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RFK Jr and the chaos at the CDC – podcast
RFK Jr faces calls to quit as CDC chief fired and senior staff resign: ‘an embarrassment’Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod More
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Trump news at a glance: Bessent says markets not worried by Fed interference as Lagarde warns of ‘danger’
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said the Federal Reserve is and should be independent but that it had “made a lot of mistakes”, as he defended Donald Trump’s right to fire the central bank governor Lisa Cook.The president has criticised the Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, for months for not lowering interest rates. Independent central banks are widely seen as crucial to a stable global financial system. Bessent also rejected the idea that markets were disturbed by the Trump administration’s actions. “S&P’s at a new high and bond yields are fine, so we haven’t seen anything yet,” he said.Bessent’s comments come as Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said Trump undermining the independence of the world’s most powerful central bank could pose a “very serious danger” for the world economy.Trump’s war on Fed is ‘serious danger’ to world economy, says ECB headLagarde, who was France’s finance minister until 2011 before leaving to run the International Monetary Fund, said it would be “very difficult” for Trump to take control of Fed decision-making on interest rates, but such a scenario would be highly dangerous.“If US monetary policy were no longer independent and instead dependent on the dictates of this or that person, then I believe that the effect on the balance of the American economy could – as a result of the effects this would have around the world – be very worrying, because it is the largest economy in the world,” she said, according to remarks reported by Reuters.Read the full storyGuatemala says it is willing to receive hundreds of deported children from USGuatemala is ready and willing to receive about 150 unaccompanied children of all ages each week from the US, the country’s president has said, a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 Guatemalan children.Those children had already boarded a plane when a court responded to an emergency appeal on Sunday. They were later returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.On Monday, Guatemala’s president, Bernardo Arévalo, told journalists that his government had been coordinating with the US to receive the unaccompanied minors.Read the full storyFormer CDC leaders slam RFK Jr for endangering Americans’ healthNine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership of the US health and human services department is “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”. They also warned that Kennedy’s leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”.Read the full storyTrump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of FreedomThe president said Monday he would award Rudy Giuliani the nation’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, two days after his longtime political ally was seriously injured in a car crash.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the 11 September 2001 attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Read the full storyHundreds of ‘workers over billionaires’ Labor Day rallies take place across USHundreds of protests organised as part of the national “workers over billionaires” effort – a mass action calling for the protection of social safety – were held in cities large and small across the country, including New York, Houston, Washington DC and Los Angeles.As the Labor Day rallies took place, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson sharply denounced the Trump administration’s threat to deploy federal troops to the city as part of an immigration crackdown.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
For this Labor Day, the Trump administration has draped an enormous banner outside the US labor department with his portrait and the words “American Workers First”. But many labor advocates say Trump has consistently put corporate interests first in his second term as he has taken dozens of actions that hurt workers.
Catching up? Here’s what happened on 31 August 2025. More - in US Politics
Trump says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Donald Trump said Monday he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, two days after his longtime political ally was seriously injured in a car crash.The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.Trump on his Truth Social platform called Giuliani the “greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot”.For much of the past two decades, Giuliani’s public life has been defined by a striking rise and fall. After leading New York through the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he mounted a brief campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and became one of the most recognizable political figures in the country. But as Trump’s personal lawyer, he became a central figure in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Courts repeatedly rejected the fraud claims he advanced, and two former Georgia election workers won a $148m defamation judgment against him.The election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, said Giuliani’s efforts to promote Trump’s lies about the election being stolen led to death threats that made them fear for their lives.Giuliani was disbarred in New York and Washington DC for repeatedly making false statements about the election, and he was criminally charged in Georgia and Arizona in connection with efforts to undo Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.Giuliani, 81, was hospitalized after the Saturday night collision in New Hampshire. State police said he was a passenger in a rented Ford Bronco driven by his spokesperson, Ted Goodman, when the vehicle was struck from behind by a Honda HR-V. Giuliani suffered a fractured thoracic vertebra along with multiple lacerations, contusions and injuries to his left arm and leg, according to his security chief, Michael Ragusa. On Monday, Ragusa said Giuliani remained in the hospital but was expected to be discharged “soon”.The Medal of Freedom, established in 1963, is awarded to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the US, world peace, or cultural or other significant public endeavors. More
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Hundreds of ‘Workers Over Billionaires’ Labor Day rallies take place across US
As Labor Day rallies took place across the US, the Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson sharply denounced the Trump administration’s threat to deploy federal troops to the city as part of an immigration crackdown.“No federal troops in the city of Chicago,” said Johnson on Monday to a gathered crowd at the “Workers over Billionaires” demonstration in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood.Johnson added: “We’re going to defend our democracy … we’re going to protect the humanity of every single person in the city of Chicago.”Monday’s rally in Chicago is one of hundreds of protests organized across the country as part of the national “Workers Over Billionaires” effort, a mass action demanding freedom, fairness and security for workers, and the right to unionize.Demonstrations are taking place in cities large and small, including New York, Houston, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. Smaller cities such as Cleveland, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina, held rallies of their own as a part of the nationwide action.The May Day Strong group, a coalition to labor unions, organized Monday’s efforts, along with AFL-CIO, the US’s largest federation of unions; the One Fair Wage, a non-profit advocating for fair wages for restaurant workers; and other labor groups.“This is about organic, grassroots organizing, and we intentionally wanted it to be outside of Washington DC, because that’s where the impacts are being felt,” said Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, about Monday’s efforts.In New York, hundreds gathered across the street from Trump Tower in the city’s Midtown district, USA Today reported. Separate protests were held throughout New York state, including in Albany, the state’s capital.US senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who represents New York, made an appearance at an Albany demonstration. “It’s Labor Day [and] we want to celebrate working men and people in this community,” said Gilibrand. New York state, the middle class was built on the labor movement and it’s time to recognize how important working people are to this community, to our country, to our great state,” she added.Thousands also marched in the Los Angeles area early Monday, local affiliate KTLA reported. The rally was followed by a free picnic for community members, along with live entertainment.Several protests were organized in California’s Bay Area. Residents in Redwood City, about an hour from San Francisco, even formed a 17-mile human chain to Santa Clara as apart of the day’s protest, NBC Bay Area reported. More
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Former CDC leaders slam RFK Jr for endangering Americans’ health
Nine former officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said that Robert F Kennedy Jr’s leadership of the US health and human services department is “unlike anything our country has ever experienced” and “unacceptable”. They also warned that Kennedy’s leadership “should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings”.In a guest essay for the New York Times, the former CDC leaders said Kennedy’s actions were “unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency”.The letter comes days after Kennedy sought to dismiss Susan Monarez, the CDC director he appointed just months earlier. Monarez refused to leave her post, and was later fired by Donald Trump. Monarez said through lawyers the clash came after she refused to sign off on Kennedy’s directives.In the essay, titled We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health, the former leaders, including Rochelle P Walensky, Mandy Cohen and Tom Frieden, said they were concerned Kennedy is “focusing “on unproven ‘treatments’ while downplaying vaccines” and cancelling medical research “that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies”.The former officials accused Kennedy of replacing “experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views”.The letter comes as the Trump administration is pushing back on criticism of Kennedy’s leadership.The White House said last week that Trump and Kennedy aim to make the agency “more public-facing” and “more accountable,” and that they would be “strengthening our public health system and restoring it to its core mission of protecting Americans from communicable diseases, investing in innovation to prevent, detect and respond to future threats”.The arguments over the direction of the CDC center in part on disagreements over vaccination policies.Monarez was reportedly fired after clashing with Kennedy over vaccine policy.In a sign that it is a debate even Trump can’t escape, the president on Monday in a Truth Social post called on pharmaceutical companies to “justify” the success of the Covid vaccines that were initiated during his first term.“Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.”Trump added that while the drug companies “go off to the next ‘hunt’ and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC”, they should “figure out the success or failure” of Covid drugs.The White Househas named deputy health secretary Jim O’Neill to serve as acting CDC director. O’Neill is a biotech investor and former speechwriter for the health department during the George W Bush administration. He can only serve as an interim leader of the agency until a permanent director is confirmed by the Senate.Following Monarez’s firing, hundreds of CDC staffers rallied outside the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta in protest. Three senior CDC leaders, Debra Houry, Demetre Daskalakis and Daniel Jernigan, resigned from their posts.In Monday’s Times editorial, the nine former CDC officials stepped in to Covid vaccine dispute, saying Operation Warp Speed “produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives” during the pandemic.“During our respective CDC tenures, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reason to doubt that they would rely on data-driven insights for our protection, or that they would support public health workers,” they added. More
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Doctors find bullet fragment in neck of 10-year-old Minnesota school shooting survivor
Doctors have found a bullet fragment lodged perilously close to the carotid artery in the neck of a 10-year-old boy who narrowly survived the mass shooting in Minneapolis last week after a friend shielded him from the gunfire.Fifth-grader Weston Halsne recounted running under a pew and covering his head while shots fired by the alleged shooter, Robin Westman, came through the stained-glass windows during the shooting at Annunciation Catholic school last Wednesday. He described how his friend Victor Greenawalt had jumped on top of him to shield him.After the shooting, the boy told reporters: “I think I got, like, gunpowder on my neck.”His father, Grant Halsne, has now told NBC News that it was in fact not gunpowder, but a piece of bullet, adding that a doctor described the boy’s survival as a “miracle”.“If it [the bullet fragment] went any further, he would’ve died,” Halsne told the outlet.His son is expected to have the fragment removed later this week and is expected to make a full recovery.An aunt, Allison Hawes, confirmed that her nephew “will need surgery to remove a bullet fragment that is lodged in his neck, dangerously close to his carotid artery”.Hawes wrote on a fundraising page: “You’ve been amazed by his quick wit, awed by his persistence, and charmed by his earnestness.“If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve seen his grief-stricken face and heard, despite his shock, Weston’s account of the horrific details during the mass at Annunciation Church. And in spite of everything, this 10-year-old boy was able to express appreciation for his friends and pray for their recovery.”Weston last week described how he first heard the gunfire. “I was like two seats away from the stained glass windows,” Weston said. “So, they were like, the shots were like right next to me.”The suspect, who was found dead at the rear of the church with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, fired around 120 shots from three different guns, according to Minneapolis police.Police on Sunday revised the number of people injured in the shooting from 18 to 21 on Sunday. Fletcher Merkel, eight, and Harper Moyski, 10, were killed. Most of the injured were children.Greenawalt’s uncle, Mike Kelly, said his nephew’s “selfless acts” helped spare the lives of his friends. “But he and his sister were injured in the process,” Kelly wrote on a fundraising site.Others injured include Genevieve Bisek, 11, who was shot in the neck. She is listed as “satisfactory”. Her family, who have also launched a fundraising page, said her “medical journey is uncertain”.Sophia Forchas, 12, was listed as in critical condition; Lydia Kaiser in “very serious condition”; David Haeg, six, is being treated in a hospital pediatric intensive care unit; and Astoria Safe, 10, was grazed on the forehead. She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that she had helped pull two kids next to her down when the bullets started flying.“I had two buddies side by side, and I just pushed their heads down to make sure they were safe,” she said. “I thought it was fireworks, it was just crazy. And the smell was terrible.”Officials have said they are trying “to determine some type of motive” for this shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara told ABC News the suspect “clearly had a deranged obsession with previous mass shooters”.“Ultimately this person committed this act with the intention of causing as much terror, as much trauma, as much carnage as possible for their own personal notoriety,” O’Hara said.The survivor accounts come as a political debate rages over the motives for shooting, with figures on the right pointing to the shooter’s transgender identity, and the left to identify gun control.On Sunday, Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar accused White House official Sebastian Gorka on Sunday of wanting “to deflect from the reality” after Gorka said Westman had a clear “ideological” motive for targeting the Catholic school.“That’s what terrorism is,” Gorka said, prompting Omar to respond: “These people are all over the place because they want to deflect from the reality … which is that, there was, someone who came into that school, through the window, and assassinated two beautiful angels, as they prayed.”Omar called for call for a ban on assault weapons and increased mental health services. “This is not the moment to point fingers,” she said. More
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Utah emerges as a pivotal battleground amid race to redraw congressional maps
In the fast-escalating national arms race over redistricting, Utah has emerged as an unexpected and potentially pivotal battleground.The campaign began in Texas, where Donald Trump openly declared he was “entitled to” five additional Republican House seats. It quickly expanded to California, where Democratic lawmakers are asking voters to retaliate with new congressional maps drawn to “neutralize” Texas.At least half a dozen other states have been recruited into what has is now an unprecedented push to redraw their congressional boundaries in ways that could lock in political advantage ahead of next year’s midterms.The president has been candid about his aims: to safeguard Republicans’ fragile hold on the House. A loss of the speaker’s gavel would derail Trump’s legislative ambitions in the second half of his term – and open the door to a wave of investigations, from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to its mass detention and deportation policies.Deeply conservative Utah, by contrast, has been pulled into the redistricting fray not by the president but by a judge.This week, Judge Dianna Gibson tossed out Utah’s current congressional map and gave the Republican-led state legislature until 24 September to submit a new one.The existing boundaries fracture Salt Lake City – a splash of blue in a sea of red – across all four congressional districts, effectively diluting Democrats’ political influence. A redrawn map could consolidate more of Utah’s capital city into one district, giving Democrats a rare opening in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states.“There’s no doubt that any map that complies with this ruling would be more competitive than the current map,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the non-partisan Cook Political Report. But he cautioned that lawmakers could still carve up Salt Lake City in ways that would maintain a Republican edge.On Friday, lawyers for the Utah legislature asked Gibson to pause her gerrymandering order to allow time for lawmakers to appeal the decision to the state supreme court, according to local news reports. The request comes a day after the state’s Republican legislative leaders said they would comply with the ruling, which they denounced as “misguided” and “unreasonable” given the 30-day deadline.“While we will continue to pursue every legal option available – including requesting a stay from the Utah Supreme Court if necessary – we will attempt to redistrict under these unprecedented constraints, consistent with our oath to represent the best interests of Utah,” the state house speaker, Mike Schultz, and senate president J Stuart Adams, said in a statement.The ruling in the Utah case stems from a yearslong legal battle over Proposition 4, a ballot initiative narrowly passed by voters in 2018 that aimed to ban partisan gerrymandering through the creation of an independent redistricting commission. Although the Republican-controlled legislature weakened the commission and enacted its own map, the state supreme court – made up of five justices all appointed by Republican governors – ruled last year that lawmakers had probably overstepped, paving the way for this week’s decision.Mark Gaber, an attorney representing the groups challenging Utah’s congressional maps, called the ruling a “vindication of a fair and neutral process”.“The voters passed this in 2018 to effectively ban partisan gerrymandering and now we’re seeing a push across the country to gerrymander,” he said. “It’s nice to see this standing out as a shining example of a process that can work.”Mid-decade redistricting on this scale is extraordinary. Typically states draw new congressional maps at the start of each decade following the census to account for population shifts.At stake is the balance of power in Congress, where the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections. House Democrats need to flip only a handful of seats to retake the majority, and early signs point in their favor: Trump’s approval ratings are low and falling, and since his return to the White House, Democrats have outperformed expectations in a series of low-turnout contests from Florida to Iowa.In a tit-for-tat redistricting fight, political analysts and experts say Republicans still hold the advantage: they control more state legislatures and have fewer constraints on gerrymandering.Yet the Texas plan, which was signed into law on Friday by the state’s governor, Greg Abbott, faces multiple lawsuits, including one alleging that the new districts are racially discriminatory. In California, Republicans have asked the state supreme court to block the proposed countermeasure from reaching the ballot. And even seats drawn to favor one party can become competitive depending on candidate quality, voter turnout and the national mood.In a closely fought election, even a single seat could tip the balance of power, making the prospect of a Democratic pickup in Utah all the more worrying for the president.On Wednesday night, Trump called the Utah decision “absolutely unconstitutional”.“How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “All Citizens of Utah should be outraged at their activist Judiciary, which wants to take away our Congressional advantage, and will do everything possible to do so.”Gibson, the judge, was appointed to the district court in 2018 by the then governor Gary Herbert, a Republican.Trump continued, urging Republicans in Utah to “stay united” and ensure the state’s “four terrific Republican Congressmen stay right where they are!” (One of Utah’s four House members, Celeste Maloy, is a woman.)Trump’s outrage over the Utah ruling is a reminder, experts say, that courts – and voters – also have a say in shaping the political map.Kareem Crayton, the vice-president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington DC office and a leading expert on redistricting, said the Utah ruling “achieves something closer to redistricting with guardrails” – in stark contrast to what is unfolding elsewhere.The lurch toward maximalist gerrymandering underlines the need for national standards, long sought by advocates of less partisan maps, Crayton said, but for now the message from the White House is: “Do more of it.”“This system is broken,” he said. “It’s a broken one when the outcome of the people’s house – the one that’s actually supposed to be the most representative of the public – turns out to be the least representative because people are going back to the maps multiple times and, with no abandon, with respect to partisanship, drawing districts that choose their voters and not the other way around.” More
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‘He’s brazenly anti-worker’: US marks the first Labor Day under Trump 2.0
For this Labor Day, the Donald Trump administration has draped an enormous banner outside the US labor department with his portrait and the words “American Workers First.”Trump was elected on promises, since repeatedly pledged, that he would fight for workers and forgotten Americans. But many labor advocates say that Trump has consistently put corporate interests first in his second term as he has taken dozens of actions that hurt workers, often by cutting their pay or making their jobs more dangerous.Despite his vow to help coal miners, Trump halted enforcement of a regulation that protects miners from a debilitating, often deadly lung disease. He fired the chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), leaving the US’s top labor watchdog without a quorum to protect workers from corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics. Angering labor leaders, Trump stripped one million federal workers of their right to bargain collectively and tore up their union contracts.“It’s a big betrayal,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the main US labor federation, said. “We knew it would be bad, but we had no idea how rapidly he would be doing these things. He is stripping away regulations that protect workers. His attacks on unions are coming fast and furious. He talks a good game of being for working people, but he’s doing the absolute opposite.”“This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires,” Shuler added.Trump has hurt construction workers by shutting down major wind turbine projects and ending Biden-era subsidies that encourage the construction of factories that make renewable-energy products. In moves that will harm some of the nation’s most vulnerable workers, the Trump administration has proposed ending minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million home-care and domestic workers. It has also killed a Biden plan to prevent employers from paying disabled workers less than the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage.“There is a huge disconnect between Trump’s pro-worker rhetoric and the policies he’s putting in place. The gulf is enormous,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive thinktank. “In his second term, he’s been absolutely, brazenly anti-worker.”“I keep thinking about his taking away the Biden-era increase in the minimum wage for federal contractors. It’s unbelievably brazen,” Shierholz continued. (Trump ended the requirement that federal contractors pay their workers at least $17.75 an hour.) “The minimum wage is incredibly popular. He just took away the minimum wage from hundreds of thousands of workers. That blew my mind.” As a result, many full-time workers will see their pay drop by more than $9,200 a year.The administration disputes all these criticisms. “The American worker has been left behind by the Democrat party for years, but President Trump has championed an agenda that puts the American worker first,” said Taylor Rogers, White House assistant press secretary.Trump has “unleashed an economic boom”, she said. Inflation is cooling, native-born Americans are benefiting from private-sector job gains and blue-collar wages are rising fast. “Under President Trump’s leadership, Republicans are once again the party of the American worker,” said Rogers.Many labor experts say Trump is even more anti-union than Ronald Reagan, often called the most anti-union president of modern times. Reagan fired 11,345 air traffic controllers who went on strike, but the AFL-CIO’s Shuler said that “pales in comparison” to Trump’s ending collective bargaining for 1 million federal workers. “That’s the largest single act of union-busting in our history,” she said.“He is worse than Reagan when it comes to his approach to unions,” said Julie Su, who was acting labor secretary under Biden. “We saw what Reagan did in the 1980s. That began a long decline in unionization. This president wants to make America non-union again. He’s certainly trying to make the government non-union again.”Shierholz said the “absolute scale of crushing unions” under Trump is “on a whole different scale from what we saw under Reagan. Trump is saying it’s absolutely open season on union folks. He took an absolute chainsaw to the federal workforce. He’s giving the green light to the private sector and local government to do the same.”Justin Chen, president of an American Federation of Government Employees council representing 8,000 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers across the US, is angry that Trump halted collective bargaining for EPA employees, voided most of their union contracts and fired probationary workers. “Whatever he said about fighting for workers was a complete lie,” Chen said. “He treats federal employees with a great deal of disdain, not as civil servants valuable to make our government and economy run.”Many labor advocates say Trump’s signature policies, including tariffs and deportations, are hurting US workers. Trump’s tariffs are pushing up prices and slowing economic growth, economists say. Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax cut will harm millions of working families by cutting food assistance and causing many to lose health coverage. As for Trump’s deportation campaign, many workers say it’s undermining their employers’ businesses and forcing them to work harder because they have to do the work of their departed co-workers.In her annual State of the Unions address, AFL-CIO president Shuler said on Wednesday: “The state of working people in this country is they’re under attack.” She added: “We want cheaper groceries, and we get tanks on our streets. We want more affordable healthcare, and we get 16 million Americans about to be kicked off their coverage.” Shuler said unions will hold close to 1,000 rallies and other events this Labor Day across the US to kick off a year of mobilization.Jenny Smith, a home-care worker in Champaign, Illinois, said Trump’s plan to end overtime and minimum-wage protections for home-care workers shows contempt for struggling, low-wage workers. “Trump doesn’t know what it means to go to work day after day to earn a living,” she said. “If you take away these wage protections, it will take money out of these workers’ pockets. The majority of these workers are Black, brown and single mothers. You’re taking from their children’s mouths.”Smith voiced dismay that Trump hasn’t made good on his promise to reduce prices. “I’m very disappointed that prices aren’t going down,” she said. “I just bought a dozen eggs for $6.”She added: “I don’t think he cares about us, but he does care about the billionaires.”Trump has taken numerous steps that will weaken safety protections for workers. He is cutting staffing by 12% at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha). His administration has proposed eliminating a requirement for adequate lighting on construction sites. It is reducing the fines that small businesses pay for violating safety rules. It has proposed blocking the government’s mine-safety district managers from ordering upgrades in mine ventilation and safety. It has slowed action on Biden’s effort to protect workers from high temperatures.Trump also froze enforcement of a Biden-era regulation that protects miners from silicosis, a serious lung disease.“Silicosis has become a major killer among coal miners, but the Trump administration is trying to make silicosis great again,” said David Michaels, a professor of public health at George Washington University who headed Osha under Barack Obama. “The Trump administration has taken several steps that are devastating to the safety and health of the nation’s workers. Osha, which is under-resourced and underpowered, has become significantly smaller as a result of the Trump and Doge [Trump’s unofficial ‘department of government efficiency’] cuts.”Michaels warned that Trump’s cuts to Osha penalties will reduce incentives for companies to ensure safe conditions.Administration officials point to the Trump-backed “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” as clearly pro-worker. But Yale’s Budget Lab notes that only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs, while almost 40% of tipped workers earn so little they don’t pay federal income taxes.Moreover, the no-tax-on-overtime provision will reduce income taxes far less than most workers realize. The deduction applies only to the “half” in “time-and-a-half” overtime pay. If a worker earns $20 an hour and their overtime rate is $30, that worker can deduct only the $10 premium for each overtime hour, not the full $30.Shierholz said that if Trump were serious about helping workers, “he would raise the minimum wage, make overtime pay double pay and do away with the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers. That would truly help workers, but that’s not what he’s doing. He’s doing as little as possible to help workers, while helping employers.”While Trump says his deportations will create job opportunities for US-born workers, Shierholz’s economic institute forecasts that Trump’s effort to deport 1 million immigrants a year will result in 5.9m lost jobs after four years: 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants and 2.6 million fewer employed US-born workers. “If you don’t have immigrant roofers and framers, you’re not building houses, and that means electricians and plumbers lose their jobs,” Shierholz said. “Plus, you lose the consumer spending from those workers.”Corey Mahoney, a 35-year-old cargo handler at John F Kennedy international airport in New York, said Trump’s policies have whipsawed workers at his warehouse. “The tariff situation has slowed down work, and many people lost their jobs,” he said. When Trump ended protected status for many Venezuelans and other immigrants, some of his Venezuelan co-workers left or were deported. “Some of the people I was working with tried to come to work, but they weren’t allowed,” he said. “We were left with less people, and we had to work twice as hard. It’s unfair.”“Trump is in an alternative universe thinking everything is good,” Mahoney said. “He doesn’t realize that normal people who are just trying to make a living aren’t happy with what he’s doing.” More
