March 13, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson: All About The SAVE Act

March 13, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson: Leaking Like a Sieve

March 13, 2026

Mike Duggan made millions while DMC workers accused hospital system of union busting

(Detroit Metro Times) As ex-Detroit mayor Mike Duggan works to win over union voters in his independent bid for governor, records show he oversaw the layoffs of union hospital workers while becoming a millionaire at the Detroit Medical Center.

Duggan later brokered the sale of the nonprofit hospital system to a for-profit company, a move that was followed by years of safety violations, federal scrutiny, and labor disputes.

Documents reviewed by Metro Times show that while Duggan was president and CEO of the eight-hospital system between 2004 and 2012, unions repeatedly accused the hospital system of aggressive tactics to stop organizing and weaken bargaining units.

Newly uncovered documents show that DMC laid off an entire class of unionized hospital workers and replaced them with non-union employees in 2012, prompting a federal labor complaint. The dispute centered on Hutzel Hospital in Detroit, where AFSCME Council 25, Local 3695 accused DMC of violating federal labor law after 17 unionized hospital aides known as “nurse extenders” were laid off and their work transferred to non-union staff. .................(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/news/politics-elections/mike-duggan-made-millions-while-dmc-workers-accused-hospital-system-of-union-busting/

March 13, 2026

Anthropic-Pentagon battle shows how big tech has reversed course on AI and war

Anthropic-Pentagon battle shows how big tech has reversed course on AI and war
Nick Robins-Early

Less than a decade ago, Google employees scuttled any military use of its AI. Now Anthropic is fighting Trump officials not over if, but how


(Guardian) The standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon has forced the tech industry to once again grapple with the question of how its products are used for war – and what lines it will not cross. Amid Silicon Valley’s rightward shift under Donald Trump and the signing of lucrative defense contracts, big tech’s answer is looking very different than it did even less than a decade ago.

Anthropic’s feud with the Trump administration escalated three days ago as the AI firm sued the Department of Defense, claiming that the government’s decision to blacklist it from government work violated its first amendment rights. The company and the Pentagon have been locked in a months-long standoff, with Anthropic attempting to prohibit its AI model from being used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.

Anthropic has argued that giving in to the DoD’s demands to permit “any lawful use” of its technology would violate its founding safety principles and open up its technology for potential abuse, staking an ethical boundary that others in the industry must decide whether they want to cross.

Although Anthropic’s refusal to remove safety guardrails and the Pentagon’s subsequent retaliation have highlighted longstanding concerns over the use of AI for conflict, the fight has shown how much the goal posts have moved when it comes to big tech’s ties to the military.

“If people are looking for good guys and bad guys, where a good guy is someone who doesn’t support war,” said Margaret Mitchell, an AI researcher and chief ethics scientist at the tech firm Hugging Face. “Then they’re not going to find that here.” .....................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/13/anthropic-pentagon-artificial-intelligence

March 13, 2026

Suspect in Temple Israel attack named; mayor says he lost family in war

(Detroit Free Press) The suspect in the Temple Israel attack has been identified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a 41-year-old immigrant from Lebanon who is a U.S. citizen.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali carried out "the tragic attack on Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield," a spokesperson for the department told the Free Press in a statement late March 12. Ghazali was killed in the attack, a security guard was injured and the temple partially burned in a fire.

The department did not say where Ghazali lived. A neighbor told the Detroit Free Press he lived in Dearborn Heights, west of Detroit, and recently lost family in an Israeli strike in Lebanon. Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun said in a statement the suspect "lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon" earlier in March.

Ghazali was born in Lebanon in January 1985 and entered the U.S. in May 2010 on an IR1 immigrant visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen, DHS said. He had filed alien relative and fiancé petitions in December 2009, which were approved in April 2010. ...................(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2026/03/12/homeland-security-said-ayman-ghazali-carried-out-temple-israel-attack/89128502007/

March 13, 2026

Labor Department chaos hides an anti-worker agenda

Labor Department chaos hides an anti-worker agenda
Dysfunction at the NLRB has grown to the point that it’s even beginning to hurt employers

By Russell Payne
Staff Reporter
Published March 13, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) Earlier this year, a Boston Trader Joe’s worker had their wrongful termination case dismissed by the National Labor Relations Board, with the board providing no other explanation than “lack of cooperation.”

This, however, was just the reason given as part of the board’s recent policy of dismissing cases that fall short of their new standard, which requires those bringing cases to gather and present information that was previously gathered by a board investigator. The board explained this is part of a new phase of investigation meant to determine whether a case might be eligible for summary dismissal, at least under the new standard.

Under the policy, the charging party — typically an employee or union alleging an unfair labor practice — is required to file a timeline of events related to their allegation, documentation of those events, like communications and phone records, and a list of witnesses they plan to bring and a summary of their testimony. All of this was previously collected and presented by a board investigator, but now workers must make their case before a board investigator is even assigned. If workers fail to collect this information, they can expect the board to dismiss their case.

....(snip)....

The whole ordeal, however, is indicative of a department that has garnered attention for the chaos at the leadership level, but which is quietly plugging away at the conservative vision for labor in the United States.

At the top, the Department of Labor appears to be a mess. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the one-term Oregon Republican congresswoman tapped by Trump to lead the department, has been engulfed in scandal since January. Chavez-DeRemer has faced allegations she was romantically engaged with a security staffer, allegations which she has denied while Trump has expressed ongoing support for her. Separately, Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Shawn DeRemer, has been accused of sexual assault by two women at the department and banned from its buildings. An attorney for DeRemer has also denied allegations against him. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/13/labor-department-chaos-hides-an-anti-worker-agenda/

March 13, 2026

Pete Hegseth's manly act is backfiring

Pete Hegseth’s manly act is backfiring
MAGA bros hoped the defense secretary would make them feel butch — with Iran war, he embarrasses them

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published March 13, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) Pete Hegseth has an abnormal obsession with how he looks in photographs. This is not revelation: The defense secretary is well known for preening for the cameras with a level of self-regard that would embarrass most supermodels. But his fixation on striking a manly pose was confirmed in humiliating fashion this week when the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon banned news photographers for taking what was deemed “unflattering” photos of the former Fox News weekend host during a March 2 briefing about the Iran war.

The situation was a perfect synecdoche for Hegseth’s self-inflicted Sispyphean task of trying to be a big man. His efforts to butch himself up are so grasping that they inevitably backfire, revealing his vanity, insecurity and weakness — qualities that are very much the opposite of the John Wayne ideal of masculinity to which MAGA aspires. (Not that Wayne lived up to his own image either.) Liberals have always laughed at Hegseth and his self-owning, try-hard energy. But with the Iran war, even his fellow travelers in overcompensation, the MAGA bros, are starting to worry about the vicarious emasculation that is likely to come with his embarrassing failure to live up to his vaunted — and frequently espoused — “warrior ethos.”

Hegseth’s rhetoric is so alarming that it sometimes eclipses how he also can come across like an eight-year-old boy inventing dialogue for the villain in his G.I. Joe game. He likes to say things like, “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” and “violent effect, not politically correct.” It’s impossible to hear the secretary spout these rhymes and not picture how he must have practiced them in front of the mirror in his rumored makeup studio at the Pentagon, imagining himself the hero of an action movie, unable to realize that he’s making most listeners feel embarrassed on his behalf.

....(snip)....

To their slender credit, some MAGA dudes know that getting into a real war will backfire by disproving their fragile masculine fantasies. And with incompetent people like Hegseth and Donald Trump in charge, the odds of losing, which is experienced as emasculation on the right, is near 100%. So they’ve been trying to talk their leaders out of this foolhardy mission. Walsh called the war a “travesty.” Rogan said Trump voters feel “betrayed,” and he called the war “insane” as a political decision. Wilson, who has a personal relationship with Hegseth that likely tempers his typical inflammatory rhetoric, was more delicate. Still, he released a video expressing hope that the action would stay “limited” and advising Trump to get out quickly and avoid “the hubris of nation-building.” ........................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/13/pete-hegseths-manly-act-is-backfiring/

March 12, 2026

Corewell Health accused of ignoring Islamophobic posts by nurse practitioner

(Detroit Metro Times) Corewell Health failed to address a nurse practitioner who publicly described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and shared social media posts calling for discrimination against Muslims, according to a complaint filed with the state.

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) announced Wednesday that it filed the complaint with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights on behalf of a Muslim employee who works in a locked neonatal unit at one of the health system’s hospitals. Corewell Health is the largest health system in Michigan, operating dozens of hospitals and employing tens of thousands of workers across the state.

The complaint identifies the coworker as Marley Sollars Shook, a nurse practitioner in OB triage at Beaumont Hospitals, a system that is now part of Corewell Health. According to the complaint, social media posts attributed to Shook include statements identifying herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and calling for Islam to be banned and mosques shut down.

Other shared posts mocked racial and ethnic groups, including two that pictured nooses with the messages, “I am past the point of just wanting them in prison” and “There’s a reason we used to do things the way we did.” ...............(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/news/michigan-news/corewell-health-accused-of-ignoring-islamophobic-posts-by-nurse-practitioner/

March 12, 2026

Lawmakers and faith leaders demand Southfield (Michigan) building owners cancel ICE lease

(Michigan Advance) Elected officials who represent Southfield on the state and federal level joined faith leaders and community members to demand that REDICO, the building management of One Towne Square in Southfield, where ICE has leased an office for its legal team, cancel the lease in a Wednesday afternoon press conference and rally near the building.

“ICE is leasing a new office here, I hate even calling it an office, a deportation machine here in Southfield, to fill it up with lawyers and administrators who will carry out this fascist police state,” said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit).

The lease, which will house the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, ICE’s legal wing, first became known to the public in February, and this is the second such rally outside the office building.



“In early February, we learned that OPLA, the lawyers for ICE, the people whose job it is to defend the agency’s many abuses, who decide how big a child’s cage can legally be, were renting space five minutes from our beautiful neighborhood,” Lauren Fink, a member of the Southfield Neighbors Action Committee, said.

“They say that they’re proud to be headquartered here in Southfield. They say that they love Southfield too,” Fink said of REDICO. “We’ve got a great idea for how they can show it.” ...................(more)

https://michiganadvance.com/2026/03/12/lawmakers-and-faith-leaders-demand-southfield-building-owners-cancel-ice-lease/

March 12, 2026

Right-wing media's Mamdani outrage fuels GOP anti-Muslim rhetoric

Right-wing media’s Mamdani outrage fuels GOP anti-Muslim rhetoric
Mike Johnson refuses to condemn Republicans for turning attack at Mamdani’s home into Islamophobic campaign

By Sophia Tesfaye
Senior Writer
Published March 12, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) During Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims around the world fast from dawn to sunset and gather with family and neighbors each evening to break that fast, the American right is manufacturing outrage about Muslims in public life. Worse yet, they are turning it into a vehicle for increasingly explicit calls to push Muslims out of American society altogether.

What should have been a straightforward story about an anti-Muslim rally escalating into violence instead became a right-wing media opportunity to cast New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and by extension all Muslims, as the villain. Saturday’s protest outside Gracie Mansion, the city’s mayoral residence, was explicitly billed as a demonstration against the supposed “Islamic takeover of New York City.” Organized by Jake Lang, a pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionist who promised to burn a Quran, the event attracted counter-protesters. Amid the chaos, two men allegedly hurled improvised explosive devices (IEDs) filled with bolts and screws into the crowd of anti-Muslim protesters.

....(snip)....

Within hours, right-wing media and Republican politicians had reframed the entire episode into a grievance against Mamdani himself. The logic was almost comically circular: an anti-Muslim rally was held outside the home of a Muslim mayor and violence erupted, therefore the mayor’s response was suspect. When Mamdani criticized the Islamophobia driving the rally, that criticism itself became the outrage. Even the New York Times curiously questioned why Mamdani “did not turn to his typical means of communication,” like “short-form videos posted to social media about the attack.”

The most nakedly bigoted response came from Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., who declared on social media that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” and suggested that Mamdani should be deported. The mayor, who was born in Uganda, has been a U.S. citizen since 2018. That hasn’t stopped Ogles from previously urging the Justice Department to investigate whether Mamdani could be stripped of his citizenship through denaturalization. The congressman, whose Nashville-area congressional district is home to more than 40,000 Muslims — one of the largest Muslim communities in the South. He recently proposed a bill to ban immigration by Muslims, declaring that they “are unable to assimilate” and “all have to go back.”

The most alarming part of the episode is not that one far-right congressman is willing to indulge in explicit religious bigotry. American politics has always produced figures eager to test the boundaries of decency. What is remarkable is how many Republicans have decided those borders no longer exist. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/12/right-wing-medias-mamdani-outrage-fuels-gop-anti-muslim-rhetoric/