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      Trump claimed he was pro-worker. His new order shows how absurd that was | Steven Greenhouse

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      If any workers are still holding on to the notion that Donald Trump is pro-worker or pro-union, his move last week to terminate union bargaining rights for 1 million federal workers should disabuse them of that notion. As a candidate Trump often wooed workers by promising to fight for them, but ever since he returned to the White House, he has taken dozens of anti-worker and anti-union actions.In an unprecedented anti-union action last Thursday, the president moved to end collective bargaining for a million federal employees and scrap union contracts nearly that number, while attacking their unions as “hostile” merely because they were doing what unions are supposed to do: battling to save the jobs of tens of thousands of union members whom Trump and Elon Musk had summarily fired.In an era when many workers are demanding respect, Trump keeps showing disrespect toward the country’s 2.3 million federal workers. He and Musk have cavalierly fired more than 50,000 federal employees, ignoring contractual protections saying they could only be terminated for poor performance. Then Trump blamed the victims, saying, without evidence: “Many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.” Trump views federal employees not as dedicated workers who serve the nation’s 340 million people, but as deplorables who work for the detested deep state.Not stopping there, Trump has named several vehemently anti-union figures to be his right-hand men. Russell Vought, head of Trump’s office of management and budget, has shown true sadism toward workers. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video disclosed by ProPublica and the research group Documented. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains … We want to put them in trauma.”Would anyone who cared an iota about workers name such a callous, anti-worker person to a top position?Then there’s the aggressively anti-union Mr Musk. Trump praised Musk over the idea of firing striking workers, an action that is illegal and would go far to cripple labor’s most powerful weapon: the strike. Musk has become a pariah in Scandinavia for his extreme anti-union animus: Tesla has refused to recognize a union there – something that virtually all Scandinavian corporations do. Like Trump, Musk has a penchant for disrespecting workers, repeatedly tarring federal employees as being guilty of “waste, fraud and abuse”. Last week on Fox News, Musk insulted the intelligence of federal workers by falsely saying: “Basically almost no one [no federal employee] has gotten fired.”Again, would anyone who cared a whit about workers and unions tap Musk for such a powerful position?Trump’s first two months back in office have been filled with anti-worker and anti-union actions. In an unseemly move, the Trump administration called on federal workers to snitch on each other, to report on co-workers who promote diversity and inclusion. Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, the acting chair of the National Labor Relations Board – a move she says is illegal – leaving the board without a quorum to penalize employers that break the law when fighting against unionization. Trump also fired the NLRB’s vigorously pro-union general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, and wants to replace her with a management-side lawyer whose firm represents many anti-union companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.Trump, the supposed champion of workers, has done little to raise workers’ wages. As in his first term, he’s done zilch to increase the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at a shockingly low $7.25 an hour for 15 years. He also rescinded Joe Biden’s order securing a $17.75-an-hour minimum wage for federal contractors. As a candidate Trump wooed tipped workers by vowing to end the income tax on employee tips, but he has failed to get the House budget bill to end that tax, although that bill tentatively includes Trump’s idea not to tax overtime pay.Labor leaders have denounced Trump’s order to gut union bargaining for 1 million workers. Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, called Trump’s actions “the biggest assault on collective bargaining rights we have ever seen in this country”. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said Trump’s order was “a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants – nearly one-third of whom are veterans – simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies”.Anti-union CEOs and ideologues will no doubt applaud Trump’s order. By targeting unionization among 1 million workers, Trump aims to weaken the nation’s 14-million-member labor movement. If successful, his move would end bargaining for those 1 million workers, holding down employee pay and thereby making more money available for Trump’s tax cuts for the rich.Republican lawmakers will love Trump’s move because it undermines a key financial pillar for the Democrats. Half of US union members are government employees, and their unions are often major funders of Democratic candidates. Trump certainly knows that – 10 minutes after the supreme court issued its Janus decision in 2018, ruling that no federal, state or local government employee can be required to pay union dues, Trump tweeted “big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!” Trump’s new executive order will further skew a huge imbalance: Open Secrets, a research group that tracks political contributions, found that in the 2024 election cycle, business out-donated unions by 16 to one. Corporations donated $6.1bn to unions’ $264m, which is less than the gazillionaire Musk gave all by himself.Trump also won over many workers by vowing to cut prices. Not only did he vow to cut egg prices, he boldly said he’d cut auto insurance prices and energy prices in half. But Trump has totally failed to do any of that. Moreover, his 25% auto tariff will cause auto prices to soar.One has to strain to think of even one or two pro-worker or pro-union moves that Trump has taken. The White House says his tariffs are pro-worker and pro-union, insisting they will bring back manufacturing jobs. But many economists say Trump’s tariffs will hurt myriad industries and workers. His auto tariffs, for instance, will increase car prices and as a result, auto sales, auto production and auto jobs will decline, at least short-term. Not only that, other countries’ retaliation will pummel various US industries and trigger additional layoffs. Moreover, Trump’s tariffs will undermine GDP growth and perhaps push the US into recession. Bottom line: Trump remains obsessed with tariffs, even though they’re likely to result in more pain than gain for US workers.When it comes to worker issues, Trump resembles the emperor in the famous fairytale: he sees himself wearing magnificent union-made clothes covered with buttons containing pro-worker slogans. But more and more Americans realize that when it comes to helping workers, Trump is like Hans Christian Andersen’s emperor: his nakedness is showing.

      Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues More

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      The Tesla backlash – podcast

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      “It felt like you were driving in this future dream car,” says Mike Schwede, an entrepreneur based between Zurich and London. For him, driving a Tesla used to feel special.“People on the streets really liked it,” Schwede says. “I got so many thumbs-up.”When Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, became a supporter of Donald Trump and spearheaded his so-called “department of government efficiency”, Schwede’s thoughts about his car changed.“You kind of sit in a right-wing car, without having any power to influence this. So I thought, OK, every kilometre I’m driving, I will donate 10 cents to US anti-racism and LGBTQ foundations to get some money to people … Elon doesn’t like, so that’s my way of revenge.”In this episode, the Guardian’s global technology editor, Dan Milmo, talks to Michael Safi about the recent protests against Tesla, and we hear from current and former Tesla enthusiasts, Jim, Mika and Kam, about what they think of Elon Musk’s rise in US politics.Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

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      ‘We weren’t stuck’: Nasa astronauts tell of space odyssey and reject claims of neglect

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      In the end, whatever Elon Musk and Donald Trump liked to insist, astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were never stuck, nor stranded in space, and definitely not abandoned or marooned.The world heard on Monday, for the first time since their return to Earth two weeks ago, from the two Nasa astronauts whose 10-day flight to the international space station (ISS) last summer turned into a nine-month odyssey. And their story was markedly at odds with the narrative painted from the White House.Wilmore and Williams were speaking to reporters at a press conference in Houston, hours after a joint appearance on Fox News, and reaffirmed that they never felt neglected or in need of the rescue the president insisted was necessary.Instead, they said, they calmly assumed duties as members of the space station crew – “planning for one thing, preparing for another”, Wilmore said – while a political firestorm over their status raged back on the ground.If anything, the pair of veteran space flyers appeared slightly bemused by, or largely ignorant of the furore that followed their enforced and protracted stay on the orbiting outpost 250 miles above Earth, caused by technical failures on board their pioneering Boeing Starliner spacecraft that returned in September without them.At the press conference Nasa had called to discuss the science activities the astronauts performed during their time in space, Williams and Wilmore gave diplomatic answers to questions designed to elicit their thoughts.“The stuck and marooned narrative … yes, we heard about that,” Wilmore said, before reverting to a carefully worded explanation of how their training and preparations allowed them to pivot seamlessly from the roles of new spacecraft test pilots to routine ISS crew members who splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on 18 March on a routine crew rotation flight.“The plan went way off for what we had planned. But because we’re in human spaceflight, we prepare for any number of contingencies. This is a curvy road. You never know where it’s going to go,” he continued.Earlier, in the Fox interview, he pushed back on Musk’s false claim, amplified by Trump, that the astronauts were “abandoned in space by the Biden administration”. Had they felt stuck, stranded or marooned, the interviewer, Bill Hemmer, wondered.“Any of those adjectives, they’re very broad in their definition,” Wilmore said.“So in certain respects we were stuck, in certain respects, maybe we were stranded, but based on how they were couching this, that we were left and forgotten in orbit, we were nowhere near any of that at all.“Stuck? OK, we didn’t get to come home the way we planned. But in the big scheme of things, we weren’t stuck. We planned and trained. Let me comment back on this other [claim], you know, ‘They failed you’. Who? Who’s they?”Williams, too, was reluctant to kick the political football. In orbit, she said, her focus was solely on the work she needed to do.“You sort of get maybe a little bit tunnel-visioned … you do your job type of thing, right, and so you’re not really aware of what else is going on down there,” she said.“I hate to say that maybe the world doesn’t revolve around us, but we revolve around the world, something like that. But I think we were just really focused on what we were doing and trying to be part of the team. Of course, we heard some things … ”The third US astronaut at the press conference, Crew 9 commander Nick Hague, who returned to Earth with Williams and Wilmore, backed up his crewmate.“The politics, kind of, they don’t make it up there when we’re trying to make operational decisions,” he said. “As the commander [I’m] responsible for the safety of this crew and getting them back safely.”Musk, the founder of SpaceX, a key Nasa contractor, has continued to push the story, with no evidence, that the astronauts were effectively held hostage in space by Biden for political advantage. It was a SpaceX Dragon capsule that eventually brought them back to Earth, but it was a spacecraft that had been attached to the ISS for months, not one Trump said he directed Musk to “go get the two brave astronauts”.The billionaire became embroiled in a heated online dispute with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen over the claims, and later attacked Mark and Scott Kelly, both retired astronauts and the former now Democratic senator for Arizona, for calling him out.As for the troubled Starliner, whose future is questionable as Boeing and Nasa engineers continue to evaluate the helium leaks and thruster control issues that brought its maiden crewed mission to a premature end, both Williams and Wilmore said they would be happy to fly on it again.Wilmore, as the Starliner mission commander, said there were questions he wished he’d asked during the flight that he believed might have brought a different outcome, and “some shortcomings in tests, shortcomings in preparation, that we did not foresee”. The astronauts will meet Boeing leadership on Wednesday to give first-hand testimony.The whole experience, he said, was a learning curve familiar to those in “the difficult job we all take part in”.“Could you point fingers? I don’t want to point fingers. I hope nobody wants to point fingers. We don’t want to look back and say, ‘shame, shame, shame’. We want to look forward and say, ‘Let’s make the future even more productive and better’.“That’s the way that I look at it. And what I think the way the nation should look at.” More

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      Musk’s Doge gains access to federal payroll system despite staff warnings

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      Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) reportedly gained access to a payroll system over the weekend that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across various government agencies, despite warnings from senior staff about the potential risks.According to two people familiar with the situation who spoke with the New York Times, Doge employees had spent about two weeks trying to obtain administrative access to the program, known as the Federal Personnel and Payroll System.Then, toward the end of last week, senior career officials at the interior department reportedly issued a memo highlighting the unusual nature of the request and the associated risks with granting it.The memo, reviewed by the Times, stated that “such elevated access to critical high-value asset systems is rare with respect to individual systems and no single [Department of Interior] official presently has access to all HR, payroll and credentialing systems.”The senior employees reportedly warned that granting Doge employees this level of access would allow them to be able to view highly sensitive personal information that is subject to controls under the Privacy Act and cautioned that individuals given this elevated access could become targets for cybersecurity attacks by terrorists, nations or other malicious actors.The memo emphasized that gaining administrative access to the system “typically requires training and certification”.“Without formal qualifications, the Department may experience significant failure because of operator error,” the memo said.On Friday, the federal employees reportedly asked the Doge workers to deliver the memo to Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, for his signature, thereby assuming the legal responsibility for the associated risks.However, Burgum reportedly never signed the memo.But on Saturday, interior department officials reportedly granted at least two Doge employees the access they had requested, the two people told the Times.With this access, the Doge employees now have visibility into sensitive employee information, like social security numbers, and are able to more easily hire and fire federal workers, according to the Times, citing the two people with knowledge who spoke with the newspaper on condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution.Meanwhile, Tyler Hassan, the recently named interior department’s acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget and a former Doge employee, reportedly placed two of the IT officials who had resisted the Doge employees on administrative leave and under investigation for their “workplace behavior”, according to the two sources.In a statement, a spokesperson for the interior department said: “We are working to execute the President’s directive to cut costs and make the government more efficient for the American people and have taken actions to implement President Trump’s Executive Orders.” More

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      Tesla investors brace for global sales data amid consumer backlash over Elon Musk

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      Tesla investors are bracing for evidence of declining global demand this week as the electric carmaker battles headwinds including a consumer backlash against its chief executive, Elon Musk.On 2 April, the US company will release data for first-quarter deliveries – a proxy for sales – that is expected to show a dip on the same period last year. The figures follow global protests on Saturday against Musk and Tesla, targeting the carmaker’s showrooms.Analysts have been lowering their forecasts amid evidence that Musk’s senior role in the Trump administration has damaged the Tesla brand.Dan Ives, managing director at the US financial firm Wedbush Securities and a self-avowed Tesla “core bull”, forecast deliveries to come in at between 355,000 and 360,000, a fall of 7% on the same period last year and down from initial predictions across Wall Street of 400,000.View image in fullscreenIves, who recently warned investors that Tesla was facing a “brand tornado crisis moment”, said 30% of the anticipated decline was due to brand damage associated with Musk and his involvement in the so-called department of government efficiency (Doge). The advisory body has targeted federal agencies with cost-cutting policies and redundancies.Other issues affecting Tesla’s figures during the first three months of the year include consumers waiting for an update to the top-selling Model Y. The US is Tesla’s biggest market.In a note to investors last week, Ives said that while “much of this softness is related to customers waiting for Model Y refreshes along with a lower-cost new model set to be launched by the summer … the anti-Musk and brand issues are clearly at play”.Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based electric car analyst, said Musk was “hitting his liberal consumer demographic exactly where it hurts”.“He has become the core toxic issue behind the disintegration of the brand and should step-aside before it explodes like one of his rockets,” added Schmidt, who is expecting first-quarter deliveries in western Europe to come in at just under 70,000 for the first time since the end of 2022.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenAmong Tesla owners, the Democrat owner group has fallen from 40% during the Biden administration to 29% now, with the Republican group averaging about 30% since 2021, according to market research firm Strategic Vision.Last week, Donald Trump announced a 25% tariff on cars from overseas, with Tesla also expecting to be affected despite making its cars for the US market in America. The company imports some parts for its US-made cars. Last week, Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, that Tesla is “not unscathed” by tariffs. He added: “The tariff impact on Tesla is still significant.”The tariffs threaten to plunge the global auto industry into “pure chaos”, according to Ives. “Every auto maker in the world will have to raise prices in some form selling into the US and the supply chain logistics of this tariff announcement heard around the world is hard to even put our arms around at this moment,” he said in a note to investors last week.However, on Saturday, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if carmakers raise prices in response to the tariffs on foreign-made vehicles. Indeed, the US president told NBC News that he hoped foreign carmakers raise prices as it means “people are gonna buy American-made cars. We have plenty.” More

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      Elon Musk hands out $1m checks to voters amid Wisconsin supreme court election race

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      Elon Musk gave out $1m checks on Sunday to two Wisconsin voters, declaring them spokespeople for his political group, ahead of a Wisconsin supreme court election that the tech billionaire cast as critical to Donald Trump’s agenda and “the future of civilization”.“It’s a super big deal,” he told a roughly 2,000-person crowd in Green Bay on Sunday night, taking the stage in a yellow cheesehead hat. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”Musk and groups he supports have spent more than $20m to help conservative favourite Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s race, which will determine the ideological makeup of a court likely to decide key issues in a perennial battleground state. Musk has increasingly become the center of the contest, with liberal favourite Susan Crawford and her allies protesting Musk and what they say is the influence he wants to have on the court.“I think this will be important for the future of civilization,” he said. “It’s that’s significant.”He noted that the state high court may well take up redistricting of congressional districts, which could ultimately affect which party controls the US House.“And if the [Wisconsin] supreme court is able to redraw the districts, they will gerrymander the district and deprive Wisconsin of two seats on the Republican side,” Musk claimed. “Then they will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you, the American people.”A unanimous state supreme court on Sunday refused to hear a last-minute attempt by the state’s Democratic attorney general to stop Musk from handing over the checks to two voters, a ruling that came just minutes before the planned start of the rally.Two lower courts had already rejected the legal challenge by Democrat Josh Kaul, who argues that Musk’s offer violates a state law. “Wisconsin law prohibits offering anything of value to induce anyone to vote,” Kaul argued in his filing. “Yet, Elon Musk did just that.”But the state supreme court, which is now controlled four-to-three by liberal justices, declined to take the case as an original action. The court gave no rationale for its decision. All four liberal justices have endorsed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate.Kaul had no immediate comment on the court’s order.Musk’s attorneys argued in filings with the court that Musk was exercising his free speech rights with the giveaways and any attempt to restrict that would violate both the Wisconsin and US constitutions.The payments are “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate,” Musk’s attorneys argued in court filings.Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the presidential election last year, offering to pay $1m a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second amendments. A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.Musk’s attorneys, about four hours before the rally was to begin, asked that two liberal justices who have campaigned for Crawford – Jill Karofsky and Rebecca Dallet – recuse themselves from the case. His attorneys argued their work for Crawford creates “the spectre of inappropriate bias.” If they did recuse, that would leave the court with a three-two conservative majority.Both justices rejected the request and said they would spell out their reasons why at a later date.One of the court’s conservative justices has endorsed Schimel, who wore a “Make America Great Again” hat while campaigning Sunday.Schimel said in a national television interview that he does not control “any of the spending from any outside group, whether it’s Elon Musk or anyone else” and that all Trump asked was whether he would “reject activist judges” and follow the law.“That’s exactly what I’ve committed to anybody, whether it’s President Trump, Elon Musk or any donors and donors or supporters or voters in Wisconsin. That’s my commitment,” Schimel told Fox News Sunday.The contest has shattered national spending records for a judicial election, with more than $81m in spending.It comes as Wisconsin’s highest court is expected to rule on abortion rights, congressional redistricting, union power and voting rules that could affect the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election in the state. More

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      Most employees at US Institute of Peace mass-fired via late-night email

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      Most employees at the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded thinktank now taken over by Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency”, received email notices of their mass firing late Friday, the latest step in the Trump administration’s government downsizing.The emails, sent to personal accounts because most staff members had lost access to the organization’s system, began going out about 9pm, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.One former senior official at the institute said that among those spared were several in the human resources department and a handful of overseas staffers who had until 9 April to return to the United States. The organization employs about 300 people.Others retained for now are regional vice-presidents who will be working with the staff in their areas to return to the US, according to one employee who was affected.An executive order last month from Donald Trump targeted the institute, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, and three other agencies for closure. Board members, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and the institute’s president were fired. Later, there was a standoff as employees blocked Doge members from entering . Doge staff gained access in part with the help of the Washington police.A lawsuit ensued, and the US district judge Beryl Howell chastised Doge representatives for their behavior but did not reinstate the board members or allow employees to return to the workspace.A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said in an email Saturday that the institute “has failed to deliver peace” and that Trump “is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars”.The letter to employees said that as of Friday, “your employment with us will conclude”, according to one longtime employee who shared part of the communication. A second email, obtained by the AP, said the terminations were at the direction of the president.Workers were given until 7 April to clear out their desks.Mary Glantz, a former foreign service officer who was working as a senior adviser at the institute, said she was not surprised by the late-night firings, calling it part of Doge’s playbook.Glantz studied how Russia has fomented conflicts around the world and analyzed options for resolving them. She hoped her research could be continued and used elsewhere. She said the institute plays a unique role because of its narrow focus on conflict resolution.“We are the other tool in the tool box,” she said. ”We do this work so American soldiers don’t have to fight these wars.”George Foote, a former institute lawyer fired this month who is with one of the firms providing counsel in the current lawsuit, said lawyers were consulting Saturday to discuss possible next steps. He said employees are not part of the pending lawsuit, so they would have to file separate cases. More