Rebuilding America the Washington Monthly Way
Two years ago, as America reeled from the Dobbs decision, I was invited to a constitutional law conference at Georgetown University. On a bright, cold
Trump pushes back on ‘President Musk’ claims
President-elect Trump on Sunday rejected the recent dubbing of tech billionaire Elon Musk as “President Musk” by Democrats.
“No, he’s not gonna be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said at conservative group Turning Point’s “America Fest” in Phoenix, Ariz. “And I’m safe, you know why? He can’t be, he wasn’t born in this country.”
Democratic leaders have recently implied that the tech billionaire is the “real leader” of the GOP in the wake of Musk’s hard-line campaign opposing a stopgap spending measure.
In the last week, Musk railed against the stopgap measure on social media , with the president-elect following him in his disapproval of the deal negotiated by strong Trump ally House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.)
“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk said Wednesday on the social platform X, which he owns.
At “America Fest,” Trump said Musk “went to Pennsylvania, and he stayed — stayed up there for a month, and helped us to win that state, which we won by a lot.”
“So he was really good,” Trump added.
Trump said last month that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would serve as the heads of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) panel, which aims to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures” and “restructure federal agencies.”
DOGE will “provide advice and guidance from outside of government” and work alongside the White House Office of Management and Budget, the president-elect said.
“It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump added. “Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of ‘DOGE’ for a very long time.”
The Hill has reached out to Tesla, Musk’s electric car company, for comment.
Decay Devils install new “I Love Gary” sign at RailCats’ stadium
It’s important for city residents to have pride, Tyrell Anderson said, which is part of the reason why the Decay Devils installed a new art piece at the SouthShore RailCats SteelYard.
“How do you encourage people who do have pride to speak up more?” said Anderson, president of Decay Devils. “I think the more we do that in unison, the more of an impact it has.”
The Decay Devils installed an “I Love Gary” sign outside the RailCats’ stadium. The group received funding for the sign through a $60,000 grant from the Legacy Foundation, Anderson said.
The mayor’s office and U.S. Steel contributed to the funds, Anderson said, but the Legacy Foundation distributed the money.
The 20-foot sign is larger than the group expected, which Anderson said made the stadium a great place to display it. They didn’t want it to be in a more limited space.
RailCats General Manager Anthony Giammanco said in an email that the Decay Devils and City of Gary Mayor’s Office approached the organization about the sign. The RailCats “jumped at the opportunity” to have it featured at the stadium.
“We are proud to be a longstanding staple of downtown Gary and look forward to having many visitors stopping by the ballpark to see and take pictures with the sign,” Giammanco said in an email.
The Decay Devils worked with ACC Signs and Design in Crown Point to create the “I Love Gary” sign, Anderson said. The sign was near completion in August before a fire broke out at the facility, and the company had to restart the project.
Although there were setbacks, Anderson said Decay Devils liked working with the sign company and understood the situation.
“They came through and finished it up for us,” he said. “We still have a few more things to touch up, but we all were adamant about at least getting the bulk of the sign in place this year.”
Since the installation, the group has received a lot of interaction on social media, Anderson said, including more than 80,000 impressions within the first 24 hours on Facebook. He thinks the Instagram engagement was about 20,000 people.
“It’s nice to see people going out, taking pictures with the sign, sharing their fond memories,” Anderson said. “I believe this city has had people reach out to them interested in actually developing and installing more signs, and this is the direction that we were hoping it would go.”
Although feedback from the “I Love Gary” sign has been great, Anderson said the Decay Devils plan to focus on its Union Station project.
The nonprofit has worked since 2016 to preserve the former train station.
Decay Devils plans to raise $2 million to transform the station into a mixed-use community space, with dining and offices, according to the organization’s website. The project will cost at least $6 million, and the nonprofit has received funding from private donors, grants and tax credits.
The group plans to work on events with the Gary Art Council, but Anderson said the majority of their focus will be on Union Station.
“We haven’t touched too much art for 2025,” Anderson said. “If something major falls in our lap we might look at it, but our focus is more so on how we can finish up Union Station.”
Cenk Uygur Praises TPUSA Crowd For Being ‘More Welcoming’ Than Democrats
Young Turks co-founder Cenk Uygur praised a Turning Point USA conference for being “more welcoming” to him than Democrats.
Uygur joined TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk on stage in Phoenix, Arizona at the organization’s annual AmericaFest 2024 conference. Footage from the event shows the progressive media pundit receiving a standing ovation.
WOW! The crowd at America Fest just gave Cenk Uygur a standing ovation to welcome him.
Never in my life did I think this would be happening. Respect to Cenk for showing up. pic.twitter.com/QEpSBj95o7
— George (@BehizyTweets) December 21, 2024
During his on-stage interview with Kirk, Uygur noted that Republicans do “a great job of coalescing” and are more “welcoming” to other political groups than Democrats. Uygur has criticized Democratic leaders, including Kamala Harris, following Donald Trump’s victory in the November election for not reaching out to independent voters with a populist message.
He also encouraged Democrats to “unify” and stop attacking “one another.” Uygur then said older Democratic voters need to stop watching cable news because “they’re trying to get you to vote for corruption.”
Wasnt expecting Cenk and Charlie Kirk having a friendly conversation:
“You do a couple things well. You work together well and you’re more welcoming, if I’m being honest…..if you agree with MAGA 5%… welcome, come join us. On the left if you disagree 5%, they go, get out of… pic.twitter.com/UKHIimC93e— Ellie A (@EllieGAnders) December 21, 2024
CENK: You guys do a great job of coalescing. Okay, So you do a couple of things, well. You work together well, and you’re more welcoming, if I’m being honest.
KIRK: We’re glad Cenk’s here. Right, everybody?
[CROWD CHEERS]CENK: And a lot of people on the left know this as well. If you agree with MAGA 5%, the answer you get is welcome, right? Come join us right? On the left if you disagree 5%, they go, get out of here. You’re a right winger. You’re a fascist. Right? But if you push enough people out and you guys welcome enough people in, eventually you win the popular vote. That’s what I warn them about. And that’s what happened, right?
[CROWD CHEERS]CENK: So, look, I proposed simple rules, the three rules of the Internet. Rule number one. When we disagree, we fight. There’s nothing wrong with that right now. New rule number two is afterwards, we must have a beer together. Okay. And and rule number three is, for God’s sake, when we agree, let’s unite. So for the left. We have too much division. We almost never unify. I don’t mean with the right. I mean internally. The left loves to attack one another. I love you guys on the left. I love you. But every once in a while, when we get a yes, when we agree. Can we please unite? And the second thing we need is for the old I’m being honest. And on average, not everyone, of course, but for the older Democratic voters. Please turn off your television sets there. They’re lying to you. They’re tricking you. They’re trying to get you to vote for corruption. They’re trying to get you to vote for policies you don’t even want. So if we can do those two things, then we’ll be in great shape.
The post Cenk Uygur Praises TPUSA Crowd For Being ‘More Welcoming’ Than Democrats first appeared on Mediaite .
D.C. restaurant owner wanted on hate crime charges arrested in separate knife incident
A D.C. restaurant owner who was wanted on a hate crime charged was arrested last week after police said he swung a knife at someone during an argument.
Families in Park Ridge take a dip in the pool with Santa, days before his big delivery day
The North Pole may be too chilly for a swim, but the pool at Centennial Fitness Center in Park Ridge offered a festive alternative as dozens of families turned out there Saturday to splash around with Santa.
The Park Ridge Park District hosted its annual “Swim with Santa” event Saturday, giving children a chance to dive into the holiday spirit ahead of Christmas Day.
Forty-three guests gathered at the Centennial Fitness Center for the one-hour seasonal swim that was open to children age 3 through 13. Families were welcome to stay for beyond the hour for open swim, which was included in the event cost.
“There’s games, toys in the pool, crafts, and we do Christmas cards so when kids take their picture with Santa, they can stick them on their card,” said Jenna Jezek, the aquatics supervisor.
Upon arrival, children received goodie bags filled with crayons to set the tone for the day. Beyond the opportunity to splash in the pool to the sounds of holiday tunes, attendees could participate in an array of Christmas-themed games, activities and prizes on the pool deck.
“Kids who aren’t as comfortable in the water, or don’t want to spend the whole time in it, have plenty of other things to do,” said Jezek.
The Park District put the community pool at the center of its festive programming.
“We have a pool, so we want to use it to its maximum capacity and provide value to the community,” Jezek said. “We do an Easter and Halloween event, and we try to do one per season to get families in the pool.”
About 20 minutes into the swim, the excitement reached a peak as Santa, himself, made a grand entrance. Children cheered and gathered around to greet him, later showing off their swimming skills as Santa joined them in the water. Prizes, including holiday-themed pencils, snowflake sharpeners and finger puppets, added to the holiday cheer.
Among the attendees was Lucas Miles, who traveled from Bloomington with his wife and their two children, Bennett and Merritt, as part of their ambitious mission to see 100 Santa Clauses before Christmas Day.
“We’ve done breakfast with Santa, roller skating with Santa, mall Santa, pizza dinner with Santa. But this is our first swimming with Santa,” Miles said.
The Park Ridge event marked their 87th Santa sighting, leaving just 13 more to go before their Christmas Day deadline. Their Santa journey began in July, a tradition born out of Miles’s desire to create lasting holiday memories following his deployment to Iraq with the Illinois National Guard from December 2019 to December 2020, during the height of COVID-19 restrictions.
“[In] 2022, we saw a decent number of Santas. But last year, 2023, just through the power of Facebook and the algorithm popping up — there’s this Santa, and that Santa — and in no time flat, before Thanksgiving, we had seen several Santas,” Miles said. “I was like, ‘man, we’re on pace to see 100.’ We ended up seeing 89, my son and daughter together, and my daughter saw two extra, so I was kind of bummed that we didn’t hit 100. So this year, I was like, we’ve really got to up the ante and try to get to 100.”
First-time attendee Valerie Reynolds, of Park Ridge, brought her two children, Wyatt and Caden, to experience the event.
“I liked that it was different from an outdoor or regular ‘meet Santa’ event,” Reynolds said, adding that her family enjoyed the unique way to embrace the holiday spirit.
Kaitlin Mikrut is a freelancer.
A fragile alliance: What Assad’s fall means for Maduro in Venezuela
The collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria reverberates far beyond the Levant, shaking the foundations of other autocratic regimes. Among these, Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela faces a stark warning: An erosion of external support can dismantle even the most entrenched dictatorships.
Assad’s fall highlights not only the fragility of authoritarian regimes but also the growing impatience of populations living under decades of repression. For Maduro, it underscores how reliance on foreign backers like Russia could lead to a similar unraveling.
Assad’s ouster dismantled a regime notorious for its extreme violence and dependence on external allies, particularly Russia and Iran. When the support of those allies wavered, Assad’s hold on power crumbled.
For Maduro, the parallels are striking. His survival strategy mirrors Assad’s reliance on Moscow, but Russia’s capacity to sustain its client regimes is rapidly diminishing.
The war in Ukraine has severely strained Russia’s resources, with reports indicating more than $200 billion spent and approximately 700,000 casualties suffered . These immense demands have drained Moscow’s ability to prioritize distant allies such as Venezuela, rendering Maduro increasingly vulnerable.
Venezuela has long been dependent on Russia for military equipment, financial support and political backing. Since the mid-2000s, Russia has supplied Venezuela with more than $10 billion in military hardware, including jet fighters and missile systems. Additionally, Russian oil giant Rosneft has invested billions in Venezuela’s oil industry , providing critical lifelines to the regime. With Russia now consumed by the Ukraine conflict, these supports are at risk, leaving Maduro’s government increasingly exposed.
Venezuela also faces mounting internal pressures: economic collapse, mass emigration and persistent political unrest. A weakened Russia compounds these challenges, threatening Maduro’s grip on power. Just as Assad’s fall exposed Iran’s diminished influence, a collapse in Venezuela would highlight Russia’s limitations and further isolate its remaining allies.
Yet Maduro’s continued hold on power raises troubling questions about the world’s tolerance for authoritarian regimes, particularly in light of the recent Venezuelan election, where Edmundo González defeated Maduro but the international community has done too little to support the opposition and ensure a meaningful challenge to Maduro’s rule.
The horrors of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis — millions displaced, widespread hunger and the systematic erosion of democracy — are well-documented. Yet, the international response has been marked by cautious diplomacy and ineffective sanctions. This contrasts sharply with the urgency elicited by sudden regime collapses like Assad’s.
Part of the explanation lies in the slow, grinding nature of Venezuela’s decline. While Assad’s brutality was immediate and unrelenting, Venezuela’s crisis has unfolded over years, numbing the global conscience. Starving populations, mass displacement and systematic repression have become background noise. This normalization allows Maduro’s regime to persist, exploiting the global preference for negotiation over confrontation.
History offers rare examples of peaceful transitions from authoritarianism, but these are exceptions. In Chile, Augusto Pinochet eventually orchestrated a controlled transition to democracy, ensuring protections for the military and amnesty for himself.
South Africa’s dismantling of apartheid similarly relied on enlightened leadership, with Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk fostering dialogue that de-escalated decades of tensions. Both cases required leaders willing to put national stability above personal power — a quality Maduro conspicuously lacks.
Even these transitions were not without scars. Pinochet’s military retained influence for years, and South Africa continues to grapple with the legacies of apartheid. Still, they offered something Maduro has yet to provide: hope and a chance to rebuild. Maduro, in contrast, clings to power at any cost, indifferent to his people’s suffering and the looming collapse of the state.
Assad’s fall reminds us that authoritarian regimes are inherently brittle. They rely on external support, repression and a passive populace. Once any of these pillars weakens, the structure collapses. Maduro’s reliance on Russia and Cuba mirrors Assad’s dependence on Iran and Russia — alliances that are ultimately unreliable. The world’s normalization of his regime’s horrors risks an eventual collapse that will be even more destabilizing if left unaddressed.
The fall of Assad should reignite urgency to confront enduring authoritarian regimes like Maduro’s. These are not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of authoritarian collapse that destabilizes entire regions. The challenge is to prevent such implosions from leading to further chaos or new forms of repression. For Maduro, Assad’s fate serves as a warning that no regime is immune to the tides of history.
The world cannot afford to adapt to the suffering in Venezuela. The normalization of this crisis must end, and decisive action must replace the complacency of half-measures. Assad’s fall may foreshadow Maduro’s, serving as a reminder that entrenched regimes cannot escape the inevitable reckoning with their own fragility.
Carl Meacham, formerly a senior Republican staff member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is an international consultant.
Column: The 1st round of the College Football Playoff was a snoozefest. Will we get better games in the quarterfinals?
The first thing we learned from the opening round of the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff is there really aren’t 12 teams good enough to compete for a national title.
Indiana, SMU, Clemson and Tennessee were all sizable underdogs in their first-round road games, and all proved they weren’t up to the task of competing on the big stage. That led to four boring games in which the announcers spent much of the fourth quarter rationalizing the losing teams’ presence in the CFP and overhyping the teams that handily beat them.
Going from four teams to 12 was always a stretch. Six teams, with two getting first-round byes, would have sufficed. Eight teams, with no byes, would’ve been OK. But 12?
Well, money talks, and it never shuts up when it comes to college football.
And despite all the blather ESPN and TNT delivered in their pregame shows, on which breathless analysts suggested the expanded playoffs was the greatest thing to happen to college football since Red Grange, the games had the feel of another bowl game once the novelty of playing in a non-bowl stadium wore off.
In fact, the CFP organizers should’ve just replaced other bowls for first-round action, utilizing the lesser ones already in place that exist for the sole purpose of creating more revenue for Disney Co. and other TV network owners.
Notre Dame-Indiana might have made a decent Sun Bowl matchup, replacing wind-chill factor with the actual sun and Touchdown Jesus with Tony the Tiger.
Ohio State-Tennessee, a matchup of Power Two powers that couldn’t even make their own conference title games, would’ve been a perfect Citrus Bowl, in which Big Ten and SEC wannabes always meet.
Texas-Clemson would’ve felt right at home in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, with Matthew McConaughey eating the Pop-Tart mascot after the Longhorns won while mumbling, “All right, all right, all right.”
Penn State-SMU , the least interesting matchup of the four first-rounders, would have been more appropriate for the long-defunct Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl, which featured a team from Texas against an out-of-state team whose fans traveled well.
Alas, we can only dream.
Instead we got overkill about the weather, Penn State coach James Franklin practicing his indefensible decision-making in big games and overrated quarterbacks such as SMU’s Kevin Jenkins, Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke and Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava stinking up the joint.
Oh, by the way, did you know it gets cold in late December in the Midwest?
Next week’s quarterfinals should provide much better games and a real playoff-type atmosphere for viewers in warm-weather sites and domed stadiums. But we’ll see.
At least they’ll all be played in the bigger, traditional bowls — Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Peach — and on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Bowl games before Christmas simply lack the aura of the end-of-year and start-of-year games. The NFL even scheduled two games Saturday opposite the CFP, undeterred by the competition.
Two of the lower-seeded quarterfinalists began the week as considerable favorites, with No. 6 seed Penn State a 10½-point favorite over third-seeded Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl and No. 5 seed Texas a whopping 13½-point favorite over fourth-seeded Arizona State in the Peach Bowl. You can pencil in Penn State and Texas for the semis, which shows how ludicrous the CFP seeding process is and should lead to changes next year to ensure the four most dominant teams get the first-round byes.
The most interesting game figures to be Ohio State-Oregon in the Rose Bowl, a rematch of the Big Ten thriller in October in Eugene, Ore., where Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard slid a tad too late at the gun to deny his team a shot at a potential winning field goal in a 32-31 loss.
Oregon is the top seed but only a 1½-point favorite over the Buckeyes, who also lost to Michigan. Ohio State recovered from its devastating 13-10 loss to the Wolverines in “The Game” with Saturday’s 42-17 pummeling of Tennessee , a game so dull former Buckeyes quarterback Kirk Herbstreit decided to launch into a partisan screed in the final minutes of the broadcast, defending Ohio State coach Ryan Day for the loss to Michigan despite being a three-touchdown favorite.
Herbstreit referred to the anti-Day crowd that wants the Buckeyes coach fired for his repeated failures to beat their hated archrivals as “the lunatic fringe.”
“I’m sure they’ll be happy tonight, fired up about what Ohio State did,” Herbstreit said. “But God forbid they lose to Oregon, they’ll want to fire him again.”
Herbstreit even took aim at his ESPN colleagues on “First Take,” a show dependent on sports “takes” such as “Should the Michigan loss cost Ryan Day?” Apparently some of the designated shouters on the shoutfest agreed, which upset Herbstreit to no end.
Does Herbstreit understand the importance of beating Michigan to Ohio State fans, or is he just too comfortable acting as a shill for Day?
Meanwhile, Notre Dame is coming off a virtual bye — its matchup against overmatched Indiana — to face SEC champion Georgia, the No. 2 seed, in the Sugar Bowl. Notre Dame finally won a “big” playoff game Friday, though it will be completely forgotten in a month if Georgia stifles quarterback Riley Leonard and the Irish running game, as many expect.
The Irish could use some help in New Orleans from comedian Shane Gillis, who might be their version of McConaughey, the uber-Texas fan. Gillis went on ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Friday and called analyst Pat McAfee a “real scumbag” for picking Indiana. He was joking, of course, but there was applause for the gesture in many living rooms around the country.
Gillis then called cocky Indiana coach Curt Cignetti “disgusting” for coming out on the field before the game without his players to “get some camera time for himself.”
“It was disgusting, and I thought, ‘Wow, what a sad, disgusting program,’” Gillis said of Cignetti and Indiana.
Knute Rockne couldn’t have given a more stirring pregame speech. The Irish will need that kind of bravado to beat the Bulldogs, so hopefully Gillis will be at the Superdome to talk smack at Georgia coach Kirby Smart.
Despite its uninspiring opening weekend, there’s plenty of time for the CFP to provide memorable games and big moments that make college football what it is.
Now if we can only find a way to get rid of McAfee.
A Return to Narnia Through Blue’s Tooth by Way of Ford’s Edge
It’s been quite some time since I’ve visited Narnia. I tend to give Disney’s 2005 adaptation of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” a watch every Christmas season—it is a Christmas movie after all. I’ve loved the film since seeing it in theaters. It is a faithful representation of the book, though not quite the same.
My wife and I have been to Narnia several times over the past few months while on long road trips. While the Pevensie children first entered Narnia from the “land of Spare Oom” and the “city of War Drobe,” we returned through “Blue’s Tooth” by way of “Ford’s Edge.”
As we looked for a way to pass the time in the car, we came across free audiobooks of “The Chronicles of Narnia” on Spotify. Pressing play on “The Magician’s Nephew,” the first book chronologically in the Narnia series, we were taken back to C.S. Lewis’ realm of magical creatures and talking beasts we loved as children.
In our return to Narnia, we retrode familiar ground in completely different shoes.
What struck me when listening to the audio version of the book, and what I imagine is a strength of the film as well, was how intentional Lewis was in crafting “The Magician’s Nephew” and the other Narnia books to be stories that are meant to be read aloud. They’re not just books to be read by children; they’re bedtime stories, meant to be read by adults and children together.
Lewis makes the philosophical and theological themes simple and clear enough for the child reader. The parallels in “The Magician’s Nephew” to the Christian story of creation and The Fall are just as obvious as those drawn to the crucifixion in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
For adult readers, however, Lewis’ distillation of these theological and philosophical themes in childspeak takes on deeper meaning.
One of my favorite examples of Lewis’ ability to reduce complex themes in “The Magician’s Nephew” comes as the young protagonist Digory is discovering his Uncle Andrew is an evil magician. Lewis attacks the Thrasymachuses and Machiavellis of the world and all those thinkers who reject a higher moral order by suggesting might makes right.
“You must understand that rules of that sort, however excellent they may be for little boys—and servants and women and even people in general—can’t possibly be expected to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages,” Uncle Andrew said. “No, Digory. Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures.”
“[Digory] saw through Uncle Andrew’s grand words. ‘All it means,’ he said to himself, ‘Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.’”
For this rebuke to come from the lips of a child, highlighting the natural simplicity of the claim that right is more than desire, is all the more devastating for Lewis’ philosophical opponents.
Another, probably my favorite line from the book, comes from the great lion Aslan after giving the Narnian creatures the capacity of speech:
“Laugh and fear not, creatures. Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave. For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”
What a beautiful mixing of Aristotelian virtue and teleological nature with Christian joy.
As the aphorism goes, “The best way to learn something is to teach it.” And perhaps mastery of a subject is being able to teach it to a young child. Therein lies the genius of Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew.” For young and old, it’s an invitation to learn and teach the permanent things on which our civilization is built.
Whether by yourself or with your children, I’d encourage you to take a trip to Narnia this Christmas season.
The post A Return to Narnia Through Blue’s Tooth by Way of Ford’s Edge appeared first on The Daily Signal .
Death on the night shift at frozen pizza factories in Chicago
On a brilliant day three years ago, a grieving crowd gathered on the South Side of Chicago to bury Adewale Ezekiel Ogunyemi.
In Nigeria, Ogunyemi had not earned enough working in a bank to support his mother, wife and two daughters. So in 2019, he flew to the United States on a tourist visa and obtained fake identity documents. He then signed on for temporary work at several staffing agencies in the Chicago area.
Shy and laid-back, he was often assigned to do night jobs. One agency, Snider-Blake Personnel, sent him to scrub machines at Rich Products Corp., which makes food products that have been sold at stores like Walmart and distributed by suppliers like Sysco.
One night in July 2021, workers at Rich heard a scream. Rushing to an area of the plant where the dough for frozen pizzas rises, they found Ogunyemi, who was 42, tangled in a machine that helps the dough ferment. His right arm had been pulled through the conveyor and wrapped around his head. His chest was crushed. The fire department had to free him from the machine, and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Staffing agencies, like the ones Ogunyemi worked for, have become ubiquitous in America’s on-demand economy. Companies turn to the firms to find workers for factories, warehouses and distribution centers, where jobs are often difficult to fill.
The workers, The New York Times reported recently, include people who are in the country illegally, are desperate for jobs and are vulnerable to exploitation. With staffing agencies acting as middlemen, companies can sidestep responsibility for the hiring and treatment of these workers, even as they profit from their labor.
While relevant data is limited and generally does not specify immigration status, research in multiple states shows that temporary workers have faced higher rates of serious injuries than their permanently hired counterparts.
One recent study in Washington state, which mirrored findings in Illinois and Ohio, found that the injury rate among temporary workers there, adjusted for the distribution of workers across industries, was about 67% higher, according to an analysis by Michael Foley, an occupational health research economist at the state’s Department of Labor and Industries.
To more fully understand the hazardous conditions in some of these workplaces, reporters reviewed thousands of pages of regulatory documents, lawsuits, police reports and internal company records, and interviewed researchers, staffing industry veterans and labor advocates, as well as more than 100 temporary workers, most of whom entered or remained in the United States illegally.
The investigation found that many people employed by the staffing industry, including workers in the U.S. without legal permission, have been placed in dangerous situations where they suffered serious physical harms — fractures, amputations, miscarriages — or death. When it comes to redress, the Times found, it has been hard for some workers or their families to hold the manufacturers to account because the staffing agency, as their actual employer, acted as a legal shield.
A review of federal workplace safety records by the Times found that at least 50 workplace deaths since 2017 involved staffing agencies. The Times also identified a sampling of more than 1,000 severe injuries to people working for staffing agencies from 2015 to 2023, including more than 250 amputations, 370 broken bones and 30 instances of crushed body parts.
More than 50 of the severe injuries occurred in Illinois, where the so-called collar counties that surround Chicago are crowded with food processing and other factories. Six of the country’s largest freight railway lines converge in the region, with each earning more than $1 billion a year hauling goods and commodities.
Illinois also has been at the forefront of national efforts to regulate staffing agencies. It is one of the few states where companies can be fined for using unregistered agencies, and a state law allows worker centers and others to file complaints on behalf of temporary workers, who might otherwise not have the wherewithal to do so.
Federal, state and local regulators have pursued at least 25 investigations of staffing agencies operating in Illinois for potential safety and other violations, according to federal records obtained by the Times. Those investigations were referred to the Department of Homeland Security under a Biden administration program that encourages immigrant workers, including those in the country illegally, to cooperate with regulators. The records do not indicate the status of the investigations, and a department spokesperson did not respond to requests for more information.
In addition, the records show that an Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation into Rich Products, the food manufacturer, was similarly referred to Homeland Security.
Snider-Blake did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Rich said the company does not hire workers in the country without legal permission, but “we cannot speak to the practices” of the staffing agency. She said that the company was “heartbroken” by Ogunyemi’s death but that the incident was “not representative of our culture of safety.” She described the referral of the OSHA investigation to Homeland Security as “procedural.”
Many workers in the country illegally are afraid to speak out for fear of being fired or deported. More than two dozen in Illinois agreed to talk on the condition that they not be identified. Reporters focused on the food industry in the Chicago area.
The workers spoke of staffing agencies and corporations that expected them to master hazardous jobs with minimal or no training, discouraged the reporting of injuries, and let go of workers when they were badly hurt.
At a Rana Meal Solutions factory in Bartlett, Illinois, temporary workers were required to clean pasta machines without fully shutting them down, according to a lawsuit filed by one of them. The man, an immigrant from Venezuela working for Surge Staffing, had his right hand caught in a machine that suddenly turned on. The injury required that his arm be amputated. After the accident, OSHA fined Rana Meal Solutions $178,118 for exposing workers to hazards from moving parts and other violations.
Among the workplace deaths identified by the Times, was a woman in the U.S. illegally from Honduras who was decapitated while working as a cleaner at the Miracapo Pizza Co. in Gurnee, Illinois. The facility has mixed, baked, packed and shipped frozen pizzas for brands including Newman’s Own, Hunt Brothers Pizza and Quest Nutrition.
The woman, Leily López Hernández, 31, had been sent by Xcel Staffing Solutions and was cleaning around a machine that carries pizza crusts on a conveyor belt as they cool.
At the time of the accident, in December 2022, the company was owned by an affiliate of Henry Crown and Co., the privately held firm that manages assets for the wealthy Crown family. It was acquired by private equity firm Brynwood Partners this year.
The Department of Labor investigated both Miracapo and Xcel for labor violations and referred the investigations to Homeland Security, according to the Homeland Security records under the Biden administration program involving immigrant workers.
Miracapo Pizza, Rana Meal Solutions, Xcel Staffing, Surge Staffing, Henry Crown and Co., Brynwood Partners, Walmart, Hunt Brothers Pizza and Quest Nutrition did not respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.
Sysco and Newman’s Own said that they take worker safety seriously and expect their suppliers to follow their codes of conduct. Sysco said it would investigate the reports involving the Rich facility. Newman’s Own said it had not received pizzas from Miracapo’s Gurnee facility in the past year.
‘Demonstrated Indifference’
Dozens of temporary workers at multiple worksites told the Times that safety complaints were met with indifference, retaliation or threats of dismissal. And because many of them were working illegally, they were afraid to involve state or federal agencies.
Government systems for enforcing labor laws depend almost entirely on workers who are willing to come forward. This creates a perverse incentive for companies to hire people who are unlikely to complain, said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University.
“Undocumented immigrant workers are doing all these critical jobs in the U.S. economy,” she said. “Although they are supposed to be protected by our laws, they often aren’t. And employers know that.”
Stephen C. Dwyer, president of the American Staffing Association, a trade group, said that while there are “bad actors” in the industry, the vast majority “are law-abiding, good corporate actors that want to do right by the workers.”
He added, “Staffing firms that continue to place workers in dangerous situations will face financial repercussions.”
The industrial pizza-making process can depend upon enormous machines with razor-sharp cutters, fast-moving rollers and needlelike pins. At the Rich facility in Crest Hill, Illinois, the deep cleaning of the machines usually happened at night, when temporary sanitation workers scraped, soaped and scoured them to remove food debris, according to four former Rich employees who spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they still work in the industry.
Some supervisors at Rich, the former employees said, often pushed the sanitation staff to work quickly. That demand, they said, spurred some workers to clean the machines while they were running, which can be dangerous and can also violate federal regulations. The police report in Ogunyemi’s death also said multiple witnesses “stated that it was a common practice to clean the machines while the belts were moving to speed up the process.”
The spokesperson for Rich strongly disputed the suggestion that its employees had pressured the sanitation workers, and pointed out that OSHA had not raised such concerns. “This is not representative of who we are and how we treat our people,” she said.
OSHA requires that workers be protected from contact with an operating machine. During cleaning, in some cases, sanitation workers are allowed to use special tools and physical barriers to keep safe. But in most instances, regulations require that machines be shut down and locked before cleaning — a process known in the industry as “lockout/tagout” — because a running machine can ensnare a worker.
The former Rich employees said they had seen or heard of other workers getting pulled into machines — usually after their clothing got snagged in the moving parts. Two said that they had experienced close calls. “It’s easy to get pulled in there,” one said. “You’re going to be jerking all around, trying to get yourself up out of it.”
According to OSHA, lockout/tagout problems are among the most frequently cited safety violations across all industries. The agency found more than 2,500 such violations during fiscal year 2023.
Five months before Ogunyemi was crushed in July 2021, OSHA investigated the Crest Hill factory when a worker’s gloved hand was pulled between a roller and bar of a conveyor, fracturing his wrist. In that case, OSHA fined Rich $37,000 for failing to properly train employees on safety and use of lockout/tagout procedures.
After Ogunyemi’s accident, OSHA fined Rich $145,000 and placed it on its enforcement list of employers that “have demonstrated indifference” to OSHA rules “by committing willful, repeated or failure-to-abate violations.”
The Rich spokesperson said, “We’ve doubled down on safety and training enhancements” since the incident. “It is important to stress that the Crest Hill of 2024 is not the same as the Crest Hill of 2021.”
At Miracapo, a month before López Hernández died, a worker suffered an amputation of two fingertips. In that case, OSHA fined Miracapo $290,191 for not properly implementing lockout/tagout procedures and for exposing workers to unguarded rotating shafts.
A coroner’s report found that López Hernández died because of “sharp force and crushing injuries of face and neck.” According to the Gurnee Police Department, video footage showed that “she began to use a long air hose with an attachment to blow dust from the oven, conveyor belt and the cylindrical machine.” She then moved out of the camera’s view. About 20 minutes later, the camera captured another worker running for help.
The police report said her body was found underneath the machine. Her head was several feet away.
Portions of the video, obtained through a public records request, showed that the machine was running when López Hernández was found. OSHA records show that the agency later cited Miracapo for willful violations of lockout/tagout rules on seven machines, including the cylindrical machine.
Six staffing agency workers who cleaned machines at Miracapo in December 2022 told the Times that the company had them keep the machines running. They asked not to be identified because of their immigration status.
Miracapo’s current and previous owners and Xcel Staffing did not comment. According to a deposition given in May by a Miracapo vice president, Lee Hodson, the evening López Hernández died she was “responsible for cleaning conveyors near the ambient spiral,” but not the machine itself. Another person familiar with the accident disputed whether cleaning workers were told to leave the machines running.
A news release from OSHA after its investigation said that Miracapo had failed to provide workers with the locks needed to properly secure machines before cleaning, and failed to “train employees in a language that they understood.”
“This tragedy took the life of a young woman, and forever changes the lives of her family, friends and co-workers,” Doug Parker, a Labor Department assistant secretary, said in the release. “Safety standards are put in place to prevent these kinds of tragedies.”
Miracapo was fined $2.8 million. OSHA records show that the company contested the fine, but offer no further details.
‘Life Without Meaning’
The family of López Hernández, a mother of two boys, filed a lawsuit against Miracapo, Henry Crown and Co. and others, claiming their negligence had led to her death.
The action against Miracapo was dismissed in court after Miracapo’s lawyer successfully argued that the company could not be held responsible because López Hernández was employed by Xcel, the staffing agency, and was therefore a borrowed employee under Illinois law.
“Whether Miracapo was a good employer, a bad employer or an indifferent employer doesn’t matter,” the lawyer, Robert Carson, told the judge.
Factory owners typically buy workers’ compensation insurance for their employees, which serves as an incentive to maintain a safe working environment so that premiums don’t increase. But when staffing agencies are involved, they often pick up the tab, leaving some business owners less concerned about workplace safety, according to several lawyers who specialize in workers’ compensation claims.
“This is something that I’ve always thought was fundamentally wrong with our system,” said one of those lawyers, Jose Rivero.
In López Hernández’s case, Miracapo did not directly provide the insurance for Xcel Staffing’s employees, instead contracting out that responsibility to the agency. And the company may not be sued separately over the death because the court ruled that it was protected under the state law that deals with so-called borrowed employees.
“They get to have their cake and eat it too,” said Jackie Kurth, a lawyer for López Hernández’s family.
The family did make a claim with Xcel. They reached a settlement in August. A close family friend said Thursday that the family had yet to receive payment.
Ogunyemi’s family made a claim with Snider-Blake, the staffing agency he worked for at Rich, and they have been receiving about $1,200 monthly in benefits. In addition, the staffing agency paid $8,000 toward the burial.
His estate is also suing Rich, which sought to have the action dismissed, but a judge ruled that the company had not shown that Ogunyemi fit all the criteria of a borrowed employee.
The situation is complicated by the family being in Nigeria. Ogunyemi’s widow, Adeola, said in an interview that her family was unable to get visas to attend his burial. A Chicago roommate, Femi Matimoju, made the arrangements and livestreamed the funeral for the family.
In a tribute, Adeola Ogunyemi shared that missing her husband was like “listening to music without sound and living a life without meaning.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .