Monthly Archives: April 2025

Austerity, budget crisis, Congressional Progressive Caucus, Democrats, Economy, Education, elections, fair trade, Fascism, Immigrant Rights, labor, Low Wage workers, safety net, social security, Solidarity, trade unions, trump

Are Working People Meeting the Moment? Prepare for Battle

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https://www.weekendreading.net/p/the-trump-regimes-war-on-working

The Trump Regime’s War on Working People: The First 100 Days

Weekend Reading

How Unions are Resisting Authoritarian Attacks on Workers’ Rights—and Why It Matters for Everyone

By Michael Podhorzer

Apr 28, 2025

Over the course of the first 100 days, appropriate attention has been paid to Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, law firms, universities, philanthropy, non-profit groups and the media as dangerous in their own right, but more importantly as essential elements of authoritarian consolidation. Yet almost no one has mentioned the attacks on an equally proven constraint on oligarchy and autocracy: unions. Trump and Elon Musk’s destructive ransacking of our government should remind us of what previous generations of Americans understood intuitively: that “we may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both,” as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis put it. Like other attacks on civil society, the Trump regime’s attacks on unions and working people do not just injure those directly targeted, but all of us, as the labor movement is one of the most essential bulwarks against authoritarianism.

I’ve covered the indispensable role of unions in creating and protecting democracy and freedom in earlier Weekend Readings (Oligarchs Understand Power. Do We?, As Go Unions, So Goes America, More Than the Weekend: Unions, the Past and the Future of Democracy, and Then they came for the trade unionists).

If we all have a stake in unions as bulwarks against authoritarianism whether we belong to one or not, the same is true because of how unions foster shared prosperity and a healthy society, which I elaborate on here and here. In that regard, it is crucial to recognize the Trump actions as coming from the same playbook as Reagan’s decisive firing of over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers. It was more than punitive—it communicated a clear, aggressive stance against unions nationwide. The immediate aftermath saw corporate America follow Reagan’s lead, significantly increasing anti-union activities and adopting overt union-busting strategies.1 Reagan further entrenched anti-unionism by reshaping the NLRB into a body less protective of labor rights, reversing precedents that had previously safeguarded union activities.2

As it did then, today’s federal war on working people comes at a key inflection point. Then it was the rush to globalization, coupled with financialization and deindustrialization. Now it is the imminent transition to artificial intelligence in the workplace. Musk’s firings are providing a new playbook for that transition—fire everyone so as to be able to start from scratch with AI with as little friction from a legacy workforce as possible. And, although not the topic today, it’s important to note here that with respect to DOGE cleaning house to make way for AI, it’s also cleaning house to make way for even more of the government to be privatized—providing a vast market for the tech companies’ AI products and services. Although this future is not certain, it seems to be Musk’s plan: first trash the government, then when the government fails, privatize.

Today, I’ll lay out some of the most egregious actions taken by the Trump regime in the first 100 days to attack unions and working people in both the public and private sectors. Much of this is based on indispensable research by the Economic Policy Institute and its just released 100 Days, 100 Ways Trump Hurt Workers. (For more great reports like this, you can subscribe to EPI here.)

Then I’ll document the robust pushback unions are mounting against the Trump regime’s war on working people in the courts. Unions have also been in the forefront of mobilizing public action, most notably the AFL-CIO’s Department of People Who Work for a Living, which in addition to leading and participating in protests3, has organized town halls across the country.4 AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler declared:

The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an unelected billionaire destroy what we’ve fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being.

And, significantly, even sectors mistakenly thought to be pro-Trump like the Building Trades powerfully responded to Trump’s executive order eviscerating collective bargaining for federal workers:

This executive order is an unprecedented assault on worker freedom and a direct attack on those fundamental rights. Americans know that patriotic blue-collar workers built this country, not billionaires. They also know that one of the last best chances to make it to the middle class is collective bargaining. NABTU and our affiliated unions will stand shoulder to shoulder with the entire labor movement to fight this head-on — and we will not back down.

Continue reading Are Working People Meeting the Moment? Prepare for Battle →
Civil Liberties, Immigrant Rights, Pittsburgh, Youth and students

Timeline: Pittsburgh Higher Ed Responds To Trump Moves, As La Roche Is Latest To See A Visa Nixed

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A timeline of federal higher ed changes

and responses by Pittsburgh-area colleges

and universities.

Photo: La Roche University, Friday, Feb. 10, 2023, in McCandless. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

By Maddy Franklin
Public Source

April 11, 2025 –
Here’s how President Donald Trump’s administration has roiled higher ed, and how the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and other local colleges and universities have responded.

This timeline will be updated as developments occur.

April 11
A visa held by an undergraduate student at La Roche University is revoked, a university administrator shared with PublicSource.

Revocations and wipes of international students’ records through a Department of Homeland Security system have been widespread over the week. Much of this is occurring, schools and students report, without communication from the government and with no reasons provided.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that there’s “no right to a student visa” and argued that visas would be cancelled in cases the government finds “appropriate,” such as participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Without legal status, students with terminated visas risk deportation.

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April 9
Visas held by two recent graduates and one current Pitt student are revoked, according to an email sent by a university administrator. The administrator said no known immigration agencies or authorities have been on campus, and the students were offered unspecified “support.”

PublicSource reached out to Duquesne, Point Park, La Roche, Carlow, Chatham and Robert Morris universities to ask if students or recent graduates have been impacted by sudden visa terminations. Spokespeople for Duquesne, Point Park, Carlow and Chatham said there haven’t been any changes. RMU did not immediately respond.

April 7
Visas held by five recent graduates and two current CMU students are revoked, following a trend seen at universities across the country. The university reports that no immigration authorities have been on campus, and the students were connected with legal resources.

March 19
A congressional committee sends letters to six universities, including CMU, requesting information regarding Chinese students to assess national security risks. The letter states that U.S. higher ed institutions “are increasingly used as conduits for foreign adversaries to illegally gain access to critical research and advanced technology” and sets an April 1 deadline to turn over the details.

March 14
The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights opens investigations into CMU and 44 other universities nationwide for alleged Civil Rights Act violations following the guidance set out in the department’s “Dear Colleague” letter. The department said these institutions engaged in “race-exclusionary” practices within their grad programs by partnering with The Ph.D. Project, which “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”


March 13
After Pitt paused faculty and staff hiring, administrators say that federal actions are not the only reason for the freeze. At a university faculty assembly meeting, Pitt’s Chief Financial Officer Dwayne Pinkney says enrollment trends, inflation and flat state funding were also behind the decision. The freeze would’ve happened “a little later” if not for recent events, he says — federal funding uncertainty was simply the catalyst.

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