🔥The Internet is Cooked: May 22, 2026

Good morning. Here's your dispatch from the corners of the internet still fighting slop: Walmart workers in Mississauga made history, the union-busting industry tells on itself, Mamdani's deputy mayor for economic justice has thoughts, Trump broke Jim Cramer's brain on live TV, and a trans director just gave Cannes the best night of its year.

Walmart just lost. Or, more accurately, the people just won. Eighteen months after becoming the first Walmart warehouse to unionize in North America, the workers at Walmart's Mississauga distribution centre ratified their first collective agreement — also a first for Walmart on the continent. 93% ratification. The world's biggest private employer just signed its first union contract in North America — and Walmart workers in four more provinces just saw what's possible. Active organizing is already underway in Cornwall, Calgary, Nisku, and Surrey. 

The union-busting industry is now a ~$1.7 billion business — and they told on themselves. A new EPI/LaborLab report dropped May 20 found that's what US employers spend every year on consultants and law firms to keep workers from organizing: "Union avoidance law firms have constructed an industry providing counsel on union busting." Billions and billions and billions (smh). Amazon alone spent over $26.6 million on union-avoidance consultants in 2025; other companies dropped between $400,000 and $2 million each. Keep organizing folks. 

Mamdani's deputy mayor for economic justice gave her first big interview and it's a good one. Julie Su, former Biden Labor Secretary — the one who actually stood with the UAW during the Stand Up Strike — is the first-ever DM for Economic Justice in NYC. Her opening pitch in Jacobin: "This idea that it's so radical to propose that the city could be a place where everybody experiences justice is only the case because we've accepted injustice for so long." It's been a long time since a labour secretary had a platform this big. Settle in.

Trump made over 3,700 stock trades in Q1 2026 — Common Dreams has the receipts — including 30+ purchases worth a million or more in Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, Boeing, Qualcomm, and GE Aerospace. The same companies whose execs all flew to China with him earlier this month. Jim Cramer literally stuttered on live TV trying to describe it. When CNBC's resident cheerleader can't find the words, you know it's bad.

Trans director Jane Schoenbrun just gave Cannes the best night of its year. The day after the premiere of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (releasing August 7), a bold, bloody queer slasher film starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. The movie, one of the most prominent American films in Cannes this year, gave the festival a “gonzo jolt." Jane Schoenbrun's third feature — after I Saw the TV Glow and We're All Going to the World's Fair — got turned down everywhere but Mubi. Schoenbrun on what that felt like: "It was kind of shocking to me that it was just pass after pass after pass. You don't know, in the way you never know as a trans person. You're like: 'Maybe there's something about my otherness that you're not into.' Hollywood can feel like a mafia. I think it was a f---ing shame." Time Out called it "a gift that keeps on giving". 

Soundtrack: Bleachers’ anticipated fifth studio album, everyone for ten minutes, drops today. Also, in case you missed it last week we are giving another shout out to Dua Saleh's Of Earth & Wires. It features Bon Iver on three tracks, Aja Monet closing on poetry. We have been listening to this for the last week, on repeat. 

 Solidarity forever,

The internet is cooked.