The first pilot episode of Reveal exposed how the Department of Veterans Affairs was overprescribing opioids to veterans and contributing to an overdose crisis. Journalist Aaron Glantz explained how he received—surprisingly quickly—a decade’s worth of opioid prescription data from the federal government.  “Sometimes, you have to sue to get the records,” he said. “I have to think that there were some people over there in DC who were as concerned as we were about this.” After that first show was made, host Al Letson didn’t know what to expect. “We weren’t sure if any public radio stations would even air it,” he said.  Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Reveal’s VA investigation sparked outrage. Congress held hearings during a government lockdown, and there’s been a sea change in the way veterans are prescribed painkillers. And today, the show is on more than 500 stations.  This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.   This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in March 2025.

The Bank of England is set to cut interest rates on Thursday, after lower-than-expected inflation figures and signs of a weakening jobs market. Headline inflation slowed to 3.2 percent in November, from 3.6 in October, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. That was the lowest since March and a much clearer drop than predicted by analysts, who had forecast a rate of 3.5 percent. “A cut tomorrow should be a no-brainer, with another to follow in February,” Peel Hunt chief economist Kallum Pickering said via social media, pointing to “No growth since summer, a labor market that is rapidly cooling, and a big downside surprise to inflation across the board in November.” The news comes only a day after labor market data from the ONS showed the unemployment rate rising to its highest level in over four years in October. The economy has struggled for growth in the second half of this year, after a sugar rush in the first quarter in which exporters rushed to get their goods to the U.S. before President Donald Trump could impose trade tariffs. The hangover from that — and the lingering uncertainty over the global economic outlook caused by Trump’s trade policy — has been severe. But at the same time, an unwelcome rise in inflation has stopped the Bank of England from cutting interest rates more quickly to support the economy. A raft of hikes in government- controlled prices such as energy bills and rail fares meant that inflation was rising for much of the year, leading it to peak at 3.8 percent in September. That was also partly due to companies passing on increases in labor costs due to a 6.7 percent hike in the National Living Wage and an increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions. Panmure Liberum chief economist Simon French said the wide range of goods and services now showing softening price trends showed that demand is now so weak that companies are having to absorb those price increases themselves instead. The government will be particularly relieved to have seen politically sensitive food prices, which have been a constant bugbear for the last couple of years, making the biggest contribution to the slowdown in inflation in November. Prices for clothing and footwear and for discretionary services such as restaurants and hotels also fell slightly. “As Christmas gifts go, this is a most welcome one,” said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell. “It’s the time of year when people put a few more things in their supermarket trolley, so news that food and alcohol inflation has fallen will be a boon for cash-strapped families.” The Bank has consistently said that inflation would fall once those factors passed out of the annual calculations, given that the underlying weakness of the economy. However, with the worst bout of inflation in half a century still fresh in everyone’s minds, it has been forced to keep the pace of policy easing “gradual and cautious”. Peel Hunt’s Pickering said that the scale of the slowdown could be enough to have some members of the Monetary Policy Committee voting for a half-point cut in the Bank Rate to 3.5 percent on Thursday. However, the consensus remains for a quarter-point cut to 3.75 percent. The pound still fell over half a cent against the dollar in response to the numbers, as traders penciled in more scope for easing next year, while the government’s borrowing costs in the bond market also fell.

Chandler Bursey used to have an office. It was a modest room at the Veterans Affairs campus in Idaho, a set of buildings nestled under one of the mountain ridges reaching into Boise. The office, a meeting place for members of the union chapter Bursey leads, was something the union had negotiated. For many years it relied on VA resources, but after Donald Trump was reelected, Bursey began decoupling. “I made sure to separate all of our computer systems, get our own separate phone line,” he says. “He might kick us out.” Like other federal labor leaders, Bursey spent the first months of Trump’s second term waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Heritage Foundation’s manifesto had called for the dismantling of public sector unions and privatization of various agencies. Within weeks of the inauguration, federal workers were already experiencing “trauma,” as Project 2025 architect and Office of Management and Budget chief Russell Vought had promised. But the first sweeping assault on the unions arrived in mid-March in an executive order clawing back labor rights across dozens of agencies. Bursey’s chapter was booted from its office—a minor ding next to the loss of hard-won guarantees of good working conditions and paid parental leave, which went out the window along with the workers’ collective bargaining rights. The VA’s new political appointees issued a dubious statement, claiming taxpayers were losing millions of dollars as agency employees spent work hours on union activities. Bursey did set aside some of his day for union tasks, but given his $52,000 salary, the numbers didn’t add up. “We save the American taxpayer money,” he counters. “We see issues within the VA. We help them become more efficient.” Not only that, but the administration had, in one fell swoop, squandered the considerable resources that went into creating that collective bargaining pact. “The government spent a lot of money with their attorneys to sit down and negotiate with the union,” Bursey says. “And then the government just says, ‘Yeah, it’s not real. I don’t believe in it anymore.’” Across town, at Boise Airport, local Transportation Security Administration workers were staring into a similarly uncertain future. A few weeks before Trump issued his order, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had announced she was canceling TSA’s collective bargaining agreement. “That’s kind of like my work bible,” says Cameron Cochems, who leads Idaho’s TSA union chapter. “But if the laws of the country are just kind of going away, then what’s stopping [workers’ rights] from just getting thrown in the trash can, too?” Cochems’ and Bursey’s chapters both fall under the umbrella of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union. It’s been a busy year for AFGE’s lawyers who—alongside a handful of other unions—have filed eight lawsuits on their workers’ behalf. In July, a federal judge temporarily reinstated the collective bargaining agreement for TSA workers, pending a final decision. In the meantime, there’s little to do but wait. “A lot of the members, I felt, were kind of despondent about it,” Cochems says, “because they’re just like, ‘Oh, the union is so weak anyway, especially because we can’t strike.’” > Amid DOGE’s assault, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) went on a rant > suggesting federal jobs are not “real jobs” and the workers “do not deserve > their paychecks.” Unless you’ve worked for the government (as I did until February of this year), you might be surprised to learn that striking is a felony for federal workers. The government had always cracked down on public sector strikes, but they were officially outlawed in 1947, made punishable by fines, jail time, and a lifetime ban from government work. Even asserting a right to strike—or belonging to an organization that does—can bring about those consequences. Civil servants have staged illegal strikes in the past, but for decades, no one has dared run afoul of the laws, tranquilizing a once-militant workforce. “A lot of people think that since we don’t have the right to strike,” Cochems says, “we’re kind of like a paper tiger.” Lately though, federal unions have been showing they are still relevant. Take Adam Larson, who a few years ago was “voluntold” into a leadership post with the National Federation for Federal Employees (NFFE) chapter for Idaho’s Forest Service workers. As Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began bulldozing agencies with zero transparency, Larson’s nascent presidency shifted into high gear, his chapter becoming a key source of information and support. “No one knew anything. The [Forest Service] wasn’t sharing any information with us,” Larson recalls. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this is a tough situation. Here’s what we know. We’ll share more when we find it.’” The workers were grateful to hear from someone. The chapter organized dinners for targeted employees and helped people share their stories with news outlets. Bursey and Cochems conducted their own triage operations, orchestrating pickets against the mass firings and, more recently, mounting food drives for essential workers unpaid during the shutdown. This mutual aid has been a lifeline for many, even if it doesn’t solve the bigger problems. Under the anti-strike laws, big-ticket negotiations became the purview of national union leaders, not local chapters. The result is “a quieting of on-the-ground work, because I think a lot of members are just like, ‘Oh yeah, they’ll take care of that at the higher levels,’” Larson says. “Decades of that have kind of declawed us.” The public sector has a much larger share of unionized workers than the private sector, but the rights of the civil servants have lagged far behind. Since the 1930s, federal laws have allowed private sector employees to unionize and strike, but it would be decades before federal workers could even bargain as a unit. A few piecemeal laws and executive orders were solidified into the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which lays out federal workers’ limited rights. Their unions cannot bargain over pay and benefits, for example, because those pertain to federal spending—congressional turf, even though Congress has all but ceded its spending authority to Trump. Unions may negotiate how employees are classified within the rubric that determines salaries, but other restrictions are spelled out clearly, including the criminalization of strikes. (Most states also prohibit state and local government employees from striking, and about a third forbid public sector collective bargaining.) The rationale for these restrictive laws is that allowing civil servants to strike would give them—relative to other citizens—unfair influence over government. By threatening work stoppages, they could sway policies and influence how tax dollars are spent. And because their services are often essential—think air traffic controllers—the ability to strike would make unions “so strong politically, the mayor of the town will always cave to the striking union,” explains Joseph Slater, a professor of law at the University of Toledo and an expert on public sector labor. That’s the theory, anyway. Slater is unconvinced. “I think that concern is largely misplaced,” concurs Kate Andrias, a Columbia Law School professor who specializes in labor and constitutional issues. In countries and states where civil servants are allowed to strike, “there really hasn’t been a history of or a demonstration of circumstances where workers routinely abused that power.” > “I could make more in the outside community doing what I do, but I believe in > the mission of the VA.” That’s partly because striking demands sacrifice. “The difficulty of actually going on strike and losing a paycheck is a very significant check on the ability of workers to go on strike,” Andrias says. Government workers, by and large, are not highly paid, so a strike is a big ask that most workers won’t agree to unless the outcome is vital. The public benefits, too, when federal workers are well-treated. The ability to negotiate fair pay and benefits results in lower turnover and a more experienced workforce, which in turn delivers better services—although that perspective contrasts sharply with Republican rhetoric depicting civil servants as acting against the public interest. Amid DOGE’s assault, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) went on a nonsensical tirade suggesting that federal jobs are not “real jobs” and federal workers “do not deserve their paychecks.” Such sentiments were pervasive long before Trump’s minions started kneecapping the federal workforce. In a May 2024 proposal to reduce federal employee benefits, House Republicans asserted, “The biggest losers in this system are hardworking taxpayers who are forced to subsidize the bloated salaries of unqualified and unelected bureaucrats working to force a liberal agenda on a country that does not want it.” Pay stubs tell a different story. According to an analysis of 2022 data from the Congressional Budget Office, federal workers without a college degree tend to make a bit more than they would in similar private sector roles—perhaps because less-educated workers are more likely to be shortchanged by private employers—but people with advanced and professional degrees earn significantly less than their private sector counterparts. “I could make more in the outside community doing what I do, but I believe in the mission of the VA,” Bursey says. “When they’re saying we’re taking millions of dollars away from the American taxpayer, that’s not true.” Historically, civil servants have leveraged their collective bargaining power and risked strikes to, at least in part, actively improve government services. “The piece that people don’t appreciate is that they are purpose driven. They’re there to serve the public,” Max Stier, CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, told one of my Mother Jones colleagues. “They are not clock watchers. They’re not lazy,” he adds. “If they’re in NASA, it’s because they want to explore the universe. If they’re at the VA, it’s because they want to serve veterans.” Trump’s attempt to destroy the much-maligned “administrative state” have already succeeded in making government less effective and less responsive to people’s needs. The onslaught has, among other things, harmed the ability of already strapped federal agencies to collect weather data; compile key agricultural, economic, and housing statistics; conduct scientific research; and respond to climate disasters. Former IRS chief John Koskinen predicted that the gutting and demoralization of that agency’s staff will likely result in a disastrous upcoming tax season—with significant revenue losses thanks to the summary firing of sophisticated auditors and enforcement personnel. “People think that we’re just focusing on ourselves. That’s not the case at all,” Cochems told me. “We’re focusing on making the country a better place for all of us.” I heard this sentiment from every labor scholar and leader I spoke with, but it’s a message that demands a receptive audience. Notes law professor Slater: “It is not at all clear that anybody in the Trump administration believes that argument or even cares tremendously about certain agencies functioning well.” Many legal experts see a strong First Amendment case for the right of public sector workers to strike, because what is a federal strike if not people exercising their rights to speak, assemble peacefully, and petition the government for grievances? The Supreme Court has broadly protected the right of workers to unionize, but it has yet to extend First Amendment protections to union activities. One one hand, “there’s never been a Supreme Court case squarely saying you don’t have a right to strike,” Slater offers, but “given our current Supreme Court, I doubt that’s going to change.” A legal precedent exists for stripping union protections from certain agencies, but Trump has stretched it to the extreme. The Civil Service Reform Act states that a president can revoke collective bargaining rights from workers handling serious national security matters. In the past, the stipulation has been applied only to agencies like the CIA, but now, “Trump is basically saying most of the federal government does that,” Slater says. “That’s an extremely aggressive interpretation.” > When air traffic controllers launched their illegal strike in 1981, > “everything unfolded fast…The government really brought down a sledgehammer.” The administration claims the national security provision pertains to everything from the Department of Justice to obscure agencies like the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Unions are fighting back in the courts, but that’s a path available for only the most paramount of grievances. For other labor disputes on Trump’s watch, workers are out of luck. Barred from striking, federal unions are left with arbitration, the highest level of which goes through the 10-member Federal Services Impasses Panel. This is where civil servants are supposed to turn when negotiations are gridlocked—the point at which nongovernment workers might walk off the job. FSIP is staffed by presidential appointees, typically labor rights experts like Slater, who served on the panel under President Biden. A shuffling of panelists is normal when a new administration comes in, but early in his second term, Trump basically nuked the panel—every seat has been vacant since February. Government bodies tasked with resolving lower-level disputes—such as the Merit Systems Protection Board—have been similarly and “intentionally” disabled, Slater says. And those mechanisms are especially important now, given the deteriorating relationships between federal workers and their bosses. When Trump’s people came in, “I saw a massive shift in the tone in which upper management was speaking to the union and started treating [VA] employees,” Bursey says. “That’s been really hard to watch.” He’s heard managers assert that union posters in agency hallways constitute propaganda. In such an environment, it’s hard to imagine resolving any clashes amicably. And now there’s nowhere to turn. There’s a union slogan that was common in the 1960s and ’70s, when public sector strikes were tolerated for a time: There are no illegal strikes, just unsuccessful ones. Many of the rights public sector employees have today were the product not of lawsuits and arbitration, but of illegal strikes by teachers, sanitation workers, and federal employees. In response, states began to recognize the labor rights of their own civil servants, which eventually led the federal government to establish union rights for its workforce. Things were looking up for organized labor. And then came the PATCO fiasco. On the morning of August 3, 1981, 13,000 air traffic controllers walked off the job. They demanded better pay and shorter hours, as increased air travel was straining the workforce and causing safety concerns. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization had been in a stalemate with the Federal Aviation Administration for years, and union leaders began planning an illegal strike. When the controllers finally stepped off the job, “everything unfolded fast,” says Joseph McCartin, a professor of labor history at Georgetown University and author of Collision Course, a book about the PATCO strike. “The government really brought down a sledgehammer.” Air traffic controllers picket at a radar station where they worked in Long Island, New York, August 5, 1981.Keystone/Zuma They were on the picket line only a few hours when President Ronald Reagan, in a televised press conference, gave the controllers 48 hours to return to work or be fired. Reagan’s attorney general announced he would start filing criminal charges as early as that afternoon. No federal employees had ever been charged for striking before, and the workers held strong. But Reagan didn’t cave. He fired 11,000 air traffic controllers, the union was decertified, and PATCO leaders served jail time. The move sent shockwaves through the federal workforce and ushered in an era of union-busting that has broadly reduced the power of labor. Strike activity waned in the private sector, and there hasn’t been a federal strike since. “You see what happened to the PATCO workers, and one might imagine an even more aggressive stance by the Trump administration,” Slater says. > “Russell Vought said that he wants to make our lives miserable and so knowing > that…has really engaged a lot of people.” McCartin views things differently. “I fear that some of the leaders of the federal unions really almost took the wrong lessons from the PATCO strike,” he says. After all, the controllers had some major factors working against them in 1981. They’d threatened to strike long before it happened, giving the government time to bring in military personnel who were qualified to manage the airspace and willing to cross picket lines. More importantly, the union didn’t have the public on its side. While some of the controllers’ demands involved public safety, they sought a $10,000 raise (almost $36,000 today)—an off-putting amount when many Americans were feeling the squeeze of an impending recession. What’s more, Reagan, PATCO’s adversary, was a popular president who had just survived an assassination attempt, rocketing his favorability ratings above 70 percent. If federal workers went on strike today, they might receive a more sympathetic hearing from a public who saw them in line at food banks during the shutdown. Today’s villains are more clear-cut, too: a government that aspires to put its own workers “in trauma,” as Vought phrased it, and is openly corrupt to boot. “We are not allowed to take anything while we’re on duty in our official capacity, even a candy bar,” Cochems says. “But then we see videos of people in elected offices in the White House basically swimming it up with cryptocurrency kings. All these people are making millions of dollars or getting a $40 billion plane…or whatever the hell—in their official capacity.” Given all of this, previously disinterested employees are warming up to collective action. As DOGE hacked agencies apart, union sign-ups spiked. In February, AFGE announced the highest number of dues-paying members in its history. More than 14,000 people joined the union in the first five weeks of 2025, about as many as it had gained the entire previous year. “They say that the boss is the best organizer,” Larson explains. “Russell Vought said that he wants to make our lives miserable and so knowing that that’s coming down the pipe has really engaged a lot of people.” But the mass layoffs put a dent in union membership. Since January, the government has shed an estimated 10 percent of its civilian workforce, with some agencies and union chapters much more heavily gutted. “Most of my department took the deferred resignation program after months of getting illegally fired and then rehired and then treated like hot garbage,” Larson told me, his own Forest Service team having shrunk from 10 workers to three. > Many workers opposed their national unions urging Democrats to end the > shutdown: “We were willing to suffer a little bit longer to make sure that the > greater good was achieved.” Trump’s sweeping anti-union order also decimated union membership; federal payroll systems stopped collecting the dues that are normally deducted from members’ paychecks, which many workers only realized upon scrutinizing their pay stubs. Without knowledge or consent, they’d been dropped from the rolls. “We’re steadily getting them back, and we’re steadily losing people,” Bursey says. “That was hard to take.” He and the other leaders have worked so hard to build up their membership over the past few years, only “to see it just rapidly decline, pretty much overnight.” Bursey now believes someone in his regional office management has been spreading false rumors that the union is kaput. Members call him up, saying, “I want to drop. You guys don’t exist anymore,” he says. “My first response is, ‘How did you get ahold of me? The union cellphone! We’re still here!’” The compounding indignities have led more union chapters to seek safety in numbers. Bursey and Cochems have been collaborating with other Idaho-based workers, including Larson’s NFFE chapter. “We’re all in lockstep,” Bursey says. The Federal Unionists Network, which started out a few years ago as a WhatsApp group chat, has evolved into a government-wide worker collective. They distribute information and resources and mobilize federal employees to turn out for national protests like “No Kings,” as well as local actions. A picket line of workers who will still clock in isn’t as disruptive as a strike, but it’s more energizing, and visible, than lawsuits and arbitration sessions. Everyone can participate. “Cameron [Cochems] has been coming out to our pickets 100 percent of the time,” along with every registered Democrat in Boise, Bursey jokes. “There’s not many, but they’re feisty, let me tell you.” In early 2025, union members led a march, sponsored by more than 60 unions and public interest groups, through lower Manhattan to protest mass layoffs and agency budget cuts by the Trump administration.Gina M Randazzo/Zuma During our video call, Cochems points to a sign on his wall reading Solidarity! Solidarity! Solidarity! This ethos transcends unions, he says. Federal workers are increasingly feeling more in solidarity with the public than with their national union leaders. When Everett Kelley, AFGE’s national president, asked Congress to end the shutdown four weeks in, many workers interpreted it as a call for the Democrats to cave. And when the NFFE applauded the Senate for passing a resolution that failed to extend the Obamacare subsidies, as Democrats had demanded to keep health insurance affordable, a lot of federal workers felt betrayed. “I’m definitely angry about it, because I’ve seen the people that were suffering for it, but like, We’re going to get that to get that health care,” Bursey says. “We were willing to suffer a little bit longer to make sure that the greater good was achieved.” There are indications that the administration’s union-busting may have gone further than the public is willing to stomach. Last week, 20 House Republicans joined Democrats in passing a bill (the Protect America’s Workforce Act) that would reverse Trump’s anti-union executive order. The GOP showing may be performative—the bill faces greater obstacles in the Senate—but this at least suggests that vulnerable Republicans are getting an earful from constituents. An illegal strike would be a last resort, of course, and many workers fear Vought et al would use it as an opportunity for further firings. Some civil servants, too, view striking as antithetical to their mission. At the VA, “we’re providing health care, so if we shut down in a strike, where’s that veteran going to go?” Bursey says. “To go on strike would kind of go against our own oath with the VA, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to fight.” They are, in any case, growing impatient. The legal system moves excruciatingly slowly, and with mixed results. Many workers want to see action before it’s too late. “Every day could be our last day doing this,” Cochems says. “I just feel like I’m living on borrowed time.” Taking action might just mean more picketing, and workers reaching out to members of Congress directly instead of trusting national union figures to lobby on their behalf. But the biggest goal is to win over the public. “I think everybody will get to a point where the American population is going to get so fed up with this that 7 million people for the No Kings protest is going to look like a trickle,” Bursey says. “That’s what we’re working toward.”

BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative-led coalition received an unsolicited political lifeline from an unlikely place — but it comes at a cost. Germany’s far-left Die Linke ― The Left ― party on Wednesday announced that its lawmakers will abstain from a vote on a pension package set for Friday, a move that effectively assures the package will pass and potentially saves Merz from a humiliation that would have further undermined his already-weak coalition government. The announcement from far-left leaders came as Merz was attempting to quell a rebellion by 18 young lawmakers inside his own conservative bloc who argue that current pension benefits aren’t sustainable. Because Merz’s coalition has a narrow parliamentary majority of only 12 votes, passage of the pension package had remained in doubt. The Left’s leaders said they were acting not to help the coalition, but rather to protect pensioners from cuts. Conservatives “have been playing power games at the expense of millions of pensioners across the country,” The Left’s parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek said in a statement. “It is absolutely disgraceful that the conservative bloc does not even allow pensioners to have butter on their bread.” The Left’s decision to abstain bails Merz out of an immediate political mess that casted doubt on the ability of his coalition — an ideologically divergent alliance between Merz’s conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — to pass key legislation just several months after taking office. Johannes Winkel, a young conservative lawmaker, said in an online post that he intended to vote against the pension package on Friday. | John Macdougal/Getty Images At the same time, The Left’s unsolicited help is an embarrassment of its own kind, creating the politically damaging impression that Merz’s coalition required the support of far-left foes his party views as too radical to work with. Should The Left’s 64 lawmakers follow through on the vow to abstain in the Bundestag on Friday, it will bring down overall number of votes coalition lawmakers need to pass the pension legislation, providing indirect help. In a kind of face-saving measure, conservative leaders continue to try to secure support of the young conservative rebels for the pension package. Yet, on Wednesday, it was still unclear whether the effort would bear fruit. Coalition leaders last Friday announced a compromise on pensions — agreeing to weigh far more sweeping reforms as early as next year — that they had hoped would assuage the concerns of young conservatives. But many continue to reject the immediate pension package. Johannes Winkel, a young conservative lawmaker, said in an online post that he intended to vote against the pension package on Friday. “Germany urgently needs reforms because demographic change will have an unprecedented impact on public finances,” he said. “Intergenerational justice finally requires practical decisions instead of symbolic politics.” Rasmus Buchsteiner contributed reporting.

Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.

BRUSSELS — The European Union has approved a proposal to curb trade benefits for developing countries that refuse to take back migrants whose stay in the bloc has been denied. Low-tariff access to the EU’s market will be reviewed in the context of “the readmission of that country’s own nationals” who have been identified as “irregular migrants to the Union,” a document seen by POLITICO confirms. Negotiators from the Council of the EU, the European Parliament and the European Commission agreed to the draft text late Monday night. The push to link trade measures to migration policy comes amid major advances by far-right parties across Europe and calls for governments to get tougher on enforcing returns. Currently, only a small share of those eligible for removal from the EU are actually deported — many because their home countries refuse to cooperate. “In case of serious and systematic shortcomings related to the international obligation to readmit a beneficiary country’s own nationals, the preferential arrangements … may be withdrawn temporarily, in respect of all or of certain products originating in that beneficiary country, where the Commission considers that an insufficient level of cooperation on readmission persists,” it reads. The readmission clause will be applied with more or less stringent conditions depending on a country’s development level, the document also says. The measures, which would only be invoked after dialog with countries, are being included in an overhaul of the so-called Generalized Scheme of Preferences, a 50-year old program that enables poorer countries to export goods to EU countries at lower tariff rates. The review of the program, which has been under negotiation for over three years, is designed to help these nations build their economies and is tied to the implementation of human rights, labor and environmental reforms. However, the issue of cheap rice imports from Pakistan or Bangladesh threatened to collapse the talks before the eventual agreement on Monday, amid concerns from EU producers like Spain and Italy that want to ensure their own farmers are not outcompeted. EU countries have long been considering the idea of using trade, development and visa policies to ensure third countries agree to take back failed migrants, amid growing public discontent that has driven victories for far-right parties at the ballot box. However, the proposals had faced opposition from the Parliament, as well as the Commission and a handful of capitals that feared this would upend relations with key partner countries. Denmark’s center-left government set its sights on migration as a key issue for its presidency, which ends on Dec. 31. Justice and home affairs ministers will meet next Monday to discuss ways to ensure more people leave the EU after their applications to stay are rejected, including through so-called return hubs in third countries.

BERLIN — Germany is facing crises from conscription to pensions, a troubled auto industry and faltering economic growth, and figuring out politically palatable solutions is splintering Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition. “There have been too many public discussions that have been interpreted as disputes,” Merz pleaded last week of his fractious coalition of conservative Christian Democrats and center-left Social Democrats (SPD).   “The government must solve problems. And the government must not give the impression that it is divided,” Merz went on, “Then the confidence of the population in the political parties and also in the individuals involved will gradually grow again.”    With top politicians of the center left and center right feuding over key government policies, it’s affecting Germany’s place at the heart of the EU as other countries are having a hard time figuring out Berlin’s position on a host of key issues. There are also growing doubts over the coalition’s long-term survival prospects. Fewer than one-third of Germans think the coalition will be able to govern until the end of the legislative period in 2029, according to a survey by polling institute Insa for Bild, which also saw government approval fall to a record low of just 25 percent. At the same time, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has recently overtaken Merz’s conservatives as Germany’s most popular party, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, and its rising strength is adding to coalition tensions. Since taking office in May, Merz’s Christian Democrats have tried to take the wind out of the sails of the anti-immigrant AfD by vowing to lead a crackdown on migration. But members of the SPD, Merz’s junior coalition partner, are increasingly trying to distance themselves from a discourse they say is taken straight out of the far-right playbook. The deputy leader of the SPD in parliament, Wiebke Esdar, went as far as joining anti-Merz protests over the weekend.   “The two major parties of the former center are now in a dilemma in that, on the one hand, they naturally have to distance themselves from each other to a certain extent, but at the same time they must always fear that, in a sense, if they do not work together properly, it will benefit the fringes,” said Florian Grotz, a political scientist at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.  KEY DIVISIONS A prime example of the coalition’s messy infighting is its battle over military conscription, a dispute over both the army’s future and how present it should be in Germany’s national identity.  The Bundeswehr needs to reach 260,000 troops by 2035 from about 180,000 today. The conservatives want to reintroduce a “lottery-based” draft if voluntary recruitment fails, invoking civic duty as the backbone of national resilience.   The SPD, backed by Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, counters that coercion will only breed inefficiency at a crucial time for Germany’s rearmament. Pistorius has already torpedoed a compromise between the two parliamentary groups, rejecting the reintroduction of mandatory elements.  The deputy leader of the SPD in parliament, Wiebke Esdar, went as far as joining anti-Merz protests over the weekend. | Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images Both sides agree that the army needs people — but not on how to rebuild a force gutted by decades of neglect. Critics warn that six-month stints for 18-year-old conscripts would barely scratch the surface of the Bundeswehr’s high-tech needs.  The issues have grown into a referendum on postwar Germany’s self-image and whether the country’s ability to implement wide-ranging reforms is equitable for everyone — young and old. While the SPD is trying to protect the young from a mandatory draft, a whole other generational issue has triggered a rebellion inside Merz’s own bloc: pension reform. At the center of it is SPD Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, who wants to lock in the current pension level of 48 percent of average wages beyond 2031. She argues that safeguard is essential to prevent benefit cuts when Germany’s baby boom generation retires later this decade.  For Germany, this is no small matter. Pensions are the country’s largest single item of public spending — more than defense, education or health — and the system rests on a delicate pact between workers and retirees. The coming years will see millions leaving the workforce while far fewer young people enter it, threatening to push the pay-as-you-go model to the brink.  But for a bloc of younger Christian Democratic lawmakers that looks like an act of generational theft. Bas’ reform means about “€115 billion in additional costs” by 2040, according to a position paper by the 18 lawmakers who say they want to block it, seen by POLITICO. The revolt has turned into a test of Merz’s authority. His government’s 12-seat parliamentary majority is among the smallest in postwar German history, meaning that a relatively small group of lawmakers can easily stymie any measure. THE END OF AN ERA  The coalition’s gridlock is also being felt in Brussels. The EU’s 2035 phaseout of combustion engines — a crucial issue for Germany’s car industry that anchors nearly a fifth of the country’s exports — is another dicey issue that exposes Germany’s fading grip on Europe’s industrial transition.  Merz’s Christian Democratic Union and the SPD have tentatively backed a compromise to keep the EU’s 2035 ban in principle while creating exemptions for plug-in hybrids, “range-extender” vehicles that use small combustion engines to add range to batteries, and some synthetic fuels.   But the Bavarian Christian Social Union, the sister party of Merz’s CDU, has flatly refused. Bavarian premier Markus Söder has framed the ban as an assault on Germany’s industrial soul, warning Brussels to turn back its “ideological regulations.” Söder’s strong rejection is based on the influence of car giants such as BMW and Audi in Bavaria, but also on political fear, two people familiar with the CSU’s strategic thinking, granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, told POLITICO’s Berlin Playbook. Bavarian premier Markus Söder has framed the ban as an assault on Germany’s industrial soul. | Boris Roessler/picture alliance via Getty Images Söder worries about ceding working-class voters to the far-right AfD, they said, which has turned the defense of the combustion engine into a rallying cry ahead of next year’s communal elections.   The European Commission will start reviewing its car-emission regulation by the end of the year and expects member countries to communicate their positions beforehand. While other big countries such as France and Spain are trying to uphold the ban, Germany is essentially voiceless as long as the government has no common position. Defining a new approach toward pressing questions — including on the way forward for the German car industry —has become even more important as the old global system that saw Germany become Europe’s dominant economy looks increasingly tattered. During the long 2005-2021 rule of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany’s prosperity rested on three pillars: exports to China, cheap gas from Russia and U.S. protection through NATO. They have all crumbled, shattered by Chinese market barriers, Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,and President Donald Trump’s questioning of U.S. security guarantees for Europe. “Germany has created and enjoyed relatively favorable conditions during the Merkel era — economically, geopolitically, etc., and little provision has been made for the future,” said Grotz, the political science professor. “That is why difficulties exist now not only in one area, but in many.”  The result is a country forced to reinvent itself — but the fear of fringe parties is keeping mainstream politicians frozen, said Sabine Kropp, a political science professor at the Freie Universität Berlin. “A truly poor approach at the moment is the constant fear of the AfD,” she said. `”Everything is viewed through the lens of whether it benefits or harms the AfD, and that reduces the ability to solve problems.” Laura Hülsemann and Rasmus Buchsteiner contributed to this report. 

THE HAGUE — Frans Timmermans rose to the pinnacle of European Union politics. But it was his own Brussels legacy that sabotaged his attempt to defeat the far right. Timmermans resigned as the leader of the GreenLeft-Labor alliance Wednesday night after a stunning underperformance in the Dutch general election, with the party losing five seats since the last election and ending up in fourth place. “It’s clear that I, for whatever reason, couldn’t convince people to vote for us,” Timmermans said in a speech in Rotterdam after the exit polls were published Wednesday night. “It’s time that I take a step back and transfer the leading of our movement to the next generation.” The pan-European Party of European Socialists considered Timmermans living proof that progressive, left-wing politics are in for a comeback after a decade of losing ground to the right. To them, Timmermans was an international statesman with a real a chance at scoring the Netherland’s premiership, 23 years since the last government led by Social Democrats. But for Dutch voters, he was unable to shake his reputation as an outsider and elitist. And it was precisely that international experience that doomed him as a stodgy statesman in The Hague. As a European commissioner for nearly a decade, half of it spent as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s second-in-command, Timmermans delivered the flagship EU Green Deal package to fight climate change. The ailing GreenLeft-Labor alliance — which only recently began an official merger process — also put stock in Timmermans, bringing him back home to lead the charge against the surge of far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) in the national election of 2023. But his party failed to win the top slot, and was sidelined in government formation. Party leaders on the right demonized Timmermans and ran a hate campaign against him. | Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images Party leaders on the right demonized Timmermans, branding him as a green fanatic who would misspend taxpayer cash, should he be given the chance to govern. Dilan Yeşilgöz, the leader of Mark Rutte’s liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), called him “arrogant” and “elitist” on several occasions — as did other leaders. Hopes for Timmerman rose again this past June when the right-wing government, led by Geert Wilders’ PVV, collapsed. With all major parties now pledging to sideline the far right, and with favorable polls placing his party second after PVV, Timmermans seemed to have another shot at leading the next Dutch government. But much as he tried, Timmermans failed to get rid of his EU past and lead his own country. BRUSSELS ARROGANCE During the EU election in 2019, Timmermans was the lead candidate of the European Socialists, campaigning across EU countries and on many occasions speaking the local tongue — as he is fluent in six languages. This impressive international flair earned him supporters in Brussels — but not so much in his home country. Since his return to Dutch politics, Timmermans’ problem has been that he is seen as an intellectual focused on foreign affairs, coming from the outside to lecture Dutch voters, campaign expert Alex Klusman and Leiden University politics professor Sarah de Lange told POLITICO ahead of the vote. “He has a handicap, because he’s perceived as this relatively well-off cosmopolitan” — an image that creates tension with the idea of defending “the interests of ordinary Dutch citizens,” said de Lange. Over the years, Timmermans has grappled with being seen as arrogant after years of keeping his head out of the country — first, as state secretary of EU affairs and minister of foreign affairs for seven years, followed by his tenure at the European Commission for nine years, said Klusman, who is the CEO of the BKB campaigning agency. When he came back to the Netherlands in 2023, Dutch citizens saw Timmermans as someone who was lecturing them — “telling them what to do, and at the same time somebody who had lost complete contact with what the Netherlands had become,” Klusman said. By that time, Klusman pointed out, the country had become widely dominated by right-wing politicians distrustful of the EU. Timmermans indeed worked hard to change his image. He sought to convey a more energetic, healthier politician campaigning across the country. | Dingena Mol/ANP/AFP via Getty Images For a man who had been in charge of devising the core of the Green Deal — now used in a counter-campaign by portraying it as killing Europe’s businesses — it was not a smooth landing. An article by Dutch newspaper NRC ahead of the vote argued that GreenLeft-Labor is increasingly associated with words like elitist, cosmopolitan and moralistic. “This image, partly the result of years of hard work by Geert Wilders, has stuck with many voters,” the analysis said. “GreenLeft-Labor is finding it difficult to shake that off.” Timmermans himself was keenly aware of that image, which he fought hard to leave behind. The perception of him as an outsider in his own country, Timmermans said when asked by POLITICO prior to the Dutch vote, “was very relevant two years ago when I came back — but last year, year-and-a-half, this has not been an issue.” “People remember that I was in government, that I was in the European Commission. But it’s no longer ‘the guy who comes to lecture us,’ because I’ve been active in Dutch politics again for two full years in the forefront of national politics,” he added. FAILED MAKEOVER Timmermans indeed worked hard to change his image. He sought to convey a more energetic, healthier politician campaigning across the country, while living in his hometown Maastricht to show he is connected to his roots. That makeover included dramatic weight loss after a gastric bypass surgery he underwent a year ago — which he descrribed at length in an interview with Dutch daily De Telegraaf, known to be especially critical of Timmermans, to try make him more palatable to right-wing voters.  But, according to Klusman, key for Timmermans were the “two years of humbleness lessons” doing parliamentary work as opposition leader after he lost the election in 2023. “In the beginning, he would never say that he wasn’t right, that he made a wrong remark or a wrong position in a debate,” said Klusman. But “now he’d think, and then he’d say, ‘no, I made a mistake.’” Timmermans began to listen instead of lecture, Klusman added. As the EU’s Green Deal architect, he brought the message home by focusing on the social aspects of climate change — for example, Timmermans tapped the narrative that building out renewable energy will reduce the energy bills for Dutch households. But despite all efforts, personal opinion ratings a few days before the election showed the wider Dutch population did not like Timmermans, giving him among the lowest grades on Oct. 27. “He is clearly not perceived as a new Timmermans,” said de Lange. “He’s very much perceived as the same figure he was in 2023” — as a party leader with strong credentials as a minister and a commissioner — “but far less as a fighter in politics and campaigning,” she concluded. Eva Hartog and Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.

HOW TO WATCH THE DUTCH ELECTION LIKE A PRO POLITICO lays out everything you need to know about a critical vote that is currently too close to call, as far-right Geert Wilders takes on the mainstream again. By EVA HARTOG Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO Europe is holding its breath: Will the Netherlands swing left or maintain its rightward course? The Dutch head to the polls Wednesday for a vote that could cement the far right as the most popular political party in the Netherlands — and expose the wider struggle European centrists face to beat back anti-establishment forces. But even if anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders wins the election, as current opinion polls suggest he might, he is short of allies and has next to no chance of becoming prime minister, or even being in government — likely setting off a scramble to form a coalition that excludes the far right. The last Dutch government was in office for less than a year — 336 days to be exact — before it collapsed, triggering the third election in five years, as the Netherlands struggles to govern itself. To get you prepared for more drama, we’ve compiled this essential guide to everything you need to know ahead of the big reveal Wednesday evening. WHO’S RUNNING? Twenty-seven parties spanning the political spectrum will be competing for 150 seats in parliament, and a chance at having one of their own appointed as Dutch prime minister. WHEN DO WE GET THE RESULTS? Polls open Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. CET and close at 9 p.m. Exit polls are announced as soon as voting ends — and around midnight, national news agency ANP publishes preliminary results. Figures per municipality will trickle in over the course of the evening, and final results can be expected the next day. WHAT SHOULD I WATCH OUT FOR? The main question is not just whether Dutch voters will lean left or right, but also which of the many competing parties on each side they’ll go for. Whether supporters of the far-right populist Party for Freedom (PVV) will stick with founder Geert Wilders, shift to another hard-right or right-wing party, or stay home altogether will be critical. In short: it’s a political battle royal. WHAT ARE THE POLLS SAYING?  For weeks, polls have suggested that the PVV will come out on top — while its former coalition partner, the center-right liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), is lagging. The centrist D66 is having a real moment, with all eyes on its leader Rob Jetten, who is giving the large traditional parties a run for their money in his bid to become the party’s first prime minister in Dutch history. THE NETHERLANDS NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS All 3 Years 2 Years 1 Year 6 Months Smooth Kalman For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls. In a tightly contested election, the Christian Democratic Appeal’s down-to-earth Henri Bontenbal is another candidate who has been floated as the potential next prime minister — given no one wants to team up with Wilders — a prospect that would’ve shocked anyone watching two years ago when voters ditched the conservative CDA en masse Green-Left Labor, led by veteran politician Frans Timmermans, is also in the mix. But as the Dutch say: Don’t sell the hide before the bear is shot. In the last election, most voters didn’t make up their minds until the final moments. This means that for Wilders especially, turnout will be critical. No matter what his result, he is expected to be frozen out of coalition talks, having burned too many bridges in The Hague. If he wins the most votes but is still sidelined from government, he’s likely to use it as ammunition to argue his followers are being ignored and Dutch democracy is dead. A RECAP The Dutch are still reeling from the electoral earthquake that upended the political landscape in 2023, when Wilders’ PVV won the most votes for the first time ever.  After decades of being politically sidelined for its anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment standpoints, the PVV was suddenly at the center of the most right-wing government in modern Dutch history.  To form a coalition, it teamed up with three other forces right of center, including the VVD and two smaller newcomer parties. But from Day One, the alliance was plagued by infighting and public drama worthy of a soap opera. And Wilders, considered too toxic for the post of prime minister, criticized his own coalition relentlessly from the parliament benches. And since we’re already dragging up old cows out of the ditch (Nederglish for bringing up old grievances) … … THE (MOST RECENT) COLLAPSE That brings us to this past June, when Wilders suddenly quit the coalition, arguing it wasn’t strict enough on migration despite the fact that the asylum and migration minister wore a PVV badge. The question now is: Will Dutch voters opt for stability by moving back to the center, or will they forgive Wilders for triggering a political meltdown and opt for more far-right disruption? For weeks, polls have suggested that the PVV will be the big winner. | Carl Court/Getty Images The answer could have wide-ranging repercussions.  In a September report, the group Democracy Monitor warned of “urgent” democratic backsliding in the Netherlands, citing, among other factors, increased support for authoritarian leadership styles and declining public trust in politics overall.  WHAT ARE THE CAMPAIGN ISSUES?  Unsurprisingly, after the last two Cabinets collapsed over migration, limiting the number of asylum-seekers in the Netherlands is a central topic. One one end of the spectrum, the PVV is calling for a complete asylum ban (which goes against EU rules); while, on the other side, Green-Left Labor proposes a refugee quota and cooperation with Brussels.  Other major matters dominating the debate include housing, health care and — to a lesser extent — the climate. There is broad agreement on raising defense spending to the NATO target of 5 percent of gross domestic product, though parties disagree on exactly how to finance this increase. Overall, the campaign has been rather tepid. VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz took on a cursing Wilders in a game of Mario Kart; D66’s Rob Jetten showed off his IQ in a TV game show; and CDA’s Bontenbal tried to charm online voters with a video of him making a his own kapsalon.  But the temperature has risen somewhat in the last few days, with Timmermans threatening legal action after media linked PVV parliamentarians to an AI-driven attack against him online, while rising star Jetten was reprimanded by a TV host for making a “sexist” remark about a Dutch princess. SO, WILL THE DUTCH HAVE A NEW LEADER THE DAY AFTER THE VOTE?  Ha! No.  The election result is only the starting gun for a long and convoluted negotiation process that rivals the choosing of a new pope. First, a scout is appointed to explore which parties could work together based on their electoral result and their views (a majority coalition requires 76 seats). Then, the baton is passed to a so-called informateur, who takes the talks a step further and draws up a preliminary coalition agreement.  45,000 demonstrators marched demanding the Dutch government improve its policy on climate change, just three days before the Dutch general election. | Charles M. Vella/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Finally, the informateur is replaced with a formateur, who is usually also the next prime minister, and who divvies up various ministries across the coalition parties. Once the Cabinet is assembled, they pay a traditional visit to the Dutch King and — voilà—white smoke. WHEN WILL WE KNOW WHAT THE NEXT GOVERNMENT WILL LOOK LIKE?  That is anyone’s guess. The last Cabinet formation took 223 days. The all-time record stands at 299 days. (If that makes your jaw drop, we kindly refer you to neighboring Belgium, where the record is 541 days.)  If we Dutch people can manage it, you won’t have to read another one of these again until the next planned election — in four years.  Koen Verhelst contributed to this report.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Coal miners, their family members, and union representatives rallied outside of the US Department of Labor’s headquarters in Washington one morning early last week, urging the Trump administration to enforce a rule that was meant to protect miners from serious health complications but has been on hold for months. The rally, which included members of the National Black Lung Association and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), sought to highlight how lax industry standards for exposure to dangerous substances have impacted workers, and demand the government move forward with stricter protections. A new Biden-era rule, which went into effect in June 2024, was meant to limit miners’ exposure to silica dust, which is released during the mining process. Those tiny silica particles can cause dangerous and irreversible damage to miners’ health, including black lung, silicosis, lung cancer and other diseases. “If we don’t [enforce the rule], this is just going to be an earlier death sentence for our miners,” said Vonda Robinson, vice president of the National Black Lung Association. “Twenty-eight years old, 30, 35 years old and passing away—that shouldn’t be.” > “Put a pillow over your face, and that’s how these coal miners breathe. They > smother every day.” The rule requires mining companies to lower exposure limits for silica to half the previously permitted amount. It also requires mine operators to monitor workers’ exposures to silica dust, compel them to provide periodic health examinations at no cost to miners and update standards for respiratory protection. For Robinson and many of the attendees, the fight is personal. Robinson’s husband was diagnosed with black lung at 47 years old and is now “totally disabled,” she said. Some attendees at the rally carried portable oxygen machines, while others held up pictures of loved ones who had died from the disease. Black lung has been on the rise in the past 20 years, despite previously having been on the decline since the 1970s. In central Appalachia, the disease now affects one in five miners with 25 years of mining experience, according to the UMWA. Coal mines were originally required to comply with the new rule by April 14, 2025. However, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) pushed back that deadline by four months just days before it was set to be implemented, citing the administration’s restructuring of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health as the reason for the pause. “Given the unforeseen NIOSH restructuring, and other technical reasons, MSHA offers this four-month temporary pause to provide time for operators to secure necessary equipment and otherwise come into compliance,” MSHA said at the time. Legal challenges filed by industry groups, including the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA) and the National Mining Association (NMA), prompted the Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a temporary stay halting enforcement of the rule. In a statement, NMA spokesperson Ashley Burke said that the association is “absolutely supportive of the new lower levels,” but that the rule “needs to allow for the use of administrative controls and personal protective equipment for compliance with the standard to supplement and enhance engineering controls.” “The MSHA rule must align with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s silica rule on methods of compliance,” Burke said, adding that OSHA “has adopted a strict but workable approach to achieve these same silica levels; we are asking for consistency across government.” Critics have said that those measures—such as rotating shifts and the use of respirators—are insufficient, arguing the practices would only increase the number of workers exposed to the dust and don’t sufficiently protect miners. The rule instead requires mining companies to implement engineering controls, such as ventilation and water sprays, as the primary method to meet lower exposure limits. > “President Trump loves to use coal miners as political props. But when the > cameras are turned off, he couldn’t care less.” MSHA chose not to defend the rule in court, instead asking the Eighth Circuit in August to keep the case on hold as it discusses a potential settlement with the industry groups. The agency also successfully urged the court to reject attempts by the American Thoracic Society, UMWA and United Steelworkers to intervene in the case in defense of the rule. The administration has now requested a third delay from the court due to the federal government shutdown. To some of those present at Tuesday’s rally, those moves represented a backslide on Trump’s promises to support coal workers. Trump is a vocal ally of the coal industry and has taken steps to boost production of the fuel in his first months in office. The president’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandated that millions of acres of federal lands be made available for mining, and his administration has consistently sought to prop up the industry in executive and regulatory actions. “President Trump said we’re going to dig, baby dig,” said Robinson. “OK, we can do that, but let’s take care of the health and safety of our miners.” “I would ask him—put a pillow over your face, and that’s how these coal miners breathe. They smother every day,” Robinson said. In an emailed statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said that “President Trump cares deeply about unleashing America’s energy potential, as well as standing up for those who fuel our country, such as hardworking coal miners.” “Blue collar Americans played a key role in sending President Trump back to the White House because they know he has their back, and with the help of great leaders across the administration…he is working tirelessly to deliver policies that improve the livelihoods of working families across the nation,” Kelly said. But Jason Walsh, a former Obama administration official and executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental organizations, said that Trump’s pro-coal rhetoric represented empty promises to the workers underpinning the industry. “President Trump loves to use coal miners as political props. But when the cameras are turned off, he couldn’t care less whether they’re sick or healthy,” Walsh said. “This is a guy who digs coal, loves coal, calls it beautiful. But what he really digs is coal industry profits. He really digs PAC checks from coal company CEOs. He couldn’t care less about miners or the communities they live in.”