A version of this commentary was published as “Together, we can stop Trump from demobilizing workers. Trump’s authoritarian drive is especially focused on disarming the people from self-government. His consistent anti-worker administrative actions belie Republican claims to be a working-class party”.
San Antonio Express-News (May 23, 2025). https://www.expressnews.com/opinion/commentary/article/trump-working-class-attack-20335712.php
Many opponents of Trump’s grasp for monarchical powers believe that the Supreme Court will block him by upholding the rule of law. I hope so, but Trump is signaling defiance of the courts while society’s capacity to act politically has been eroded by failures of the Republican and Democratic parties and civil society organizations. Moreover, Trump is using the government to attack organizations he sees as his enemies who might constitute public opposition: universities, law firms, unions, legacy media, the Democratic Party, and liberal civil society groups. These organizational elements of the Constitutional People will need to join mass voters to renew our democratic heritage. The Constitution’s Founders constructed checks and balances to block unwarranted power by each branch of government, but ultimately The People have the power to make changes, as the Founders had experienced themselves in the Revolution. Although Constitutional scholars now commonly observe that The People is a narrative device rather than an actor, sometimes something like mass participation occurs. Mid-20th century liberal democracy was based on mass participation organized by unions and the civil rights movement. Trump’s authoritarian counter-revolution revealingly is proceeding without popular majorities.
Trump’s authoritarian drive is especially focused on disarming the demos from self-government: not only his attacks on voter participation and election outcomes, but his consistent anti-worker administrative actions belie Republican claims to be a working-class party. Most people — most citizens, women, Latinos, Asians, Blacks and migrant workers — are working-class, but they have been demobilized. Trump is being challenged in court by unions and groups dedicated to Constitutional due process and, therefore, his actions are not accomplished facts, but the record is clear. Trump is systematically undermining the regulation of work that protects working people. Trump is trying to cancel the collective bargaining rights of a million federal employees, including terminating the rights of Transportation Safety Administration staff at the airports, and to re-designate tens of thousands of protected civil service workers as partisan appointees subject to presidential authority. Trump’s budget will cut 35% from the Labor Department’s work to uphold the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Wage and Hour Act, and other labor market regulations, including international cooperation. He illegally fired leaders of the federal agencies that regulate labor-management relations in both the private sector (the National Labor Relations Board) and federal sector (Federal Labor Relations Board; the Merit Systems Protection Board) and he appointed a legal counsel to the NLRB who argued that the Board itself is unconstitutional. Similarly, Trump has stymied the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He is trying to fire two-thirds of the staff who promote occupational safety and health policies (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) and provide conciliation services in union-management disputes (the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service). Trump rescinded Biden’s order for a minimum wage for federal contractors of $15 an hour plus indexing of future wages. He also reversed Biden’s order to federal agencies to favor employers who pay prevailing wages and provide benefits such as paid family leave when awarding contracts. He cancelled the FTC rule against employee non-compete clauses. He is trying to abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has handled tens of thousands of complaints from working families against credit card companies and banks (among others) and won billions in restitution. In addition, Trump proposes massive cuts in education and workforce programs and Medicaid health insurance. He proposes huge tax breaks for corporations and millionaires but collection agency referrals for low-income workers with student debt. Beyond the deregulation of work and social benefits cuts, Trump’s tariffs have disrupted trade-oriented employment.
Trump’s actions reveal the classic goal of rightwing nationalists: to create national unity under elite control. The caution about relying on the checking power of the Supreme Court is that Trump is a product of earlier poor decisions by both political parties’ leaders and the Court. This longer movement toward oligarchy was spurred by the Court, which shredded our campaign finance laws (in Citizens United 2010) in ways that favored extremely wealthy donors (such as Elon Musk and Trump’s billionaire cabinet), undermined unions (Janus 2018), and handed virtual impunity to presidents (Donald J. Trump 2024).
The authoritarian drive for power is synonymous with the demobilization of the working-class demos, who are prevented from acting effectively to promote their class interests in raising pay and working conditions. Unions, despite their flaws (and what organization doesn’t have them), are organizations of regular people who are independent of government, corporations, and the political parties that campaign for economic and political self-government. Pro-democracy groups should take advantage of the blatant gap between Trump’s rhetoric and his anti-worker actions because the authoritarian threat is not only a challenge to Constitutional principles, it is a movement for elite domination of The People. The demos can be united to protect their interests in democracy in organizing campaigns to unionize Tesla and Amazon warehouses and win representation for the 85% of employees without a union. But to get effectively organized, workers need cross-class allies to provide pro-labor representation, legislation and work regulation. The time to make these pledges is now.