Skip to main content
The Footnote

Open Record archive

  1. The Bill for the War Comes Due at the Checkout Counter
  2. A State Spends Its Force Abroad and Its Patience at Home
  3. The Security State Turns Its Tools Inward
  4. The Iran War Keeps Exporting Its Costs
  5. Power Turns on Its Witnesses
  6. A Government That Performs Power
  7. Firing Squad Meant to Be Watched
  8. The War Is Now the Economy
  9. War Abroad Party at Home
  10. Guardrails Left a Map
  11. Who Decides Who Pays
  12. Pressure Campaign Reaches Brazil
  13. Record Caught Up
  14. Machinery Pointed Inward
  15. Bond Market Prices the Deficit
  16. Three Ways an Argument Disappears
  17. The Machinery Keeps Running
  18. The War Is Now a Domestic Story
  19. Who Counts Not Who Votes
  20. No to a Map Yes to a Database
  21. Power Was Visible Accountability Was Not
  22. Records Landed Claims Did Not Hold
  23. Projected Power Argument at Home
  24. Washington Is Rationing What the Public Sees
  25. Who Gets to See What Power Is Doing
  26. Power Moves in Days
  27. Four Institutions Four Judges
  28. The Loud Fight Ends
  29. The Bill Came Due
  30. Six Institutions Said No
  31. Saying Stop Is Not Stopping
  32. AI Slowdown Accountability Gap
  33. Cost Arriving Channel Narrowing
  34. The Question Is Who Pays
  35. Washington Offers a Check
  36. Dividend Promise Failing Election Machinery
  37. War Automated Faster Than Accounted For
  38. Nineteen Months
  39. The Election Is Now a Docket
  40. The Rule Is Not the Safeguard
  41. The Price Walked Into an Election
  42. Outrunning Review
  43. Machinery of Who Counts
  44. War's Real Bill Arrives Far From the Gulf
  45. The Legal Justification Comes Last
  46. A Price, Not a Front
  47. The Price of a War Nobody Calls a War
  48. War's Second Front Is Economic
  49. Three Instruments, One Method
  50. Fight Over the Machinery
  51. Documents Caught Up With Statements
  52. Capacity Without Checks
  53. The Machinery Is Not Failing
  54. Coercion Is the Policy
  55. You Cannot Sue a Bond Market
  56. War Washington Cannot End
  57. Blockade and Bond Market
  58. The Bill Comes Due
  59. Money Lost, Surveillance Won
  60. Government Stopped Showing Its Work
  61. Routed Around, Not Repealed
  62. Enforcement Turned Inward
  63. Past the Point It Can Hold
  64. What It Cost to Lose
  65. Who Holds the Veto
  66. Risk Moves Down
  67. The Government Rents Its Surveillance
  68. The Powers Expand, the Checks Sit Empty
  69. The Promise Was Only Worth the Pressure Behind It
  70. The Senate Traded Away Its Leverage
  71. Two Orders and a Shrinking Stockpile
  72. What Money Bought
  73. Money Lost Michigan, Won Missouri
  74. Change the Accounting
  75. Two Clocks
  76. Who Decides What Counts as a Threat
  77. The Claim Arrives First

Publication sections

The Open RecordInvestigationsCommentaryMethodAbout

Publication utilities

CorrectionsRSS 2.0

A topic. All topics.

Labor and Unions

The federal government's rollback of labor law enforcement and surveillance of unions, and membership growing anyway where state law protects bargaining.

What the record shows

The federal government has switched off parts of the machinery that enforces labor law. A National Labor Relations Board member was removed in January 2025, leaving the board without a quorum to decide cases, and a 27 March 2025 executive order stripped collective bargaining from roughly 1 million federal workers.

Unions themselves have been treated as suspects. Court filings reported in mid-August describe undercover Homeland Security agents in Minnesota union halls, subpoenas for 3 years of financial records from the Communications Workers of America and the Service Employees International Union, and a government slide labeled Conspiracy that named 18 organizations, among them the AFL-CIO and a bicycle repair collective. Fifteen Minnesotans, union members and leaders by Jacobin's account, were indicted in June on conspiracy to impede federal officers; no union itself has been charged.

Membership grew anyway. A report from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois finds it rose by 411,000 in 2025, the largest single-year increase since 2008, with about 305,000 of the gain in states that protect collective bargaining.

Standing summary, carried forward and rewritten as the coverage moves. Every claim is sourced either to a dated edition below or to the named body that made the finding.

32 editions