Elon Musk

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      US watchdog to investigate Musk ‘Doge’ team’s access to payment systems

      by

      A government watchdog is to launch an inquiry into security over the US treasury’s payments system as a judge on Friday considered whether access by Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to the highly sensitive data base was unconstitutional.Amid mounting court cases concerning Doge’s activities, the treasury department’s inspector general said it would launch an audit after Democrats complained about the access gained to a 25-year-old Musk associate, Marko Elez, who was briefly granted edit access within the system, meaning he had the potential to change entries. The access was later rescinded by an interim court ruling.The payment system contains the personal details of millions of Americans and disburses trillions of dollars to federal government programmes.Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla and SpaceX, has been tasked by Trump to slash government spending by targeting alleged waste and fraud and has upended large swaths of the federal bureaucracy, cancelling contracts, stopping spending programs and throwing thousands of staff out of work.Loren Sciurba, the treasury’s deputy inspector general, said the audit would review the past two years of the system’s transactions to examine Musk’s claim that his team has uncovered evidence of billions of dollars of fraudulent payments.She said the audit – launched in response to demands from the Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden – would begin immediately and take until August to complete.Its launch coincided with a judge in Washington considering a legal suit lodged by Democratic attorneys general from 14 states, arguing that Doge’s work was illegal on the alleged grounds that Trump violated the US constitution by creating a federal government department without congressional approval.The attorneys general argue that Musk has exercised “virtually unchecked power” by entering government agencies and ordering sweeping cuts without oversight or authorization from Congress.USAid, the government foreign assistance agency, has been shuttered on his authority and its workforce put on leave, although a judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the funding freeze it has imposed on the agency’s humanitarian work.The suit, led by New Mexico’s justice department, alleges that Doge has “unraveled federal agencies, accessed sensitive data, and caused widespread disruption for state and local governments, federal employees, and the American people”.The attorneys general asked the court to order Musk to identify how “any data obtained through unlawful agency access was used” and to destroy any “unauthorised access in his or Doge’s possession”. They called on the court to bar Musk and his team from stopping the disbursement of public funds, cancelling contracts and dismantling agencies.The hearing was due to take place after Musk said the US needed to “delete entire agencies” to eliminate waste.A separate hearing in a court in New York was due over whether to extend a temporary block on the Doge team entering the payments system that was imposed in an interim ruling last Saturday by Judge Paul Englemayer. Musk called for Englemayer’s impeachment after that ruling, while JD Vance, the vice-president, wrote in a social media most that judges were not allowed to interfere with a president’s “legitimate power” – a view contested by most constitutional law experts.Swingeing cuts continued apace despite the plethora of legal challenges. Federal agency heads were ordered to fire most recent hires who have not completed their probation period – a move likely to affect about 200,000 workers, the Washington Post reported.The treasury department audit coincided with a call from Chris Murphy, Democratic senator for Connecticut, for an official investigation into the “legality and scope” of Musk’s penetration of the federal bureaucracy.“Musk and his aides are subject to various conflict of interest statutes which prohibit federal employees from participating in matters that impact their own financial interests,” Murphy wrote to the US government comptroller general, Eugene Dodaro.He added: “It is imperative the public understands whether Musk and his aides have complied with the law and whether highly sensitive data could be at risk if accessed by private actors who seek to benefit from the information illegally, or worse, by foreign adversaries who wish to attack this country.”Despite the rising resistance to its activities, the US armed services were preparing a list of weapons systems to be cut in preparation for Doge casting its gaze over the Pentagon, the Wall Street Journal reported.Members of Musk’s team were expected to visit the Pentagon on Friday. “People are offering up things sacrificially, hoping that will prevent more cuts,” a defence official told the Journal.The army was said to be volunteering cutting outdated drones and vehicles, while the navy is proposing cuts to frigates and littoral combat ships. More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Some federal workers given just 30 minutes to leave amid Trump layoffs

      by

      Some federal employees who have been laid off were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices. Federal agencies were ordered by Donald Trump to fire mostly probationary staff, with as many as 200,000 workers set to be affected and some made to rush off the premises, the Washington Post reported.More mass layoffs came on Friday as approximately 2,300 employees have been fired from the US interior department.The interior department oversees the US’s natural resources and manages 500m acres of public land, including national parks. The widespread layoffs were confirmed by three sources with knowledge on the subject, who spoke to Reuters anonymously.Probationary employees at two US agriculture department research agencies were also fired, Reuters reported, citing two anonymous sources. The exact number of terminated workers has not been confirmed, but layoffs reportedly happened overnight.Several federal unions have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for mass terminations at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), ABC News reported. The plaintiffs argued that Russ Vought, the acting director of CFPB, plans to slash 95% of the agency’s workforce, essentially gutting the agency.The large-scale layoff strategy, led by Elon Musk’s so called “department of government efficiency”, is meant to cut costs by downsizing the federal government. Trump and Musk have both criticized the federal workforce as being oversized, with Trump calling the federal government “bloated” and filled with “people that are unnecessary”. Musk said on Thursday that the US should “delete entire agencies”, comparing them to “weeds” that needed to be rooted out.But massive layoffs have created chaos for affected federal employees. Thousands of workers were fired in group calls or via pre-recorded messages in recent days, the Post reported. Others were told they would be laid off by email, but never received such messages.Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press that firing employees on probation is flawed because it targets younger workers.“Baby boomers are retiring right and left, so actually the people you want to keep are probably most of the people who are right now on probation,” said Kamarck, who worked in former president Bill Clinton’s Democratic administration when about 426,000 federal jobs were cut over more than eight years in a deliberative effort aimed at reinventing government. “They’re younger and presumably have better skills, and that’s who you want.”About 100 employees at the office of personnel management (OPM) were fired in a Microsoft Teams group call, CNN reported, and told they had half an hour to leave the building.OPM workers were told that they were terminated because they did not accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation plan, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union told CNN. The buyout offers allowed employees who agreed to stop working to be paid through 30 September, although some have questioned if the payment offer is valid.Everett Kelley, head of the AFGE, which represents 800,000 federal workers, has condemned the layoffs and promised to use “every legal challenge available”, in comments to the Post.“Employees were given no notice, no due process, and no opportunity to defend themselves in a blatant violation of the principles of fairness and merit that are supposed to govern federal employment,” said Kelley.So far, at least six agencies have carried out widespread layoffs. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which oversees services and benefits to military veterans, laid off 1,000 probationaries, Reuters reported. A termination notice to VA employees stated and CNN reported: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”Termination notices were also sent to employees at the Department of Education, the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the General Services Administration (GSA).Additional layoffs are expected at the National Science Foundation and Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Post reported, citing a person with knowledge on the reductions who spoke anonymously. The US Forest Service, which manages 193m acres (78m hectares) of US public lands, is also expected to fire more than 3,000 workers.The job slashing comes as a judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s buyout offers could proceed, with officials then closing the plan to employees who may still have been weighing the decision.Approximately 3.75% of workers – or about 75,000 people – accepted the deal, Semafor reported. The figure is below the 5-10% of workers that the White House aimed to get rid of and estimated would accept the buyout offers.Send us a tip
      If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761 More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Inside Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ crackdown on US consumer watchdog

      by

      The termination email for a score of employees at the top US consumer watchdog arrived in the late hours of the night.“Unfortunately, the Agency finds that you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs,” dozens of probationary staffers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) were informed on 11 February.“For these reasons, I regrettably inform you that I am removing you from your position of [job title], with the agency and the federal service [effective date],” continued the letter from Adam Martinez, CFPB’s chief human capital officer and seen by the Guardian.The CFPB has long been known as a popular agency, one that’s recovered more than $21bn for defrauded Americans since its creation in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But now it faces the threat of dismantlement, and becoming the next institution under the Trump administration to potentially be rapidly hollowed out from within – a situation that could cause consumers the need to fend for themselves against predatory financial practices. More broad layoffs may be on the way.“It’s been really stressful to potentially lose my way to support my family as the primary breadwinner,” said one of several CFPB employees who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation. “But the chaos that’s happening is impacting not just the bureau, but consumers and industry.”The trouble began earlier this month, when the newly appointed acting director, Russell Vought, issued a sweeping order halting all agency operations. Staff were instructed not to perform any work tasks without explicit written approval. The agency’s headquarters was abruptly closed, its website went dark, and its social media accounts were deleted.“This has been unprecedented,” said a second CFPB employee, who joined the financial watchdog just before Trump’s first term. “No administrative tasks, no trainings, we can’t do anything. We were in the middle of exams, doing what we do. And now there are open questions about everything.”The freeze has left both CFPB staff and the financial institutions they oversee in limbo. Ongoing examinations have been suspended mid-process. Statutory deadlines loom with no one authorized to handle them. Even routine consumer-protection functions have ground to a halt.“Right now, they’re not allowed to proceed with any kind of court cases,” a third employee explained. “Any of these cases they’re litigating against any kind of bank is presumably going to be thrown out, which really sucks.”The work stoppage came with a twist: the possible installation of surveillance software on employee computers just days before the shutdown, two current staffers told the Guardian.“People are almost scared to work. There are concerns of keystrokes being monitored,” the first CFPB employee said. “No one wants to get fired for insubordination.”“I would have it open and I’d be, like, jiggling my mouse to keep it green,” the second employee said, “if only because I’m just extremely nervous about what the consequences are of a work stoppage.”The CFPB did not return a request for comment.This climate of fear has only been amplified by the tech billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” team, who were granted access to CFPB’s headquarters and computer systems. Hours after their arrival, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji on his social media platform, X.The CFPB holds vast amounts of sensitive consumer and corporate data, raising serious security concerns. The bureau maintains one of the federal government’s largest consumer-complaint databases, containing millions of detailed records about Americans’ personal financial struggles, from mortgage difficulties to credit card disputes. This includes social security numbers, account details and comprehensive financial histories.“Companies submit confidential business information, trade secrets and information about consumers,” the third employee went on. “People reveal very personal, sensitive information, and it seems like there has been very little regard towards protecting that.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, the administration is preparing for even more dramatic cuts. According to legal filings from a federal workers’ union on Thursday, plans are believed to be under way to terminate more than 95% of the bureau’s employees, in effect rendering it impossible for the agency to fulfill any of its statutory functions.Another legal filing from the union that represents CFPB employees on Friday seeks an injunction to prevent further disruption, arguing that Vought’s moves violate separations of powers by obstructing Congress’s mandate to protect American consumers.There are fears that CFPB’s potential demise would leave a massive void in consumer protection. Over the years, some strong enforcement actions included a $120m settlement with student loan servicer Navient over illegal practices, a $175m penalty against Block’s Cash App for inadequate fraud protection and a $3.7bn order against Wells Fargo for mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages and deposit accounts.Still, Trump has been explicit about his intentions to gut the agency. When asked whether his goal was to eliminate the CFPB entirely, he told a press pool on Monday: “I would say, yeah, because we’re trying to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse.” He added: “It was a very important thing to get rid of.”Adding to the confusion, Trump moved to install his own pick atop the watchdog, nominating Jonathan McKernan, the former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation board member.McKernan, who quit his FDIC post just a day before his nomination, would potentially be moving from an agency focused on banking stability to one focused on consumer protection. He took a parting swipe at financial regulations as he left the FDIC, posting on X that he hoped it would “succeed in its mission while also reversing the regulatory overreaches of the last few years”.The actions come despite overwhelming public support for financial protection. A September poll from Americans for Financial Reform showed that 91% of voters believe it is important to regulate financial services to ensure they are fair for consumers, including 95% of Democrats, 87% of Republicans and 88% of independents.But the administration is looking to move ahead and dismantle the agency’s infrastructure anyway. As the future of America’s consumer financial watchdog hangs in the balance, its employees remain defiant.“We’re the watchdogs. We do this work to protect all American consumers. It doesn’t matter who they voted for, where they live,” one staffer said. “What matters is that people have rights. There are laws to protect them, and we’re here to do the work to help protect them, and we’re not going to be bullied.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Seth Meyers on Trump and Musk: ‘They’re trying to rip you off’

      by

      Late-night hosts took aim at Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s too-close relationship and how one is clearly in control of the other.Seth MeyersOn Late Night, Seth Meyers spoke about how voters have been most concerned about grocery prices yet Trump has been “easily distracted by silly stuff” and placed his attention elsewhere.This week saw him elected chair of the Kennedy Center, which led to Meyers joking that the next round of honors would include “Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood and Big Mouth Billy Bass”.It’s meant that he’s had less time to help Musk in his project of “dismantling the government”. Meyers joked that it’s “fun sometimes to pretend bad things might be good things”.In audio from a call about the Kennedy Center, Trump said he was going to make it “hot” again like he had also made the presidency. “You didn’t make the presidency hot unless you mean hot like a low-grade fever,” he said.Another “frivolous distraction Trump is obsessed with” concerns him renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has led to Associated Press journalists being banned from official press events as they refuse to obey. “At least give people like a week to process it!” Meyers said.He also said that “we should stop waiting for tech companies to be part of the pushback” with both Google and Apple following the change on official maps.Meyers played a clip of Trump trying to explain Musk’s dismantling, which was a ramble about magnets, tractors and planes. “Every time Trump speaks I feel like a guy who started season two of Severance without watching season one,” he said.He said they want to avoid talking about what’s really happening as “the reality of what they’re doing is unpopular and illegal” and Musk essentially wants “direct control of the government” by taking over the regulatory group that would otherwise be able to stop his business practices.He said that there is “a lot of bad stuff happening right now” and “they’re trying to rip you off and they hope you’ll be distracted by all the nonsense going through Trump’s head”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host spoke about the nationwide shortage of eggs with grocery stores hiking prices and limiting the number of eggs customers can purchase.He said that regular eggs are now “more valuable than Faberge”.For Valentine’s Day, he joked that Trump has “got a little something for his sugar vladdy” after a call with Vladimir Putin in which the Russian dictator was given essentially everything he wanted out of the negotiation.Kimmel said it is “honestly amazing the guy only bankrupted three casinos” while saying that “if you attack and murder our allies, it will make no difference at all”.Trump’s rambling explanation led Kimmel to say that we are “one weird press conference away from Trump saying he wants to move Ukraine to Gaza”.Then, “as if we don’t have enough to worry about”, Kimmel said that “measles and wide-leg jeans are back”, joking about Kendrick Lamar’s outfit choice at the Super Bowl.He reassured us that “Bobby Brainworm is on the job” to fix measles with the outspoken anti-vax crusader confirmed as the new head of health and human services.In a press conference, Robert F Kennedy Jr said that God sent him Trump. “Next God is gonna send us diphtheria,” Kimmel joked.The clip saw Kennedy engage in “triple-A ass kissing”, which Kimmel said would have aroused Trump. “Melania couldn’t turn him on like that the first night they met,” he joked. More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Musk-linked group offered $5m for proof of voter fraud – and came up with nothing

      by

      In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.Close ties to world’s richest manThe Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.View image in fullscreenThe Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.A detour into third-party ballot accessThe Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.

      This article was produced in partnership with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project. Brendan Fischer is deputy executive director and Emma Steiner is a researcher with Documented More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Want to defeat Trump? Support unions | Eric Blanc

      by

      Can anybody stop Trumpism? Progressives are understandably worried. Though federal judges may temporarily pause some of the new administration’s most brazenly illegal executive orders, a hyper-conservative supreme court lies waiting in the wings. And looking ahead to 2028, it’s hard to feel hopeful about defeating Maga given that the Democratic party continues to hemorrhage working-class voters.But there’s no need to despair. A powerful force in our society has the legitimacy, resources and leverage to turn things around: organized labor. Unions can beat back Donald Trump’s attacks, expose his sham populism, and – by uniting workers around their shared economic interests – help isolate his xenophobic scapegoating.Rather than hibernate for the next four years, or limit ourselves to posting online about the president’s latest outrages, each of us can lend support to workers organizing at federal agencies, schools, Starbucks, Amazon, auto plants and beyond. Just as importantly, we can expand the labor movement’s reach by unionizing our own workplaces. It won’t be easy to counter Trump’s shock-and-awe offensive, or to fill the void left by the Democrats’ disarray. But it’s both necessary and possible.Consider Trump’s latest moves. While he can appoint his cronies to head crucial civil service agencies, it is still unionized federal employees who make these institutions run. And their resistance to his power grab – through defying the new administration and enlisting public support – constitutes our best hope for protecting these services upon which millions of Americans depend.Remember the government shutdown during the first Trump administration? By late January 2019, the crisis had already lasted a month, with no end in sight. But then the flight attendant leader Sara Nelson began making national waves by agitating for a general strike, stressing the public safety dangers of not paying the people whose labor makes air travel possible. On 25 January, various air traffic controllers refused to come into work, resulting in a temporary grounding of New York flights. Only a few hours later, Trump announced a deal to end the shutdown.Resisting Maga’s barrage is crucial. But it would be a mistake to fight only on the right’s chosen political terrain. Trump’s achilles heel is that he won by speaking to the economic grievances of working people, but heads an administration of and for billionaires obsessed with maximizing their own profits and control. Centrist Democrats have generally been unable to expose this contradiction, as they too are often tied to big business. But combating corporate greed is the labor movement’s bread and butter, which is why unions in our era of rampant inequality are experiencing record-high levels of popularity, even among conservatives and independents.The administration’s connection to the world’s richest men – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg – makes it easier for anti-Trump sentiment to channel into workplace battles. When Tesla factory workers unionize, or coders at X push back against their boss, this is now de facto a confrontation with the White House. By scaling up high-publicity union drives and strikes for economic dignity across the country, labor and its supporters can force politicians to show which side they’re really on.Even labor struggles focused on economic issues can have dramatic political repercussions. Faced with Trump’s efforts to deprive workers of the right to unionize by kneecapping the National Labor Relations Board, every union drive is now on a collision course with the new regime. Moreover, since workplaces bring together people from a wide range of backgrounds and ideologies, union organizing requires listening to and persuading people who disagree with us, a skill sorely lacking among most progressives today. Effective persuasion happens not by haranguing or shaming others, but rather by finding points of commonality – often economic – around which working people can come together.Through this patient process of building solidarity across differences, labor organizing is uniquely positioned to convince large numbers of Americans to direct their anger at the bosses above (and their political proxies), instead of immigrants or trans people. Unsurprisingly, union members voted for Kamala Harris by a 16-point margin in the last election; indeed, Trump would probably have lost had the US labor movement represented a significantly higher percent of the American workforce.Despite Trump’s constriction of labor rights, conditions overall remain favorable for union growth. Organized labor, for example, is sitting on an unprecedented war chest of roughly $38bn in assets, over a third of which are highly liquid. This is more than enough to defend against Project 2025 while simultaneously going on the offensive against corporate America. Big, assertive unionization battles could lay bare Trump’s oligarchic allegiances, while pressuring Democratic politicians to champion economic populism.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnfortunately, it’s unclear whether union officials will finally find the chutzpah to break from business as usual. Most remain exceedingly risk averse, narrowly focused, and deferential to establishment politicians. For that reason, labor’s post-pandemic upsurge has been driven from below, with young, left-leaning workers taking the lead – most recently at the Whole Foods in Philadelphia that voted for a union last Monday. But to scale up widely enough to transform the US, this grassroots uptick will need deep-pocketed labor leaders to fully jump into the fight.It remains to be seen whether unions can rise to the challenge of Trumpism. For the sake of our democracy, our livelihoods, and our planet, let’s hope they do.What’s giving me hope nowWhat’s giving me hope is that Philadelphia Whole Foods workers last Monday voted to unionize, 130 to 100. It’s a really big deal: this was only the second time American workers have defeated Amazon in a union election. Many in the labor movement were expecting a loss, since Maga is now in office and since management – headed by Trump’s new billionaire buddy Bezos – went scorched earth against the nascent union effort. But a multiracial crew of young, self-organized, left-leaning workers proved the skeptics wrong, as so often has been the case since 2021. Labor passed its first big test under Trump, and hopefully we’ll see many similar wins in the months to come.

      Eric Blanc is the author of We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big, which is out with UC Press in February 2025 More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump administration lays off most probationary staff and warns big cuts to come

      by

      The Trump administration on Thursday intensified its sweeping efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce, the country’s largest employer, by ordering agencies to lay off nearly all probationary employees who had not yet gained civil service protection – potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers.In addition, workers at some agencies were warned that large workplace cuts would be coming.The Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides healthcare for veterans, reported on Thursday evening that it had laid off more than 1,000 probationary workers. The US Forest Service was set to fire more than 3,000.The decision on probationary workers, who generally have less than a year on the job, came from the office of personnel management (OPM), which serves as a human resources department for the federal government. The notification was confirmed by a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.It’s expected to be the first step in sweeping layoffs. Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that told agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force”.Elon Musk, whom the president has given wide leeway to slash government spending with his so-called “department of government efficiency”, called on Thursday for the elimination of whole agencies.“I think we do need to delete entire agencies as opposed to leave a lot of them behind,” Musk said via a video call to the world governments summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “If we don’t remove the roots of the weed, then it’s easy for the weed to grow back.”Paul Light, an expert on the federal government and professor emeritus of public service at New York University, said it seemed like the administration was “inventing new methods for destroying government capacity”.“You’re basically harassing your own workforce at the end of the day,” he said. “You’re undermining the engine that you want to run.”Layoffs are unlikely to yield significant deficit savings. When the congressional budget office looked at the issue, it found the government spent $271bn annually compensating civilian federal workers, with about 60% of that total going to workers employed by the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.The government could, in theory, have cut all those workers and still run a deficit of more than $1tn that would continue to grow as tax revenues are needed to keep up with the growing costs of social security and Medicare.Thursday’s order was an expansion of previous directions from OPM, which told agencies earlier this week that probationary employees should be fired if they weren’t meeting high standards. It’s not clear how many workers are currently in a probationary period. According to government data maintained by OPM, as of March 2024, 220,000 workers had less than a year on the job – the most recent data available.The firing of probationary employees began earlier this week and has included Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Education workers.At least 39 were fired from the education department on Wednesday, according to a union that represents agency workers, including civil rights workers, special education specialists and student aid officials.The layoffs also hit Department of Veterans Affairs researchers working on cancer treatment, opioid addiction, prosthetics and burn pit exposure, US senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, said on Thursday.“I’m hearing from longtime VA researchers in my home state of Washington who are right now being told to immediately stop their research and pack their bags,” Murray said in a statement, “not because their work isn’t desperately needed, but because Trump and Elon have decided to fire these researchers on a whim.”Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a group that defends government workers, said the agriculture department’s food safety and inspection service would be hit especially hard by the laying off of probationary employees because it has trouble recruiting inspectors required to be present at all times at most slaughterhouses.“Firing any probationary employees would be a big kick in the gut to those that do very grueling and difficult work,” Peer’s executive director, Tim Whitehouse, said. “It would make our food system less safe and cause consumer confidence in the safety of our food supply to dip.”The civilian federal workforce, not including military personnel and postal workers, is made up of about 2.4 million people. While about 20% of the workers are in Washington DC and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia, more than 80% live outside the Capitol region.Trump’s initial attempt to downsize the workforce was the deferred resignation program, commonly described as a buyout, which offered to pay people until 30 September if they agreed to quit. The White House said 75,000 people signed up, and a federal judge cleared a legal roadblock for the program on Wednesday.However, the number of workers who took the offer was less than the administration’s target, and Trump has made it clear he would take further steps.Employees at the National Science Foundation and the housing and urban development department were told this week that large reductions – in some cases a halving of the workforce – would be coming, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.The National Science Foundation was told to expect a 25% to 50% reduction in force within two months, while the housing and urban development department was told to plan for a 50% reduction, the person said.Employees at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were also bracing on Thursday for reductions in their workforce.The order Trump signed on Tuesday stipulated that government functions not required by law would be prioritized for cuts and hiring would be restricted. With exceptions for functions such as public safety, only one employee can be added for every four that leave. In addition, new hires would generally need the approval from a representative of Doge, expanding the influence of Musk’s team.Trump, speaking to reporters later at the White House, praised Musk’s work to slash federal spending.“We’re looking for waste, fraud and abuse,” he said. “That’s what Elon is working so hard on.”Trump has also been sharply critical of federal workers, especially those who want to keep working remotely, though his administration is simultaneously working to cut federal office space and ordering the termination of worksite leases throughout the government.“Nobody is gonna work from home,” Trump said on Monday. “They are gonna be going out, they’re gonna play tennis, they’re gonna play golf, they’re gonna do a lot of things. They’re not working.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Seth Meyers on Musk and his agency’s corruption: ‘It’s so transparent’

      by

      Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s bizarre Oval Office press conference and their dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Seth MeyersThough Trump promised throughout his campaign to lower grocery prices as president, to date, “we still don’t have a plan for lowering eggs prices,” said Seth Meyers on Wednesday night. “But we do have a plan for building hotels in Gaza.”The Late Night host had a theory for why Trump remained so fixated on his “plan”, announced seemingly on a whim at a press conference, to expel Palestinians and build hotels: “It’s called the Gaza Strip, and the only other strip he knows is the Vegas Strip, so he thinks that can work there,” Meyers explained. “And if you think the people around him are going to say, ‘Actually, sir, it’s a different kind of strip,’ just remember that the people around him also suggest Red, White and Blueland” as an alternative name for Greenland.“This is what Trump does,” Meyers continued. “We’ve seen it for years. It’s nothing new. He’s hoping voters will pay attention to his plans for Gaza and Greenland, and ignore what he’s doing to the rest of the government.”Such as disbanding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). After firing its employees, Musk tweeted “CFBP RIP” with a tombstone emoji. “First of all, don’t announce policy via emoji,” Meyers said. “Second, think about how corrupt this is: they’re eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that stops companies from ripping you off. It’s so transparent.” Meyers noted that Musk is in the process of turning X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter that he owns, into a peer-to-peer payment and financial services app, while also dismantling the agency that oversees payments and financial services.At a press conference in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Musk defended his conflicts of interest, claiming transparency via posts to the Doge handle on X. Meyers didn’t buy it – “so to find out what our government is up to, we just have to wade through a sea of Nazis, trolls, ads for Cheech & Chong weed gummies and bots with women in bikinis offering to send us 1m units of something called Sex Coin as long as we send our social security and bank routing numbers.”Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the host ripped into Trump’s proposal on Gaza. “Blob the Builder is still going all in on his ridiculous and potentially disastrous plan to force nearly 2 million Palestinians who live in Gaza to go live somewhere else,” he explained. “There seems to be no thought put into this plan outside of just what he says at the press conference.”Asked if the Palestinians didn’t want to leave, Trump answered: “They’re going someplace beautiful, they’re going to be in love with it.”“This is not what you say to people you’re evicting from the place where they live!” Kimmel exclaimed. “This is what you say to your parents when you’re about to put them in a retirement home.”In other Trump chaos, the White House banned reporters from the Associated Press because the outlet refused to call the Gulf of Mexico by Trump’s self-proclaimed new title, the Gulf of America. “They’re going to keep kicking journalists out until all they have left are Fox, Newsmax, OAN, OnlyFans and Golf Digest,” Kimmel joked.Google and Apple Maps both fell in line, relabeling the body of water for just American users. “It’s basically the equivalent of giving Trump a binky and hoping he shuts up,” said Kimmel.The Daily ShowAnd on the Daily Show, Jordan Klepper recapped an Oval Office presser hosted by Trump and Musk. “It’s good that we have Elon Musk here,” said Klepper, “because we’ve been watching him slashing programs and shuttering agencies for a month now, and we can finally ask Elon, ‘Why are you doing this?’”Musk defended his unofficial “department of government efficiency” (also known as Doge) because: “It’s incredibly important that the president, the House and the Senate decide what happens, as opposed to a large, unelected bureaucracy.”Though Musk disparaged unelected bureaucrats, Klepper had to ask: “Isn’t that you …? Am I going crazy? Because it feels like I’m watching Drake sing Not Like Us at karaoke. Like, does he not know?“Is having this one unaccountable bureaucrat in charge better than having those other unaccountable bureaucrats in charge?” he continued. “Because at least the others have to follow transparency laws. The only thing transparent about Doge is Elon’s skin.”As Klepper noted, Musk’s financial disclosures are being kept secret, the ‘efficiency’ agency is exempt from open records laws, and when someone on X posted the names of Doge employees, the account was suspended and Musk tweeted “you have committed a crime” – “which, we tried to factcheck with career officials at the FBI, but they’re all working at a Panera now”, Klepper quipped.Musk also defended himself against obvious conflicts of interest, saying: “I fully expect to be scrutinized and get a daily proctology exam.”“Well, I did the exam, and what an asshole,” Klepper retorted.Send us a tip
      If you have information you’d like to share securely with the Guardian about the impact of cuts to federal programs, please use a non-work device to contact us via the Signal messaging app at (646) 886-8761. More