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Trump Quietly Took Away a Living Wage from Thousands of Federal Workers

Michael Arria

(Extract): On March 14, President Donald Trump quietly rescinded a Biden-era executive order that raised the minimum wage for private sector employees on federal contracts. The move is just one part of a wider war the administration has launched against the working class since assuming power.

Executive Order 14026 was issued by former President Joe Biden in 2021. In addition to increasing the minimum wage rate for federal contractors, it set adjustments to account for inflation. The Department of Labor (DOL) estimated that some 327,300 workers saw their wages go up, with an average wage increase of over $5,000 a year. The 2025 rate was set to be $17.75 per hour.

“Because federally contracted work so often takes place in long racially segregated industries in states where corporate lobbyists and their lawmaker allies have unjustly suppressed wages, this action will also help begin to close the racial wealth gap,” noted National Employment Law Project (NELP) Executive Director Rebecca Dixon at the time.

Trump’s move could result in thousands of workers losing their pay increases, but its overall impact may be much more severe.

A full overturning of the rule means that some federal contractors will return Obama-era wage of $13.30 an hour, but Trump could undo the minimum wage for these workers altogether, meaning that some contractors could make just $7.25 an hour in some states.

“Lower-wage federal contractors include janitors who clean government buildings, food service workers on military bases, cashiers in gift shops in national parks and security guards protecting federal property,” Samantha Sanders, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of government affairs and advocacy, told Truthout. “This pay cut is a blatant attack on these workers — everyday people all across the country trying to make rent, buy groceries, and support their families.”

Anti-Union Moves

The Trump administration knows there is power (and thus protections) in a union, which is why it’s trying to prohibit federal workers from organizing in any way. The president’s recent flurry of anti-union measures makes the resistance to his wage cuts even more challenging.

In March, the administration moved to revoke collective bargaining rights with federal unions across several federal agencies. According to a report from Government Executive, the order could eradicate bargaining rights for about 67 percent of the federal workforce and for 75 percent of workers who currently belong to unions.

Shortly after the order was announced, Trump took the unprecedented step of suing the AFGE, the U.S.’s largest federal worker union, for allegedly constraining the executive branch. The lawsuit aims to invalidate a large swath of union contracts.

Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) also effectively shut down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS), an independent federal agency tasked with resolving work stoppages.

DOGE “basically decided to eliminate all but a few people from the agency,” an FMCS employee, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told The Guardian. “We don’t know the final count but maybe a dozen left out of an agency that had almost 200 employees through last year…. It is shocking as the agency does not regulate and has always been non-controversial.”

In yet another swipe against federal workers, Trump recently ended collective bargaining rights for nearly 50,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees. The move was a clear act of retaliation against the AFGE, which represents TSA employees and has continually sought to restrain the administration in court. The TSA negotiated a seven-year labor agreement last year, which included the addition of parental bereavement leave and expanded shift trade options for workers.

On April 8, Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce got a boost from the right-wing Supreme Court. In a 7-2 ruling, the court paused an order from a San Francisco judge that required the administration to reinstate the more than 16,000 workers who were terminated earlier this year.

Thousands more could be facing unemployment, thanks to a rule proposed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on April 18. The mandate would reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as “at-will” employees, stripping them of civil service protections and enabling Trump to fire them en masse.

“Moving forward, career government employees, working on policy matters, will be classified as ‘Schedule Policy/Career,’ and will be held to the highest standards of conduct and performance,” Trump wrote on social media after the rule was announced. “If these government workers refuse to advance the policy interests of the president, or are engaging in corrupt behavior, they should no longer have a job.”

The OPM estimates that 50,000 workers would be reclassified, which is about 2 percent of the federal workforce.

(Michael Arria is the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss. Courtesy: Truthout, a US nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social justice issues.)

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In First 100 Days, Trump Waged ‘Relentless Assault on Working People’

Jessica Corbett

(Extract) Apr 29, 2025: Tuesday is the 100th day of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, which so far has featured plummeting public opinion poll numbers and mobilizations against his billionaire inner circle’s mounting attacks on working people.

“Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s earthshaking first 100 days in office, no president has matched the sheer drama and disruption of that 15-week sprint in 1933, which rewrote the relationship between Americans and their government. At least until now,” Naftali Bendavid wrote Monday for The Washington Post.

“Roosevelt’s onslaught, in the depths of the Great Depression, was aimed at expanding the federal government’s presence in Americans’ lives. Trump’s crusade is aimed largely at dismantling it,” Bendavid added, noting that while FDR’s agenda was enacted by Congress, the current president “has governed largely by unilateral executive action.”

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) last week compiled a list of “100 ways Trump has hurt workers in his first 100 days,” which includes terminating grants to fight forced and child labor, nominating Crystal Casey to be general counsel at the National Labor Relations Board, and leaving the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service with what one employee recently told Common Dreams is “a very skeletal crew.”

In addition to detailing Trump administration actions to degrade wages and working conditions, the think tank’s report lays out Trump’s attacks on anti-discrimination protections, immigrant workers, public education, and more.

“During the campaign, Trump promised to put working people first, lower rising costs on groceries and gas, and preserve our earned benefits and healthcare,” American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) president Lee Saunders noted Monday. “Instead, the first 100 days of this billionaire-run administration have been fueled by lies, broken promises, and a relentless assault on working people and unions.”

“He has handed over the reins of government to billionaires—appointing the wealthiest Cabinet in American history, kicking off a trade war that is raising prices on everyday goods, attacking Social Security and Medicaid, cutting wages for workers, and stripping collective bargaining rights from more than 1 million federal employees,” the union leader said. “The White House claimed it had nothing to do with Project 2025, yet it has already implemented over one-third of the anti-worker agenda, often sidestepping Congress and the courts to do so.”

Saunders stressed that “the fallout has been immediate. Retirees are left wondering how to navigate Social Security as staff are laid off, offices are closed, and services are cut. People are watching their retirement savings shrink. Lifesaving health and safety regulations have been put on hold. Students with disabilities are losing vital support from the Department of Education. The Department of Health and Human Services is clawing back funding from states, cities, and towns to fight infectious diseases as measles is on the rise, and it’s just the beginning.”

AFSCME and the American Federation of Teachers are challenging some of Trump’s moves in court. AFT president Randi Weingarten on Tuesday condemned a similar list of Trump actions, including cuts to “research grants to colleges and universities that fund cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s research,” and said that “it’s no wonder his public approval is tanking.”

“The cruelty is unnerving, the disregard for the Constitution and rule of law is reckless, and the day-to-day pain can never be justified,” Weingarten added. “That’s why our members are fighting back.”

Some of the actions highlighted by union leaders are also included in First Focus on Children’s Monday timeline for what the advocacy group called the Trump administration’s “systematic war on the nation’s children.”

“I’m not sure we’ve ever seen an administration so laser-focused on targeting the nation’s children for harm,” said the group’s president, Bruce Lesley. He called out Trump, his appointees, and the GOP-controlled Congress for planning to cut children’s healthcare by $880 billion, shutter the Education Department, and “steal the lunch money of the nation’s poorest kids.”

“Babies have been singled out for special punishment with the proposed revocation of birthright citizenship and deportation of U.S. citizen children. This administration is also promoting tax policies that penalize families for having newborns,” Lesley continued, also pointing to the “decimation” of the United States Agency for International Development. “The president has left children overseas to die of AIDS, malaria, and starvation by the millions.”

Trying to end birthright citizenship is one of several ways Trump is attacking immigrants. The advocacy group America’s Voice this week published a fact sheet titled, High Costs, No Benefits: 100 Days Of Trump’s Immigration Agenda.

“Let this sink in: Our government is deporting American kids, including kids with cancer, and is now trying to defend and excuse their choices on national television,” said the organization’s executive director, Vanessa Cárdenas. “Their actions embody the cruelty, chaotic, and harmful nature of their agenda the past 100 days, and what they want from the next 100 weeks and beyond.”

“As Americans see the cruelty and overreach in action,” Cárdenas noted, “a growing majority is expressing disapproval, connecting it to broader concerns regarding the rule of law, the tanking economy, cuts to Americans’ healthcare, and overall chaos and extremism.”

The Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda is featured in several of the items on a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) list of actions “that pose significant risks to the human rights of people living in the United States and around the world.”

Tanya Greene, U.S. program director at HRW, said that the administration has already “inflicted enormous damage to human rights” and “we are deeply concerned that these attacks on fundamental freedoms will continue unabated.”

Item 51 on HRW’s list warns that “people in the United States risk seeing their democratic power weakened by a politically motivated effort to skew long-standing U.S. Census Bureau policies and methods aimed at ensuring accurate population counts that determine how presidents, members of Congress, and others are elected and how federal funding is allocated to states and localities.”

All Voting Is Local executive director Hannah Fried said in a Tuesday statement that “these first 100 days have been a five-alarm fire for the freedom to vote,” citing Trump’s executive order on elections, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, “and copycat bills in Ohio and Michigan that would require voters to show a passport or birth certificate to vote.”

“The voting rights assaults during this time specifically hurt Black, Brown, Native American, and other historically marginalized communities,” she emphasized. “They also set a tone for further efforts to erode voting rights and consolidate power at all levels of government in the lead-up to next year’s midterm elections.”

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)

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‘A Disgrace’: Trump Budget Gives $1 Trillion to Military While Slashing Programs for Working Class

Jake Johnson

(Extract): The budget blueprint that U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled Friday would give a record $1.01 trillion to the American military for the coming fiscal year while imposing $163 billion in total cuts to housing, education, healthcare, climate, and labor programs.

According to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) summary, Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget would cut over $4.5 billion from Title I and K-12 education programs, $4 billion from a program that provides heating assistance to low-income households, $2.4 billion from safe drinking water funding, $26 billion from rental assistance programs, $17 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $100 million from environmental justice programs, $1.3 billion from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and $4.6 billion from the Labor Department.

Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, noted that the cuts to social programs in the White House’s budget proposal “are extreme by any standard, but they’re extreme even by Trump’s own standards,” far exceeding even what he proposed during his first term.

“The cuts in this budget are especially egregious,” said Kogan, “when you consider that Trump is also trying to push the largest Medicaid and food assistance cuts in American history through Congress over the next few months.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. military would see a $113 billion budget increase compared to current levels if the Republican-controlled Congress were to enact Trump’s proposal. The 13% increase would push the nation’s annual military budget above $1 trillion, which analysts have described as the highest level since the Second World War.

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)

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Reporters Without Borders Sounds Alarm Over Trump Effort to ‘Bring the Press into Line’

Brett Wilkins

(Extract): Press freedom in the United States has fallen to its lowest level since Reporters Without Borders began publishing its annual ranking more than 20 years ago, with President Donald Trump’s return to power “greatly exacerbating the situation,” RSF said Friday.

The U.S. fell from 55th to 57th place on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, marking the second straight year that the situation in the country which lists freedom of the press first in its Bill of Rights has been classified as “problematic.” The report comes ahead of World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

The U.S. has been trending downward on RSF’s index since 2013, when it ranked 32nd in global press freedom. A decade later, it had fallen to 45th place before plunging to 55th place last year amid Trump’s attacks on the media.

“Trump was elected to a second term after a campaign in which he denigrated the press on a daily basis and made explicit threats to weaponize the federal government against the media,” the report states.

“His early moves in his second mandate to politicize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ban The Associated Press from the White House, or dismantle the U.S. Agency for Global Media, for example, have jeopardized the country’s news outlets and indicate that he intends to follow through on his threats, setting up a potential crisis for American journalism,” the publication continues, accusing Trump of using “false economic pretexts” to “bring the press into line.”

“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides broad protections for the press. However, no meaningful press freedom legislation has been passed at the national level in recent years despite the country’s consistent slide on the Press Freedom Index,” the report notes. “The PRESS Act, a federal shield law, failed to pass for a second successive time in 2024. More than a dozen states and communities have proposed or enacted laws to limit journalists’ access to public spaces, including barring them from legislative meetings and preventing them from recording the police.”

RSF continued:

Economic constraints have a considerable impact on journalists. Roughly one-third of the American newspapers operating in 2005 have now shuttered. While some public media outlets, and radio stations in particular, have been able to offset this decline thanks to online subscription models, others have found ways to sustain growth through individual donations. Massive waves of layoffs swept the U.S. media throughout 2023 and 2024 and have continued into 2025, affecting both local newsrooms and major legacy outlets. Many parts of the country are now considered news deserts, with the disappearance of local news outlets reaching crisis levels. Since 2022, more than 8,000 journalists have been laid off in the U.S.

Furthermore, “more Americans have no trust in the media than trust it a fair amount. Online harassment, particularly towards women and minorities, is also a serious issue for journalists and can impact their quality of life and safety.”

“Politicians’ open disdain for the media has trickled down to the public,” RSF added. “Journalists reporting on the ground can face harassment, intimidation, and assault while working. When covering demonstrations, journalists are sometimes attacked and physically assaulted by protestors or wrongfully arrested by police. According to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, there were 49 journalist arrests in 2024 compared to only 15 in 2023. The last journalist to be killed in the course of his work was Dylan Lyons in February of 2023.”

RSF’s new rankings come days after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi ended a Biden administration policy that strictly limited the Justice Department’s authority to seize journalists’ records and compel them to testify in leak investigations.

On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) published a report on Trump’s first 100 days in office, which the group said were “marked by a flurry of executive actions that have created a chilling effect and have the potential to curtail media freedoms.”

“From denying access to upending respect for the independence of a free press to vilifying news organizations to threatening reprisals, this administration has begun to exert its power to punish or reward based on coverage,” CPJ said. “Whether in the states or on the streets, this behavior is setting a new standard for how the public can treat journalists.”

“The uncertainty and fear resulting from these actions have caused requests for safety advice to increase as journalists and newsrooms aim to prepare for what might be next,” the group added. “These moves represent a notable escalation from the first Trump administration, which also pursued banning and deriding elements of the press. After nearly a decade of repeating insults and falsehoods, and filing lawsuits, Trump has normalized disdain for media to an alarming degree.”

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)

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‘Democracy is on Life Support’: Trump Orders Defunding of NPR and PBS

Jake Johnson

(Extract): U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order calling for an end to taxpayer funding for NPR and PBS, an escalation of his dangerous assault on public media that could shutter hundreds of local stations across the country.

The president’s order, which he signed behind closed doors, echoes a section of Project 2025, a far-right agenda that called for stripping public funding from NPR, PBS, and other broadcasters on the grounds that they “do not even bother to run programming that would attract conservatives.”

Trump’s order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)—a private nonprofit corporation created and funded by Congress—to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my administration’s policy to ensure that federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.”

The executive order, which is expected to face legal challenges, also directs all federal agencies to “identify and terminate, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS.”

In a letter to congressional leaders earlier this week, a coalition of civil society groups led by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warned that, if enacted, Trump’s proposed funding cuts for public broadcasting “will result in the shutdown of dozens, if not hundreds, of local, independent radio and television stations serving Americans in every corner of the country.”

“As it stands, public media journalists are often the only reporters attending a school board meeting, or a local zoning hearing, or at the scene of a crime,” the groups wrote. “They are the journalists most likely to hold local public officials accountable and expose corruption. Faraway digital media outlets will not replicate this coverage, and the American public will lose out.”

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)

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Trump Tightens the Screws on Education Funding

Nancy Hanover

(Extract): Since Trump’s March 20 executive order to close the Department of Education (ED), the nationwide coordinated effort to dismantle public education is escalating, resulting in educator layoffs, school closures or consolidations and the sudden termination of tutoring and other essential services.

On April 29, the ED announced it would terminate $1 billion in grants for mental health professionals in K-12 schools. On April 15, Trump canceled $400 million to AmeriCorps, which supplies more than 54,000 tutors, mentors, classroom assistants and reading or math specialists to schools and after-school programs. On April 1, five regional Head Start offices were closed, and it was then reported that Trump planned to eliminate the early childhood education program.

On March 28, Education Secretary Linda McMahon abruptly reversed $4.4 billion in pandemic aid spending extensions.

According to lawsuits filed by at least 20 states against the Trump administration, these escalating “catastrophic” cuts are causing “immediate and devastating harm.”

The stage was set in 2024, when the Biden administration chose not to renew funding for schools under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund, which allocated $190.5 billion to assist schools in three phases beginning in 2020. Instead, the Democrats prioritized the predatory US-NATO war against Russia, the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza and preparations for war with China.

The loss of the ESSER fund is, by far, the most significant source of the decline in K-12 revenues. However, Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s abrupt layoff of half of the Department of Education staff and her sudden reversal of all state-approved ESSER III spending extensions have truly been a lethal blow.

Baltimore, Maryland, presents a horrifying picture of the current assault on educators, children and families. After losing an estimated 100,000 manufacturing jobs—in steel and shipbuilding—in the second half of the 20th century, Baltimore now has a poverty rate of 20.3 percent and is among the nation’s poorest cities.

Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) have long been underfunded. But the sudden revocation of federal pandemic assistance left City Schools with a shortfall of $48 million from unreimbursed ESSER expenditures. This amounts to 14 percent of the district’s budget. The results have been immediate and catastrophic, including:

• Tutoring services were shut down effective April 8, with after-school programs ending April 11. At least 1,000 students lost tutoring services previously provided at 44 physical locations and through a virtual platform. The afterschool programs provided homework assistance, enrichment activities and meals. Special education students lost access to sensory-friendly after-school hubs. A majority, 63 percent, of Baltimore families relied on the after-school programs for childcare; 127 jobs were cut, including 89 tutors.
• Summer learning initiatives lost $12.7 million in planned funding. This will reduce the student capacity by 12,000, a devastating blow to children. Both the Career Exploration Camp and extended academic support will be cut.
• Asbestos remediation is being “paused” at 12 schools.
• Twenty-eight mental health professionals have been terminated.
• Infrastructure upgrades have been “paused.” HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) upgrades—critical for providing clean air and good learning conditions—may be left uncompleted in 11 buildings. Upgraded door-locking systems at 19 buildings are no longer funded.
• Bilingual education tutoring will be cut by 23 percent.
• Due to the overall end of ESSER funding, virtual learning options have been significantly reduced. In January, virtual learning in grades 2-5, which affects 138 children, were eliminated, and the secondary programs were restructured, resulting in teacher layoffs and a reduction in course offerings.

The cuts in Baltimore are the rule, not the exception. A brief survey of news sources around the country yields a near-endless list of cuts.

• About 2,300 California school employees are being terminated, including 395 educators being laid off in San Francisco, about 566 in 10 San Diego County districts, and almost 300 in the Santa Ana Unified School District.
• Washington state had $497 million in planned reimbursements blocked by the McMahon’s revocation, including $229 million for salaries and $41 million for counseling. As a result, Spokane schools deferred HVAC upgrades and asbestos remediation. Seattle halved its tutoring program and introduced athletic fees.
• Hartford, Connecticut, eliminated 387 educators, and New Haven plans to lay off over 100. The state is losing $14 million and will cut homeless student transportation and special education technology.
• Portland, Oregon, plans to cut 242 positions and end the International Baccalaureate programs at 12 elementary schools.
• New Bedford, Massachusetts, cancelled $6.2 million in teletherapy contracts and postponed bilingual preschool expansion.
• Mississippi lost $137 million, affecting jobs, summer school and ventilation system replacements; Missouri will lose $630,000 for literacy training and rural schools; and California will lay off staff due to the loss of $2.5 million.
• Flint, Michigan, schools have lost $15 million for mental health staff and lead pipe replacement.

(Courtesy: World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), the online publication of the International Committee of the Fourth International.. This article is an extract, for full article please visit WSWS website.)

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‘No Legal Basis,’ Says Harvard After Trump Declares Tax-Exempt Status Will be Taken Away

Eloise Goldsmith

Harvard University pushed back forcefully Friday after President Donald Trump declared in a social media post that “we are going to be taking away Harvard Tax Exempt Status,” adding that is “what they deserve.”

Trump’s comment came just hours after Democratic senators sent a letter demanding a probe into whether the administration is acting illegally by trying to compel the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to yank the university’s tax exemption.

Trump’s post did not specify whether the IRS, the entity that has the power to remove an organization’s tax-exempt status, is opting to remove Harvard’s designation. Multiple outlets noted they got no immediate response from the IRS when they asked the agency for comment.

“There is no legal basis to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status,” a university spokesperson said in a statement, according toPolitico. “Such an unprecedented action would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission.”

It is illegal for the president, vice president, or other top officials to request, indirectly or directly, that the IRS audit a particular taxpayer.

Loss of tax-exempt status, something that would only typically occur after an audit process that allows the university opportunity to defend itself and appeal, would be extremely significant for the university. Tax-exempt status means the school does not pay federal income tax on charitable contributions to the school and other income. It also means that donations to the school are tax-exempt for those who make them.

Trump mused publicly on April 16 that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status, after the university’s president said the institution would not comply with a list of policy demands from the president, that included, according to the Harvard Crimson, derecognizing pro-Palestine student groups and auditing academic programs for viewpoint diversity. The pushback from Harvard prompted the administration to freeze over $2 billion in federal funding for the school.

That same week, it was reported that the IRS was making plans to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

In response to Trump’s bullying tactics, Harvard sued the administration, calling the freeze on funding unlawful and asking the court to restore it.

The tangling between Harvard and the Trump administration is part of a broader wave of scrutiny by the White House on higher education.

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)

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‘Growth has Simply Vanished’: Under Trump, US Economy Shrinks for First Time Since 2022

Eloise Goldsmith

The United States economy decelerated during the first quarter of 2025, as businesses braced for sweeping tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a Wednesday “advance estimate” from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis—marking the first contraction of the country’s real gross domestic product since 2022.

Real GDP declined at an annual rate of 0.3% in January, February, and March of 2025, according to the report. That headline figure is a dramatic turn around from the final quarter of 2024, when real GDP increased 2.4%.

According to the report, “the decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports… and a decrease in government spending.” When calculating GDP, imports are subtracted, meaning more imports will yield a lower number.

A number of outlets have cautioned that the 0.3% contraction figure is somewhat misleading. Axiospointed to solid business investment and consumer spending data in the report as evidence “signaling at least some underlying momentum in the economy—at least once volatile measures like trade are stripped out.” The New York Times offered similar analysis.

But even with this caveat, the economic picture is less than rosy. “Maybe some of this negativity is due to a rush to bring in imports before the tariffs go up, but there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugar-coat this. Growth has simply vanished,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.

Several observers were quick to point the finger at the Trump administration.

“Our economy is crumbling under President Trump’s mismanagement, and today’s falling GDP data confirms our slide toward a recession,” said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the progressive group Groundwork Collaborative. “Trump is creating the conditions for a particularly brutal recession.”

“It turns out that when you launch a trade war with blanket tariffs, layoff federal workers en masse, cancel federal contracts, and reduce skilled immigration, you will have negative GDP growth,” wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on X.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said that “Trump’s chaos is clearly and significantly raising the risk of a recession, and the economic warning lights are all flashing red.”

In response to the release, markets slipped on Wednesday.

Trump, for his part, took to his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday to say that “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s.” He added that “tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers … This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other.”

Economists say they think Wednesday’s numbers are related to tariffs. According to reporting from the Times, the main takeaway from the report is that consumers and businesses started to modify their behavior even prior to Trumps “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, which rattled markets.

A surge in the trade deficit edged GDP into negative territory, said Dean Baker, senior economist for the left-leaning economic think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in a statement on Wednesday. “This was due to massive stockpiling of inventories and purchases of durable goods in anticipation of tariffs.”

“The negative GDP number could also mean the end of the big upswing in productivity growth under Biden. This is bad news for both real wage growth and inflation,” continued Baker.

“No surprise that GDP took a hit in the first quarter, mainly because the balance of trade blew up as companies imported goods like crazy to front-run tariffs. The more telling number for the future of the expansion was consumer spending, and it grew, but at a relatively weak pace,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, according to CNBC.

Wednesday’s report also registered increased inflation. The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge, registered a 3.6% gain for Q1, up from 2.4% in the final quarter of last year.

The numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis come a day after reports of consumer confidence in April dipping to lows not seen since early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is still major economic data set to be released this week. On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its jobs report for the month of April.

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)

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Nationwide May Day Protests Target Trump’s ‘Billionaire Agenda’

Brett Wilkins

Hundreds of thousands of workers rallied from coast to coast Thursday to mark International Workers’ Day with spirited demonstrations supporting labor rights and protesting President Donald Trump’s “billionaire agenda” and attacks on the rule of law, unions, immigrants, Palestine defenders, transgender people, and others.

Rallies took place in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States in what the May Day Strong coalition, which led the day of action along with the 50501 movement and others, called “a demand for a country that invests in working families—not billionaire profits.”

“Trump and his billionaire profiteers are trying to create a race to the bottom—on wages, on benefits, on dignity itself,” the coalition said. “This May Day we are fighting back. We are demanding a country that puts our families over their fortunes—public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, prosperity over free market politics.”

“Just one day after the 100th day of the Trump administration, families nationwide are already facing cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and education—while billionaires reap massive tax breaks and record profits,” May Day Strong added.

In Philadelphia, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among those who addressed a crowd of thousands, many of them union workers.

“Brothers and sisters, what we are celebrating today, May Day, is in a sense a sacred holiday, and all over our country workers are coming out and demanding justice, and all over the world, in dozens of countries, workers are standing up to oligarchy and demanding a world in which all people have a decent standard of living,” said Sanders, whose Fighting Oligarchy tour with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is drawing massive crowds, including in “red” states.

Shafeek Anderson, a hotel worker and member of Unite Here Local 274 who attended the Philadelphia rally, toldWCAU that “we’re tired of everything that’s going on in everyday life. We’re tired of our prices going up. We’re tired of the unfair treatment.”

“We’re tired of the inequality in life and everything else,” Anderson added. “So rallies like this will absolutely help show that we mean business and we absolutely will stand on business when we need to.”

In Chicago, Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union—which recently won what it called a “transformative” new contract—said that “we believe in the power of common good bargaining and together, with SEIU 73 and other labor unions, we have been able to secure sanctuary protections for our students and their families.”

“We resist bullies like Trump by creating coalition and leaning into the power of history and the power that Black people’s freedom has paved for America in the first general strike during the Civil War,” Davis Gates added. “My people believe in reconstruction, and we can do it together in solidarity and create a society that works for everyone.”

The May Day Strong coalition is demanding:

• An end to the billionaire takeover and government corruption;
• Full funding for public schools, healthcare, and housing;
• Protection and expansion of Medicaid, Social Security, and other essential programs;
• A halt to attacks on immigrants, Black, Indigenous, trans, and other targeted communities; and
• Strong union protections, fair wages, and dignity for all workers.

“This is a war on working people—and we will not stand down,” said May Day Strong. “They’re defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence. Working people built this nation, and we know how to take care of each other.”

“We won’t back down—we will never stop fighting for our families and the rights and freedoms that propel opportunity and a better life for all Americans,” the coalition added. “Their time is up.”

(Courtesy: Common Dreams, a US non-profit newsportal.)