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Workers allege labor violations at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory. “On Tuesday, workers filed a pair of complaints, one claiming employers involved with site construction violated federal minimum wage and overtime pay laws and another alleging falsified safety credentials,” Axios writes.
The Guardian reports that one whistleblower said “he and his colleagues were expected to keep up production on a flooded first floor – despite observing there was live wiring all over the place and cords in the water.” He said he told his wife, “I’m going to die in this factory.”
This is an area we know a lot about. In 2018, we reported that former safety professionals at Tesla blamed the company’s injury problems directly on CEO Elon Musk. The company cut back on safety precautions to suit his eccentric tastes, the reporting showed: He didn’t like yellow paint, safety signs or the beeping of backing up forklifts. “Frantic growth, constant changes and lax rules, combined with a CEO whom senior managers were afraid to cross, created an atmosphere in which few dared to stand up for worker safety.” Read the investigation.
Leaked audio from a strategy call between anti-abortion movement leaders and Tennessee lawmakers suggests that IVF and contraception could be their next policy target. ProPublica obtained audio from an Oct. 27 webinar in which representatives from the Tennessee affiliate of National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America urged legislators to hold the line on their state’s abortion ban, considered one of the strictest in the nation.
In the audio, Stephen Billy, the vice president of state affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, “advises lawmakers not to discuss regulating in vitro fertilization and contraception with voters when discussing the current law,” ProPublica reports.
In our recent show – The Long Campaign to Turn Birth Control Into the New Abortion – we told the back story of how many in the anti-abortion movement have set their sights on hormonal birth control because they claim that hormonal contraceptives like IUDs and the pill can actually cause abortions. The show also looks to the future of how conservatives are aiming to use birth control as their new wedge issue. Take a listen.
After Texas’ largest county experienced voting troubles on Election Day, a new Texas bill proposes “election marshals” to investigate voting during elections. Some polling locations in Harris County experienced voting troubles last week, like running out of ballot paper or being short staffed. There are no indications that the problems affected the outcome on Election Day.
But election-denying Republican officials there have seized on the mix-up. They’ve filed suit against the county elections administrator, and Governor Greg Abbott has called for a state investigation that would include the secretary of state, the attorney general’s office and the Texas Rangers.
Republican state lawmakers pointed to the voting issues in Harris County to introduce a new bill that would “direct the secretary of state to appoint state police officers as ‘election marshals’ to investigate voting during elections,” Bolts writes. “What happened in the November 8th election in Harris County is absolutely abominable and can NEVER happen again. Which is why I will continue to champion voter integrity bills,” said State Senator Paul Bettencourt in a statement. He is the Republican state lawmaker who filed the bill.
Last month, our voter suppression investigation highlighted how lawmakers in 42 states have introduced legislation that would dramatically criminalize voting activity. In our process of identifying all of the bills, one category included empowering a law enforcement agency by giving it more power or resources – just as the proposed legislation in Texas calls to do.
You can search the crime bills that target voting and elections in your state here. This is a topic our democracy team is going to continue to track.
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