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Since the Trump administration deployed 2,000 immigration officers to Minneapolis a few weeks ago, childcare workers have been on high alert. Immigration officers have shown up at childcare centers across Minnesota, leaving many childcare workers scared to show up for work. Childcare providers, who have long faced funding challenges and staffing shortages, are now being forced to figure out how to protect their workers while continuing to provide an essential service to families. Today, many of these centersat least 50 providers, according to the childcare coalition Kids Count on Ushave shut their doors to participate in an economic blackout across the state that is being called the Day of Truth and Freedom. The collective action is intended to protest ICEs presence in the state, by halting all economic activity for the day. For childcare workers, there is a lot on the line: A viral YouTube video that made the rounds in December put a target on their backs, alleging that Somali-run daycares were committing fraud and misusing public funding. The video has since been debunked, but the damage was done: The Trump administration issued a freeze on $10 billion in federal funding for childcare and social services in Minnesota, along with four other states. (A federal judge has temporarily blocked the freeze for the time being, and the states in question have brought a lawsuit against the Trump administration.) From the beginning, childcare and the ICE operation were very closely tied, says Meredith Loomis Quinlan, the director of childcare at advocacy group Community Change. There’s threats of these frozen funds, and at the same time their colleagues are getting targeted by ICE. These childcare providers have really stood togetherand the childcare movement of parents and providers are a really core [part] of what’s happening right now in Minnesota. Many of them feel it is essential that they fight back against both ICE and the looming threat of a funding freeze. Thats why Kayley Spencer and Megan Schmitz, directors at a childcare center in northern Michigan, decided to close their daycare for the day. We have connections all around the state, [and] other providers and families are experiencing this very real heaviness around being scared to go to school, being scared to go to work, and being scared to leave their houses, Schmitz says. We needed to show solidarity, and that we won’t stand for our neighbors and families and other providers being targeted in that way. While their staff has not been directly targeted thus far, they have fielded questions about how the center would navigate any encounters with ICE and introduced protocols accordingly. That is something as a childcare provider that I never thought I’d have to come across, Schmitz says. What if they do show up now? So having those protocols in place was really important for us, to make our staff feel secure in coming to work. This day of action is also intended to call attention to the federal funding freeze, which could leave many childcare providers struggling to keep their doors open. We’re operating on razor thin margins, Spencer says, noting that their center has six families who rely on childcare assistance from the state. If you lose those six familieseven oneyou’re at risk of permanent closure. Access to childcare allows countless parents to stay in the workforce, and closing for the day is not a decision that providers take lightly. Spencer and Schmitz were candid about why they felt it was important to participate and why collection action was critical at this moment. Were very transparent with our families about how this is not just an isolated incident, Schmitz says. We are in the collapse of childcare if we do nothingand we’re already at severe risk of that every single day, and this is just another way to not give childcare [providers] the funding and the resources that they so badly deserve and need. Spencer and Schmitz say they had the support and understanding of many families they serveand a number of them who are small business owners closed shop for the day in solidarity, as well. [As] providers, our only goal is to provide safe spaces for these childrenand now they’re being targeted, and it’s not okay, Schmitz says. This is such a small way of us showing support, but we knew we had to do it. These actions have also extended beyond Minnesota, as childcare workers around the country are finding ways to show their support. Community Change works with grassroots organizations in many states that are hosting events or taking other actionsfrom protesting ICE facilities to closing their centers in solidarityto draw attention to what is happening in Minnesota. Meanwhile, childcare providers and advocates in Minnesota are continuing to put pressure on Republican lawmakers to preserve the federal funding that is so crucial for centers to keep serving families. People might feel hopeless or afraid right now, but there are so many ways to show up for our neighbors and for each other, Loomis Quinlan says. So we’re just trying to encourage more people to join our movement.
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E-Commerce
For the first time in Dr Peppers 140-year history, the brand is the second-most-popular soda in America. And now, it has a shiny new jingle to match. In late December, TikTok creator Romeo Bingham, 25, posted a little ditty she had made up for Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper, baby. Its good and nice. Doo. Doo. Doo, the tune went. In her caption, she tagged the company and noted: Please get back to me with a proposition. We can make thousands together. The original post has garnered almost 54 million views, 6.4 million likes, and almost 500,000 bookmarks at the time of this writing. One month later, Binghams dreams were realized. Dr Pepper licensed the song and folded it into an NCAA football commercial. TikTok creators capitalizing on viral moments is not unusual. Influencers have long been tagging brands in content in the hopes of landing freebies or a lucrative brand deal, as the booming influencer-marketing industry becomes ever-more saturated. Here, the success of Binghams overt brand baiting may signal a subtle shift in power dynamics as creators compete for brands’ attention and marketing budgets. Once the jingle became viral, Binghams comments section was inundated with requests from national brands. Me next bb i beg, wrote Dennys Diner. Yea imma need one of these theme songs right now, added Buffalo Wild Wings. GET HER ON THE PHONE NOW!! Popeyes chimed in. Not to be pick me, but US NEXT, commented Welchs Fruit Snacks. Bingham has since gone on to make jingles for Hyundai and Vita Coca, fully realizing the new American dream of overnight viral success. Brands showing up in the comments sections on TikTok and Instagram, whether the post is about them or not, isnt new. The top comments on a trending TikTok video often garner hundreds of thousands of likes, gaining brands the type of attention they could only dream of on their own channels. But overnight, a new batch of POV: Trying to make a jingle so I can quit my job type videos have been cropping up across social media platforms. Some of the most popular of these jingle videos show brands actually replying to the creators in their comments sectionspossibly as a shoot-for-the-moon attempt to replicate Dr Pepper’s hype. With these public auditions in pursuit of 10 seconds of fame, brands might appear like the real winners, receiving massive amounts of unpaid creative laborsometimes even full commercialscomplete with engagement metrics and audience-testing in real time. If brands reward the noisiest creators with paid partnerships, this could lead to creators shilling spec work ads as a new content pillar, Dayna Castillo, founder of the digital culture newsletter Silence, Brand!, told Fast Company. And yet, brand baiting is normalizing unpaid promotional labor from creators, and long term, this practice risks burning out both audiences, brands, and creators. As she noted in a recent Substack post: We no longer skip the ads. We consume the ads our peers made in hopes The Capitalism will notice. The warp speed with which the internet moves means that trying to re-create anothers recipe for viral success is unlikely to ever deliver the same results. As the saying goes: Lightning never strikes twice. Instead, all thats left to gain is further muddying the shared waters of the internet with subpar unpaid spon-con. (Binghams jingle was at least catchy!)
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E-Commerce
This week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rescinded its guidance on workplace harassment, in a move that could significantly undermine protections for all workers, but especially those who identify as LGBTQ+. The agency, which plays a crucial role as the federal watchdog that enforces anti-discrimination laws governing the workplace, voted on Thursday to strike down guidance that had been codified in 2024, during the Biden administration. Across nearly 200 pages, the document offered an important update to the EEOCs language on harassmentwhich had not been updated in over two decadesand also incorporated a key Supreme Court ruling in 2020 that extended anti-discrimination protections to LGBTQ+ workers. The guidance included over 70 examples of workplace discrimination that employees might encounter, with a section dedicated to sexual orientation and gender identity. Before releasing the final version back in 2024, there was a customary notice and comment process on the proposed document, during which the agency fielded over 38,000 comments from the public. All that guidance has now been scrapped, with no room for public comment on the decision. (The harassment document has since been taken down and is no longer accessible to the public.) EEOC chair Andrea Lucas suggested that this would not change how the agency approached harassment claims. “Let me be perfectly clear: The EEOC will not tolerate unlawful harassment, as was the case before the guidance document was issued and will remain so even after the guidance document is rescinded,” she said during an open meeting on Thursday. Still, this reversal is a big loss for workers, who remain protected by federal anti-discrimination laws but rely heavily on the agency when they encounter harassment in the workplace. People who experience workplace discrimination typically have to file a complaint with the agency before taking any kind of legal action. By rescinding this guidance, the EEOC has stripped away an important resource for workers (and employers) who are trying to understand what constitutes workplace harassmentand what they can do about it. This decision also cements a seismic shift in the agencys priorities since Lucas took the helm. Under the Trump administration, the EEOC has undergone changes that experts believe have compromised its mission to protect workers rights. After assuming office, Trump immediately fired two EEOC commissionersJocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrowsbefore their term limits were up, breaking with precedent and eliminating the Democratic majority. (Commissioners of federal agencies are usually allowed to serve out their terms, regardless of political affiliation.) He later nominated Brittany Panuccio to join the commission; her confirmation in October secured a Republican majority and restored the three-person quorum required for the agency to revise guidance or pursue certain types of litigation. Over the last year, the Trump administrations attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace have reshaped the agencys priorities. Lucas has explicitly stated that the agency would focus on rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination in accordance with Trumps executive orders targeting DEI programs. Back in December, Lucas even put out a call for white men to report workplace discrimination and potentially recover damages. (This took the form of a video on X, in which Lucas asked: “Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?”) Revoking the harassment guidance, however, seems to align with a broader agenda to curtail protections for LGBTQ+ and trans workers. A federal ruling last year struck down the section of the EEOCs harassment document that applied to transgender and gender-nonconforming workers, claiming the agency did not have the authority to impose those guidelines on employers; the section stated, for example, that misgendering employees or denying them access to bathrooms in line with their gender identity qualified as workplace harassment. Last year, the EEOC also dropped six cases that involved allegations of discrimination from trans or gender-nonconforming workers. Even prior to the Trump administrations directives, however, Lucas was a dissenting voice on the commission. When the harassment guidance was finalized in 2024, Lucas had taken issue with the section that outlined protections for trans and gender-nonconforming workers and ultimately voted against it, under the guise of protecting womens rights in the workplace. Lucas echoed anti-trans sentiment by noting biological sex is real and binary, suggesting that women would be harmed by the updated guidance. Womens sex-based rights in the workplace are under attackand from the EEOC, the very federal agency charged with protecting women from sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination at work, she wrote in a statement at the time. Women in the workplace will pay the price for the Commissions egregious error. By rescinding the harassment guidance outright, however, Lucas has effectively weakened anti-discrimination protections for all kinds of workerswomen included.
Category:
E-Commerce
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