50,000 LA public employees go on strike

More than 50,000 Los Angeles County workers were on strike again Tuesday, closing libraries and disrupting administrative operations in the nation's most populous county and organizing a large march in downtown LA.

The two-day walkout that began Monday followed failed negotiations with the county for a new contract after the last one expired in March, according to the Service Employees International Union Local 721.

By late Tuesday morning, a large crowd most wearing purple SEIU 721 shirts with picket signs had gathered in downtown Los Angeles. The union bused members to a rally that began outside the Hall of Administration on Temple Street, which was closed to traffic for a march.

Chanting workers carried banners at the head of the march, reading "LA County Workers on ULP Strike," and "We are the Safety Net."

At about 12:30 p.m., about a dozen people who sat on Figueroa Street in a coordinated display of civil disobedience and blocked the road were taken into custody. The individuals surrendered peacefully to officers and most of the crowd dispersed by early Tuesday afternoon.

They were quickly processed, cited and released at the scene.

A nearby entrance ramp onto the 110 Freeway was closed. Fifth Street was closed from the 110 Freeway to Flower Street due to the demonstration.

The union represents employees including public health professionals, social workers, parks and recreation staff, custodians, clerical workers and others serving a county of 10 million residents. It will be the first time all of its about 55,000 members go on strike, the union said.

“This is the workforce that got LA County through emergency after emergency: the January wildfires, public health emergencies, mental health emergencies, social service emergencies and more," union leader David Green said in a statement. "That’s why we have had it with the labor law violations and demand respect for our workers.”

The labor action is set to last until 7 p.m. Wednesday. During this time, libraries, some healthcare clinics, beach bathrooms, and public service counters at the Hall of Administration are expected to be closed. Some other services in the medical examiner's office and public works department may also be affected, according to the county.

The union has accused the county of 44 labor law violations during contract negotiations, including surveillance and retaliation against workers engaging in union activity and contracting out positions represented by the union.

LA County says it's facing “unprecedented stresses” on its budget, including a tentative $4 billion settlement of thousands of childhood sexual assault claims, a projected $2 billion in impacts related to the LA wildfires in January, and the potential loss of hundreds of millions in federal funding.

“We do not want to negotiate ourselves into a structural deficit — which could lead to layoffs and service reductions,” spokesperson Elizabeth Marcellino said in a statement from the chief executive office. “We are trying to strike a balance: fair compensation for our workforce while sustaining services and avoiding layoffs in the midst of some of the worst financial challenges we have ever experienced.”

The city of LA is facing similar financial woes — Mayor Karen Bass's recently proposed budget includes 1,600 layoffs of city workers amid a nearly $1 billion deficit.

More than 150 county workers picketed outside the Los Angeles General Medical Center on Monday, raising signs that read “We are the safety net!”

Lillian Cabral, who has worked at the hospital since 1978, said the strike was a “historic moment” that involved staff from the emergency room and radiology departments to custodians.

Cabral is part of the bargaining committee and said she was frustrated by a process that has been filled with long delays and little movement from the county.

“It's so unfair to us, it's so unfair to our patients, and to our clients and our community,” Cabral said.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/los-angeles-county-workers-strike/3689130/

New York Bans Smartphones in Schools, Joining National Movement

New York will require schools statewide to ban smartphone use during school hours, joining a national movement aimed at preventing compulsive social media use and distractions that interfere with school work, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced this week.

In more than 700 districts including New York City, school leaders will be required to create plans to store students’ smartphones “from bell to bell” and prevent their “unsanctioned use” during class, lunch and other parts of the school day.

The ban, which applies to students in kindergarten through 12th grade, will also restrict other “internet-enabled personal devices” such as smartwatches. The ban will not apply to basic cellphones that lack internet access, state officials said.

New York’s move follows the lead of roughly a dozen other states including California, Louisiana and Virginia that have moved in recent years to require districts to limit phone use, though the policies vary. Some states have banned devices only during classes; others have ordered districts to create their own restrictions.

The bipartisan movement to crack down on phones has been fueled by anxiety over the consequences of an “always online” youth culture. Today, about 90 percent of U.S. teenagers own a smartphone, surveys show. Nearly one in three 8-year-olds have a smartphone.

These bans come as policymakers are searching for solutions to soaring rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm among adolescents in the past decade. The U.S. surgeon general in the Biden administration warned last year that the addictive nature of social media could be part of the crisis, especially for young girls, though research on the issue is nuanced and mixed.

In New York, Ms. Hochul said that she had begun to consider restrictions after hearing stories from students about the negative effects of social media.

School smartphone bans are broadly popular and backed by nonprofit child advocacy groups and the teachers’ unions for the state and New York City. More than 60 percent of voters — including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents — support a state prohibition, according to a poll this month from the Siena College Research Institute.

Districts are expected to create plans to restrict phone use by the start of next school year. The state, which announced the ban as part of its $254 billion preliminary budget deal, will also make roughly $13 million available to those districts that need help buying storage for devices, state officials said.

Ms. Hochul compared the move to previous national efforts to safeguard children from harms like cigarettes, alcohol and drunken driving.

“Now, we’re protecting them from addictive technology designed to hijack their attention,” the governor said on Monday. “Cellphones have dragged too many of our kids into dark places.”

The rise of smartphones and social media has brought new challenges for teachers: Students sometimes make TikTok videos in cafeterias, browse Instagram in bathroom stalls and field texts from their parents in class. Significant numbers of students face bullying or harassment online, surveys show, and those virtual conflicts can seep into school.

Ms. Hochul’s plan directs schools to provide a method for parents to contact their children if needed and to allow “common-sense exemptions” from the ban, including for children using phones for translation or for students with disabilities who might need a device for medical reasons, state officials said.

Many schools across the state already restrict cellphone use in some form. In New York City, some middle schools ask children to place their phones in cubbies at the side of their classrooms. High schools sometimes hand out locked fabric pouches for phones, which students then keep in their backpacks.

The governor’s announcement followed a failed effort to restrict phone use in all New York City schools. The former schools chancellor, David C. Banks, was poised to announce a ban last summer, but it was called off amid a disagreement with Mayor Eric Adams.

For years, New York City students had been prohibited from bringing their phones to school, but the rule was reversed a decade ago in part because of concerns that students who commuted long distances by train and bus needed access to their phones for safety reasons.

Today, critics worry that cutting off students from their phones could hurt those with jobs or babysitting duties for younger siblings. Some parents fear being unable to quickly reach their children in a crisis, such as a school shooting. Groups of principals argue that the details of a ban — such as whether to permit phone use at lunch — should be left to schools.

The New York Civil Liberties Union expressed concern that the move would place “students at an increased risk of police searches and surveillance,” and suggested that investing in private counseling and medical services would do more to boost mental health.

Ms. Hochul had previously said that schools would be required to report on the rollout of the ban, including any disparities in enforcement.

The restriction has many backers. Melinda Person, the president of the state teachers’ union, said the bell-to-bell policy would stop students from “counting down minutes in each class for a few moments of screen time during passing periods.”

Many school leaders who have banned cellphone use have reported benefits such as increased student participation in class. National reviews, though, show mixed results related to behavioral problems and academics.

Educators and students point out that smartphones are not always the source of classroom distraction.

Studies show that computer use in class can negatively affect learning, and teachers say it can make it harder to hold student attention. But even in early grades, district-issued laptops and tablets have become an increasingly common part of the school day.

https://archive.is/3itpY

Program spends up to $750,000 per graduate who end up making $17K per year

A Labor Department program designed to train 16- to 24-year-olds to join the workforce spends more per person annually than Ivy League colleges, but participants wind up making minimum wage on average — raising questions about whether it should continue to exist.

The Job Corps pays teenage runaways, high school dropouts, and twentysomething ex-cons to live in dormitories and receive their GEDs and vocational training. The national cost per graduate was $188,000, with the average graduate staying 13.5 months. Of more than 110 campuses, the 10 least efficient averaged a cost of $385,000 per graduate. Job Corps participants earn $16,695 per year on average after leaving the program, according to new government data.

Nearly $2 billion in federal taxpayer money is spent annually on residential Job Corps campuses, a boon for the for-profit contractors who run them. But the dismal statistics about the program’s efficacy have never been fully public until the Trump administration released a “Transparency Report” last week.

The Job Corps has only a 32% graduation rate, though statistics have typically been calculated using a misleading definition of “graduate,” which bumped the number up slightly to 39%. Of about 30,000 enrollees in the 2023-24 school year, roughly 10,000 were expelled for misconduct, 5,000 were booted for absconding, and 5,000 dropped out for other reasons. The average cost per enrollee, including those who dropped out or were expelled, was $50,000, with an average stay of 7.5 months, working out to $80,000 per year.

The Old Dominion Job Corps campus in Monroe, Virginia, had 95 enrollees in 2023, at a cost of $137,000 each. Only 17 successfully completed the program, amounting to a cost of $764,000 per graduate. Old Dominion is operated by ODLE Management Group LLC, which runs several campuses.

The Daily Wire reported this month that thousands of young people have been the victims of assault and other crimes at Job Corps campuses, including a transgender-identifying girl who was assigned to live with a 23-year-old man who was charged with raping her.

A decade of oversight by government auditors and news media has found that the program attracts criminals and that some staff look the other way to avoid expelling members, which would lead to lost revenue — or negative attention — which could jeopardize the program.

At the Old Dominion campus with 95 enrollees, the campus officially reported 46 disciplinary infractions. At the Gary campus in San Marcos, Texas, there were 633 disciplinary incidents among 1,191 enrollees. The Oconaluftee campus in Cherokee, North Carolina, had 205 infractions over 162 enrollees, amounting to more than one per person.

The latest quarter of data showed that 72% of graduates were placed in jobs, though past investigations have found some Job Corps centers cooking the books on those numbers. The Gadsden campus in Alabama reported a 40% job placement rate, while the Gulfport campus in Mississippi claimed 100%.

Job Corps participants were typically not capable of remaining employed for long. After exiting the program, fewer than half had a job a few months out and were still working that job at the one-year mark.

YouTube is full of videos of Job Corps “students” viciously fighting each other, and participants interviewed by The Daily Wire described a culture that is racially charged, where dysfunction dominates, and “snitches” are physically assaulted. Democrats have moved to lower behavioral standards even further by introducing a bill making it harder to expel students.

Contractors pay recruiting bonuses for finding prospects, and participants are paid to take part in the program in addition to covering their room, board, and medical. One recent graduate told The Daily Wire that contractors conceal the program’s failure to keep the cash coming, and that many participants wind up working in menial jobs they could have done without the expensive training.

“A lot of reasons they allow dangerous behavior to go covered up, as I imagine you may know, has to do with the entire program being a numbers game. The program also fails to complete its actual goal, which is to help at-risk youth find jobs,” he said. “I can’t think of a student I knew that has a job in the trade that they trained for. They have jobs in fast food.”

“A lot of these kids, their mentality is like middle schoolers. I’d say it’s equivalent to an inner city high school but with dorms. Because it’s with dorms, anything like fights or sexual assaults could happen at any time. Something’s gonna happen every day. Not everyone is a gangbanger but the vast majority are,” he added.

GEDs are already available at no cost to young adults from most school districts, and unions often offer free training in the trades, making Job Corps’ value proposition dubious — though the nearly $2 billion a year spent on the program means that contractors will lobby hard to preserve their cash cow.

As part of its Department of Government Efficiency initiatives, the Trump administration may recommend significantly cutting Job Corps’ budget next year, a source familiar with the matter told The Daily Wire.

On April 1, the Labor Department said new enrollees will not be accepted at two Maine campuses. The Penobscot campus cost $91,000 per enrollee and had a 41% graduation rate, while the Loring campus cost $42,000 per enrollee, with only 38% completing the program.

“Taxpayers deserve to know the facts and outcomes of their multi-billion-dollar investment,” Labor Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training Lori Frazier Bearden said in a statement. “This report underscores the department’s commitment to program transparency and accountability – both of which are essential for effective oversight, informed policymaking, and maintaining public trust.”

As The Daily Wire previously reported, eligibility requirements say that only people on welfare or living in poverty are eligible for the Job Corps, that refugees and non-citizen parolees are eligible, and that “no individual shall be denied enrollment in Job Corps solely on the basis of contact with the criminal justice system, except for the disqualifying felony convictions of murder…child abuse, or a crime involving rape or sexual assault.”

The program requires that applicants not be able to read at higher than an eighth grade level, saying they must be “unable to compute or solve problems… at a level necessary to function on the job, in the individual’s family, or in society,” or he must be homeless, a runaway, a high school dropout, or a victim of sex trafficking.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/job-corps-spends-764k-per-graduate

Merck to invest $1 billion in U.S. drug manufacturing plant

Merck is investing $1 billion to build a U.S. plant in Delaware, in a show of its commitment to domestic manufacturing.

The move comes amid plans by President Trump to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals, which would include taxes on imported ingredients used in the making of such medicines.

The drug maker on Tuesday announced a new 470,000-square-foot facility in Wilmington, Delaware, where it will make Keytruda, the company's immunotherapy treatment for different cancers. The plant will be Merck's first U.S. facility dedicated to making Keytruda for U.S. patients, the company said.

"This is part of a significant investment to not only bring the world's best-selling medicine closer to the American patients who rely on it, but to also establish a home for our biologics portfolio of products serving U.S. patients," Merck said in a statement Tuesday.

The new site will spur growth in Wilmington's biotechnology sector, creating more than 500 full-time jobs, and roughly 4,000 construction jobs, the company said. The Wilmington lab is expected to be functional by 2028.

"The Merck Wilmington Biotech site represents our continued commitment to growing our investments in U.S. manufacturing and has the potential to create thousands of high-paying American jobs while ensuring that we can produce and distribute products close to patients right here in the U.S.," Merck chairman and CEO Robert M. Davis said in a statement.

Since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Merck has allocated more than $12 billion toward its domestic manufacturing footprint.

"We are committed to continuing our efforts to stimulate economic growth in the U.S., allowing for the domestic production and distribution of medicines and vaccines to patients here and around the world," the company said.

A long list of American corporations have announced new investments in U.S. manufacturing under Mr. Trump's broad-based tariff program. Computing giant IBM this week pledged to spend $150 billion on U.S. manufacturing capabilities to "fuel the economy."

While not all of the companies with plans to grow their U.S. production facilities have cited Mr. Trump's tariffs as the motivating factor, the White House has touted such moves as furthering Mr. Trump's goal of reshoring manufacturing and stoking job-creation on home soil.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/merck-us-manufacturing-drug-plant-1-billion/

Mexico has received nearly 39,000 deportees from US since Trump took office

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has received nearly 39,000 immigrants deported from the United States since the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, of which 33,000 are Mexicans, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Tuesday.

Speaking in her regular morning press conference, Sheinbaum said that although Mexico decided to accept non-Mexicans deported from the U.S. for "humanitarian reasons," only a few thousand have been sent to Mexico since Trump took office in late January.

"Fewer and fewer people are arriving from other countries because the U.S. government has agreements with practically all nations," Sheinbaum said.

Mexico has received fewer people deported from the U.S. since Trump took office than over the same period last year, when former U.S. President Joe Biden was in office.

Mexico received some 52,000 immigrants deported from the U.S. in February, March, and April last year, according to Mexican data.

The decrease, despite Trump's vows of a mass deportation campaign, is driven by fewer migrants crossing the U.S. border.

Since Trump launched his border crackdown, migrants across Latin America have been giving up on their hopes of entering the U.S. and making their way back to their home countries.

(Reporting by Raul Cortes Fernandez and Diego Ore; Writing by Brendan O'Boyle; Editing by Rod Nickel)

https://www.aol.com/numbers-show-no-mass-deportation-124944787.html

Trump shitcans PBS board of directors

Scott MacFarlane

@MacFarlaneNews

Lawsuit: “On April 28, 2025, three members of the Board of Directors for CPB – Laura G. Ross, Diane Kaplan, and Thomas E. Rothman – received an email from Trent Morse, the Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel for the Executive Office of the President, purporting to notify the board members that their positions on the Board of Directors for CPB were terminated. The Correspondence stated, in full: On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service. The Correspondence did not identify the authority with which the President was purporting to terminate the Board members.”

https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1917196547487600827

“We Can’t Hire a White Guy”—a Professor on Life at Princeton

In 2020, Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber made headlines for declaring the university guilty of “systemic racism.” He meant systemic racism against racial minorities, but in truth, Eisgruber’s institution has practiced the opposite: systematically discriminated against supposed “oppressors,” like whites and males.

Though most Princeton faculty support Eisgruber’s “anti-racism” policy, a faction of dissenters—a few dozen in number—has grown bolder in recent months. In these professors’ telling, Princeton’s president is a vengeful administrator who punishes anyone who questions DEI orthodoxy. They have worked behind the scenes to assemble evidence of his discriminatory policies and hope the Trump administration will restore the principle of colorblind equality on campus.

I sat down with one of these professors for a wide-ranging discussion about anti-Semitism, radical ideologies, and DEI at Princeton. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Rufo: Harvard and Columbia have drawn the most attention for radical ideologies and anti-Semitism on campus. Set the stage for what’s happening here at Princeton.

Professor: Anti-Semitism is really a symptom of a deeper malaise at Princeton, which is that the university decided to go woke and—as President Eisgruber wrote in the last few months of the first Trump administration—declare that we were “systemically racist.” But if we have been systemically racist, it’s been against whites, Jews, Asians, and Indians, in favor of other demographics. We’ve always been told that we have to give special treatment to women and certain demographic minorities.

At one point, I was a “search officer” in my department. When our department was going to make a hire, a search committee was constituted. A search officer has access to demographic data that the search committee does not have and can look at the short list and then look at the demographic data and say, “I think you should maybe consider this person or that person,” i.e., people who belong to certain groups.

In one meeting of search officers, we were told that 70 percent of the faculty are white, and that the faculty composition has to change to reflect the composition of the class of Princeton, which they themselves had curated. Having engineered the class a certain way, they wanted then to engineer the faculty.

I have a colleague in the sciences, and he was told by the department, “You can’t shortlist this person. We can’t hire a white guy.” This colleague went to the chair, who was Jewish, and said to him, “In the 1930s, that’s what they used to say about Jews here at Princeton: ‘We couldn’t hire them because they’re Jewish.’”

Everyone knows, but academics are cowards. They see the way the wind is blowing and either go quiet or jump on the bandwagon.

Rufo: And paint me a picture of President Eisgruber. He is really trying to make a reputation on this.

Professor: Here’s what I can tell you: he’s very insecure about the fact that he doesn’t have a Ph.D.; he has a JD. He’s a bit of an antisocial person. He doesn’t socialize with faculty at all. He’s extremely arrogant. It may have to do with his insecurity. And he lives in a bubble. He’s created a board of trustees that is entirely sycophantic. Each board member’s dream was to become a trustee of Princeton, and they will never cross him because they would never want to lose that position. This is the pinnacle of social ascension for them.

Last year, Eisgruber was on an American Enterprise Institute panel, in conversation with Ben Sasse. Sasse asked him, “Other than Robbie George, who are the conservatives on campus?” Eisgruber couldn’t come up with a single name, and people started laughing. Robbie is the house conservative, and the general atmosphere is not a good one. I’ve seen a lot of people self-censoring. Certainly, if you’re a conservative student or a Christian or a Zionist, many are afraid and won’t talk. There’s no doubt that, for a while, the woke were ruling the roost.

Rufo: And who are the people Eisgruber has rewarded?

Professor: All the people who’ve been signing these anti-Israel petitions and going to the encampments are being considered for the top administrative positions. For instance, there’s a woman named Ruha Benjamin who has just been given the MacArthur Award. She led a group of students to take over a building here and then exited the building a minute before the police showed up. [Benjamin has claimed that she was a “faculty observer” during the April 29 occupation of Clio hall, though many dispute this characterization.] And she’s on the web page of the university as the “genius,” the most wonderful, incredible academic. In truth, she is the person who led the crazy stuff about Israel and Hamas on campus. We don’t have the same number of crazies here as they do at Columbia, but we do have them. We have a local chapter of Hamas supporters, and they’re feted by the university. They’re not penalized or punished in any way; they’re feted.

Rufo: And why is that? Not to be crude, but Eisgruber himself is Jewish. You would think that—

Professor: No, hold on. He discovered he was Jewish as an adult. It was a very late discovery. It was something from Ellis Island that his son looked up. I don’t think he grew up Jewish at all. To me, again, the bottom line is this: he’s bought into the ideology that certain people are victims and certain people are oppressors. I think he’s bought into it completely.

Rufo: In my observation, you have a lot of cynical actors that follow the path of least resistance, and you have some true believers. You put him in the latter category?

Professor: I think he was initially very cynical because he wanted to be reappointed as president of the university and feared that he could have easily been replaced by a black woman. So, I think it started out being cynical and then, once he secured his reappointment for five years, he proceeded to drink the Kool-Aid and felt that he was getting all kinds of accolades because of it. There is an elite in this country that rewards itself for adopting certain ideologies, and he’s one of them.

Rufo: Conversely, how are white and Jewish men on the faculty responding?

Professor: Largely by being quiet and afraid. A scientific department had displayed photographs of all the previous department chairs for the last 70 years—all white men, many of them Jewish. One day, all the pictures disappeared. The administration had removed them from the wall because someone found it objectionable that all these white men should be staring down at them. And yet, a number of those men were key in bringing black students to Princeton in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. But none of that history matters: it’s just a bunch of whites faces, so they removed all the photographs, and no one objected—no one.

Rufo: And how do you hope that this conflict between Trump and Princeton will resolve?

Professor: I want this university severely punished for its unlawful behavior. I want discovery; I want all the emails to come out that will make it very evident that this university was engaged in illegal discrimination. I want President Eisgruber subpoenaed before Congress to have to account for not only anti-Semitism, but for DEI and for the “systemic racism” arguments that he’s made. I want him to be publicly put on the stand. That’s what ultimately will deeply embarrass this university.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/princeton-university-president-christopher-eisgruber-anti-semitism-racial-discrimination

Iraq arrests ISIS suspect for inciting New Orleans attack

A recent UN report said government-led counter-terrorism operations have resulted in the deaths of nearly half of ISIS’s senior leaders in Iraq.

BAGHDAD

Iraqi authorities have arrested a suspected member of the Islamic State group for inciting a January truck-ramming attack that killed 14 people in the US city of New Orleans, Iraq’s judiciary said on Sunday.

The city in the southern state of Louisiana was plunged into a panic early on New Year’s Day when a US army veteran, who the FBI said had pledged loyalty to ISIS, ploughed a pickup truck into revellers in the crowded French Quarter, famed for its nightlife.

Police killed the suspect in an exchange of fire.

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said that an ISIS member “was arrested for inciting the January 2025 truck attack in the United States” after Iraq received a request from Washington to assist in the investigation.

It added that the suspect is “a member of the external operations office of the Daesh terrorist organisation,” using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

The suspect will be tried in Iraq under the anti-terrorism law, it said.

Although the country proclaimed the defeat of the jihadist group on its territory in 2017, ISIS cells have remained active and carry out sporadic attacks against the army and police.

A recent UN report said government-led counter-terrorism operations have resulted in the deaths of nearly half of ISIS’s senior leaders in Iraq.

https://thearabweekly.com/iraq-arrests-isis-suspect-inciting-new-orleans-attack