Trump's Tyranny
Trump’s views on workers are not new
Lawrence Wittner, Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany who has
written extensively on peace movements, foreign policy, and economic inequality,
considers Trump’s record on American workers
(https://commondreams.org/opinion/trump-working-class). The title of his article,
published on May 21, 2024, says it all: “Trump Didn't Lift Up the Working Class.
He Stepped on Its Neck.” Here’s some of what he writes.
“Although Donald Trump, as president, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union
address that he had produced a “blue-collar boom” in workers’ wages, the reality
was quite different. Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S.
government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by
blocking raises and imposing wage reductions.
“Only the preceding year, Trump derailed vital wage legislation. In July
2019―with the pathetically low federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour for
a decade and some 13 million workers holding two or more jobs to support their
Among the flurry of actions by the Trump administration, it could be easy to miss one that poses a grave danger to public health and our planet: a no-holds-barred attack on science.
In a series of disturbing moves, the administration has censored scientific research, slashed resources for public health and the environment, and advanced fossil fuel industry propaganda. These moves only serve corporate interests — at the expense of ordinary people and the planet.
As a former chair of a congressional investigative subcommittee, I witnessed and uncovered significant waste, fraud and abuse inside the government and in private sector contractual relations with the United States. But, through 16 years in Congress, I also witnessed countless federal workers who love this country, have dedicated their lives and worked long and hard to be of service to the people of the United States. They honorably did their duty and delivered when people needed help.
My excellent Congressional staff handled at least 11,000 requests for service, yearly. Our office was engaged with federal workers in dozens of agencies on an hour-by-hour basis to make government work for the people.
Over a period of sixteen years, diligent federal workers have intervened in all these cases and as a result changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of my constituents for the better.
The Great White Father in Washington has spoken. Let mere mortals hark and obey.
Gaza is a ‘mess’ said President Trump and must be ‘cleaned up.’ 2.1 million human refuse are befouling this potentially prime beachside property. `We just clean out that whole thing’ quoth the Great Developer.
Trump said the answer to this thorny problem is to move all these Palestinian refugees to neighboring Egypt and Jordan. Voila! Problem solved!
Why didn’t the world think of this earlier? Small problem: Egypt, has 107.5 million people crammed into a fertile area the size of the small US state of Maryland. Overpopulated Egypt is so crowded that its people have taken up camping in cemeteries.
Egypt can’t feed its people without millions in US aid delivered through a network of corrupt suppliers. Trump had nothing to say about the corrupt former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, who took large bribes for decades from the Egyptian government – and possibly from others such as Ukraine and Israel.
As the Trump presidency digs its claws into the country – winner take all! – I look on in terrified amazement as he begins arrogantly instituting what can only be called his plan to devolve America back to the good old days: back to the era of Jim Crow certainty and whatever that might mean.
We’re white, we’re Christian and we’re the best! Just ask Pete Hegseth.
This is the “Gulf of America”! It’s not Trump’s smugly renamed Gulf of Mexico; it’s the hole in the country’s collective consciousness, which Mr. President is hellbent on expanding. His plan is to make America safe for what it used to be and allow our old, beloved prejudices to return. Deport the illegals! Kill wokeness! Kill understanding and awareness!
All of which leaves a few glaring questions hovering over the daily news: How the hell did this guy win a majority of votes? Is he really aligned with the nation’s primary beliefs? And if he isn’t . . . uh, what happened last November? Was the election rigged? Was it stolen? And if so, how? Do we live in a publicly proclaimed – yet fake – democracy?
Trump intended his second inaugural address to be uplifting and unifying, though
it is riddled with questionable claims, downright lies, and is hardly unifying. (See a
transcript of the address at: https://nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/trump-
inaugural-speech.html.)
As of Jan. 20, his first day in office, he began implementing many of the policies to
which he referred in the address as well as in speeches during the presidential
campaign, and, in some cases, over many years. There are some issues that he
avoided discussing; for example, whether he will issue a federal ban on abortions.
By the end of his first days in office, he issued hundreds of “executive actions,”
many of which will be contested in courts (https://apnews.com/article/what-has-
trump-done-trump-executive-orders-f061fbe7f08c08d81509a6af20ef8fc0). Here
are some examples of Trump’s actions and anticipated actions and the effects.
They threaten to destroy the tenuous democracy that we know, and replace it with
On the one hand, there’s no sugarcoating how progressives feel as President Trump retakes office: rough.
Trump and his allies in Congress are already rolling out plans to cut taxes for billionaires, slash services for the rest of us, pollute the planet, and deport people who’ve lived here their whole lives.
But if you look closely, you’ll see signs people aren’t just going to accept all this. Here are five that caught my eye from this past election year.
1. Populist anger is boiling over.
Americans have had it with economic elites. Union activity has been on an upswing for a few years running now, with union petition filings in 2024 significantly up over 2023.
Updated on Jan 13, 2024 (International crimes)
Although the rich have been getting away with crimes since the founding of the Republic, this concept that no one is above the law at least applied to the proletariat, or the common man. The citizenry has mostly accepted this powerful myth.. That myth is hanging by a thread given Trump’s own crimes, but will be completely and 100% indefensible after Trump pardons the traitors that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“Unqualified,” declared Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, about Lee Zeldin being nominated by President-elect Trump to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The nomination, Jealous said, “lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs and future out to corporate polluters. Our lives, our livelihoods, and our collective future cannot afford Lee Zeldin—or anyone who seeks to carry out a mission antithetical to the EPA’s mission.”
In issuing the statement, the Sierra Club noted that it “is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization with millions of members.”