Fake News Friday, 03/13/2026: The Holy Donut petitions NLRB

Last week, I misreported that Local S6 would be showing up on the Holy Donut workers’ picket line. It snowed Friday morning, so the union decided not to send anyone to Portland. The Holy Donut is now calling for an NLRB election, claiming only 8 of its employees want the IAM. Management also “strongly disagree[s]” with the union’s allegations. They have condemned the IAM’s “adversarial” approach while subtly accusing the union of only being after dues payments.¹ The IAM does not collect dues from new members until they have won a contract. It’s hard to read the Holy Donut’s Facebook post as anything other than an attempt to bust the union.

Truth be told, I did not have a lot of time to work on Fake News Friday last week. I had to rush through it to make a dentist appointment in the early afternoon. I also had to write Thursday off because of Labor Lobby Day. I remembered something Ben Franklin said. “Either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”² He didn’t say how hard it is to do both.

I regret forgetting to include major news stories like Kristi Noem being fired, but Labor Lobby Day meant doing something worth writing:

As unionized workers rallied, lawmakers passed a bill to lower child care costs and increase access by boosting support for the state’s Child Care Affordability Program, which currently has a waitlist of more than 1,000 families.³

In any case, this feels like a good time to scale back Fake News Friday. My real passion is writing essays, not reporting the news. I’m impressed with myself for maintaining a weekly newsletter for this long on top of academic and stewarding commitments. At this rate, though, Fake News Friday is taking away from my ability to write quality, longform essays. So I am going to transition from writing a weekly newsletter to a monthly one. I will post on the last Friday of the month. This will make the next Fake News Friday March 27.