If  the new health care reform law is repealed—and today, Republican lawmakers are taking their first step toward repeal—more than 129 million Americans would be put at risk of  losing their health insurance.

In his latest book, All Labor Has Dignity, historian Michael Honey brings together 16 of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches on economic justice, many of them unpublished until now. Honey, a professor at the University of Washington Tacoma, edited the speeches and wrote an introduction for the book. AFL-CIO Now senior writer James Parks interviewed Honey about King and his legacy of economic justice.

Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U.S. child labor laws are unconstitutional.

While House Republicans have put a vote on health care reform repeal on hold in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others Saturday in Tucson, they haven’t backed off their threat to repeal a law that eventually will provide health coverage for 30 million people.

Last week, we highlighted a move by House Republicans who are so incensed at the word “labor”—because some folks might complete the phrase with the word “union”—that they ripped out the word “labor” from the name of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Here’s a statement from Rebekah Friend, executive director and secretary/treasurer of the Arizona AFL-CIO, about today’s tragedy in Tuscon, Ariz., in which a gunman shot Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head as she met outside a grocery store with constituents. The gunman, who is in custody, also allegedly shot and killed Chief Judge John Roll of the U.S. District Court for Arizona and an unidentified nine-year-old girl.

Max Hall has seen the fight for health care reform from both sides—as an advocate and a patient. In a Point of View (POV) guest column at the AFL-CIO website, Hall (no relation to me) writes how he first saw passing health care reform as part of the principles of fairness he believes in. But later, the issue turned personal for the 30-year veteran trade unionist when, in September, he confronted serious medical issues.

California Labor Federation Legislative Advocate Mitch Seaman points out how California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa is busy catering to his rich corporate donors rather than representing the people in his congressional district.

Our friends at the Transport Workers (TWU) have taken a light-hearted video look at rather serious subject: how Republicans might use their new found congressional strength and powers.

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this profile of the Oregon Young Emerging Labor Leaders program.

One week, Oregon’s young workers might be speaking out on the radio. Or they might be dishing up food at a Portland homeless shelter. They might be learning about labor history through the University of Oregon’s Labor Education and Research Center. Or they might be biking 18 miles in Portland’s only wintertime bicycle ride.