The State of Labor/ Forever Chemicals

Ralph welcomes labor organizer Chris Townsend to discuss the current state of the labor movement under the second Trump administration. Then, Ralph talks to journalist Mariah Blake about PFAS and her new book “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals.”

Chris Townsend has been a union member and 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.

We've moved up an administrative layer of labor leaders, time markers, folks who see their role as at best guiding the sinking ship, managing the decline, taking best care as they can think of the members as their lives are destroyed, as the employers move to liquidate us.

Chris Townsend

In many ways, exceeding the gravity of the political action crisis (our subordination to the Democratic Party, our membership estrangement from the political process, the lack of any significant trade union education of the rank and file other than a few cheap slogans)…is that the crisis that we face is the crisis of our very existence.

Chris Townsend

It's far easier to shrink the labor movement than it is to build it and grow it. And that's our job. No other force in the country is going to do the work of adding the many millions of unorganized toilers—I use the word “toilers” very carefully…Toil is really what we've been reduced to, and increasingly so. So there's absolutely, I would indict the labor movement loudly, daily, that there is as yet no understanding that unless we go back out to the unorganized and take the spirit of trade unionism—unity, one for all, take on the employer, organize, defend each other, move forward, recapture some of this gargantuan wealth that we create each day on the job—unless that spirit is returned into an organizing wave or at least an attempt to do this, our fate has been sealed.

Chris Townsend

Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist whose writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Mother Jones, the New Republic, and other publications. She was a Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism at Harvard University. And she is the author of They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals.

PFAS are a large family of chemicals with some pretty amazing properties—they're extremely resistant to heat, stains, water, grease, electrical currents. They stand up to corrosive chemicals that burn through virtually every other material (including, in some cases, steel). And this makes them extremely useful. And as a result, they found their way into thousands of everyday products. On the other hand, they are probably the most insidious pollutants in all of human history. So they stay in the environment for hundreds or even thousands of years. Those that have been studied are highly toxic, even in the most minuscule of doses. And they are literally polluting the entire planet.

Mariah Blake

The way we regulate chemicals in this country at the moment makes zero sense. You do see changes happening in response to the unique threat posed by these chemicals on a state level. And this is really in response to citizen activism. So a number of states are passing laws that have banned the entire class of chemicals. That is not how we regulate chemicals in this country normally. We normally regulate them one by one, but at this moment 30 US states have passed at least 170 laws restricting PFAS, including 16 full or partial bans on the entire class of chemicals in consumer goods.

Mariah Blake

The amazing thing is the families of all these lobbyists have got these chemicals in their own bodies, their own kids, their own infants. I mean, don't they crank that into their daily mission as to how they're going to confront efforts by citizens around the country to ban and regulate these chemicals? How oblivious can you be? These oil and gas executives and lobbyists in Washington, their own families are being contaminated.

Ralph Nader

These were people very much like Michael, people who had never taken much of an interest in politics, who'd spent their lives trusting that there were systems in place to protect them. And now that trust had been shattered. But rather than becoming cynical or resigned, they fought like hell to protect their families. And along the way, they discovered these hidden strengths that turned them into really remarkable advocates.

Mariah Blake

News 8/8/25

* In Gaza, even the Israeli media is starting to acknowledge the scale of the starvation crisis. The New Yorker reporters, “Channel 12 [Israel’s most-watched mainstream news broadcast], aired a series of startling…photographs of emaciated babies, and of children being trampled as they stood in food lines, holding out empty pots…[as well as] pictures of mothers weeping because they had no way to feed their families…Ohad Hemo, the network’s correspondent for Palestinian affairs, concluded, ‘There is hunger in Gaza, and we have to say it loud and clear…The responsibility lies not only with Hamas but also with Israel.’” According to the U.N.’s World Food Programme, more than one in three people are not eating for days in a row. Yet, polls show that a “vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza,” according Haaretz. This callous disregard for the lives of Palestinians among Israel’s majority population ensures that this humanitarian crisis will worsen even more unless the government faces real external pressure to end the devastation and provide humanitarian aid.

* Meanwhile, Axios reports the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “unanimously voted Monday to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who is currently prosecuting [Netanyahu] for corruption.” As this piece explains, “This is the first time an Israeli government has ever voted to fire an attorney general,” sparking “immediate accusations Netanyahu was seeking to protect himself and his aides.” The Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction blocking the move. However, this act, and the ensuing backlash, all but guarantees the bombardment of Gaza will continue as Netanyahu uses the campaign as a political liferaft.

* Speaking of political crises, a major one is unfolding here at home. In Texas, the Republican-dominated state legislature is seeking to redraw the state’s congressional maps to give Republicans five additional seats, which President Trump claims they are “entitled” to, per ABC. This naked power grab has set off a firestorm, with Democratic-controlled states like California and New York vowing to retaliate by redrawing their own maps to maximize their party’s advantage. Texas state Democratic legislators, in an attempt to deny Republicans the quorum they need to enact the new maps, have fled to Illinois. Attorney General Ken Paxton has ordered their arrest, but they are seeking safe harbor in Illinois. Gerrymandering has plagued the American body politic since the foundation of the republic; perhaps this new crisis will force a resolution to the issue at the federal level. Then again, probably not.

* In more positive legal news, former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan reports that in an “Important win…A court rejected Google’s effort to overturn a unanimous jury verdict finding that Google illegally monopolized key markets.” Crucially, the court also found that “digital monopolies can enjoy the fruits of their illegal conduct even after it stops.” In practice, this ruling means a remedy “may need to go beyond just stopping the illegal behavior so that the market can truly be opened up to competition.” However, Google is still appealing the ruling to the corporate-friendly Supreme Court, so the ultimate fate of this decision remains in the balance.

* On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article giving an inside look at financier and pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s “Manhattan Lair.” Among other notable features of the seven-story townhouse: a surveillance camera inside Epstein’s bedroom. One can only imagine the images it captured. Another notable feature: the preponderance of photographs of powerful and influential figures with Epstein, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Epstein’s Saudi connections, including a passport with a fake name and an address in Saudi Arabia which he used to enter several countries, including the Kingdom in the 1980s, have not been deeply probed.

* Our remaining stories for this week all revolve around the Trump administration. First, after complaining that the Bureau of Labor Statistics “rigged” economic data to make his administration and Republicans look bad, Trump has fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. As POLITICO notes, budget constraints and workforce cuts have already enfeebled BLS, and the bureau’s attempts to insulate itself from political pressure will now be strained to the limit as whomever Trump does install will – implicitly or explicitly – understand that their fate will be tied to reporting out positive economic data. In the long run, this blow against accuracy in official economic reporting could do immense damage to the confidence of those considering investing in the United States.

* Another Trump power grab is aimed at the District of Columbia. At 3 a.m. on Sunday, an altercation occurred between two fifteen-year-olds and Edward Coristine, the infamous DOGE staffer nicknamed “Big Balls,” in Washington’s Logan Circle neighborhood. According to AP, “the group approached…[Coristine’s] car and made a comment about taking it…[he then]...turned to confront the group…the teens then attacked him…officers patrolling nearby intervened…[and] the teens fled on foot.” This objectively strange, though ultimately mundane, attempted carjacking by teenagers has spurred the president to threaten a federal takeover of D.C., even as “violent crime overall is down more than 25% from the same period last year.” This is not the first time Republicans have threatened a federal takeover of the District, and in recent years there have been increasing tensions between the local and federal government – but D.C. is largely powerless to resist as it lacks the constitutional protections of statehood.

* The Trump administration is also taking actions that will endanger the health and safety of all Americans. NBC reports Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is terminating 22 contracts, amounting to around $500 million, for research and development of mRNA vaccines. These contracts were awarded through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA. One of these contracts was intended to help develop an mRNA-based vaccine for H5N1, the strain of bird flu that has infected dozens of people in the United States, according to this report. Rick Bright, who directed BARDA through the first Trump administration is quoted saying, “This isn’t just about vaccines…It’s about whether we’ll be ready when the next crisis hits. Cutting mRNA development now puts every American at greater risk.”

* Over at the Environmental Protection Agency, the picture is far more muddled. The Washington Post reports that the EPA held a tense meeting this week on its plan to rescind the agency’s drinking water standard with regard to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS. In this meeting, state officials complained that mixed messages from federal regulators were frustrating their efforts. According to the Post “Despite the lack of clarity on what the EPA will do with the standard, states are still on the hook for implementing it.” Steven Elmore, chair of the National Drinking Water Advisory Council, is quoted saying “Certain states have state laws that say their drinking water standard can’t be more stringent than the federal law.” At the same time, 250 bills have been introduced in 36 states this year to address PFAS by “banning the chemicals in products, setting maximum levels in drinking water and allocating funding to clean up contamination,” and “Dozens of states have passed regulatory standards for at least one forever chemical in drinking water.” Put simply, chaos and confusion reign, and the American people will pay the price as toxic forever chemicals continue to pollute our drinking water.

* Finally, the BBC reports Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced plans for the United States to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. According to this piece, this initiative – part of “US ambitions to build a permanent base for humans to live on the lunar surface” – will be fast-tracked through NASA with a goal of being completed by 2030. The BBC astutely observes “questions remain about how realistic the goal and timeframe are, given recent and steep [NASA] budget cuts.” The announcement of this literally outlandish potential boondoggle is driven by an announcement in May by Russia and China that they plan to build an automated nuclear power station on the Moon by 2035. That’s right, a second space race is underway, and to paraphrase the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the second time is always a farce.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

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