| The labor movement is surging right now in America. Last week, Amazon workers on Staten Island voted to create the first union in Amazon's history. Union experts saw it as a stunning victory, largely because these warehouse workers formed a new union with virtually no backing from traditional institutional labor groups. They just did it on their own, over opposition from one of the largest corporations in the country.  Union organizer Chris Smalls, in baseball cap, and others celebrate on Staten Island last week. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP) (Eduardo Munoz Avarez/AP) | Over the past six months, Starbucks employees have voted to unionize in more than a dozen stores. Today, all three Starbucks in Ithaca, N.Y., voted to unionize, making that the first unionized Starbucks city. More than 100 other stores plan to vote soon. What's going on? "I don't know if anyone truly understands what's happening right now," said John Logan, a professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University. He and other experts say the pandemic is prompting workers to rethink how they interact with their companies. "Workers are seeing the stark inequalities that run our lives, which are made so much more visible by the pandemic," said Javier Morillo-Alicea, a former union leader and Democratic strategist. He said similar union pushes came when workers were down on their luck, such as in the post-war era. Logan said that for the past two years, factory workers and others unable to work from home during the pandemic have seen their jobs get tougher — and more dangerous. Meanwhile, their employers have made huge profits, and some temporary pandemic benefits such as hardship pay increases or paid sick leave have ended. "Jeff Bezos going to space was a very real organizing point," said Laura Bucci, who union issues at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. (Bezos, Amazon's founder, owns The Washington Post.) What's really interesting and different about this movement compared with past labor surges is that a lot of these union advocates are young and politically motivated, having experience with movements on the left, such as Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns or the Black Lives Matter movement, Logan said. It's not coming from union leaders with decades of experience. Your questions about the week in politics Q: Why is there so much coverage of Fox News and Tucker Carlson and Co.? And do we risk elevating these folks like the media did for Trump in 2016?  Protesters outside Fox News headquarters in New York this week. (Gabriele Holtermann/Sipa USA/AP) | A: I asked The Post's Aaron Blake, who writes quite a bit about Fox News, to answer this. Here's what he said: "It's a very valid question — and one that we all had a real come-to-Jesus about after the 2016 election. Coverage of Donald Trump swamped his GOP opponents. Trump was such an object of fascination that cable news ran his rallies live (on prime time!) without filtering through what was true and false. I'm not sure I agree it delivered Trump the White House, as some have suggested, but the former was unbalanced, and the latter wasn't really journalism. "As for Fox and Tucker, I sympathize with the argument. Plenty of conservatives have clearly made the calculation that provocation and saying outlandish things is a recipe for notoriety. Their movement is drawn to allies who 'own the libs,' even if their method of doing so is to spout nonsense and baseless conspiracy theories. Carlson knows what he's doing. "But also consider this: When Carlson's show debuted in 2016, it was already hitting huge ratings — the highest of the year in that time slot. Fox has traditionally been the most popular cable news channel and sometimes the most popular cable channel, period. People are watching — lots of them. It's a massive player in the conservative movement, often a leading indicator, and to ignore that would be a dereliction of duty for a political reporter. "Just because certain people don't respond to our skeptical coverage by turning against the subject of that reporting doesn't mean the reporting is bad or ill-conceived. Our obligation is to the truth and to holding powerful people accountable. And these are among the most powerful people in the world. In that way, I think this presents a different question even than coverage of Candidate Trump in 2016." Q: Which states are truly purple for the midterms? A: A good way to look at this is: Which states flipped from voting for Donald Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020 and now have competitive congressional races in 2022? Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia flipped to Biden. Of those five states, all but Michigan have competitive U.S. Senate races.  Competitive Senate races in 2022 (The Washington Post) (The Washington Post) | Pennsylvania is a particularly fascinating purple state. Sen. Patrick Toomey (R) is retiring, making this is one of Democrats' best opportunities to take a Senate seat from Republicans. Even better for Democrats is that Republicans have had a tumultuous primary. Trump's candidate dropped out over an ugly child custody battle. But there are early signs that Democrats' brand is badly damaged in Pennsylvania ahead of the midterms. Reuters recently found that Republicans are registering former Democrats to vote at four times the rate that Democrats are registering Republicans. It suggests that Republicans have a message that voters in this key swing state want to hear. | 
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