Donald Trump built his campaign on a foundation of hate and bigotry. His desperate, scripted speech today about immigrant working families will not fool anyone. We already know where he stands.

Today, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler addressed the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Convention about what's at stake for working women this election. 

Working women in particular are driving the progressive agenda forward and are coming up with solutions to the problems that have been holding working families back. Here are some highlights of Shuler's speech (after the jump). 

There's a lot at stake in the 2016 presidential election. While U.S. Supreme Court nominations may not be the most headline-grabbing stories that come out of a presidency, they probably should be. With Supreme Court justices serving for life and having significant power in interpreting laws that affect our daily lives, the importance of court appointments cannot be overstated.

Today, we dropped the first round of regular, direct mail pieces that will reach voters in key battleground states. The program begins by calling out Donald Trump’s hypocrisy to more than 150,000 voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. We will send mail to union members in six additional states, including Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina every week until Election Day.

One night at his UPS job, Tefere Gebre's co-worker handed him some union material. 

“He told me that I’d get health care and vacation and other benefits by filling it out. I said, ‘Are you serious?’ I thought ‘Hmm. Everyone should have that.’”

Each week, we take a look at the biggest friends and foes of labor. We celebrate the workers winning big and small battles, and we shame the companies or people trying to deny working people their rights.

The Kansas City Federal Reserve Regional Bank held its annual research symposium at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming this week. The focus was on the limits of monetary policy. The challenge faced by central bankers is that since the Great Depression, the world has faced deflationary pressures from overcapacity. Oil prices have plummeted, Chinese steel floods the global markets and workers remained frustrated with low wages and finding full-time work. Central bankers have run into a problem because their primary tool of interest rate policy to stimulate the economy has run into the limit of zero nominal interest rates. At zero, they are essentially giving away money. But investment remains stuck on low. And one way to stir the economy, to prompt inflation that gives the room of rising prices for firms to make profitable investments, isn’t happening.

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s this week’s Working People Weekly List.

Yes, graduate students who work are WORKERS. The National Labor Relations Board has re-settled the question of whether graduate student workers are primarily students or workers and decided…they can be both.

Today, hundreds of workers protested and rallied in front of Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. Culinary Workers Union members and Trump Hotel Las Vegas workers were joined by our Ironworkers brothers and sisters from across the country who were in town for their national convention.

The Olympics is a constant exercise in irony and hopefulness for African Americans. Since John Taylor won a gold medal at the 1908 Olympics in London, in the no longer contested medley relay, African Americans have hoped that winning gold for the United States would transform America’s dialogue on race. The hope was it could transform the discourse to see African American Olympians, as all Olympians, as exceptional; and, rather than exceptions to their race, as examples of their race and the families that supported and nurtured their excellence.

Around the country, classes are starting up again, students are getting ready to learn once more and parents are rushing out to buy the supplies their children need for school. When shopping for those necessary items, you can make sure that your purchases support working families. Here is a list of union-made school supplies.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka gave an inspiring speech to the Nevada State AFL-CIO's 60th Annual Constitutional Convention yesterday. Some key excerpts and reactions to the speech follow.

I can still recall the first time I saw what state-sanctioned discrimination looked like.

Growing up in rural Kentucky in the first half of the 20th century, I witnessed firsthand the extreme measures that elected officials would take to prevent African-American men like my father from voting.

Today is Black Women’s Equal Pay Day. It’s almost September, and black women, who earn just 66 cents to the dollar of white men, have hit the point in the year when their earnings, added to last year’s, match what their white male counterparts made in 2015. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the wages of black women compared with white women are falling further behind.

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) that determines U.S. monetary policy met in July.  Its job is to weigh the state of the American economy, both the labor market and inflationary pressures to set policy.  In an interesting note, its discussion of the labor market explicitly noted the condition of the African American and Hispanic unemployment rates.  More than just an aside, reflecting on the status of June’s labor market the minutes of the meeting show the following note:

“The unemployment rates for African Americans and for Hispanics stayed above the rate for whites, al­though the differentials in jobless rates across the different groups were similar to those before the most recent recession.”

Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s this week’s Working People Weekly List.

Devastating floods in Louisiana have damaged an estimated 40,000 homes across 20 parishes. As of Thursday, 4,000 people were still being housed in area shelters. As always, union members were the first responders on the ground and will be heavily involved in recovery efforts.

The Department of Justice announced today that it would stop the use of private contractors, such as Corrections Corporation of America, to run prisons under their jurisdiction. The announcement comes on the heels of damaging reports about the safety, security and oversight of private prisons released by DOJ and Mother Jones in recent months.

In an appearance on Southern California Public Radio, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke about Donald Trump, working-class voters, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, labor's role in the 2016 election and a wide range of other issues.