Free Republic

The SAG-AFTRA strike against major video game companies has nearly reached the 250-day mark and there’s no deal yet. And while nothing seems to have changed from the outside, real progress is being made behind the scenes. The video game companies’ bargaining committee (which represents Activision Productions, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, Electronic Arts Productions, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Llama Productions, Take 2 Productions and WB Games) presented an updated counter proposal of the Interactive Media Agreement to the actors union on March 26, which “directly addresses several issues the union has identified as important components of a deal,” a source...

Former U.S. Senator Jon Tester, D-Mont., linked his 2024 Senate loss to ex-Vice President Kamala Harris’ poor performance in the state. Tester, who lost to former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy in that race, declared on HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher" that the woke politics embraced by the top of the ticket are what doomed his performance in Montana. "And the top of the ticket did not perform because I don’t think the top of the ticket embraced the issues that Americans were talking about," he said. "We got wrapped up in all the cancel culture crap." Tester had served...

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service will lay off about 6,700 employees on Thursday, in a restructuring that could strain the tax-collecting agency’s resources during the critical tax-filing season, a person familiar with the matter said. The workers being cut are probationary employees who have typically been at the agency for less than one to two years, and enjoy fewer protections than longer-term workers. The IRS has a total of roughly 17,000 probationary employees. The reductions at the IRS come amid a broader slashing of personnel across the federal government at the directive of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who...

🚨#BREAKING: Thousands of protesters have gathered at the US Capitol in a massive rally against Elon musk DOGE and President Trump

Even so, farewells are bittersweet and this one has been made more so because of her replacements. “I think it’s important to have women in these lead anchor chairs, and I think it is a setback that it’s going to be all men,” O’Donnell says. Later, she adds, “I think there are incredible opportunities for women in journalism. But I think it would be a disservice to suggest, especially to young women who are entering the workforce, that they’re not going to encounter sexism and potentially harassment. It exists. It does. And it exists even for the most powerful women...

BREAKING: Notorious liberal scold and anti-Trump legacy news personality Jim Acosta is out at CNN.

David Muir, who? It appears George Stephanopoulos has a new rival to look out for at ABC. Stephanopoulos’ political drama with President-elect Donald Trump has followed him into the new year and sources tell us his colleague — and “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” co-host — Jonathan Karl, “wants George gone,” so that he can sweep in and take over the Sunday morning news show. “He wants the show, and he sees [ABC’s Trump settlement] as an opportunity,” a source told us about Karl’s ambition to move into Stephanopoulos’ spot. While Stephanopoulos’ name is on the show, he shares hosting...

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan told conservative colleague Scott Jennings to “zip it” during an on-air dispute with a Democrat-supporting pundit who claimed that “prices are going down.” Bolduan hosted a segment ahead of the certification of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Monday in which she, Jennings and Bakari Sellers debated President Joe Biden’s legacy and the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Jennings, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), pushed back when Bolduan expressed amazement that Trump was re-elected despite his role in the events at the US Capitol four years ago. “They looked at what happened...

Layoffs are expected to rock The Washington Post this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper's business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees. The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels...

The Democratic National Committee (DNC), the party that claims to champion workers’ rights, has left its own staff out in the cold. Permanent staffers were given a single day’s notice before being unceremoniously terminated—without severance. The DNC Staff Union took to X to air their grievances, stating, “One day’s notice, no severance—the DNC fights for workers, just not their own.” The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife. This is the same party that campaigns on workers’ rights, union support, and economic justice. Yet when it comes to their own, the rules apparently do not apply....

A senior at Pacific Collegiate School, Zero Pabich felt horrible after the news of Donald Trump’s victory last week. So the day after the election, Pabich said they began organizing a protest to show that young people will continue fighting to protect the rights of marginalized communities.

TV industry executives out of work, describe their struggles. (My description)

Vice Media announced in a memo this week that it will be laying off hundreds of employees as it faces a sale. Vice Media CEO Bruce Dixon said in the company-wide email that the decision to lay off “several hundred” staff members did not come lightly. “This decision was not made lightly,” Dixon wrote. Dixon added that fired staffers will be notified of the next steps next week.

The Los Angeles Times announced over 100 journalists would be laid off Tuesday as the media outlet lost as much as $40 million a year, according to multiple outlets. The newspaper will reduce its newsroom staff by 20%, one of the biggest cuts in its 142-year history, the outlet’s Meg James reported. Among those who were axed included the chief and deputy chief of the paper’s Washington, D.C., bureau, along with its business editor, the music editor and books editor. Two of the paper’s four managing editors resigned prior to the announcement of the layoffs, adding to the uncertainty around...

American coal is rebounding! Yay. Enough of Unicorn Farts.

Forget the conventional wisdom about firing irreplaceable employees. Because if your employees aren’t irreplaceable, you’re doing something wrong. Credit: Gorodenkoff / Shutterstock“The graveyards,” General De Gaulle once ironically observed, “are full of indispensable men.” Maybe so, but the same may not be so easily said about organizations whose success did depend on irreplaceable managers and staff.Take, for example, Apple. Under Steve Jobs it created the iPod, iPhone, App Store, and iPad — products and services that ranged from radical departures to entirely new concepts.Under Tim Cook? What his Apple has introduced to the marketplace are copycat items: A streaming service,...

During the period when social media was increasingly putting pressure on legacy media outlets, driving down their profits, a phrase crept into the national lexicon. “Learn to code.” While it was no doubt said in a derisive or at least humorous fashion by most, it carried an underlying assumption that most people accepted. Perhaps you should learn to code. That’s where the jobs of the future would be. But the period when that will be true may turn out to have a much shorter lifespan than anticipated. The rise of Artificial Intelligence and chatbot apps is already automating the work...

Adults who received the updated coronavirus booster shots are better protected against severe disease than those who haven’t, cutting their risk of having to visit an emergency room or being hospitalized with covid-19 by 50 percent or more, according to new federal data.Two reports released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention give the first detailed look at how well the updated boosters from Pfizer and Moderna protect against serious illness. But uptake of the “bivalent” boosters rolled out in September has been low among vaccine-weary Americans, with only about 14 percent of those eligible — ages 5...

CNN boss Chris Licht has gutted sister network HLN, terminating all live programming as part of ongoing layoffs and budget cuts. Licht slashed HLN’s “Morning Express with Robin Meade,” as well as “Weekend Express,” he announced in a memo to CNN’s remaining staff on Thursday. Meade and HLN’s live news programming staffers will be among those fired. Also getting their pink slips Thursday were prominent CNN correspondents Alison Kosik, Martin Savidge, Alex Field, Mary Ann Fox and Chris Cillizza, according to Variety. CNN declined to comment on the overall number of job cuts when reached by The Post. Licht is...

Twitter began its highly anticipated mass layoffs Thursday evening by eliminating its top internal critics. Twitter’s Ethical AI team, according to former staff, is no more. Multiple members of Twitter’s Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team, including its former leader, posted on Twitter saying they were no longer at the company. At least one of the former workers suggested the entire team was being disbanded. The apparent layoffs impacting the company’s strongest internal watchdog group comes as thousands more brace for cuts potentially impacting around half of the company’s staff according to previous reports. Gizmodo found tweets from...