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People Mobilize Against DOGE Cuts to Education, Social Security, Medicare and More

Mark Gruenberg and John Wojcik

In a big win for senior citizens, federal workers, and anyone else Social Security covers or who pays payroll taxes, a federal judge in Greenbelt, Md., tossed Elon Musk—Donald Trump’s puppeteer—and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency out of Social Security’s offices and its files. Thousands also marched in 150 cities across the country yesterday demanding an end to Trump efforts to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

While that was happening the nation’s teachers announced they are taking Trump to court over his illegal dismantling of the Department of Education and Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez barnstormed red and swing states with calls for a real alternative to Trump policies: Raise the minimum wage, expand rather than cut Social Security and institute Medicare-for-All.

Trump defiantly doubled down in his support of his puppet master, Elon Musk, however, by granting the world’s richest man access to the Pentagon where he will examine secret military plans to make war on China. Besides the obvious outrage in granting security clearance to the unstable and erratic Musk lawmakers and others note that the conflict of interest there is glaring because Musk has billions of dollars in investments in China.

The victory for the people was welcome, nevertheless, in the March 20 temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in response to a suit from the Alliance for Retired Americans, AFSCME and others against Musk and DOGE. Her order is good for 14 days and the judge set a March 27 hearing on making it permanent.

The same day as the order, tens of thousands of people nationwide marched in 150 cities against potential privatization of the Postal Service. And Republican President Trump formally ordered destruction of the Department of Education, a longtime goal of the radical right and white nationalists.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez delivered a scathing rebuke of the president and his billionaire ally at a huge rally in Arizona on Thursday, accusing them of “screwing over” working- and middle-class Americans as they turn the country into an oligarchy.

Speaking to an overflowing arena as part of their Stop Oligarchy tour – a series of events with the progressive New York congresswoman that has attracted huge attention among Democratic supporters pushing for a strong response to Trump from their party Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, warned the president:

“We will not allow you to move this country into an oligarchy. We’re not going to allow you and your friend Mr Musk and the other billionaires to wreak havoc on this country.”

Specifically on the dismantling of the Department of Education Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher with a law degree, responded shortly and bluntly about the union’s plan: “See you in court.”

Combined, all the developments show increased popular and political resistance to the schemes of Musk, Trump and the corporate class of Wall Street bankers and right-wing executives who fueled the GOP president’s rise to power. Musk alone shoveled in $280 million into the Trump campaign. Critics say he literally bought Trump.

That class and those ideologues not only want to destroy public education, thus harming students and leaving them more exploitable, but smash Social Security while grabbing onto people’s payroll taxes.

And they want to eliminate the Postal Service so private package services lack competition and can vastly raise prices.

In the Social Security case, AFSCME President Lee Saunders called Judge Hollander’s ruling “a major win for working people and retirees across the country.”

“Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans. This will not only force them to delete any data they saved, but it will also block them from further sharing, accessing or disclosing our Social Security information,” Saunders said.

Just as blunt

As for Musk and DOGE at the Social Security Administration, Judge Hollander, a Barack Obama appointee, was just as blunt as Weingarten, but at more length.

Her key paragraph, leading the order, declared “DOGE is ENJOINED and RESTRAINED”—Judge Hollander’s emphasis and capitalization—”from granting any access to any Social Security Administration information containing personally identifiable information (PII) or any PII obtained, derived, copied or exposed from any SSA system of record.”

The judge also ordered Musk and DOGE to “disgorge and delete” any non-anonymous Social Security data. Judge Hollander banned DOGE from installing new software on Social Security devices and computers, and ordered it to remove any software it had inserted.

Before Trump arrived in the Oval Office for his second term, the Education Department had 4,000 workers. Between Musk-forced buyouts and firings the week before, it has fewer than half of that.

Other unions, including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the National Education Association and the School Administrators added their denunciations of the Education Department’s destruction, at more length.

NEA President Becky Pringle, a Philadelphia science teacher, reported tens of thousands of students, teachers and parents nationwide gathered outside schools on March 19 to protest the department’s impending doom.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students…by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires,” said Pringle.

“Last week Trump and Musk fired–without cause–nearly half of the Department of Education staff, trying to get rid of the dedicated public servants who help ensure students have access to the services and resources to keep class sizes down, expand learning opportunities, and ensure programs like” federal college student aid continue.

“Now, Trump is at it again with his latest effort to gut…programs that support every student across the nation. If successful, Trump’s continued actions will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections.”

School Administrators President Leonard Pugliese noted the Education Department firings mean the agency can’t carry out programs Congress just funded—at a much higher level than Trump wanted.

“These cuts are a direct threat to the critical programs our students and schools depend on,” said Pugliese. “Congress worked to secure funding for essential programs that support all students, and now the administration is jeopardizing their viability by removing the very federal workers responsible for ensuring their efficient and lawful implementation. This is a grave mistake.”

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler fully supports AFT President Weingarten’s planned “challenge to that illegal DOGE order in court, which closes Trump’s Education Department closure.

A radical plan

“Shuttering the Department of Education is a radical plan, from the pages of Project 2025”—the Trump/GOP platform–that will close the doors of opportunity for America’s students,” Shuler said. “Without the Department of Education, working people will have one more hurdle to access the financial aid they need” for college or a trade,” said Shuler, an Electrical Worker. “Kids from working-class families—especially kids with disabilities—will be left behind, unable to access the education they need to succeed.

“States, cities and towns will be forced to stretch their already tight budgets to cover the loss in federal funding, jeopardizing essential programs and putting good union jobs our communities rely upon at risk. None of this makes sense for America’s working families.”

Trump’s dictate against the Education Department and Judge Hollander’s ruling against DOGE were not the sole developments in a busy day in the continuing war pitting right-wing President Trump and his Hitler-praising commander, Musk, against the nation’s federal workers, seniors, and unions.

The Postal Workers (APWU) held nationwide protests in more than 150 cities against what union President Mark Dimondstein previously said was a plan to end the Postal Service’s independence, sell its profitable sections—mostly package delivery and in urban areas—to Wall Street and saddle the Commerce Department with the remainder.

A Wells Fargo financial report, which APWU posted, calculated that sell-off would net Wall Street an $81 billion windfall just from selling 8500 USPS buildings and 20,700 acres of land. Privatizing the USPS would raise package delivery costs by 30%-140% while abandoning rural routes.

The Postal Workers protests drew thousands from coast to coast, including Alaska and Hawaii. One retiree at the D.C. protest told of a visit to New Mexico, which illustrated how national delivery would suffer. In the northern part of the state, inhabited mostly by Native Americans, roads are so narrow, and unpaved, that postal vehicles can’t drive on them. Carriers ride mules to deliver the mail. Those deliveries would end.

The president of the other big postal union, Brian Renfroe of the Letter Carriers (NALC), confirmed a report by a former USPS board member that job cuts may not be drastic. The board member had joined the APWU protest, in front of a large post office in Northwest D.C.

“Our primary concern” when Musk’s DOGE team of 22-year-old computer nerds showed up at USPS headquarters “was their unfettered access to employee information,” including confidential data, Renfroe told Press Associates Union News Service. “Now the access will be case-by-case” and USPS executives must approve each demand for personal information, he added.

Renfroe also said other than 10,000 workers who accepted Musk-crafted buyouts, “We do not anticipate any reduction in our crafts.”

Renfroe’s NALC and Dimondstein’s APWU each have just over 200,000 active members. Overall, the Postal Service employs 640,000 people, 80%-90% unionized, including with other unions. A majority are people of color, women or both.

The USPS-DOGE pact was not on their websites, but Postmaster General Louis DeJoy spelled out some details in a letter to lawmakers. He cast the DOGE pact as helping to achieve his “Delivering for America” plan. It’s widely panned as ineffective in cost-cutting, slowing down service and cruel to workers.

“When the DOGE team recently reached out to me, I decided to constructively direct their attention to areas I know we can use any and all help,” which DeJoy listed. “At the same time, I took the opportunity to reiterate that the Postal Service is an independent establishment” and “our status and our mission are unique.”

Trump recognizes that, DeJoy wrote. His top personnel agencies—but not DOGE—excluded the Postal Service from the “federal hiring freezes, and federal agencies RIFs and restructuring” Musk and DOGE are imposing on the rest of the government, the soon-to-retire Postmaster General claimed.

(Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People’s World. Courtesy: People’s World, a voice for progressive change and socialism in the United States. It provides news and analysis of, by, and for the labor and democratic movements.)

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Sanders, AOC Draw Biggest Crowd of Their Careers at Rally to Fight ‘Oligarchy’ in Denver

Eloise Goldsmith

On the heels of record-breaking attendance at a “Fighting Oligarchy” event in Tempe, Arizona earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York held a rally in Denver, Colorado on Friday evening that drew more than 34,000 people—making it largest event that Sanders or Ocasio-Cortez have ever held.

Sanders, an Independent, wrote on social media on Friday that the turnout is a sign that “the American people will not allow Trump to move us into oligarchy and authoritarianism. We will fight back. We will win.”

According to Anna Bahr, Sanders’ communications director, the senator’s largest rally prior to Denver took place in Brooklyn, New York in 2016, when he was running for president.

Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, wrote online that “something special is happening… Working people are ready to stand together and fight for our democracy. Thank you Colorado!”

At the rally, which took place at Denver’s Civic Center Park, the two lawmakers hit on the same themes they spoke about in Arizona.

“The American people are saying loud and clear, we will not accept an oligarchic form of society,” Sanders said, according to Colorado Public Radio. “We will not accept the richest guy in the world running all over Washington, making cuts to the Social Security Administration, cuts to the Veterans Administration, almost destroying the Department of Education—all so that they could give over a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1%.”

“If you don’t know your neighbor, it’s easier to turn on them,” said Ocasio-Cortez, per CPR. “That’s why they want to keep us separated, alone, and apart. Scrolling on our phones thinking that the person next to us is some kind of enemy, but they’re not.”

Sanders launched his “Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here” tour in February, with the aim of talking to Americans about the “takeover of the national government by billionaires and large corporations, and the country’s move toward authoritarianism.”

The series of “Fighting Oligarchy” events have been taking place as some Democrats have gotten an earful at town halls back home, where constituents have come out to implore them to do more to counter efforts by the Trump administration.

Earlier in the day, Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders also held a rally in Greeley, Colorado—which is represented by Republican Gabe Evans in the House of Representatives—which drew more than 11,000 people.

Semafor reporter David Weigel, who attended both the Greely and Denver rally, posted online that at the Greeley rally it wasn’t easy to find people in the crowd who had voted for Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary. Weigel also wrote that the Sanders team told him that half of the RSVPs to the rallies were not from the lawmaker’s supporter list.

Eric Blanc, an assistant professor the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, wrote on Bluesky on Saturday that it is “pretty remarkable how AOC and Bernie have become leaders not just of lefties, but of the Democratic Party’s mainstream liberal base.”

While its dangerous that “establishment liberals” are yielding to Trump, he wrote, “the silver lining is that this has enabled anti-corporate forces such as labor unions and AOC-Bernie to set the tenor of Resistance 2.0.”

“Because today’s anti-Trump resistance is more focused on economic concerns, more rooted in labor unions, and more anti-billionaire, it has the potential to sink much deeper roots among working people and, in so doing, to definitively overcome MAGA,” wrote Blanc.

[Eloise Goldsmith is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.]

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Veterans “Act Now Keep Democracy Alive and Well”

Phil Pasquini

“Don’t let democracy die on our watch!” is the operative that brought concerned American veterans from across the country to every state Capitol and Washington to rally and march for accountability and to defend democracy. The date of the rally 03-14 was selected in reference to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution wherein it states that anyone who has taken an oath of office, civil or military and is involved in “…insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” can be removed from their office by a two-thirds vote of each House.

The National Mall was flooded with concerned military veterans, their supporters and family members all expressing deep disappointment and contempt for President Trump and his unelected co-president Elon Musk. The recent DOGE attack of mass layoffs against the federal workforce, many of whom are veterans, will include also include an estimated 83,000 workers at the VA. This unprecedented and egregious action against vets will result in a severe reduction of services, longer wait times and reduced access for care. This major sore point leaves many vets feeling abandoned and “pissed off at Trump and Musk.” While Musk has described the layoffs as “achieving efficiency” nobody at the rally was dumb enough to fall for it.

A disgusting issue raised, too, was the treatment of our vets who were foreign-born and have served in the US armed forces by putting their lives on the line for our nation, who after serving, have been deported. Currently, there are an estimated 45,000 foreign-born individuals actively serving who instead of having a path to citizenship for their service, will instead be rewarded by Trump with deportation after serving.

An article in The Hill reported that “The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied military naturalization applications at a higher rate than civilian ones. This is not just a bureaucratic failure but also a moral disgrace. A country that sends immigrants to fight its wars but refuses them the right to stay is a country failing to uphold its own values. How can we claim to honor service members on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, drape flags over their coffins and speak of duty and sacrifice when we discard them like they are disposable? ”

In opening the rally, MC Cliff Cash thanked the vets for their service and acknowledged their bravery and sacrifices then referred to Trump as “a five-time draft dodging Russian asset.” He went on to say that in protesting today, “Each of us is a drop of water; together we are a flood.”

Trump has been investigated since the 1980s for his ties to Russia, Cash said, and noted that Trump’s longest standing business partner is one “Feliz Sater” who is a Russian-born American mobster. “Donald Trump is a Russian asset and it’s never been more clear than now when we are seeing American foreign policy unfold as if Vladimir Putin wrote it himself, because he did. Donald Trump is not just an insurrectionist; he’s a traitor to this country.” Cash referenced his website donaldlovesvladimir.com web site for more information on the subject.

Both the organizers and speakers chastised Congress for not taking action to defend democracy that has been “hijacked by an illegitimate president and administration…(and) protected by a system unwilling to uphold our constitutional safeguards.” The vets have called on everyone in a bipartisan effort to “take immediate action to stop this authoritarian coup against the destruction of our democracy.”

John Bonifaz, president of “Free speech for People” spoke by video saying that Trump had “disqualified himself from holding office” by inciting the insurrection of January 6 to halt the peaceful transfer of power for the American government. “Anyone convicted of insurrection is forever forbidden to hold public office again.” He labeled Donald Trump as an illegitimate president, saying “We know this because three separate jurisdictions in this country looked at the merits of this question and found the same thing, that Donald Trump was disqualified. The Colorado Supreme Court, the Maine Secretary of State, and a case brought in Illinois all ruled that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection. In the end the Supreme Court found that states do not have the right to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in federal elections.” Something, he said, “Free speech for People” disagrees with.

Bonifaz went on to describe Trump’s abuse of power since taking office in January through executive orders by freezing funds appropriated by the US Congress along with his defying court orders in cases filed regarding the funds, including those affecting veterans. He noted that those actions, along with others, are “impeachable offenses.” Regarding Congress, he noted that Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was the only member of Congress that stood in defiance during Trump’s recent speech before both Houses of Congress.

Álvarez-Aranyos, founder of American Opposition, said that his organization “refuses to sit by and watch as our country is being dismantled from within. We are here today not just to protest but to demand action. Not to just speak, but to be heard. Not to just resist but to win. Because sometimes the enemies are foreign, but sometimes they are domestic. We are here because Donald Trump has already done what we thought we would never allow.”

“You can stand with Donald Trump, or you can stand with America. You can continue to cower in the shadows, or you can step forward and do what’s right. You can fight for your own career, or you can fight for your country. But you can’t do both!”

He proclaimed that Trump was acting not as a president, but as a king. “The attack on our press, the destruction of our institutions, the purge of civil servants… we are now watching our country being take from us in real time. He has given our enemies everything they ever hoped for, and he has done all of this with the support of his enablers in Congress,” who he described as “cowards who stay silent.” Informing everyone that: “We are launching a campaign to have every Republican join us in removing Donald Trump from office…by organizing ways that no opposition movement has ever organized before. The American people are more powerful than Elon Musk and we are more powerful than Donald Trump.”

Former Capitol Police officer with 16 years of service and J6 survivor, Harry Dunn, co-host of the podcast “Clean up on aisle 45,” spoke to the crowd saying that while driving in to the rally, he passed a lot of people with flags, and wearing military gear and that he had a PTSD moment because “The last time I saw everybody like this, they were beating the shit out of me and my co-workers at the Capitol.” Referring to the rally, he said this is what a day of love looks like and not what happened on January 6th that Trump refers to as a “Day of Love.”

Stating, “Veterans are the real heroes of our country,” and addressing his service working as a Capitol Police officer on J6 for which he received numerous medals and service awards, he said he “…would rather trade in all the awards and service medals I got for y’all not to know who the F%#k I am.”

“But you do know who I am and what we need to do right now is to have a lot of somebodies do something to save our country.” He continued, noting that “Congress failed us, the courts failed us. We need some people with backbone to stand up and get the job done” by removing Trump from office for his part in fomenting the violent insurrection on that day and his illegal actions since returning to the White House.

(Phil Pasquini is an award-winning photographer and journalist who has been a correspondent for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs since 1998. He reports on Middle Eastern and Islamic events which occur in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. He is a recipient of the “Fairness & Integrity in Media” Award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in 2010. Courtesy: LA Progressive, a website founded by Dick and Sharon whose mission is to provide a platform for progressive thought, opinion and perspectives on current events.)