They did have, they did prosecute Chucky on a federal case. It was a small time thing. He took some, maybe took some gifts from a, from an employer in his role as a union guy, some small gifts. And then he had also got caught up in a cargo theft case, which is all documented in the book, Office of Connection. But the law enforcement did have a couple of cases that they could apply pressure onto Chucky. But he didn’t say a word, and he just went to prison and served his time. He didn’t have to serve too much time. He was only in for about a year, I think. It was a low-level felony. But he just, he’d never thought once about turning state’s witness. He just went and served his time and got back out and went on with his life. [42:25] Yeah. It’s those 50 and 75-year sentences that’ll make the right attorneys. You get even, I used to say, when they came up, those sentencing guidelines for cocaine dealers, you could make a guy talk about his mother when he’s looking. He’s 40 years old and he’s looking at a 50, 75-year sentence. Yeah. I do have to say, though, if there’s one guy that might, and there was a few of them who went and served a hard time. Yeah, a long time until they’re old. Rather than give anybody else up. And I think Chucky would have been one of those guys. I do. Yeah. [42:57] Having been raised by sylvia pagano he was just so committed to that culture and those traditions and that way of life and and omerta yeah sylvia even had almost a kind of a halfway making ceremony for chucky she arranged for the top guys in detroit when he came back to detroit from kansas city in the early 50s tony giacalone put together a little event where chucky walked into the back room of grecian gardens restaurant in detroit and all the top guys were sitting around a table and he made a pledge of loyalty to them at that time and then he sat down and broke bread with them and he didn’t prick his finger and burn a card and he wasn’t made into the family but it was all halfway a little bit and they did that for sylvia and because they just valued her so much they respected her and they needed her they she was the connection to their most valuable asset, which was Jimmy Hoffa. So that tells you a little bit about how much respect they had for Sylvia and also for Chucky’s unique role. Here he is. [44:05] He’s he’s the son of charlie banagio’s low-level chauffeur yeah and yet he’s sitting down with guys like meyer lansky in florida he’s sitting down with all the top guys in detroit chicago inu acardo rica rosanova all these top guys in chicago then he would sit down with them on behalf of jimmy hoff he was he probably i say in the book that he probably had more chucky o’brien the son of, Banagio’s chauffeur probably had more sit-downs with high-level mobsters than Nick Civella did. As Hoffa’s representative, that was the life. And he knew how to handle that kind of thing because he was raised by Sylvia. So he knew how to say, what not to say, how to behave himself in those types of meetings. So that came naturally to him. And he was Hoffa’s gopher. He drove in places. He took Hoffa’s wife to her medical appointments. He did low-level stuff like that, but he also did more important work, more sensitive stuff, like sitting down with mob bosses and relaying information back and forth, just like as Sylvia had taught him to do. [45:16] That’s fascinating. I tell you what, guys, Frank Hayde, Hoffa’s Connection, the story of Sylvia Pagano, the Ken City girl at the center of the mafia’s alliance with the Teamsters Union. I might have links in here. You better get this book. This is untrod territory. Unplowed ground, as we used to say on the farm. This is fresh stuff that you’ve read. There’s so many books out there about Hoffa and his disappearance that they just want to, come on, we can’t do this. I can’t do this again, Hoffa’s disappearance. You’re never going to find his body. You’re never going to figure out exactly who killed him. Nobody’s going to talk, and anybody that could is dead. But this unearthed some really fresh, interesting information about Hoffa and his connection with the Italian La Cosa Nostra in the United States, the entire United States, really. Yes. Thank you, Gary. That was a very nice little summary of it. And I really appreciate you. You’ve had me on your show before, my other books, and I listened to your podcast. Can’t get enough of it. You do terrific work. All us wire trappers love you, man. And we all appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Are you still doing the, are we still buying you cups of coffee and that kind of stuff? Yeah, you can always buy me a cup of coffee and hit the donate button. [46:29] I forget about doing that. I’ve been doing this so long and I got a few guys that hit it regularly and some never do. I do this for the pure joy of it anyhow, but it helps to have a little extra money coming in now and then. When you were selling books yesterday, you love writing this book. You love all that research and putting it together and educating people, but it’s nice to get paid for it too. [46:50] It’s a small-time racket, but hey. It’s a small-time racket. Another interesting thing, Frank, we were talking about people doing time, getting so much time, and trying to force them to talk. Yesterday, Frank had a program at the library, and we had a local guy who was a subject of his last book, Mafia Dreams, who was a mob hanger-on guy when he was a young guy. And he got caught up in a murder, an accidental murder in a way. That it’s a long story and you have to get mafia dreams to learn about it. The next generation of the wannabe. [47:25] Italian mafia guys in kansas city and so that guy was there he did 25 years 25 years for what we call felony murder another guy he transported a friend of his to a drug by only the guy killed the man was selling the or tried to kill the man that was selling the drugs and the fbi had it set up and ran in and shot and killed the kid who almanese had carried up to the drug ripoff and And so they charged this driver with felony murder, and he did 25 years, just got out about four or five years ago. He could have talked. He had enough to buy him a lot of grace on that 25-year sentence, and he did every minute of it. He never said a word, and it was hard time. It was state time here in Missouri. Yeah, I think that’s true. I think he is representative of Kansas City in a way, because I do believe that in Kansas City, the Code of Emerita persisted longer than most places. And yeah, when you’re 24 years old, I think he was 24 at the time that he was sentenced. Maybe he was 25 and you get sentenced to 25 and a half years. [48:38] And you have the chance to whittle that down by giving up information on your friends. And you don’t take it, and you choose to do the 25 and a half years, that’s hardcore. And he did, and those are the best years of his life that he’ll never get back. But he is out now, and he’s making a legitimate living and keeping his nose clean and just trying to make up for a lot of lost time. Yeah, he is. 25 years will straighten your mind out, won’t it? Yeah. Man. All right, Frank. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Hey, thanks again, Gary. Don’t forget to donate Bob the Bob Gary cup of coffee, y’all. Thank you. Okay, Gary. Okay, Frank. That was great. Talk to you later.

At the beginning of this year Bulgaria, considered as one of the poorest countries in the European Union, became the latest to officially join the eurozone. Bulgaria's legal tender since 1881 had been the lev, but since the mid-1990s it had been pegged to other European currencies, first to the German deutschmark and now to the euro. But it remains to be seen if the country's economic policy can take advantage of the opportunities that joining the single currency can afford, in terms of trade and economic development. Monetary unions are not a new concept, some like the Scandinavian monetary union date back to the 19th Century, involving Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It established a fixed exchange rate system based on the gold standard, whilst member countries still had their own currencies before it was gradually dissolved from the outbreak of World War One onwards. Today, the biggest monetary union is the eurozone, used by around 358 million people across 21 European Union countries. It has one monetary authority for all the members and a standardised currency and coinage. And now the Economic Community of West African States, known as ECOWAS is actively planning a monetary union with a common currency called the eco and pegged to the euro. The ambition is for greater economic sovereignty and regional economic integration. But with the US dollar as the world's dominant global reserve currency, even though it's not part of a global monetary union, is there an argument for one currency across all borders and if so, what should it be? So, on The Inquiry this week we're asking, ‘What's the future for monetary unions?'Contributors: Assoc Prof Ralitsa Simeonova-Ganeva, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, Bulgaria Prof Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, USA Prof Mohamed Ben Omar Ndiaye, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal Dr Judy Shelton, Senior Fellow, The Independent Institute, California, USAPresenter: Charmaine Cozier Producers: Daniel Rosney and Jill Collins Researcher: Evie Yabsley Editor: Tom Bigwood Technical producer: Toby James Production management: Phoebe Lomas and Liam Morrey(Photo: Euro and US dollar banknotes. Credit: BBC/Corbis Royalty Free)

PBD and Steve Hilton explain how California's government unions “bought a lot of politicians,” doubled the state budget in 10 years, and still left workers paying high taxes, gas, and school costs — and why Hilton thinks he can flip unions and blue‑collar voters anyway.

Steve Hilton tells PBD the real answer to “Who runs California?” Unions. From a Democrat lawmaker admitting “the unions run this place” to teachers unions blocking housing and wrecking schools, Hilton lays out how government unions hijacked policy and crushed opportunity.

Ralph welcomes back union organizer, Chris Townsend, to discuss the reasons why the AFL-CIO shrinks from effectively fighting for its members and expanding the power of workers. Then, political scientist Lee Drutman lays out a system of proportional representation that would take away the incentive to gerrymander congressional districts. Plus, Ralph gives some quick takes on Thomas Massie's primary loss, fish hopped up on cocaine, and the situations in Lebanon and Ukraine.Chris Townsend has been a union member and labor leader for more than 45 years. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) International Union Organizing Director. Previously, he was an International Representative and Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE), and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and UFCW.[The upcoming AFL-CIO] convention is deliberately kept secret. It's what I describe as sort of a hideout strategy. It enables the leadership to not have to discuss or take positions that for them are difficult, such as: What is the labor movement going to do to confront the rampant lawlessness and criminality of the Trump regime? What is the labor movement going to do to address the rampaging inflation that is eating up living standards? There's no wage policy. There's no bargaining policy of the Federation. What are they going to do to address the ongoing national health care crisis and disaster?... And what are they doing about the crisis of the unorganized?Chris TownsendThe labor movement finds itself (I would submit) with the leadership disinterested in going out and organizing the unorganized. But even for those who do (and there are some), the laws—Taft-Hartley primary among them—provide such a minefield that we have to run through, that our ability to organize on any scale for decades has been stopped. And therefore, we are condemned to a perpetual shrinking size, resources, and whatnot. [And what] might help for folks to figure out how or why this is happening is that the labor movement is systematically being converted from trade union fighting organizations, membership-driven fighting organizations, to harmless not-for-profit organizations. And this is today's administrative layer of trade union leaders that don't see anything wrong with that. But that doesn't help anyone in the shop, in the office, in the workplace. And it doesn't help anyone looking to the labor movement for something better—better treatment, better wages, better benefits, better conditions, better health and safety in the workplace.Chris TownsendLee Drutman is a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at New America, where he focuses on electoral reform, Congress, and democratic health. He writes the newsletter Undercurrent Events and co-hosts the podcast Politics in Question. And he is the author of The Business of America is Lobbying and Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.The whole issue of gerrymandering is really just an outgrowth of this way that we use single-winner districts with winner-take-all votes. It's also what entrenches the two-party system in the US, which limits the choice of voters. So there's this one weird voting mechanism that we have that most countries have gotten rid of, that is an antiquated voting system, that preserves the two-party system and makes gerrymandering just inevitable—and that's the use of single-member districts. Now, in a proportional system, you take away the districts, and you do this statewide, you can carve up larger states into a few multi-member districts. And then seats get allocated proportionally by party share. That takes away the entire incentive of gerrymandering, it gives voters everywhere meaningful choices, meaningful votes, and it is just a superior system of representing the pluralism and diversity of our pluralistic and diverse society.Lee DrutmanPeople like the idea of proportional representation as basic fairness—that people think that parties should get seats in proportion to the share of votes they get. I did some polling on it a few years ago, and I'm hoping to do a little bit more… But I think that one of the challenges is people don't entirely understand how it works. And so it's a challenge to poll people on a concept that they don't know about. But I think more and more people understand it. And from the polling I've seen, at a principles-based level, people get the idea that proportionality is a form of fairness, and people like fairness.Lee DrutmanKaty O'Donnell is the editorial director at Haymarket Books, a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago.News 5/22/26* Our first story this week has to do with what appears to be the impending downfall of ultrazionist media personality, Bari Weiss. Weiss, who resigned from the New York Times to found the Free Press and then sold that venture to become “Editor-in-Chief” for CBS News under the Ellison regime, is reportedly facing down the barrel of her role being scaled back substantially. Puck reports “As Paramount closes in on its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery…members of the senior leadership team have had informal discussions about changing Bari's mandate at CBS News—and, eventually, CNN—in ways that would give her less control over the linear product.” This piece cites her missteps stewarding CBS News, including her inability to improve the ratings for Evening News, even failing to secure new anchor Tony Dokoupil a travel visa to China in time for President Trump's recent visit to the People's Republic. While a total dismissal of Weiss seems unlikely in the near future, such a dramatic reduction in her clout would constitute a tremendous, humbling blow.* Moving to state-level news, last week, Colorado Democratic Governor Jared Polis announced he would be commuting the sentence of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting systems to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the Centennial State. Peters will now be eligible for parole June 1st. This move has been widely condemned, most notably by the Colorado Democratic Party which voted by a margin of over 90% to officially censure Polis. In a statement, the CDP wrote, “Reducing [Peters'] sentence now, under pressure from Donald Trump, is not justice…It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you're friends with the president.” According to NBC, the CDP also banned Polis from being able to “participate as an honored guest, speaker or officially recognized representative of the Colorado Democratic Party at party-sponsored functions.”* In more positive state-level news, NPR reports Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has signed a bill banning prediction market sites like Polymarket and Kalshi – which allow consumers to “place…wager[s] on…future outcome[s], like sports, elections, live entertainment” – from operating in the North Star State. This makes Minnesota the first state in the nation to ban the prediction betting platforms. As this story notes, the Trump administration is pursuing legal action on behalf of the platforms, ensuring a legal battle over whether states can act to protect their own consumers from these predatory betting services. Minnesota Rep. Emma Greenman, who introduced the measure, is quoted as saying, “We as a state should decide how best and what regulations we think should attach to gambling, to protect public safety, to protect our kids.” The administration, meanwhile, specifically the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is arguing in court that prediction market industry regulation should be the sole preserve of the federal government.* Looking toward Congress, this week saw a number of high-profile primaries, including in the state of Pennsylvania. Leading up to that primary, the Pennsylvania machine went all out against the congressional campaign of State Representative Chris Rabb. Rabb, who had won the endorsements of everyone from AOC and Rashida Tlaib to Jamie Raskin and Philly DSA to the Philadelphia Inquirer, was targeted by a barrage of anonymous text messages to Philadelphia voters accusing him of “spreading conspiracy theories and holding extremist views,” per the Inquirer. What is remarkable about this smear campaign, however, is that it was organized by Philadelphia's Democratic City Committee and that it violated federal election law by failing to disclose that fact. In another troubling portend of things to come, one of the texts featured an “AI-generated image of Rabb acknowledging his supposed lack of legislative accomplishments in Harrisburg.” Rumors have long circulated that Governor Josh Shapiro wanted Rabb to lose, and worked the backrooms to this end while avoiding public statements.* Yet, despite all of that, Rabb prevailed – winning over his two establishment-backed opponents with around 45% of the vote compared to his opponents, who each won approximately 30% and 24% respectively. The Pennsylvania primaries turned out to be a good night for progressives more generally, with Bob Brooks – a firefighter's union chief and former state rep. who successfully united the Democratic Party behind him, winning the endorsements of both Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Bernie Sanders. Brooks will face off against freshman Republican Congressman Ryan Mackenzie in November in the R+1 seventh district of Pennsylvania, while Rabb's general election campaign is seen as little more than a formality in the D+40 PA-03.* Yet, if it was a good streak for Democratic progressives, it was a very bad one for Trump critics within the GOP. This week, Thomas Massie lost his primary in Kentucky's fourth congressional district, buckling under the war chest deployed against him in what amounted to the most expensive House primary on record. Massie joked that “My vote was never for sale, so they bought a congressional seat. They found out what it cost.” Massie, perhaps Trump's most formidable intra-party opponent in the House during his second term, worked with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna on bills ranging from the Epstein Files Transparency Act to War Powers Resolutions related to the administration's actions in Venezuela and Iran. In retaliation, Trump made it clear that he would go to any lengths to ensure Massie would not be reelected. That said, Massie will remain in the House until January and has indicated that he will make that time as painful for Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson as he possibly can. Moreover, during his concession speech, Massie's supporters chanted for him to run for president in 2028, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. Whether he is even entertaining that thought is unclear, but if he did run as a right-wing independent candidate, one could easily imagine him capturing a large enough share of the vote to deny certain states to the Republican nominee. Meanwhile, his ally across the aisle, Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, said in a statement that Massie “lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war…He won voters under 45 by 30 points…Tonight, I say to [his] voters who feel rejected by Trump. We welcome you. Join our coalition to take on a rotten system and stand for the working class over the Epstein class.”* Massie isn't the only Republican targeted in the latest round of Trump purges. Downballot, Trump loyalists have ousted the Indiana Republicans who resisted Trump's pressure to implement mid-decade redistricting, but the real scalps he is claiming are in the Senate. Last weekend, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost his primary runoff. Fox reports this makes Cassidy the “first elected Republican senator to lose renomination since Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana in 2012.” Trump wasted no time in dancing on Cassidy's political grave, writing on Truth Social, “His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of a legend, and it's nice to see that his political career is OVER!” His supposed disloyalty, of course, refers to Cassidy's vote to convict Trump in the Senate trial for his second impeachment following January 6th. Former Senator Mitt Romney, who also voted to convict, is quoted in this article saying that Cassidy is a “person of character,” and that his “departure is a loss for the country.” Cassidy, however, is likely soon to be joined by longtime Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. Cornyn is currently making his last stand against scandal-ridden Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in that runoff election. Trump has long prevaricated regarding whether and whom he would endorse in this race, at times leaning towards either candidate but remaining neutral up until this week, when he formally gave the nod to Paxton, per the Texas Tribune. This move has caused great consternation amongst Senate Republicans and cautious optimism among Democrats, who see Paxton as the weaker opponent to go up against Democratic nominee James Talarico in November – giving Democrats their best chance in years to flip a Senate seat in Texas.* What Cornyn's next move will be is a mystery, especially as he has not yet officially lost the Texas primary. Cassidy, however, appears to have chosen the Massie route of going down fighting. This week, Cassidy flipped his position to become the deciding vote in favor of the Senate War Powers Resolution on Iran – successfully pushing it through along with support from fellow Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul, despite disloyal opposition from Democratic Senator John Fetterman. The measure was then sent back to the House, but fearful it might actually pass – Democratic holdout Jared Golden had vowed to vote yes, and war-weary House Republicans Thomas Massie, Warren Davidson, Brian Fitzpatrick and Tom Barrett were all signaling their support – leadership abruptly canceled the vote, per MSN.* One factor cited in the Republicans' calculus around this latest War Powers push was the absences of Members of Congress. In their view, the absences would have given Democrats the votes they needed to win. Two of these absences have garnered substantial attention in the media: those of Republican Congressman Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey and Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of Florida. The 83-year-old Wilson, who was missing for a month with little public acknowledgment or explanation, has finally resurfaced, saying that she was undergoing a major eye surgery but still plans to seek reelection. In a remarkably tone-deaf comment, a source close to the Congresswoman was quoted in Axios saying “missing votes is not a sign she's sick or retiring…She shows up when she wants to.” Still, at least her absence has been explained and she has now returned to her duties in the House. Congressman Kean's disappearance is more mysterious. As of May 21st, Kean has not “been seen in Washington for more than 75 days,” NOTUS reports. When his absence first began to gain media traction, his Chief of Staff added fuel to the fire with the cryptic remark “there are no cameras where Tom is.” Now it is being reported that his neighbors back in New Jersey haven't seen hide nor hair either. There has been some indication that Kean is dealing with a personal or medical issue, but Speaker Mike Johnson claims to have no knowledge of the particulars. It is not controversial to say that being an American Member of Congress is too important to simply be AWOL for long periods of time, especially without deigning to explain why to one's constituents. Something must be done.* Finally, we turn to Latin America, where former president Evo Morales has leveled claims that the government of his native Bolivia, in coordination with the DEA and the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is plotting to “detain or kill” him, TeleSUR reports. According to this report, “Morales detailed specific military units allegedly involved, including the Army's Ninth Division in the tropical region under Colonel Franz Andrade Loza, whom he said the government promised to promote to general and appoint as armed forces commander ‘if he finishes off Evo.'” Morales also “cited an F-10 unit under Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Giménez Ortuño,” a former aide to the defense minister in the government of the unelected U.S.-backed regime of Jeanine Áñez. These allegations sound somewhat outlandish, but in a moment when the U.S. has recently kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, worked to undermine the governments of Mexico and Colombia via the Hondurasgate scheme, and just recently moved to indict 94 year old Raúl Castro for his role in an incident three decades ago when the Cuban government downed a civilian aircraft that entered their sovereign airspace, it does not seem so far fetched.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Evan Ellis characterizes protests in Bolivia as an organized "coup in motion" funded by coca growers' unions. Figures like Evo Morales and rivals within the government benefit from dismantling reforms. The instability threatens counter-drug efforts and allows criminal organizations to flourish while the government struggles to maintain order amidst resource blockades. (6/16)1900

Teachers’ Unions as Political Power Brokers Major teachers’ unions (e.g., NEA, AFT) have contributed over $1 billion to left‑wing political causes over the past decade. This funding overwhelmingly supports Democratic candidates, progressive activism, and ideological causes unrelated to education. Education System as Ideological Indoctrination Unions have shifted from focusing on education (reading, writing, math) to political indoctrination of students. Declining academic performance is linked to this ideological focus rather than educational reform. Coerced Union Participation Teachers are forced to contribute union dues and face professional consequences if they dissent, framing this as coercive or unethical. Link Between Education, Ideology, and Political Violence Left‑leaning control of education has normalized hatred of conservatives, Christians, and Donald Trump. There is a direct causal line between: union political spending, ideological education, polling data suggesting some Democrats justify political violence, and alleged assassination attempts on Donald Trump. Normalization of Political Violence 25% of Democrats believe political violence can be justified. This reflects a broader cultural shift allegedly driven by education and political messaging. Democratic Strategy Framing Democrats deliberately pursued a “long game” by controlling education from elementary school through universities to shape future voters. Education institutions are culture‑shaping tools rather than neutral public services. Call to Parental Action This is a warning to parents for continued and increased involvement in school boards. This activism is a response to loss of trust, lack of accountability, and ideological overreach. Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the The Ben Ferguson Show Podcast and Verdict with Ted Cruz Wherever You get You're Podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show on Social Media so you never miss a moment! Thanks for Listening X: https://x.com/benfergusonshowYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruzSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.