Andy Richards, new media strategist at the AFL-CIO, sent the following message to working family activists:

It’s been a long winter for locked-out American Crystal Sugar workers. Workers have been locked out for nearly 19 months from their jobs because of the greed of CEO David Berg and company board members.

Luckily, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled recently that workers were entitled to receive unemployment benefits under state law. This has been a lifeline for American Crystal Sugar workers.

Is there anyone, besides the Goldwater Institute and ALEC, who supports the extreme political agenda of some Arizona lawmakers? If this story from The Huffington Post is any indication, the answer is no. Businesses and business groups, including the state Chamber of Commerce, have been vocal about their opposition to a bill that would require unemployed workers to submit to drug tests.

Add another bad Arizona measure to the growing list of bills being dropped because of public outcry. Yesterday, after public pressure from Arizonans, extreme lawmakers in the House decided to kill a resolution that would have forced a ballot measure to repeal the state's minimum wage and hurt low-wage workers in the process.