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Undeterred by Freezing Temps, Statewide Minnesota Strikes Demand 'ICE Out Now'
“We are a northern state, and we are built for the cold, and we are going to show up."
Jan 23, 2026
Twin Cities residents are weeks into the Trump administration's deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents in an operation that has seen a legal observer and young mother fatally shot; US citizens dragged out of their homes and vehicles by masked officers; one of President Donald Trump's top Border Patrol officials lobbing a gas grenade at lawful protesters; children as young as 2 detained; and armed agents seemingly lurking around every corner.
But the trauma inflicted on the cities during "Operation Metro Surge" appeared only to have strengthened residents' resolve to push US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) out of Minnesota on Friday as residents filled the Minneapolis' downtown area to march in subfreezing temperatures and assembled at a nearby airport through which an estimated 2,000 people have been deported.
The demonstrations were part of a “no work, no school, no shopping” general strike that labor, faith, and community leaders and businesses have joined in calling for in recent days as outrage has grown over ICE's arrests of immigrants and citizens alike and attacks on residents' First Amendment rights.
Demonstrators carried signs reading, "ICE Out Now," "Stop Pretending Racism Is Patriotism," and "Stop Disappearing Our Neighbors."
Businesses and cultural institutions were closed in solidarity across the city and the state on Friday; Truthout reported that about 700 businesses shut their doors across Minnesota, while businesses that remained open planned to donate their proceeds from the day to immigrant rights groups.
Organizers said about 100 clergy members were arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport protest. They were among the protesters who blocked the road at a departures terminal, singing, "Before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail, everybody has a right to live.”
Thousands here at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, the site of deportation flights. Clergy have blocked the road at terminal 1 departures singing “before this campaign fails, we’ll all go down to jail. Everybody has a right to live.” pic.twitter.com/FDtUYyyjNL
— Sarah Lazare (@sarahlazare) January 23, 2026
According to union leaders, 12 airport workers are among the Minneapolis-area residents who have been detained by ICE in recent weeks.
A massive number of workers have descended on the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport for the general strike today, forming an extended picket line, with some blocking a main airport road at this time. pic.twitter.com/2JZPZpS4hR
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) January 23, 2026
Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, president of the Minnesota Regional Labor Federation (MRLF), AFL-CIO, acknowledged that the weather on Friday was "dangerously cold."
"Negative-10°F with wind chills. Like the high is going to be -10°F with wind chills of up to -20F,” Glaubitz Gabiou told the Guardian. “We are a northern state, and we are built for the cold, and we are going to show up."
Organizers said the goals of the general strike were for ICE to leave Minnesota, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good earlier this month to be held legally accountable, and no additional federal funding for ICE operations.
Seven US House Democrats joined the Republican Party in passing a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security this week. The legislation still needs to get through the Senate.
Nationwide, data has shown that nearly three-quarters of people arrested by ICE have had no criminal convictions, but the Trump administration has continued to claim it is detaining the "worst of the worst" violent criminals, even as agents have clearly been shown arresting people who are authorized to be in the US and have no criminal records.
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'Senseless Betrayal' of Workers as Trump Agency Scraps Anti-Harassment Guidance With No Public Input
"Trump-installed Chair Andrea Lucas orchestrated this rescission through the back door, refusing to issue the opportunity for public comment."
Jan 22, 2026
The Trump administration, quietly and with no public input, voted Thursday to scrap federal guidance aimed at clarifying and bolstering anti-harassment protections on the job, a move that rights advocates condemned as yet another destructive attack on workers.
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which President Donald Trump targeted last year by firing two of its Democratic commissioners before their terms were up, voted 2-1 to rescind the anti-harassment guidance approved under the Biden administration.
Unlike the approval process, which garnered tens of thousands of public comments, the decision by Republicans on the EEOC to completely scrap the guidance was made without any feedback from the American public.
Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), said in a statement that the Trump administration is "abandoning millions of workers who face harassment on the job and sending a clear message that this administration will not lift a finger to protect them."
"Trump-installed Chair Andrea Lucas orchestrated this rescission through the back door, refusing to issue the opportunity for public comment," said Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates (ERA). "Requests for meetings to discuss the rescission, including ERA’s request, were canceled. This administration does not want to hear from the workers it is abandoning."
"The Trump administration’s rescission of the EEOC workplace harassment guidance is about weaponizing a civil rights agency against the very people it was created to protect," Farrell added.
Ahead of Thursday's vote, Lucas was vocal in her opposition to the portions of the 2024 guidance that clarified the illegality of workplace harassment based on gender identity. Under Lucas' leadership, the EEOC last year moved to drop virtually every lawsuit the agency had filed in the previous year over discrimination against transgender workers.
Late last year, Lucas reportedly received a green light from the Trump White House to pursue the complete rescission of the 2024 guidance—not just the sections related to sexual orientation and gender identity, which had already been vacated by a federal court.
Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the EEOC's only Democrat and the lone vote against rescinding the guidance, lamented that "instead of adopting a thoughtful and surgical approach to excise the sections the majority disagrees with or suggest an alternative, the commission is throwing out the baby with the bathwater."
"Worse, it is doing so without public input," Kotagal added.
"This move will leave the commission enforcing guidance from a time when gay marriage was illegal and most people didn’t have internet at home."
US Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement that the guidance rescission "is a senseless betrayal from an administration doing everything it can to make working people’s lives harder at every turn."
"While this move doesn’t change the underlying law, this administration is turning back the clock decades by abandoning robust enforcement of sexual harassment in the workplace—this hurts everyone and helps no one," said Murray. "Andrea Lucas is openly waging war on the independence and basic mission of the EEOC—and this move will leave the commission enforcing guidance from a time when gay marriage was illegal and most people didn’t have internet at home."
“Whether it’s protecting sexual predators in the Epstein files, promoting alleged abusers to the highest offices in government, or getting rid of basic standards to protect workers against harassment, this administration has proven time and again that they couldn’t care less about workers, women, or victims of abuse," the senator added. "Under Trump, the EEOC is taking the side of abusers over working people just trying to do their jobs. We can’t let this get swept under the rug."
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US Union Leader Tells Davos Elites 'You're Gonna Have a Revolution' If AI Wipes Out Jobs
The president of the AFL-CIO warned of a large-scale revolt if corporate leaders use artificial intelligence to "put people out on the street with no path forward."
Jan 21, 2026
The leader of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the United States, told elites and others gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday that rapid advances in artificial intelligence risk turbocharging the worst inequities of the existing economic order, displacing workers en masse while enriching those at the very top.
Liz Shuler, the AFL-CIO's president, said during a panel discussion that if the billionaires and corporate titans currently directing AI developments are "looking to just deskill, dehumanize, replace workers" and "put people out on the street with no path forward—then absolutely you’re gonna have a revolution."
The economy in the US and around the world "isn't working for working people now," Shuler noted, citing unprecedented levels of inequality, workers being forced to take on multiple jobs to make ends meet, and widespread economic instability.
“Now, put AI on top of that," she continued. "The insecurity that we’re all experiencing—the fact that people are waking up and some new technology is landing on them in their jobs, without training, without them having a say. Of course they’re going to be anxious, of course they're going to be feeling insecure about what the future holds."
“I think we really need to stop, and say: ‘Who are we doing this for, what are the results we want, and how we get there?’" said Shuler. "We get there by including workers in the process."
The International Monetary Fund has estimated that roughly 40% of global employment is "exposed to AI." In advanced economies, according to the analysis, around 60% of jobs could be impacted by AI, either positively or negatively—with some jobs expected to disappear entirely.
Multinational corporate behemoths such as Amazon are actively planning to replace many of their workers with robots, efforts that have sparked the kinds of dire warnings that Shuler expressed at Davos, where AI is a centerpiece of this year's gathering.
In a letter to Amazon's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, late last year, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked, "Are you going to simply dump these workers out on the street, or will you treat them with the dignity they deserve?"
"If Amazon succeeds on its massive automation plan," Sanders warned, "it will have a profound impact on blue-collar workers throughout America and will likely be used as a model by large corporations throughout America, including Walmart and UPS, to displace tens of millions of jobs.”
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