From Woody Guthrie's Tear the Fascists Down to Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name, musicians have been poking power in the eye for decades. It's loud. It's uncomfortable. That's the point.

Right now, the amps are pointed squarely at ICE.

Springsteen has drawn headlines. U2 just added its voice. When global superstars wade into immigration enforcement, reaction is guaranteed.

But if you want to understand the emotional core of this moment, don't start with the arena tours.

Start with Billy Bragg's City of Heroes.

This isn't subtle. It's not abstract.

It's a song about complicity.

Bragg opens with the ghost of Martin Niemöller—the pastor whose post-WWII confession about silence in the face of Nazi persecution still echoes.

"When they came for the communists..."
"When they came for the Democrats..."
"When they came for Jews..."

The point is familiar: silence feels safe—until it isn't.

Bragg brings that warning into the present tense, asking: What excuses would you tell yourself if this ever happened to you?

That's not policy debate. That's conscience.

Then it turns personal.

The refrain isn't passive. It's not "I posted." It's not "I tweeted."

It's: "I got in their face."

When they came for immigrants…
For refugees…
For five-year-olds…
To my neighborhood…
When they dragged people from their cars…
Took families from their homes…
Murdered our sister…
Murdered our brother…

…I got in their face.

Bragg ends with a vow: to bear witness to terror, to tyranny, to murder, to fascism.

This isn't about policy. It's about refusing to look away.

I created a playlist of protest songs. Some were written in the shadow of fascism in Europe. Some were born in the civil rights era. Some were recorded in the last news cycle.

Different decades. Different villains. Same instinct.

When artists believe government has crossed a line, they write. They record. They dare you to listen. And to do something.

You don't have to agree with every lyric. You don't have to like the politics. You may think some of it is overwrought.

That's fine.

But protest music tells you something about the cultural moment—what people fear, what they value, what they think is at stake.

What’s missing from my protest pantheon? Drop me an email and tell me what else belongs on the playlist.

Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

Did You Hear That? Smart Glasses, AI Voice Recorders and Workplace Recordings — via Dan Schwartz's Connecticut Employment Law Blog

Claude, ChatGPT, and Privilege: Proceed With Caution, Employers — via Eric Meyer's Employer Handbook Blog

U.S. DOL Unveils AI Literacy Framework — via Joe's HR and Benefits Blog

FCC Confirms "Enforcement Action" Against Talk Shows — via Consequence

2026 Ohio Beer Awards Results — via Ohio Craft Brewers Association

     

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Now, as BrewDog explores a sale or break-up, many Punks may be staring at a zero return, and they are not happy about it.

"Well at least I got £2.34 off an order once. Not a bad return for £500," wrote one online. Another told the BBC, "I invested £12,000 in BrewDog - I think I've lost it all."

Not because the rules changed. But because the rules were always there.

In 2017, private equity firm TSG invested and reportedly secured preferred shares with a liquidation preference. Translation: TSG gets paid first. If a sale price doesn't exceed what TSG is owed, common shareholders, the Equity Punks, get nothing.

That's not villainy. That's just basic capital structure.

Yes, TSG came later than many early investors. But timing doesn't control priority, the investment documents do. Early common shareholders typically agree the company can issue later preferred shares with superior rights. If that authority existed (and there's no indication here that it didn't) then nothing was retroactively taken. The risk was embedded from the start.

     

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In a Reddit post that has gone viral, that's what someone claims just happened to them during a job interview.

If that interview scenario is real, the issues aren't just ethical. They're also potentially legal.

Here's the framework. Employers are allowed to use personality assessments in hiring. But those assessments live in a carefully regulated space.

Under the ADA, an employer may not require a medical examination or make disability-related inquiries before a conditional offer of employment. The EEOC draws a line between permissible "personality tests" (measuring traits like honesty or preferences) and impermissible medical or psychological exams that screen for mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, or PTSD.

A standard, validated personality assessment that does not diagnose or identify mental impairments is generally lawful pre-offer. But a tool designed to reveal mental health conditions—or that predictably elicits that information—crosses into prohibited territory.

Now apply that framework to: "Based on my past conversations, can you analyze my behavioral tendencies?"

What's in those past conversations? For many users: therapy-adjacent discussions, stress about family, questions about ADHD, depression, medications, burnout, addiction, trauma. If an employer requires a candidate to generate and disclose a summary built from that data, it is difficult to argue the employer is not, at minimum, eliciting disability-related information.

Intent isn't the only issue. Effect matters. If the process predictably surfaces mental health indicators, the employer may be conducting an unlawful pre-offer medical inquiry—without calling it one.

There's another problem. Personality testing must be job-related and consistent with business necessity if it disproportionately screens out individuals with disabilities. An AI-generated "behavioral tendencies" report is unlikely to be validated for any specific role. No validation study. No reliability metrics. No guardrails. Just a black box summary.

That's we lawyers call a precursor to litigation.

Add in the power imbalance of an interview setting, and "voluntary" disclosure becomes legally murky. If a candidate feels compelled to reveal information that touches on protected conditions, you've created risk before the first day of employment.

AI in hiring isn't inherently unlawful. But using a candidate's personal AI history as a de facto psychological assessment? That starts to look a lot like a medical exam dressed up as innovation.

When AI tools wander into the territory of mental health assessment—even indirectly, the ADA is not optional. Employers who ignore that line do so at their peril.

     

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As management-side counsel, I spend a lot of time telling executives that words matter. Culture isn't what's printed on the lobby wall. It's what leaders say and do when the spotlight is on them. When you talk about "trust" and "equality" in one breath and joke about immigration raids in the next, don't be surprised when your employees call foul.

This isn't about politics. It's about judgment. Poor judgment.

When a general manager publicly says the jokes were "indefensible" and don't align with his values, that’s not a minor PR hiccup. That's your own leadership team distancing itself from you. When employees start circulating letters demanding policy changes and public denunciations, you've turned a keynote into a crisis.

Could this have been avoided? Of course. "Just do the corporate presentation." Talk about products. Talk about growth. Talk about strategy. Do not make deportation the punchline. Don't make your international employees the butt of a tasteless joke.

Humor in the workplace is tricky. Humor about immigration enforcement—especially amid real-world violence—is radioactive. Leaders who don't understand that are either insulated from reality or indifferent to it. Neither is a good look.

If you're the CEO, you don't get to test-drive edgy material at the expense of your workforce's sense of safety and decency. If you make vile jokes about ICE raids, don't act shocked when your employees decide you're the problem, or when you're nominated as the Worst Employer of 2026.

     

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That's not a plaintiff's lawyer talking. That's Dr. Robby, the chief of emergency medicine on The Pitt, grabbing a patient's phone and putting her boss on notice while she's being treated for what looks like SIRS—a systemic inflammatory response that's threatening her leg and possibly her life.

Debbie Cohen is in the ER. Her rash is spreading. Three senior physicians are at her bedside. And her biggest fear is missing work.

Her boss keeps calling, accusing her of exaggerating, dangling termination if she doesn't show up. At one point she pleads, "Please! Please don't fire me!"

Let's talk about the law.

We don't know whether her employer is large enough to be covered by the FMLA or whether she's worked long enough to be eligible. The episode doesn't give us headcount or tenure. But if the company meets the 50-employee threshold and Debbie satisfies the 1,250 hours/one year eligibility requirements, this is easy. Once the employer has notice she's in the ER with a serious health condition, firing her for missing work is classic FMLA interference and retaliation.

You don't get to terminate someone for being hospitalized after you've been told she's hospitalized.

And even if the FMLA doesn't apply, the ADA almost certainly does. A condition serious enough to land someone in the ER with a systemic inflammatory response almost certainly qualifies as a disability. The ADA requires reasonable accommodation. Time off for emergency treatment is about as reasonable as it gets. The appropriate response isn't skepticism and threats. It's flexibility and dialogue.

But here's the bigger issue. If your employee, sitting in an ER fearing for her life, is more worried about getting fired than getting better, your culture is badly broken. No one should need a doctor to threaten to testify in a lawsuit for a manager to show basic decency.

Employers, make sure you understand your FMLA obligations, respect the ADA's accommodation requirements, and build a workplace where medical emergencies trigger support—not suspicion and threats of termination.

     

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