Confront or Cave? Federal Pressure Splits the Building Trades

Often conservative construction unions will have to decide what they will do

Natascha Elena Uhlmann, Keith Brower Brown for Labor Notes

Will prevailing wage be paid on ICE
concentration camp construction?

One of the last nationwide bastions of union jobs is getting jackhammered by the Trump administration. Members are languishing in ICE prisons without trial. Programs that protect members from racism and sexism are getting the axe.

In response, building trades officers are split: some are pleading, some are protesting, and others are surrendering without a fight.

Out of nine million construction workers in the U.S., one million had a union last year. Since the 1970s, when about forty percent of U.S. hardhats wore union stickers, anti-union developers have kicked unions out from most residential and private building sites.

The building trades took refuge in publicly funded construction projects and specialized industrial jobs. An old federal law that favors union hires for interstates and military outposts helps small locals of pile drivers and insulators straggle on even in rural Alabama or Wyoming, where unions are otherwise scarce.

What history’s witch hunts have in common with today’s misinformation crisis

History provides insight into the MAGA mind 

Julie Walsh, Wellesley College

An illustration from ‘The History of Witches and Wizards,’
published in 1720, depicting witches offering
wax dolls to the devil. Wellcome Collection/Wikimedia Commons

Between 1400 and 1780, an estimated 100,000 people, mostly women, were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe. About half that number were executed – killings motivated by a constellation of beliefs about women, truth, evil and magic.

But the witch hunts could not have had the reach they did without the media machinery that made them possible: an industry of printed manuals that taught readers how to find and exterminate witches.

I regularly teach a class on philosophy and witchcraft, where we discuss the religious, social, economic and philosophical contexts of early modern witch hunts in Europe and colonial America. I also teach and research the ethics of digital technologies.

These fields aren’t as different as they seem. The parallels between the spread of false information in the witch-hunting era and in today’s online information ecosystem are striking – and instructive.

Sexual abuse of children is built in to the Republican brand

Behind MAGA's noise over the "Epstein List" is a history of support for laws and policies that protect child abusers and punish children

Jesse Mackinnon for Common Dreams

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a long article, far longer than the usual we run. However, it is well worth reading. MacKinnon offers an extraordinary historical picture of laws and practices promoted by Republican politicians that essentially legalize child rape, force raped children to carry babies to term, protects child abusers and guts support systems for rape victims. In gripping fashion, MacKinnon puts the Epstein list into a context that, in my opinion, warrants your attention.   - Will Collette

By the time the U.S. Justice Department released its memo in July 2025, the faithful were already starting to turn. There was no “client list,” no smoking gun, no perverted cabal of global elites laid bare for public vengeance.

What they got instead was a cold government document and a half-mumbled shrug from Donald Trump, who barely remembered the man everyone else had turned into a folk demon. “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” he asked, blinking like he’d just wandered out of a golf simulator.

The betrayal was almost elegant. For years, Trump’s people had promised the black book. Attorney General Pam Bondi said it was on her desk. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel practically branded his political future with it. Counselor to the President of the United Staes Alina Habba promised flight logs and names.

And then the punchline: nothing. Or rather, a truckload of documents scrubbed clean and a memo telling the public to move on. The frenzy turned inward. MAGA loyalists melted down on camera. Laura Loomer called for a special counsel. Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino stopped showing up for work. Right-wing media turned on itself like rats in a pressure cooker.

But the Epstein file was never the point. The real story was not buried in a locked safe or hidden by the FBI. It was out in the open. It is still out in the open. The political movement that once pledged to drain the swamp has spent its second tour of duty building a legal and bureaucratic fortress around some of the oldest crimes in the book. Modern conservatism has come to rely not just on outrage but on inertia, and nowhere is that more visible than in its handling of child sexual abuse.

We are not talking about a secret ring or coded pizza menus. We are talking about a system that tolerates child marriage in over half the states. A system that forces raped minors to carry pregnancies to term. A system that slashes funding for shelters and trauma counseling. A system that lets rape kits pile up in warehouse back rooms while politicians pose in front of billboards about protecting kids.

This is not a moral failure or a bureaucratic oversight. It is an architecture. It is built from votes, funded by budgets, signed into law by men who say they fear God but fear losing donors more. The Epstein affair may have collapsed in a cloud of whimpering and spin, but what it revealed is far more corrosive than any one man’s crimes. The question is not why they hid the list. The question is why they need it at all when the ledger is already written in their laws.

Legalized Child Marriage as Institutional Abuse

As of mid-2025, child marriage remains legal in 37 U.S. states. In most of these jurisdictions, statutory exceptions allow minors to marry with parental consent or judicial approval. Some states permit marriage for individuals as young as 15. Others lack any explicit minimum age when certain conditions are met. These legal frameworks persist despite growing evidence of their links to coercion, abuse, and lifelong harm.

Missouri serves as a prominent example. Until recently, it permitted minors aged 15 to marry with parental consent. Testimony from survivors has revealed how this legal permission facilitated predatory relationships cloaked in legitimacy. In one case, a girl was married off to a man nearly a decade older, and the marriage became a vehicle for sustained sexual and psychological abuse. Former child brides in Missouri have since called for a statutory minimum age of 18 with no exceptions. Legislative efforts to enact such reforms have repeatedly stalled.

Tennessee offers a more recent and pointed illustration. In 2022, Republican lawmakers introduced legislation that would have created a new category of marriage not subject to age restrictions. The bill failed under public pressure, but it signaled a continued willingness by some conservative legislators to bypass modern child protection norms. Even when confronted with documentation of exploitation, physical violence, and long-term trauma, these lawmakers often frame the issue around religious liberty and parental authority.

The prevailing rhetoric in these debates centers on traditional family values. Proponents argue that restricting child marriage infringes on the rights of families to make decisions without state interference. 

In some cases, advocates for maintaining the status quo invoke Christian theological justifications or present marriage as a preferable alternative to state custody. These arguments shift the legal focus away from the vulnerability of the minor and toward the autonomy of adults, particularly parents and religious leaders.

This legal tolerance undermines the enforcement of statutory rape laws. When marriage can be used as a legal shield, older adults who would otherwise face criminal prosecution gain immunity by securing parental consent or exploiting permissive judicial channels.

In practice, the marriage license functions as retroactive permission for sexual contact with a minor. Law enforcement agencies are often reluctant to investigate allegations within a legally recognized marriage, even when age discrepancies raise clear concerns.

The persistence of child marriage statutes in conservative-controlled states is not simply a relic of outdated law. It reflects a policy choice. The choice is to preserve adult control over minors, particularly in contexts that reinforce patriarchal and religious hierarchies.

In doing so, the state becomes an active participant in the erasure of consent. Legal recognition of these unions confers legitimacy on relationships that, in other contexts, would be subject to prosecution. The result is a bifurcated legal system where a child’s age and rights are contingent on the adult interests surrounding her.

Make America Great Again like it was in the 1950s

Boston federal judge rules that anti-woke is just racism

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a rancid bigot.

Liz Dye

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Boston explicitly called out the Trump administration for its “palpably clear” discrimination against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ Americans in a case involving canceled grants from the National Institutes of Health.

“Have we no shame?” Judge William Young asked, in an unmistakable echo of attorney Joseph Welch, who famously punctured Joe McCarthy’s popularity with his simple plea for decency.

Seventy-five years ago, McCarthy and his sidekick Roy Cohn hunted Communists. Now, Donald Trump, who was mentored by Cohn, hunts a different kind of subversive. In executive orders signed during his first weeks in office, he targeted “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies,” claiming that they violate civil rights laws. He declared that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and branded “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex” as discriminatory against women and girls.

This is a radical misstatement of the law. No court in the land has ever held that DEI — whatever that means — constitutes racial discrimination, or that allowing trans people to participate in society amounts to gender discrimination. It also defies the medical and scientific consensus about sex, gender, and biology. But no matter! The president redefined reality by executive fiat, and then instructed his minions to carry out a purge consistent with his edict.

And purge, they did! The administration immediately moved to kick trans service members out of the military, reorient the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to focus on “DEI-related discrimination at work,” and pulled down websites on everything from baseball icon Jackie Robinson to transgender health care.

But while the government was busy deleting pronouns from civil servants’ signature lines, it also slashed thousands of federal grants because some DOGE bro (or possibly an AI) decided that the recipient was vaguely “woke” — whatever that means. At NIH, more than a $1 billion of funding was cut because of its supposed association with “woke” ideologies.

Blanket termination letters informed recipients that their funding was being cut, often in the middle of a multi-year grant, for vague thought crimes:

Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness. Worse, so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics, which harms the health of Americans. Therefore, it is the policy of NIH not to prioritize such research programs.

Understanding the A to Zs of this mess

How Trump and Musk are marching America into fascism

When Fascism Comes to America

Bill Durston for Common Dreams

There's a relatively obscure quotation, sometimes attributed to the 20th-century American author Sinclair Lewis, that reads, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

Although no one’s actually sure that Sinclair Lewis ever wrote or said this, his 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, centers around a flag-hugging, Bible-thumping politician named Berzelius (”Buzz”) Windrip. 

Despite having no particular leadership skills other than the ability to mesmerize large audiences by appealing to their baser instincts (and to bully those people who aren’t so easily mesmerized), Windrip is elected President of the United States. 

Shortly after Windrip takes office, through a flurry of executive orders, appointments of unqualified cronies to key governmental positions, and then a declaration of martial law, Windrip quickly makes the transition from a democratically elected president to a brutal, fascist dictator. The novel’s title, It Can’t Happen Here, refers to the mindset of key characters in the novel who fail to recognize Windrip’s fascist agenda before it’s too late.

Written almost a century ago during the rise of fascism in Europe prior to World War II, It Can’t Happen Here is disturbingly prescient today. Buzz Windrip’s personal traits, his rhetoric, and the path through which he initially becomes the democratically elected U.S. president, and soon afterward, the country’s first full-fledged fascist dictator, bear an uncanny resemblance to the personality traits and rhetoric of Donald Trump and the path through which he has come thus far to be the 47th President of the United States, and through which he appears to be on course to become our country’s first full-fledged…. But no! It can’t happen here! Or can it?

Trump’s uncanny resemblance to the fictional dictator in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel is disconcerting. The far more important concern, though, is the degree to which Trump resembles real-life fascist dictators, past and present. A study of notorious 20th- century fascist dictators, including Hitler and Mussolini, concluded that they and their regimes all had several characteristics in common. (The current regimes of Vladimir Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, and Kim Jong Un in North Korea also share these characteristics.)

How Trump’s compulsion to dominate sabotages dealmaking, undermines democracy and threatens global stability

Bullies are terrible deal-makers

Karrin Vasby Anderson, Colorado State University

Journalists covering the Feb. 28, 2025, Oval Office meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described it as a “jaw-dropping” “spectacle” and a “striking breach of Oval Office comity.” Slate’s Fred Kaplan asserted, “Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”

People shouldn’t have been surprised.

The Oval Office encounter was expected to be an on-camera meeting between the president and the Ukrainian head of state before the signing of a crucial minerals deal between the two countries that was meant to be a key step toward ending the war in Ukraine.

But as reporters described it, the initially routine meeting devolved into a “fiery exchange” in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance “berated” and “harangued” Zelenskyy after he pushed back on Vance’s assertion that Trump’s diplomatic skills would ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin would honor a ceasefire agreement.

Trump’s compulsion to dominate both allies and enemies seems to have caused him to jettison the negotiation the moment that Zelenskyy declined to perform subservient fealty. The meeting, which was ended by Trump with no agreement signed, illustrated why authoritarians are lousy dealmakers, particularly when autocratic instincts are exacerbated by what’s known as toxic masculinity.

Toxic masculinity is a version of masculinity that discourages empathy, expresses strength through dominance, normalizes violence against women and associates leadership with white patriarchy. It devalues behaviors considered to be “feminine” and suggests that the way to earn others’ respect is to accrue power and status.

As a communication scholar who studies gender and politics, I have written about Trump’s displays of toxic masculinity and authoritarian tendencies in a variety of situations, during and after his first presidential term.

Trump’s reaction to Zelenskyy in the Oval Office illustrates how these inclinations stymie the president’s purported dealmaking abilities, undermine democratic values and make the world a more dangerous place.

Excerpts from the Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting, featuring U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Zuckerberg Extols 'Masculine Energy' in Corporate America as Meta Kills DEI Programs

Here's another good reason to get off Facebook

Brett Wilkins for Common Dreams

This is satire, but oh, if it were true...

As numerous U.S. corporations bend to the right with the political winds swirling around Republican President-elect Donald Trump's imminent return to power, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is following up on his company's termination of its fact-checking program by ending its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and praising "masculine energy" in corporate America.

"I think a lot of the corporate world is, like, pretty culturally neutered," Zuckerberg said during an interview with the eponymous host of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast on Friday. Meta is the parent company of social platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Explaining that he has "three sisters, no brothers" and "three daughters, no sons," Zuckerberg continued: "So I'm, like, surrounded by girls and women, like, my whole life. And it's like...I don't know, there's something, the kind of masculine energy, I think, is good."

"And obviously, you know, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really like trying to get away from it," he said. "And I do think that... all these forms of energy are good. And I think having a culture that, like, celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive."

Zuckerberg elaborated:

White House announcing the Equal Rights Amendment has been duly ratified and is now the law of the land

Wonder what Trump and his MAGA colleagues will do with this?

Women are at a higher risk of dying from heart disease

Often doctors don’t take major sex and gender differences into account

Amy Huebschmann, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Judith Regensteiner, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Rates of heart disease and cardiac events in women are often
underestimated. eternalcreative/iStock via Getty Images

A simple difference in the genetic code – two X chromosomes versus one X chromosome and one Y chromosome – can lead to major differences in heart disease. 

It turns out that these genetic differences influence more than just sex organs and sex assigned at birth – they fundamentally alter the way cardiovascular disease develops and presents.

While sex influences the mechanisms behind how cardiovascular disease develops, gender plays a role in how health care providers recognize and manage it. Sex refers to biological characteristics such as genetics, hormones, anatomy and physiology, while gender refers to social, psychological and cultural constructs. 

Women are more likely to die after a first heart attack or stroke than men. Women are also more likely to have additional or different heart attack symptoms that go beyond chest pain, such as nausea, jaw pain, dizziness and fatigue. It is often difficult to fully disentangle the influences of sex on cardiovascular disease outcomes versus the influences of gender.

While women who haven’t entered menopause have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men, their cardiovascular risk accelerates dramatically after menopause. In addition, if a woman has Type 2 diabetes, her risk of heart attack accelerates to be equivalent to that of men, even if the woman with diabetes has not yet gone through menopause. Further data is needed to better understand differences in cardiovascular disease risk among nonbinary and transgender patients.

Despite these differences, one key thing is the same: Heart attack, stroke and other forms of cardiovascular disease are the leading cause of death for all people, regardless of sex or gender.

We are researchers who study women’s health and the way cardiovascular disease develops and presents differently in women and men. Our work has identified a crucial need to update medical guidelines with more sex-specific approaches to diagnosis and treatment in order to improve health outcomes for all.

Of course, he says he'll do it "whether you like it or not"

There really is an "October Surprise"

Trump transforms from pervert to protector?

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE.

First play of the season opens on October 10

 ‘Machinal’ opens URI theatre department’s diverse season

Eva St-Germain plays Young Woman and Christian Owen plays Husband in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, which opens Oct. 10 in the Fine Arts Center’s J Studio. (URI Photos/Jesse Dufault)

What does it say about our society when a play from 100 years ago about the plight of being a woman holds more relevance in 2024 than we’d like to admit?

Machinal, written by playwright Sophie Treadwell in 1928, tells the story of a young female stenographer who follows the rituals that society expects of women, regardless of her resistance to them. 

This ultimately leads to her violent demise. 

The play, which opens Thursday, Oct. 10, in J Studio at the Fine Arts Center, was inspired by the real-life case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Snyder.

Why Men Need To Rethink Their Budding Bromance With the GOP

Democrats Face Growing Gender Divide as Men Shift Toward Trump and GOP

By Max Taves

Democrats have a man problem.

Poll after poll keeps reaching the same conclusion: Women are moving left; men, right into Donald Trump’s arms.

“This is the most gendered election America has seen — and the split has only deepened with Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket instead of Joe Biden,” Axios recently reported.

While Vice President Harris had the support of 56% of women in a head-to-head race against Trump in a mid-August CBS News poll of registered voters, only 45% of men said they’d support her. Trump led by nine points among men in that poll.

In battleground states, the partisan gender divide was wide four years ago. Now, it’s wider.

On election day 2020, Trump had a 6-point advantage against Biden among men in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada, per New York Times/Sienna College data. By mid-August 2024, Trump had a 15-point advantage over Harris among men in those same states, according to a Times/Sienna survey of likely voters.

Rejoice women! Trump and Vance have a plan

 

Trump does Sesame Street

The Creature from Weird

JD Vance says what grandmothers are good for