Some encouraging news from “Democrat Catelin Drey wins Iowa Senate special election, breaking Republican supermajority: Catelin Drey’s victory is the latest in a string of positive special election results for Iowa Democrats this year that will give the party hope that it can claw back seats in the 2026 midterms” by Stephen Gruber-Miller at The Des Moines Register: “Democrat Catelin Drey pulled off a victory in a special election for the Iowa Senate, flipping a Republican-held seat and breaking the GOP’s supermajority in the chamber for the first time in three years…Drey won with 55% of the vote to Republican Christopher Prosch’s 44%, according to unofficial results from the Woodbury County Auditor’s Office…Gov. Kim Reynolds called the election to fill a vacancy in Iowa Senate District 1 after Republican Sen. Rocky De Witt died of pancreatic cancer in June…”I’m just really incredibly honored that the folks in Senate District 1 believed in this campaign as much as the team did and I am looking forward to representing them well,” Drey said in an interview with the Des Moines Register…Drey will serve the remainder of De Witt’s term, which ends in January 2027. The seat will be on the ballot again in November 2026.”

If you thought that perhaps the Administration has finally exhausted its capacity for chaos, read “CDC erupts in chaos after ousted chief Susan Monarez refuses to resign” by Robert Mackey and Lauren Gambino. An excerpt: “The US’s top public health agency was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to oust its leader Susan Monarez, sworn in less than a month ago, as her lawyers said she would not resign and that she was being “targeted” for her pro-science stance…Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was ousted on Wednesday evening, according to a statement from Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that offered no explanation its decision…“Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” HHS said in an unsigned statement posted to social media. Her lawyers pushed back in a statement, saying she had “neither resigned nor received notification” from the White House of her termination…Monarez, who was confirmed by the Senate just last month, appeared to have run afoul of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, after she declined to support sweeping changes to US vaccine policies, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times…“First it was independent advisory committees and career experts. Then it was the dismissal of seasoned scientists. Now, Secretary Kennedy and HHS have set their sights on weaponizing public health for political gain and putting millions of American lives at risk,” her lawyers, Mark Zaid and Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement. “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted.”…The ousting has set off a wave of departures within the agency, with at least three other CDC leaders publicly resigning after the HHS announcement.”…“What’s happening at the CDC should frighten every American Regardless of whether you are MAGA, MAHA, neither, or don’t give a damn about labels or politics. It’s unclear whether the CDC director—confirmed just weeks ago—has been fired or not. Absolute shitshow,” Dr Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine doctor and professor at Brown University School of Public Health, posted. “And incredible career professionals resigned tonight, sounding a massive alarm,” he added. “This is pure chaos that leaves the country unprepared.”

Washington University Sociologist Jake Rosenfeld explains “How the Trump administration’s approach to organized labor is more symbolism than substance” at Fast Company: “During the 2024 election campaign, the Republican Party’s historically fraught relationship with organized labor appeared to be changing. Several influential Republicans reached out to unions, seeking to cement the loyalties of the growing ranks of working-class Americans who have been backing Donald Trump’s presidential runs and voting for other members of his party…During Trump’s first bid for the White House, the percentage of votes in households where at least one person belongs to a union fell to its lowest level in decades. In 2021, Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator at the time, wrote a USA Today op-ed supporting a unionization drive at an Amazon facility. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, walked a United Auto Workers picket line in 2023 in solidarity with striking workers…As the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, Trump spotlighted International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien with a prominent speaking slot at the Republican National Convention—rewarding the union for staying neutral in that campaign after endorsing Joe Biden four years earlier…Yet O’Brien shocked many in the convention crowd by lambasting longtime GOP coalition partners such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable for hurting American workers…Once in office, Trump continued to signal some degree of solidarity with the blue-collar voters who backed him. He chose former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), a Teamsters ally, to be his second-term labor secretary…”

Rosenfeld continues, “The GOP’s various outreach efforts during the 2024 campaign led University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, a scholar of declining labor power, to write, “Is a pro-labor Republican Party possible?”…More than six months into Trump’s second term, I would say that, based on the evidence thus far, the answer to Posner’s question is a resounding no…In late March 2025, Trump issued an executive order stripping hundreds of thousands of federal workers of their collective bargaining rights…Overnight, twice as many federal employees lost their union protections as there are members of the United Auto Workers union, making the action“the largest and most aggressive single act of union-busting in U.S. history,” according to Georgetown University labor historian Joseph McCartin…While affected unions have challenged that action and similar subsequent ones in court, the Trump administration is moving on to other agencies. In August, over 400,000 federal employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency saw their union contracts terminated and their collective bargaining rights dissolved…U.S. car producers are struggling to keep up with rising tariff-related costs of raw materials and parts. The number of factory jobs has fallen to the lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic…Even United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, a supporter of targeted tariffs to buttress the domestic auto industry, criticized the administration’s trade policy in April 2025, saying, “We do not support reckless tariffs on all countries at crazy rates.”…What seems clear in my view is that whenever the GOP has tried to cast itself as a labor-friendly political party, it has emphasized symbolism over substance, favoring using rhetoric embracing workers who belong to unions versus taking actions to strengthen labor rights.”