25 Sep 2025

Get to know Gophers wideout Le’Meke Brockington

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Few Gophers football players are in the same echelon as Antoine Winfield Jr.

But head coach P.J. Fleck puts current receiver Le’Meke Brockington alongside the former All-American safety and current NFL All-Pro with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

How can that be? It’s all about their sunny dispositions.

Flashback to 2017 and ’18: it was the portion of Winfield’s career at Minnesota that was injury plagued with back-to-back season-ending ailments. The double whammy didn’t keep him down.

“I’d be the first one out on the (practice) field and I’d see him,” Fleck recalled to the Pioneer Press this week. “He’d look at me and smile. He was done for the year, and he’d be (like), ‘It’s alright coach, it’s football.’ He’d smile at you, and you’re like, ‘This doesn’t make sense.’ Most people are crying. Most people are upset. They don’t want to talk. They’re mad. Antoine had that type of positive outlook on life, and that’s why he’s having success.

“Le’Meke got that very similar quality.”

Brockington is almost always smiling, even when talking about the broken leg he suffered midway through the 2023 season.

“Football happens,” he said with a grin Wednesday.

The fifth-year senior from Moultrie, Ga., had a career day in Minnesota’s 27-14 loss to California on Sept. 13, with eight catches and 106 receiving yards. That his outstanding performance came in defeat only temporarily wiped the smile off his face during the postgame news conference in Berkeley, Calif.

Minnesota Gophers wide receiver Le’Meke Brockington (0) scores a touchdown against the Northwestern State Demons in the first quarter of a NCAA football game at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Here are five things to know about Brockington:

Not out long

Brockington fractured his leg in the fifth game of the 2023 season against Louisiana and was projected to be out for the rest of the year. But he recovered in time to return for the regular-season finale at Wisconsin and the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit.

“We still talk about it to this day,” Brockington said this week. “It’s crazy. … I was ruled out for a whole year. The next thing you know, I’m coming back.”

Significant injuries can be harrowing experiences filled with self-doubt.

“The biggest thing when you do get hurt is there’s a fear of: ‘What’s next? Will I be included? Will I play again one day?’” Fleck said. “It immediately runs through your mind, right? This false evidence appearing real.

“He has a great way of processing his own fear and turning it into really positive energy.”

‘Freak’

The 6-foot-195 pounder, who also was on the basketball and track and field teams at Coulquitt County High School, made The Athletic’s “Freaks List” this summer.

Brockington squatted 664 pounds, breaking his own record from last year by 50 pounds, and posted a vertical jump of 42 inches. Those gaudy numbers came on top of fast agility times.

“He’s paid a big price to have the success that he’s having,” Fleck said.

Dirty work

Brockington has 44 career receptions for 694 yards and three touchdowns, none bigger than a 45-yard TD from current Rutgers quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis to beat Wisconsin 23-16 in Madison in 2022.

Brockington, who also has a rushing score this season, is key on countless, often-overlooked plays, too.

“If you really study our tape, you will know that Le’Meke is extremely valuable to what we do schematically,” offensive coordinator Greg Harbaugh said. “The things he does in the run game. He might not always be getting the ball because he might be the point of attack with a block.”

Bigger role?

Brockington came up huge in the Cal game, especially on third-down conversions vs. man coverage. He had a career-high 12 targets, but he’s not expected to be this year’s version of Daniel Jackson.

“We have a core nucleus of wideouts that can all do a lot of different things,” Fleck said. “And I think as we keep moving forward, maybe one day (Brockington) has record-setting day, and maybe one game, he’ll catch two balls and somebody else catches that.

“That’s where I think this is headed as we keep going and we only have two real games of data.  I think there’s so many (receivers) still trying to figure out who they are.”

But Harbaugh knew Brockington would have an opportunity to  have a big game versus Cal during that week of practice and before.

“It showed up throughout the week, but it built to that throughout the summer, throughout training camp and practices leading up to it,” Harbaugh said. “It’s been really impressive to see his work ethic that he has and I’m excited to see him play (Rutgers) Saturday.”

All in the family

Le’Meke’s cousin, Zy’kerious Brockington, played defensive line at Memphis for three years and Akron last season. They were high school teammates in Georgia.

“He’s a great influence in my life,” Brockington said. “He helps me push the best I can be just because … he knows he didn’t make it as far as he wanted. But he knows that I have the potential and to keep on living the legacy of (our) family.”

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25 Sep 2025

Texas Domestic Workers Face Trump Attack on Minimum Wage

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For $8 an hour, B.O., a Kenyan immigrant who asked the Texas Observer to use only her initials for fear of workplace retaliation, once cared for six elderly patients in a Houston group home for as many as 90 hours a week—without any overtime pay. Every day from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m., she fed, bathed, monitored, and administered medication to the patients. If no dayshift worker arrived to relieve her, she said, she continued working through the next day and night. Her wages were so low that she got a second job cleaning homes. 

Over time, B.O., who’s employed in an industry that’s notorious for exploiting women of color and immigrants, learned to protect herself. She now tries to secure a contract before starting work, to refuse extra duties, and to demand better wages and overtime pay. She’s even organized other domestic workers.

“It takes a toll on you,” she said. “By the time you try to get a nap, you have to start going back to work again. … You can’t do anything else because you’re so tired.” 

Texas has 315,000 home health and personal care aides—the nation’s third-highest number, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And in 2024, those Texans earned an average hourly wage of only $11.29, the second-lowest average wage earned by domestic workers among all 50 states. Another 109,000 Texans work as housekeepers and childcare workers. 

Soon, these domestic workers and millions more nationwide may lose their right to demand even the federal minimum wage—a mere $7.25 per hour—or any overtime. Amid a blitzkrieg of deregulatory measures, Trump’s Department of Labor is quickly and quietly advancing a proposal to rescind a 2013 Obama-era rule, which would leave the vast majority of domestic workers without wage and hour protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The public comment period for this proposal ended September 2. Now, the Labor Department plans to “proceed on this rulemaking once we consider all the feedback received,” spokesperson Chauntra Rideaux told the Observer.

In an interview, Eileen Boris, a University of California-Santa Barbara professor of labor, race, and gender studies, described long-term U.S. efforts to exclude domestic workers from labor laws as “an afterlife of slavery.” Black men and women who performed agricultural or domestic work during and after slavery were “bargained out” of New Deal laws to appease racist Southern Democrats, like Representative James Wilcox, a Floridian who declared in 1937: “You cannot put the [Black man] and the white man on the same basis and get away with it.” Both domestic and agricultural workers were excluded from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, which guarantees the minimum wage and overtime pay for hours worked above 40 hours, and the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which protects workers’ rights to organize, form a union, and collectively bargain with employers. 

In 1974, Congress finally amended the Fair Labor Standards Act to include domestic workers, but it barred employees defined as “companions” from minimum wage and overtime protections and live-in domestic service employees from overtime protections. A year later, the Department of Labor instituted a rule that broadly defined “companionship service” and exempted third-party agency workers, such as those referred from home care staffing agencies. It wasn’t until 2013 that Obama’s Labor Department prohibited third-party agencies from claiming that exemption and redefined “companionship services” to limit that category to workers who spent less than 20 percent of their time on “assistance with activities of daily living.”

The Labor Department’s current proposal would turn back the clock to the 1970s and restore the exclusions. 

Tiffany McAllister, a former home healthcare worker and current organizer with the Houston chapter of the domestic workers organization We Dream in Black, told the Observer that she and other domestic workers fought hard to secure the 2013 reform. The current proposal, she said, devalues their jobs. “Our members reject the label of ‘companion.’ They’re not companions. They perform wound care, administer medication, provide meals, are also chauffeurs, and support people living with dementia, mobility loss, and chronic illness,” McAllister said.

The pay is low, but the market for home care is huge—it was valued at $286 billion in 2024, including home health services, durable medical equipment (DME), hospice and palliative care, therapy, and personal care services, according to the United States Home Care and Market report. 

Some Texas home care agency owners, like Marisol Reyes of Assisting Hands in Houston, posted public comments advocating for Trump’s reforms. Reyes wrote that the proposed rule would provide cheaper and better care to patients and “reduce service disruptions and caregiver turnover.” Reyes declined further comment by phone. 

But some patients who rely on home care workers disagreed in their comments. “The work is physically hard, the pay right now is barely keeping up with other jobs,” Texan Margaret Holloway wrote. “There is a shortage of workers willing to even do these jobs because of the already low wages.” 

In its own proposal, the Department of Labor predicted that the rule change could adversely affect the workforce: “These potential effects—longer work hours and/or less pay—could negatively impact the morale of affected home care workers and lead to increased employee turnover and difficulty attracting skilled workers to the industry.”

Still, Boris, the California professor, predicted the rule would pass, given Trump’s policy priorities. “It’s anti-regulation, it’s anti-Black and anti-immigrant, and it’s anti-social safety net. So these cuts that are coming together really exacerbate the crisis of care.”

If that happens, Boris said domestic workers organizations would likely push for reforms at the state or municipal levels. Nine northern or western states and three cities, including Seattle, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C., already have laws guaranteeing minimum wage, overtime pay, and safe working conditions for domestic workers. But the Texas Legislature is a hostile place for organized labor. And the state has outlawed local minimum wage increases since 2003 and city-level labor regulations more broadly since 2023, though litigation continues on the latter. 

B.O., the Houston home health worker who’s been able to live off of one job for some time now, told the Observer she might need a second or even third gig if the proposed rule passes. “We won’t be able to take care of ourselves,” she said. “It’s just a whole ripple effect that’s going to take place.”

The post Texas Domestic Workers Face Trump Attack on Minimum Wage appeared first on The Texas Observer.

25 Sep 2025

Streaming is overtaking theaters for movie watchers, an AP-NORC poll finds

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By LINDSEY BAHR and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are more likely to watch newly released movies from the comfort of their own homes instead of heading out to a theater, according to a new poll.

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About three-quarters of U.S. adults said they watched a new movie on streaming instead of in the theater at least once in the past year, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, including about 3 in 10 who watched new movies on streaming at least once a month.

Meanwhile, about two-thirds of Americans said that they’ve watched a recently released movie in a theater in the past year, and only 16% said they went at least once a month.

The results suggest that, on the whole, American moviegoers are more likely to stream a film than see it in the theaters, a shifting tide that was only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Convenience and cost are both factors for many people who can’t find the time to go to a theater or pay the increasingly high price for a ticket.

Sherry Jenkins, 69, of New Jersey, turns to streaming for all of her moviegoing needs.

“It’s much more convenient,” Jenkins said. “I can watch anything I want, I just have to wait a month or two after the movies are released because they usually go to streaming pretty quickly.”

Streaming is more convenient

In the post-pandemic era, films end up on streaming services more quickly. In 2017, a 90-day exclusive theatrical window was common. Now, theaters are fighting for an industrywide standard of 45 days. For studios, the strategy seems to be different for every movie. This year’s best picture winner, “Anora,” had a 70-day exclusive theatrical window. “Wicked,” meanwhile, was available to purchase on demand only 40 days after opening in theaters — and that was a case in which the film was, and continued to be, a box-office hit. It was also profitable on streaming.

There is some overlap between theatergoers and people who opt for streaming — 55% of U.S. adults have seen a new movie in a theater and skipped the theater in favor of streaming at least once in the past year — but only watching new movies on streaming is more common than only going to the theater.

Some in the film industry believe that movies that start in theaters still have more cultural cachet, but Jenkins doesn’t see it that way.

“The studios now are so closely affiliated with the streaming services,” Jenkins said. “There’s really no logic behind why some skip the theaters.”

The last time she regularly went to the movie theaters was, she thinks, about 20 years ago. But as a tech-savvy retiree, there just hasn’t been enough of a reason to make the trek to the theater. A subscriber to Acorn, BritBox, Paramount+, Peacock, Netflix and Hulu, Jenkins doesn’t even see the need for cable anymore.

“People tell me, ‘Oh, you have to go to the theaters and see ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ ” Jenkins said. “But my TV is 75 inches, and I’m comfortable. I’m at home.”

The cost of movie tickets is a factor

Maryneal Jones, 91, of North Carolina, said she likes to go to the movies but finds them too expensive.

“There’s some movies I would like to see, and I say to myself, I’ll just wait until they show them on TV or I’ll go visit a friend who has those apps,” Jones said. “But I just don’t want to pay 12 bucks.”

The average cost of a movie ticket in the U.S. is $13.17, according to data firm EntTelligence. In 2022, it was $11.76.

Jones does not subscribe to any streaming services, but she also sees more movies in theaters than many others. She estimates she sees about six to eight a year. Recent films she’s watched in the theater include “The Life of Chuck” and the French romantic comedy “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.”

The AP-NORC poll also indicates that streaming may be a more accessible option for lower-income Americans. Higher-income adults are more likely than low-income adults to be at least occasional moviegoers for new releases, but the gap is smaller for watching movies on streaming instead of going to the theater.

Younger adults watch more new movies, especially on streaming

New movies are more popular among young adults, regardless of how they see them. But streaming is more of a go-to for the younger generation.

Slightly less than half of adults under age 30 say they watched a recently released movie on streaming instead of going to the theater at least once a month in the past year, compared with about 2 in 10 who watched a movie in the theater with that frequency.

Eddie Lin, an 18-year-old student in Texas, said he mostly watches movies at home, on streamers like Crunchyroll, Hulu, HBO Max and Prime Video, but will go to the theaters for “bigger things” like “A Minecraft Movie,” which is the biggest movie of the year in North America.

“A couple of my friends wanted to see it,” Lin said. “And there were the memes. I felt like the audience would be more interactive and it would be enhanced by being there with, like, a bunch of people.”

While streaming will continue to be formidable competition for audience attention and dollars, there has also been rising interest in the value of seeing certain films in IMAX or on other premium format screens, whether it’s “Sinners” or “Oppenheimer.”

The North American box office is currently up more than 4% from last year, but the industry has struggled to reach pre-pandemic levels of business. Compared with 2019, the annual box office is down more than 22%.

“I used to go more when I was younger, with my family, seeing all the Marvel movies up to ‘Endgame,’ ” Lin said. “I like movie theaters. It’s an experience. For me, it’s mostly a time thing. But I do feel like a certain charm of watching movies in theaters is gone.”

Bahr reported from Pittsburgh.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,182 adults was conducted Aug. 21-25, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

25 Sep 2025

US sets stage for tariffs on robotics, medical devices

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By Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg News

The Trump administration launched investigations into imports of robotics, industrial machinery and medical devices, setting the stage for fresh duties as President Donald Trump moves to expand his tariff regime.

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The Department of Commerce is conducting the probes under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, according to Federal Register notices. The inquiries started on Sept. 2. Under the law, which allows the president to tariff goods deemed critical to national security, the department has 270 days to deliver its policy recommendations.

The newly announced probes expand the potential sectors that could be exposed to tariffs, as Trump looks to encourage domestic manufacturing in key industries by hiking the cost of imports.

Investigations into imports of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, aircraft, critical minerals, medium- and heavy-duty trucks, and other products are currently ongoing. The Trump administration has already used the law to impose levies on automobiles, copper, steel and aluminum.

Any levies resulting from the industry-specific probes would come in addition to Trump’s country-based tariffs, though some major economies such as the European Union and Japan have struck agreements to prevent the charges from stacking on top of one another.

The trade authorities are also seen as a backstop for Trump, should those sweeping tariffs on dozens of economies imposed under emergency powers be struck down by federal courts. The Supreme Court has agreed to consider a challenge to those tariffs, which have already been declared illegal by two lower courts.

Tariffs enacted under Section 232 can be more long-lived, even through changes in presidential administrations, though they take longer to implement than the duties Trump implemented under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The new probes reflect some Trump administration officials’ concern about U.S. reliance on foreign countries for a range of medical consumables, including syringes, sutures, catheters and gauze. The Commerce Department will also scrutinize trade in personal protective equipment, such as the gloves and face masks that became ubiquitous during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The newly announced medical-equipment probe will not address prescription drugs, biologics and other pharmaceuticals, which already are being examined as part of the Commerce Department’s separate investigation.

The inquiry into robotics and industrial machinery will focus on computer-controlled mechanical systems, milling machines and stamping and pressing machines widely used in factories, according to the register notice.

(With assistance from Laura Curtis.)

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