Authored by Aaron Gifford via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
New organized labor reforms signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week require a majority of members to be present for teachers union certification or recertification votes, increase fines for illegal strikes, and establish merit-based pay for educators.
Students join striking teachers as they demand higher pay and smaller class sizes outside Oakland Technical High School in Oakland, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2019. Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesIn Idaho, after July 1, teachers unions will be prohibited from collecting dues directly from members’ paychecks, using paid time off for union activities, or recruiting new members during school hours.
A similar law in Arizona, which also bans teacher strikes and prohibits organized labor members from using any school property—even email addresses—for union activities, will be decided on by voters in the November election.
“They can’t consume taxpayer-funded resources during the school day,” said Rusty Brown, special projects director for the Freedom Foundation policy organization, which assisted state legislators with those measures and helps teachers opt out of union membership.
These ideas are expected to gain ground throughout the nation in the months and years ahead, Brown told The Epoch Times.
Individually, the Freedom Foundation’s Teacher Freedom Alliance has so far helped more than 272,535 teachers opt out of union membership, including more than 50,000 in 2025 alone, according to data provided to The Epoch Times. This includes educators in red and blue states.
At the state level, Oklahoma lawmakers have advanced legislation that would allow teachers to withdraw from a union at any time and would terminate “closed shop” provisions that prevent teachers from accessing alternative labor or professional organizations, such as the Teacher Freedom Alliance.
Brown calls this an “equal access and an end to a monopoly and captive audience bill.” Alternative organizations can offer teacher liability insurance and other benefits at a fraction of the price that traditional unions charge, he said.
Brown said he believes that the legislation could pass before Oklahoma’s session ends later this month, but the member withdrawal proposal probably won’t go through this session.
Alabama state lawmakers will consider legislation similar to Oklahoma’s next session, he said.
Maxford Nelsen, Freedom Foundation’s director of research and government affairs, said several factors prompted growing interest in pushing back against teachers unions. Members do not like that dues are automatically deducted from their paychecks. There is increasing animosity toward “zombie unions,” in which a limited number of members are informed or allowed to vote on matters. Labor organizations also engage in practices that create very narrow windows and bureaucratic hurdles for terminating membership.
“That’s the last thing they want to think about during their summer vacation,” Nelsen told The Epoch Times, citing one union’s requirement in which opt-outs were limited to the last 10 days of July.
Perhaps the most contentious issue, Nelson said, is how teachers union dues are spent. A review of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers unions’ websites shows that both heavily favor Democrats and promote transgender ideology; diversity, equity, and inclusion practices; special protections for illegal immigrants; anti-school choice measures; and other left-leaning policies.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into this progressive apparatus,” Nelson said.
A recent report from Defending Education, a conservative policy center, states that teachers unions at the local, state, and national levels have spent more than $1 billion on “far-left political causes” unrelated to collective bargaining since 2015. This includes school board races, political action committees, and campaigns against school choice.
“Given the outsized role that unions have played in the education system over the past 50 years, greater transparency on union spending is absolutely critical so that policymakers and teachers themselves can make informed decisions about the role that these entities should—or should not—play in the future,” Defending Education President Nicole Neily said in an April 27 statement.
The Epoch Times reached out to the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers unions for comment.
In response to prior Florida legislation that prohibited teachers unions from deducting dues directly from paychecks, the Florida Education Association contracted with a company to withdraw dues from members’ bank accounts after their paychecks are deposited.
“This type of ‘paycheck deception’ legislation is nothing new and has been wielded across the country to weaken unions and roll back working conditions,” the Florida Education Association stated on its website. “It’s no secret that this legislation is designed to diminish our collective voice.”
The Idaho Education Association teachers union implemented a similar system. It also denounced Idaho Gov. Brad Little for refusing to veto the legislation.
“Idaho’s students and the dedicated professionals who teach them will be worse off because of his choice,” the union’s president, Layne McInelly, said in an April 10 statement. “They deserve better.”
The Freedom Foundation is scrutinizing public organized labor groups across the nation, not just teachers unions. In Oregon, it recently submitted a complaint to the state employment relations board on behalf of a union member who said dues were deducted from his paycheck without his authorization. He asked for a refund and requested to opt out of the union, only to be told that the window to do so is Aug. 8 through Sept. 9, according to documentation provided to The Epoch Times.
Nelsen did not work on that case but said this type of practice by unions is common in an era of direct deposits and withdrawals and digital forms.
“There are no mechanisms in place to verify that the individual workers have authorized the form, let alone understand it,” he said.
Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 20:25While the digital US economy, if proxied through the earnings growth and stock prices of AI companies and their "picks and shovels" support ecosystem, has never been stronger, the traditional US consumer, responsible for 70% of US GDP, has rarely been more depressed than right now (and according to the latest University of Michigan sentiment survey, Americans have literally never been more pessimistic).
That was the take home message from the latest earnings week, when various executives across retail, restaurants and packaged goods indicated they are increasingly worried about US shoppers - especially those from the" lower half" of the K-shaped economy - with tighter budgets amid surging gas prices caused by the Iran war, and consumer electronics prices through the roof thanks to record memory chip prices.
“They’re literally running out of money at the end of the month,” Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane said in an interview with the WSJ . “We’re seeing negative cash flows in the lower-income brackets where they’re dipping into savings.” Sure enough, last week we showed that as a result of personal spending growth far outpacing personal income...
... the personal savings rate has collapsed to a 3 year low.
This underscores a remarkable trend: since the pandemic, Americans have continued to spend at surprising levels despite high inflation, keeping the US economy growing and thwarting recession fears, with much of the spending growth fueled by credit card debt, with February's $10BN+ increase in credit card debt the highest since February 2024.
But soaring fuel costs might be the straw that breaks the overlevered camel's back: “The war in Iran amplified consumer concerns about the cost of living,” Whirlpool. CEO Marc Bitzer said Thursday on a call with analysts. The maker of washers and dryers said it’s counting on purchases picking up after a harsh US winter slowed shopping, but the war caused a collapse in consumer sentiment. The company described the resulting 15% hit to industry demand as similar to the global financial crisis in the aughts. In other words a depression.
In fast food, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said confidence among shoppers isn’t improving and may be getting worse. The company cited “heightened anxiety” and gas prices that disproportionately impact low-income consumers.
Sit-down dining is also taking a hit. “Our price-sensitive, more value-oriented guests seem to be staying home a bit more,” Dine Brands CEO John Peyton said on an earnings call this week. The company, which owns the Applebee’s and IHOP chains, said it hasn’t seen a similar pullback in other income levels.
Meanwhile, eyewear retailer Warby Parker said younger shoppers are feeling the pinch from higher-than-usual unemployment and student debt bills.
Gas prices, now at $4.56 a gallon on average, are at their highest levels since July 2022, according to data from the American Automobile Association. As shoppers put more of their income toward fuel, they have less money for discretionary spending like eating out. Enlarged tax refunds helped blunt some of the impact, but sentiment has still soured to a record low.
Americans are putting less away as they try to keep up, with the savings rate dropping in March to the lowest in three years. Meanwhile, economists warn the disruptions from the war in Iran could lead to higher prices for a range of goods over time, including groceries, putting even more pressure on low-income households and draining what little savings are left.
Low-income consumers have already cut back on real gasoline consumption to try to limit costs, according to recent research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In the near term, Americans can draw down savings or tap credit cards, but the longer gas prices stay high, the more consumers will change their spending patterns to balance their budgets, said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank.
Planet Fitness on Thursday fell the most on record after cutting its full-year outlook on weaker-than-expected member signups during the typically busy New Year period.
The gym chain also said it paused the national rollout of a price increase to its top-tier membership, with CEO Colleen Keating making it clear why that decision was made. “The consumer and economic backdrop have shifted,” she said.
Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 19:50Authored by Jonathan Turley via jonathanturley.org,
“Eff around and find out”: That taunt from Hakeem Jeffries celebrating Virginia’s gerrymander did not age well.
On Friday, the House minority leader found out that Virginia’s Supreme Court was not quite as gleeful as he about Democrats’ attempt to virtually eliminate Republican representation in the purple state.
The court just cooked the party’s infamous lobster, a district over 100 miles long that was designed to help devour the GOP’s slender majority in the House of Representatives.
It also cooked the ambitions of Gov. Abigail Spanberger and the Democratic establishment, which tossed aside any pretense of principle in a raw political gambit.
The resulting faceplant is nothing short of legendary: Spanberger’s Democrats have succeeded in alienating half of the state.
For the governor, the court’s decision was particularly embarrassing.
Before assuming power, Spanberger denounced gerrymandering as “detrimental to our democracy and weakens the individual voices that form our electorates.”
She ran as a moderate, but Spanberger immediately turned sharply left once in office and called for the most extreme gerrymander in the nation.
The court found that effort was not only unconstitutional, but “wholly unprecedented in Virginia’s history.”
It characterized the state’s position as “a story of the tail wagging the dog that has no tail.”
While some of us had previously expressed skepticism over the rushed effort to circumvent the state constitution, the media almost exclusively relied on liberal experts who predicted the new districts would be upheld.
It was a calculated risk for Democrats, who have now burned their bridges with Virginia conservative and Republican voters.
As Winston Churchill said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Exhilarating and unforgettable: In a purple state where politicians often require crossover votes to prevail, the redistricting push was not just partisan but personal for voters.
National Democrats will soon “find out” whether Jeffries was right to prematurely celebrate a victory that seemed to secure his anticipated elevation to Speaker of the House.
The party is facing a potentially catastrophic reversal of fortune.
When Democrats declared a gerrymandering war, some of us warned that the party, with its already heavily gerrymandered blue states, had far more to lose than the GOP did.
It was particularly comical when Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey pledged to join the redistricting fray, even though her state is so badly gerrymandered that it’s elected zero Republicans to the House since the 1990s.
Virginia, a state long opposed to gerrymandering, has been considered the fairest state in the country, with a distribution of congressional seats that closely matches its partisan divide.
Once Spanberger sought to eradicate Republican representation, total war broke out — and now red states like Florida and Tennessee have moved forward with their own redistricting.
On top of the fact that GOP states have more room for partisan gerrymandering, the Virginia Supreme Court decision comes on the heels of the US Supreme Court’s ban on racial gerrymandering.
That means a dozen or more Democratic districts could now be deemed unconstitutional — and Louisiana and Mississippi are moving to redistrict in line with the Supreme Court’s decision.
The result could be a dramatic shift in districts favoring the GOP.
To make matters worse for the Democratic Party, a new census in 2030 will correct the mistakes that erroneously awarded them multiple districts after the 2020 census.
Those corrections, and the ongoing exodus from high-tax blue states to booming red ones, could translate into even more congressional gains for the GOP.
That prospect of a political apocalypse has Democratic strategists pushing for radical changes in Washington before it’s too late.
Top priority: packing the Supreme Court as soon as they retake power.
As Virginia has shown, an independent court can unravel the best-laid plans.
Democratic politicians, pundits and professors have been openly pushing for expanding the high court to 13 members with four new liberal additions, in order to rubber-stamp the radical changes needed to keep the party in power.
James Carville recently told Democratic politicians that they have no choice but to pack the court, declaring “F–k it . . . Just do it.”
He suggested, however, that they might not want to tell the voters.
“Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it,” he said. “Just do it.”
Last week, Jeffries declared the Supreme Court “illegitimate” as he blasted its ban on racial gerrymandering.
After the Virginia court’s ruling, the frustrated Democratic establishment is ever more likely to echo him — and to go beyond.
Many Democrats are now “all in” with this radical agenda.
With the courts declaring their redistricting efforts unconstitutional, it is the constitutional system itself that will now have to go.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Tyler Durden Sun, 05/10/2026 - 19:15