Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s billionaire education secretary, faced backlash on Wednesday over her plans to spend more than $43,000 of taxpayer money on new furniture for her government office as she works to illegally dismantle the department she leads, harming students across the country.


Was curious about this so I looked up a little more details, link for anyone else who wants to know a little more. Its not a super in depth article, but its something
https://www.thrillist.com/gear/products-made-by-prisoners-clothing-furniture-electronics
Oh, thank you, I forget this one isn’t common knowledge.
Here’s an example of one of these charming companies:
https://www.washingtonci.com/furniture.html
The “Eligible Customers” page is a real hoot, highly recommend. The summary is that if you’ve ever touched furniture in any government, university or (many) non-profits in Oregon or Washington (including tribal government guys we should really uh… think about this for a second), or really any surplused office furniture on the west coast, it was almost undoubtedly made with prison labor.
Now to be totally fair they have greatly improved things in the last five years - it’s now not literal slave labor in that people are given a choice (and I will begrudgingly admit it appears to be a genuine choice) of whether to participate and it goes towards both a prisoner’s commissary and points off their sentence/towards parole, but fucking still.