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Opinion
How to Stop Tyson Foods from Destroying 3,200 Jobs in a Nebraska Town of 10,000
Dan Osborn, the independent US Senate candidate in Nebraska, needs a plan. And it's a plan that could and should be embraced in states and communities nationwide.
Apr 15, 2026
Here are some things to know about large corporations:
- Corporations in America are free to shut down facilities, whether profitable or unprofitable, with devastating effects on workers, their families, and their communities.
- Corporations are also free to use their cash to repurchase their own stock shares, driving up their price without increasing the company’s value—a pure and simple case of stock manipulation that enriches top corporate executives and Wall Street investors.
- And corporations in the US enjoy the benefits that come from receiving taxpayer-funded government contracts, while retaining the right to destroy the jobs of taxpayers, if they see fit.
Dan Osborn, the Nebraska independent senatorial candidate, knows all this. It’s a good part of the reason he’s running for office, and he needs a plan. He knows this is a travesty, a disaster, a case of the rich and powerful trashing working people. As he puts it, “This isn’t left and right anymore, this is big versus little,” and he wants to do all he can to stop Tyson from killing 3,200 jobs in Lexington, Nebraska.
Osborn has called for the enforcement of the 1921 federal Packers and Stockyards Act, which was designed to promote competitiveness in the livestock, meat, and poultry industries and prohibit deception and fraud. He claims Tyson broke the law by closing its Lexington, Nebraska, plant instead of selling the facility to a competitor. The closure was “destroying 5 percent of America’s beef processing capacity,” Osborn argued, which will drive up prices instead of maintaining a competitive market.
In just the last quarter of 2025, Tyson conducted more than $200 million in stock repurchases which did nothing to improve production and nothing at all to protect the workers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined the fight by demanding that Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollings use the authority she has under the Act to block the Lexington closure. But, on January 21, 2026, the plant shut down anyway. In fact, no plant closing has ever been stopped by this act.
If the law is not enough to protect these devastated workers and communities, where can Osborn find leverage to help them?
It is really hard to stop a plant closing in the United States of America. Of the millions of mass layoffs over the past three decades, I’m having trouble finding any that have been reversed (although my friends at the Teamsters Union say they have been successful on occasion.) There have been at least a handful of worker buyouts of facilities scheduled for shutdowns that kept them open for a time, but all I know about soon went under.
There is one point of leverage, however, that has yet to be used—federal contracts.
Large corporations love to dine at the federal trough, gobbling up as much taxpayer money as they can through federal grants and contracts. Tyson is no exception. It’s got its hands all over our tax dollars. In 2025, it received 170 federal awards for a total of $234 million. It also received, from 2018 to 2020, $727 million from the Pentagon to supply beef to the military. And those contracts have been renewed through today.
Mass layoffs are a heartless tool that ignores how critical stable employment is to families and communities.
What if Osborn promised that as senator, he would fight for a new federal regulation like this:
All corporations of 500 or more employees that receive taxpayer-funded federal contracts shall not be permitted to conduct compulsory layoffs of taxpayers. All layoffs must be voluntary based on financial incentives.
Wouldn’t that be fair and just? After all, voluntary financial incentives to leave a job are commonplace for executives. And it’s not just severance. The idea is that no one should be forced to leave. The financial incentive would need to be high enough to attract voluntary departures.
Is this proposal too radical for Nebraska?
No doubt, corporations and their political handmaidens would vigorously attack the proposal. Isn’t the key to a free society the right of business owners, large and small, to manage their own enterprises as they see fit? When the government intervenes to control hiring and firing, isn’t it stepping towards socialism, which history has shown is both a failure economically and a path towards totalitarianism? Wouldn’t such a proposal harm jobs, our economy, and democracy?
Osborn’s response could be simple: Corporations would be totally free to hire and fire at will—but not if they are taking taxpayer money. If they want our money, then they can’t force us out against our will. No compulsory layoffs!
We tested this idea and the corporate attacks in our survey of 3,000 Midwestern voters across Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. About half of those voters supported the idea, with very low percentages opposed, even after being introduced to corporate attacks against the policy.
If they want our money, then they can’t force us out against our will. No compulsory layoffs!
Where would the money come from?
That’s where stock buybacks come in. In just the last quarter of 2025, Tyson conducted more than $200 million in stock repurchases which did nothing to improve production and nothing at all to protect the workers. They chose to pad the bonuses of Tyson executives and the portfolios of large Wall Street shareholders. It might have made instead a nice start on a worker buyout fund.
The proposal may sound radical, but nothing about this is pie in the sky. The Siemens Corporation in Germany agreed to a no-compulsory layoff proposal with its union, IG Metall, after it announced the layoff of 3,000 workers. As the result of negotiated settlement with the union, the workers could take voluntary financial buyout packages. But, none of the workers were forced to leave. And instead of the scheduled shutdown of five facilities, the company agreed to put in new products to keep the plants open.
Large corporations like Siemens and Tyson have enormous flexibility. They can rearrange production in countless ways. Unless pressured by the workers through their labor unions, they serve corporate needs first and subordinate those of workers. Mass layoffs are a heartless tool that ignores how critical stable employment is to families and communities. These companies have the financial power to fulfill the needs and interests of their employees, but they choose not to. But for Tyson, and so many companies today, all that matters is shoveling as much money as possible into the pockets of their wealthy executives and Wall Street investors. The workers be damned!
At this point, the Tyson workers and Dan Osborn know that the plant is not going to be reopened. But Osborn’s campaign could commemorate those workers by becoming the first politician in the nation to offer a realistic and potentially popular solution to this recurring nightmare:
No Compulsory Layoffs at Corporations That Receive Taxpayer Money!
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Tax Day Realities: Nuclear Weapons and Our Dangerous, Misguided Priorities
An average American family of four will spend $1,606 dollars on nuclear weapons programs this year, and as a nation we are spending $261,092 every minute on weapons that cannot and must not ever be used without threatening all of humanity.
Apr 15, 2026
Each spring our nation funds our national budget on tax day, April 15. Just as the season itself is a time of renewal, this is a time to reflect on our priorities and who we are as a nation. Each of us can identify funding priorities in our collective daily experience and must ask ourselves if these are being addressed. From childcare and education to healthcare, national defense, and even nuclear weapons, we must set our priorities. With finite dollars and a myriad of national and international needs, we must be informed as to how these funds are being allocated.
Promises of affordability, reduced cost of living, and avoidance of costly wars have not coincided with reality.
Our planet continues to warm with progressive climate change, the last decade being the hottest decade in recorded history, causing increasing scarcity of natural resources further promoting conflict around the planet. Coupled with the potential for future global pandemics, this is a time when global cooperation and collaboration is more important than ever.
Unfortunately, we are pursuing policies of increased isolationism, feigning international cooperation with disdain for the international rule of law. We are pursuing wars, interventions and conflicts of choice, while walking away from international treaties, such as New START and the previous Iran nuclear deal, while bullying nations, thus empowering other nations to follow suit as international law and norms are shunned. We have seen 5 of the 9 nuclear-armed nations at war this past year with China increasing rhetorical threats against Taiwan. The twin interconnected existential threats of climate change and nuclear war seem ever closer. Recognizing this threat, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their symbolic Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight this past January, the closest it has been in its 79 year existence. This is a grim reminder of our increased reliance on luck to prevent a nuclear catastrophe, either by intent, miscalculation, or disruptive technology.
These expenditures rob our communities of precious resources that could be redirected to the actual needs of our citizens providing true security in meeting basic human needs and providing opportunity.
The very existence of nuclear weapons threatens all of us, and everything we hold near and dear, every moment of every day. These are weapons that can never be used. With a perverse logic, as if in a trance to the end, we have chosen as a nation to increase our nuclear weapons program expenditures year over year, further proving the fallacy of deterrence as each of our adversaries do likewise so as not to be outdone.
According to the US Nuclear Weapons Community Cost Project, now in its 37th year, this Fiscal Year 2026 finds the US spending over $137 billion dollars on all nuclear weapons programs. That equates to an average of $401.51 for every man, woman, and child based on an average income of $44,673. These costs affect every community across our nation, from New York City, our richest city, spending over $3.95 Billion; to Flint Michigan, our poorest city, spending over $15.565 million; to the Navajo Nation spending over $28.491 Million. An average American family of four will spend $1,606 dollars on nuclear weapons programs this year, and as a nation we are spending $261,092 every minute on weapons that cannot and must not ever be used without threatening all of humanity.
Where does this fit into your priorities as you think about your family and the future you envision? These expenditures rob our communities of precious resources that could be redirected to the actual needs of our citizens providing true security in meeting basic human needs and providing opportunity.
This is a situation that does not have to be, but one that will not change without public support and outcry. There is a growing national grassroots campaign called Back From the Brink bringing communities together to prevent nuclear war. The movement calls for the US to take a leadership role as follows:
- Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals;
- Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first;
- Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any US president to launch a nuclear attack;
- Taking US nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
- Cancelling the plan to replace the entire US nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
With over 504 national organizations, 78 municipalities and counties, eight state legislative bodies, 592 municipal and state official, and 68 members of Congress endorsing, support is growing. Each of us can endorse the campaign, join a local hub, and call on our elected officials to add their name to the growing list of local and federal officials who endorse and support this effort.
We all have a role to play in pursuing a future for our children and future generations. That role is unique to us and not necessarily a large role or a small role, it is our role. If our luck holds out, when our children’s children ask, what did you do when the planet was threatened, how will you respond? Working together we can make nuclear weapons a threat of the past.
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As Trump Pushes Privatization, Mexico's Sheinbaum Embraces Healthcare as a Human Right
Healthcare is neither a commodity nor the exclusive privilege of the wealthy—it is a human right. Far from “outrageous,” guaranteeing healthcare to all is about ensuring that everyone can live a rich and fulfilling life.
Apr 15, 2026
On April 6, the Trump administration announced it will increase payments to privately-run Medicare Advantage, or MA, plans by 2.48% in 2027—this will result in more than $13 billion in additional payments to companies like UnitedHealth, CVS Health, and Humana. Unsurprisingly, following this announcement, shares of those companies rose by more than 9%.
MA plans have been a significant source of growth and profit for insurance companies. As the Medicare Rights Center reports, this profitability is driven by enormous overpayments, including from fraudulent billing practices such as “upcoding.” This involves submitting billing codes that make patients appear sicker than they really are to secure higher government payments than are warranted. Despite this, the Trump administration is currently considering a policy that would automatically enroll seniors into MA plans as the “default enrollment option”—a proposal outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s extremist Project 2025.
The Center for American Progress estimates that making MA the default option would generate nearly $2 trillion in overpayments over 10 years, while significantly jeopardizing traditional Medicare’s financial stability. It would give for-profit corporations more control to restrict patient choices and deny doctor-recommended care.
Instead of more privatization that puts profits over people, we should embrace Medicare For All (M4A). Yet, President Donald Trump contends that paying for our current safety nets is already too much for the wealthiest nation on Earth. He remarks: “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Sheinbaum’s embrace of universal healthcare—as well as her support of Cuba—shows us what is possible when the well-being of people is championed unconditionally.
For Trump, spending billions in an illegal war takes precedence over providing healthcare for Americans. His 2027 budget calls for a 10% reduction in all nondefense spending, including reducing funding to the Department of Health and Human Services by $15.8 billion. This, at the same time, that a measles outbreak sweeps the nation, uninsured rates continue to climb, and the prevalence of children with chronic conditions grows to unprecedented levels.
While Trump prioritizes death and destruction, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum offers a different vision. On April 7, she issued a presidential decree establishing the Universal Health Service (Servicio Universal de Salud), which will allow patients from across Mexico to seek free care at any public health institution. Universal access will be rolled out in phases starting with emergency care and continuity of care in early 2027. Radiotherapy, laboratory tests, imaging studies, and other specialized services will be added later that year. Finally, in 2028, universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization will be consolidated. For Sheinbaum, “The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received.”
The transition to universal healthcare began on April 13 when Mexicans aged 85 and older were eligible to register for their new Universal Health Credential. As Deputy Health Minister Eduardo Clark notes, these new credentials are “the guarantee of the right to healthcare” for Mexican citizens and eligible foreign residents.
This is the fundamental difference. In Mexico, healthcare is recognized as a human right enshrined in their Constitution. In 2023, then-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alicia Bárcena said before the United Nations General Assembly, “In Mexico, we believe that coverage must be universal, public and free, starting with the most marginalized areas and prioritizing, as always, the poorest.” She continued: “It is unacceptable to profit from illness. In Mexico, we know that public health is not for sale. It is a public and universal good, and we defend it."
By contrast, for Trump, healthcare is a privilege meant solely for those who deserve it. During his first presidential campaign, he remarked: “Where I come from, you have to prove your worth. You have some guy with no college degree working a minimum wage job; no ambition, no goals, nothing to show for it. Yet for some reason, the current [Obama] administration believes he—and millions of people like him, should have access to health insurance. It’s outrageous.” While Mexico starts with “the poorest,” Trump finds it “outrageous” to provide healthcare to minimum wage workers.
Trump’s position is immoral and vile. Healthcare is neither a commodity nor the exclusive privilege of the wealthy—it is a human right. Far from “outrageous,” guaranteeing healthcare to all is about ensuring that everyone can live a rich and fulfilling life.
For most (if not everyone), lacking healthcare will prevent them from living the kind of life they desire. Those suffering from untreated illness may struggle to spend time with their loved ones, pursue the opportunities they desire, and exercise their political rights. Since, at some point, everyone will eventually get sick, healthcare is a universal good that benefits each of us. Moreover, as the Covid-19 pandemic made clear, our individual health is not solely a personal issue. My health impacts the lives of others around me just as their health impacts mine. Healthcare is thus a collective and communal good.
Still, one might object that even if healthcare is not a commodity, the market is still the best mechanism to allocate scarce resources; Trump’s push toward privatization will be better than Sheinbaum’s universal care.
Such blind faith in the market is misguided. Despite spending far more than other countries with universal coverage, more than a quarter of Americans report skipping consultations, tests, treatments and follow-ups because of costs. Roughly 21% report skipping medication for the same reason. Studies consistently find that universal care provides more access, better quality, and lower costs than privatized healthcare.
Ironically, Trump once understood this. In his 2000 The America We Deserve, he writes, “We must have universal healthcare. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole if the issue of access to healthcare were dealt with imaginatively. With more than 40 million Americans living day to day in the fear that an illness or injury will wipe out their savings or drag them into bankruptcy, how can we truly engage in the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as our Founders intended?”
Trump was right. What we need is not more privatization that exploits the sick and dying, but rather a politic that works to radically defend life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. What is needed is the imagination to rethink how we use (and misuse) our country’s wealth and resources. Sheinbaum’s embrace of universal healthcare—as well as her support of Cuba—shows us what is possible when the well-being of people is championed unconditionally.
A better future is possible—already, in the US, support for M4A continues to grow, and several 2026 midterm candidates have made it an explicit part of their platforms. Together, by embracing life and rejecting capitalism, we can make America great.
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To Organize for Peace, We Must First Dare to Imagine It
The Middle East will not be stabilized by threading one crisis at a time. It will only be stabilized by a framework comprehensive enough to hold all of them at once.
Apr 15, 2026
On April 7, the United States, Israel, and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. By the afternoon of the same day, it was already unraveling.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who mediated the deal, announced it would cover "everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere—effective immediately." Within hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office contradicted him: The ceasefire "does not include Lebanon." Israel's military said it "continues fighting and ground operations" against Hezbollah. Missile alerts sounded across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. A gas facility in Abu Dhabi was ablaze. Iran and Israel each accused the other of violating a truce that neither had fully agreed to in the first place.
This is not a diplomatic miscommunication. This is a structural diagnosis. A ceasefire that each party defines differently, that excludes Lebanon while Lebanon burns, that leaves unresolved the nuclear question, the proxies, the sanctions, and the fate of millions of displaced people—is not a ceasefire. It is a pause in a war that has no agreed-upon end. And it proves, more vividly than any argument could, the central claim of this piece: There is no lasting peace to be found in bilateral arrangements, back-channel deals, or sequenced diplomacy that takes each front separately. Everything must be on the table, simultaneously, in the open. The region will not be stabilized by threading one crisis at a time. It will only be stabilized by a framework comprehensive enough to hold all of them at once.
For years, the pogroms in the West Bank grew more violent in the dark, largely ignored by media and public attention. The lawlessness of those carrying them out was enabled—sometimes actively, sometimes through willful inaction—by those whose job was to enforce the law. This ongoing catastrophe, beyond being war crimes and perhaps crimes against humanity, has already fueled new waves of antisemitic violence worldwide.
What is needed is not just pressure, but a credible vision—something to organize toward, not only against.
Now the world is paying attention. But attention, it turns out, is not the same as action.
Two and a half years of genocide in Gaza. Bombing campaigns across half a dozen countries. The Israeli Knesset's passage of a death penalty law for Arabs—62 in favor, 48 against, 1 abstained—while Germany, Britain, France, and Italy issued a statement fretting over the law "undermining Israel's commitments with regards to democratic principles." It would be funny if it weren't so revealing. The shrewdest member of the Knesset, Ahmad Tibi, used to say that Israel is Jewish and democratic—Jewish for the Arabs, democratic for the Jews. Now even that uneasy equation has collapsed. Anti-government protesters are being violently suppressed. Activists are being arrested.
What, exactly, are we waiting for? Another October 7 to green-light a massive genocide in the West Bank?
In the 1980s, the world still maintained a façade of respecting international law, human rights, sovereignty, and human dignity. Today those principles are treated as virtue signaling, carrying zero weight in global politics. The massacre at Sabra and Shatila produced one of the largest anti-war protests in Israeli history, the removal of a defense minister, the resignation of a prime minister. Today, the same events would merit a public yawn. Israelis would say there was no choice; in war, civilians die; terrorists hide among civilians.
The campaign against apartheid South Africa helped end that regime—sanctions were part of it, though not the whole story. Today the world is reluctant to act similarly, and Israel's stocks are rising. Military and technology exports have grown. The Israeli economy remains stable, the shekel as strong as it has been in years.
So what is the world to do? What are the Palestinians to do?
Here is the honest assessment: Pressure alone will not work. The Israeli public's mental condition now requires constant war to manage its anxieties, and the government has mastered the manipulation of fear to sustain itself. Geopolitical realities ensure Israel will always have trade partners—including countries that position themselves as critics, including in the Arab Middle East. And if isolation were somehow achieved comprehensively, the best-case scenario is Israel becoming a North Korea: The boycott succeeds, and we are not one inch closer to Palestinian liberation or regional normalcy. What is needed is not just pressure, but a credible vision—something to organize toward, not only against.
Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that "those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war." That is the question before us.
As today's unraveling ceasefire makes clear, there is no safe region without a framework that addresses everyone's security simultaneously.
There are credible levers that have worked before. President Dwight D. Eisenhower forced Israel's hand in 1956. President George H.W. Bush did it again in Madrid. Real leverage—the kind that changes calculations—is possible. The platform already exists: the Arab League Peace Initiative of March 2002. The Middle East is different now, but the architecture of that initiative remains usable. When Israeli leadership presented peace prospects with Egypt, Jordan, and even in the Oslo Accords, the Israeli public responded favorably. Public opinion in this region can shift quickly when circumstances change.
And this framework could do something even more ambitious: help resolve the conflict with Iran—comprehensively, not bilaterally. The ceasefire announced last week, already disputed and already violated, shows exactly why. Iran has insisted Lebanon must be part of any deal. Israel says it won't be. The US sits somewhere between the two, unable to enforce its own mediated agreement. This is the logic of piecemeal diplomacy: It produces temporary pauses, not durable peace. On multiple occasions, Iran reaffirmed the Arab League Peace Initiative and suggested that if Palestinians reach an agreement that earns the approval of a Palestinian majority, Iran would not carry the banner of the Palestinian struggle. Iran can become part of the solution. Imagine a Middle East in which the genuine security concerns of Palestine, Israel, Iran, and Lebanon are all taken into account—together, not sequentially—and prove compatible. Such a deal could include a final resolution to the nuclear question (dare we dream of dismantling both Iran's and Israel's programs?), the disbanding of proxy forces, and enforceable benchmarks for human and civil rights across all parties. After years of genocide, wars, and hundreds of thousands of victims, none of this would come easily. The international community would have to deploy every tool at its disposal, every credible threat.
Today, no leadership anywhere is offering a viable future. Here is the vision nobody in the entire Zionist political spectrum is proposing: a grand bargain. Israel accepts the Arab League Peace Initiative. A Palestinian state is established in all the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip—with real elections—before the end of 2027. This is a first stage enabling the self-determination of both national collectives, which could develop over time into various arrangements: a two-state solution, a confederation, a single democratic state, or something in-between. The international community guarantees security for all sides during the transition. And the pressure must be real: If Israel refuses, it is immediately removed from EU treaties, the OECD, and every international institution it depends on.
And then there is the bonus—the kind of audacious proposal that makes a vision legible to ordinary people. The 2026 World Cup will be hosted in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The 2030 tournament goes to Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. The 2034 tournament is slated for Saudi Arabia—the country that originally proposed the 2002 Peace Initiative. What if the 2034 World Cup became a Peace World Cup, hosted jointly by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Palestine? Imagine the region's countries spending the coming years building sports infrastructure. Imagine the tourism economy it would generate—not only in those three countries, but in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Absurd? Maybe. But the question MLK poses is whether peace-loving people can organize as effectively as those who love war. A concrete, imaginable future is part of that organizing.
I have always argued that the only genuinely pro-Israel position is also a pro-Palestine position. There is no safe Israel without a free and safe Palestine—and, as today's unraveling ceasefire makes clear, there is no safe region without a framework that addresses everyone's security simultaneously. To be pro-Israel means ensuring Israel's ability to become a nation among nations—secure, recognized, legitimate. That cannot happen while Israel is an occupying power. It cannot happen alongside an apartheid regime. It cannot happen while Palestinian citizens of Israel face systematic discrimination and neglect. And it cannot happen while a two-week truce substitutes for the comprehensive, just, and durable peace that the entire region is owed.
We cannot wait any longer. The question is whether we are willing to organize for a vision, or only against an atrocity.
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