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executive order
Judge Blocks 'Unconstitutional and Dangerous' Trump Order Designed to Derail Mail-In Voting
"The court rightly recognized that the president and the executive branch lack both the legal authority and the capacity to compile a complete and accurate list of US citizens or eligible voters in every state."
Jun 25, 2026
On the heels of a federal judge in the District of Massachusetts siding with Democratic state attorneys general who challenged President Donald Trump's executive order requiring Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote, another judge in the same district on Thursday blocked key portions of a second Trump order attacking US elections.
In the latest decision, District Judge Indira Talwani struck down Section 2, which orders the US Department of Homeland Security to create "confirmed citizen lists" of eligible voters, as well as Section 3, which directs the US Postal Service to create rules to limit the mailing of ballots to voters not included on its own lists.
"The Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections. Broadly, the Constitution vests the president with 'executive power' and commands him to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,'" wrote Talwani, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. "Sections 2 and 3... are legally void as they are ultra vires and unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers."
The judge also struck down Section 5, which requires the US Deparment of Justicee and all other executive agencies "with relevant authority" to "take all lawful steps to deter and address noncompliance with federal law," plus mandates that states and localities "preserve, for a five-year-period, all records and materials—excluding ballots cast—evidencing participation in any federal election (e.g., ballot envelopes, regardless of carriers)." She found that this portion of the order "is merely precatory."
Several state attorneys general were involved in both of this week's cases, including New York Democrat Letitia James, who called Thursday's decision a "major victory" as well as a "critical step in defending the foundation of our democracy and protecting the sacred right to vote."
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Thursday also cheered the back-to-back wins against the Republican president.
"Just yesterday, President Trump's first elections-related Executive Order was blocked. Now, his second elections-related executive Order has suffered the same fate, and rightfully so. As the federal judge wrote in today's decision, 'The Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections.' Those powers are reserved to the states and Congress," Bonta said. "Democracy doesn't work on its own—it requires constant vigilance. And that's what my fellow attorneys general and I will continue to provide."
The AGs weren't alone in challenging Trump's order. The Association of Americans Resident Overseas, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, League of Women Voters, LWV of Massachusetts, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates, and US Vote Foundation also filed suit, represented by the national and Massachusetts arms of the ACLU as well as Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, Legal Defense Fund, and LatinoJustice PRLDEF.
The attorneys and plaintiffs in that case said in a joint statement that as Thursday's decision "makes clear, President Trump's executive order from March 2026 attempting to seize control of elections is unconstitutional and dangerous."
"This ruling is a critical step in preserving free and fair elections," they said. "The court rightly recognized that the president and the executive branch lack both the legal authority and the capacity to compile a complete and accurate list of US citizens or eligible voters in every state. The ruling also rightly recognizes that the US Postal Service has no authority to limit the distribution of mail ballots."
"The court has yet to rule on our request to block the executive order's provisions on mail voting on behalf of a nonpartisan coalition of voting rights groups," they noted. "The same reasoning underpinning today's decision should hold in our case. President Trump's unlawful executive order violates the separation of powers, threatens the integrity of our elections, and must be enjoined from taking effect in the upcoming primary and midterm elections."
Meanwhile, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson signaled the administration will continue the fight, telling multiple media outlets that "President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of our elections. The president's executive order lawfully protects our elections, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail in its implementation."
Jackson also reiterated the administration's support for the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, saying that "President Trump has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE America Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting to secure our elections for generations to come."
Trump on Wednesday canceled his planned signing ceremony for the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act "until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency."
In response, US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) summarized: "Congress overwhelmingly passed a housing bill to bring down costs. But Trump just threw a tantrum. He's refusing to sign bipartisan legislation to make housing more affordable in a bizarre effort to try to rig the elections."
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Appellate Court Tosses Youth Case Against 'Unconstitutional' Trump Orders Fueling Climate Crisis
“This decision lets the president direct a sweeping fossil fuel agenda, with no authorization from Congress and no meaningful judicial review, and then tells the children harmed by that agenda that they cannot challenge it until it is unconstitutionally implemented piece by piece," one lawyer said.
Jun 02, 2026
A federal judge in the District of Montana last year "reluctantly" dismissed a lawsuit filed by young Americans challenging a trio of President Donald Trump's anti-climate executive orders and invited the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to correct him—but the panel on Tuesday again tossed the case.
Backed by attorneys at Our Children's Trust and Public Justice, Eva Lighthiser, Rikki Held of Held v. State of Montana, and 20 other children and young adults sued in May 2025 over Trump's executive orders (EOs) boosting the coal industry, declaring a "national energy emergency," and calling on federal agencies to accelerate fossil fuel development.
After the first dismissal from US District Judge Dana Christensen, the young Americans and their lawyers vowed to appeal. However, the 9th Circuit on Tuesday found that "plaintiffs can only speculate that the executive orders are the cause of the many agency actions they allege will exacerbate climate change," and "they have not plausibly alleged that enjoining federal agencies from implementing the executive orders is substantially likely to prevent agencies from taking similar emissions-inducing actions under other lawful authorities."
Issuing an injunction sought by the plaintiffs "would effectively place one federal district court in charge of executive branch energy policy—'an extraordinary and unprecedented role' for a member of the 'unelected and politically unaccountable branch,'" the appellate court also concluded. "Further, by effectively challenging hundreds of current and anticipated agency actions in one lawsuit, Plaintiffs seek to circumvent the jurisdictional and procedural rules Congress has established for challenges to agency actions."
Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, declared in a Tuesday statement that "this decision lets the president direct a sweeping fossil fuel agenda, with no authorization from Congress and no meaningful judicial review, and then tells the children harmed by that agenda that they cannot challenge it until it is unconstitutionally implemented piece by piece. That is not how the Constitution works."
"The court did not decide whether these executive orders are constitutional. It did not decide whether the federal government may knowingly endanger children," she explained. "Instead, it slammed the courthouse doors on children fighting for their lives and told them to file hundreds of cases against every agency action carrying out the president's unconstitutional executive orders. Courts do not become policymakers when they stop unconstitutional government action. That is their job. These young people deserve a court willing to do it."
The lead plaintiff, Lighthiser, stressed that "the court never said we were wrong. They never said the harm isn't real. They just said they wouldn't stop the harm."
"They had the power to act. and they chose not to," she continued. "By the time we are harmed enough to satisfy them, it will be too late. I am a young person. This is my life, my health, my future. And I deserve better than this. We all do."
The decision comes as Trump and his allies continue to serve the interests of the fossil fuel executives who helped him return to power, regardless of the consequences for people and the planet—from gutting key agencies and attacking clean power projects to dismantling a deep-ocean monitoring system that helps researchers understand the impacts of the climate crisis.
"The Trump administration is responsible for a children's health emergency by obligating federal agencies to take actions that dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions and climate change," Dan Snyder, director of Public Justice's Environmental Enforcement Project, said Tuesday. "The 9th Circuit makes no mention of this emergency. Indeed, the 9th Circuit's decision is shocking in what it lacks."
"The court didn't even consider US Supreme Court decisions—or decisions from within its own circuit—which would require it to reach a very different decision than the one it did today," he highlighted. "The court ignored significant and undisputed facts that Trump's executive orders are causing real-world injuries to our children today. And the court ignores its most basic responsibility: finding workable remedies that provide relief to the uncontested injuries being inflicted by the Trump administration on our kids."
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Trump Accused of ‘Intimidation Tactic’ for Attending Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship Hearing in Person
In an unprecedented move, Trump arrived at the court after accusing conservative justices of being "disloyal" for ruling against him in previous cases.
Apr 01, 2026
President Donald Trump is being accused of trying to "intimidate" the US Supreme Court as it hears oral arguments on his attempt to kill birthright citizenship.
Trump broke nearly 250 years of precedent as he arrived at the high court on Wednesday morning to personally observe the proceedings, which no sitting president has done.
As Kathryn Watson, a reporter for CBS News, explained, historically, "presidents have avoided attendance in part to honor the separation of powers."
Trump was in attendance as the justices—three of whom he appointed—mulled what could be their most consequential decision in decades: whether to uphold an executive order that would strip away a fundamental guarantee of citizenship enshrined in the US Constitution.
Making it all the more unnerving were the president's comments about the high court on Tuesday night in the Oval Office after letting reporters know he was "going" to keep tabs on Wednesday's proceedings.
He specifically zeroed in on the Republican-leaning justices, describing those he appointed as “disloyal” for ruling against him in previous cases. While describing the liberal justices as rank partisans, who’ll vote against him no matter what, he said the conservatives were “very different.”
"They want to show how honorable they are, so a man can appoint them, and they can rule against him and be so proud of it," Trump said.
"Some people would call it stupidity," Trump went on. "Some people would call it disloyal."
The court is expected to rule this summer on the legality of Trump’s executive order declaring that the children born to undocumented immigrants or those on temporary visas would no longer automatically become US citizens.
A lower court has already ruled against Trump's order, declaring it in violation of the 14th Amendment, which was passed following the Civil War and plainly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."
The Supreme Court will now hear arguments from the Trump administration seeking to undo that fundamental understanding, including ones advanced over a century ago by a former Confederate officer who also helped to establish the “separate but equal” doctrine that legalized racial segregation for over half a century.
If the court votes to uphold Trump's executive order, hundreds of thousands of American citizens could become effectively stateless.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it could also throw the citizenship of tens of millions more into doubt, as it would effectively require people with legal birth certificates to "prove" their parents' legal status.
Trump's effort to strip millions of people of their citizenship comes as his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has pushed to ultimately deport "100 million people" from the country—a number that far exceeds the population of undocumented immigrants in the US.
DaMareo Cooper explained on Tuesday for Common Dreams that the Supreme Court's decision will determine "whether a president can rewrite one of the clearest promises embedded in American law":
If the court strikes down birthright citizenship, it would let the government decide who counts as American based on the circumstances of their birth.
The 14th Amendment’s authors understood the danger of that approach.
Once citizenship becomes conditional, every other right soon follows. Ending birthright citizenship would affect everyone—not just children of immigrants—in a system that has long questioned the belonging of people of color, including Black Americans.
Allowing the Trump administration to determine who counts as a citizen takes on even more weight in light of another likely unconstitutional executive order signed by the president on Tuesday, requiring DHS to create a "citizenship list" to determine who is allowed to vote in the 2026 election.
Given these extraordinary stakes, many observers fear that Trump’s appearance before the Supreme Court's deliberations on Wednesday is designed to send a message to the justices he's accused of being "disloyal."
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat called Trump's arrival at the high court an “intimidation tactic to remind judges of the costs of defying him.”
Josh Sorbe, a spokesperson for the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, said, "The separation of powers is pure fiction at this point."
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Librarians and Publishers Alarmed as Tennessee Libraries Shut Down for GOP 'Book Purge'
"It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them," said a coalition of 33 library groups, publishing companies, and civil rights organizations.
Nov 27, 2025
Public libraries in Tennessee have begun to shut down as they carry out an order from state officials to remove children's books containing LGBTQ+ themes or characters.
For Popular Information, Rebecca Crosby and Noel Sims reported Tuesday that the "book purge" is required to be carried out at all 181 libraries in the Tennessee Regional Library System, which encompasses most of the state, aside from cities like Nashville and Memphis.
It comes after Tennessee's Republican Secretary of State, Tre Hargett, sent a pair of letters earlier this fall. The first, sent on September 8, said that in order to receive state and federal grants, which run through his office, libraries needed to comply with a Tennessee law banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices from agencies, as well as President Donald Trump's executive order on "gender ideology," which effectively ended the federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary individuals.
As the report notes, neither of these orders says anything about library books. However, Hargett argued that compliance with the executive order mandated book bans because it states that "federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”
Not only do executive orders typically not apply to state and local governments, but the federal funds Tennessee's libraries receive are not used to purchase books at all. Instead, according to the secretary of state's website, they “provide all state residents with online access to essential library and information resources, including licensed databases, a statewide library catalog and interlibrary loan system, bibliographic services, and materials for the disadvantaged.”
The Every Library Institute, an advocacy group that supports federal funding for libraries, said that Hargett's instructions "contain significant errors, likely exceeding the secretary’s authority and reflecting a political agenda rather than a neutral or accurate interpretation of federal or state law."
"Hargett is setting a dangerous precedent by placing Tennessee’s state and municipal government under the authority of any executive order by any president," the group continued. "Executive orders are not laws."
But Crosby and Sims argued: "Even if the executive order did apply to Tennessee local libraries, simply having books with LGBTQ stories and characters does not constitute 'promoting gender ideology.' The classic fairytale Little Red Riding Hood involves a wolf eating a little girl, but does not promote violence. Children’s books are stories, not instruction manuals."
On October 27, Hargett sent another letter, giving libraries 60 days to undertake an "age appropriateness review" of all books in their children's section to find any books that may be inconsistent either with Tennessee's age appropriateness law or with Trump's executive order.
As Ken Paulson, the director of Middle Tennessee University's Free Speech Center, noted, the age appropriateness law, which was last updated in 2024, "is modeled after obscenity laws and prohibits nudity, excessive violence, and explicit sexuality, hardly the stuff of children’s sections. Further, the law applies to school libraries, not public libraries."
Though Hargett provided no criteria for how to assess what books would need to be purged, he did provide an example of one he felt violated both orders: Fred Gets Dressed, a 2021 picture book by the New York Times bestselling author Peter Brown. As Popular Information noted:
The book, which was written by a straight, cisgender man, does not feature any LGBTQ characters. Instead it is based on a childhood experience of the author in which he tried on his mother’s clothing and makeup. If a book about a boy trying on his mother’s clothes is the strongest example of “promoting gender ideology” that Hargett could identify, it raises questions about the necessity of the review.
Earlier this month, the state's Rutherford County Library System, which serves the cities of Smyrna and Murfreesboro, shut down several of its library branches for up to a week to “meet new reporting requirements" from Hargett's office.
It's unclear why the Rutherford County system determined it needed to shut down in order to carry out the review, nor has it been made clear whether other library systems will be expected to do the same.
As former librarian Kelly Jensen noted for the blog Book Riot, the Rutherford County system has made its own efforts to ban transgender-friendly books, but backed off from the policy earlier this summer for fear of litigation after a Murfreesboro law branding "homosexuality" as a form of "public indecency" resulted in the city being forced to settle a lawsuit for $500,000.
Kelly wrote that for Rutherford library system's board, Hargett's order is "a convenient means of subverting their fears of litigation, which drove them to change their anti-trans book policy earlier this summer. If the directive is from the state, then they 'have to' comply. The Tennessee secretary of state is granting permission slips to public library boards to ban away."
This week, a group of 33 major publishers, library advocacy groups, and free speech and civil rights organizations signed onto a letter to Hargett expressing "profound concern" over its review mandate.
The coalition included PEN America, the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the transgender rights advocacy organization GLAAD. Major publishing houses also signed on, including Penguin Random House, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster.
"These types of reviews create immense administrative burdens for library systems and often lead to illegal censorship, which raises liability risks for local communities and the state," the groups said. "Many libraries, uncertain about the legal and procedural basis for the mandate, have had to redirect limited resources, with some temporarily closing branches to complete these reviews, which are implied to be necessary for future funding."
"The demands in your letter need immediate clarification, as it is not reasonable to expect libraries to follow directives that would risk violating applicable law, including the US Constitution," they added. "It is illegal to remove books from public libraries because some people do not like them. This is a well-settled legal principle."
The Rutherford County Library Alliance, which has challenged municipal anti-LGBTQ+ laws as well as the censorship policies of the library's own board, said that “we have seen firsthand the concrete harm of the Secretary’s directives—library closures during story time, intimidation of professional librarians, and the breakdown of democratic representation in our public library system."
"We hope Secretary Hargett will fulfill their duty to promote library development by supporting our constitutionally-guaranteed rights and our highly trained librarians," the alliance added, "rather than enabling censorship from 0.001% of our community for 100% of our community.”
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The Hemispheric Presidency: Emergency Powers and the New US Doctrine in Latin America
Trump's emerging doctrine is anchored in the expansion of presidential authority, representing the full extension of the unitary executive theory or the imperial presidency into the sphere of foreign policy.
Nov 08, 2025
The latest round of deadly boat strikes, which killed 3 people—bringing the total death toll to at least 70 since September—are confirmation that the second Trump administration has decisively refocused US foreign policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean.
Long treated as a secondary concern, including during President Donald Trump’s first term, when attention centered on China, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, the region has returned to the forefront of US global strategy. But what is emerging is not a revival of Cold War containment or the Monroe Doctrine. It is the consolidation of a new US doctrine, one that aims to fuse emergency powers, economic warfare, and militarization into a unified hemispheric order.
This emerging doctrine is anchored in the expansion of presidential authority. It represents the full extension of the unitary executive theory or the imperial presidency into the sphere of foreign policy, an effort to normalize executive unilateralism as the organizing principle of US governance at home and abroad. Trump’s approach reveals how emergency powers techniques, such as executive orders, emergency declarations, and budgetary discretion, are being implemented as instruments of foreign policy.
This realignment is only possible because of the profound transformations generated by the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, which over the last three decades expanded the legal and institutional capacity of the US executive branch to govern through permanent emergency. What began as exceptional counterinsurgency frameworks, asset seizures, sanctions, and military authorizations without congressional approval has evolved into the standard operating logic of the US government.
Under Trump, these tools have coalesced into a coherent hemispheric project.
Emergency powers serve as the connective tissue linking military strikes, financial bailouts, and sanctions into a coherent system of hemispheric governance.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy rests on a single assumption: that the president can act independently of Congress, international law, and long-standing diplomatic norms. This logic manifests through unilateral bailouts, economic and financial sanctions, and militarized interventions.
For instance, the Trump administration’s authorization of 17 direct boat strikes in the Caribbean illustrates how the administration treats military action as an extension of executive discretion. In a highly contested argument, the Trump administration has maintained that the president has the legal authority to carry out these attacks.
The attacks are against vessels allegedly linked to narcotics operations, though many lacked the capacity or cargo to justify the strikes. Some accounts note that the goal with these strikes is not interdiction, but provocation, using force to engineer confrontation and accelerate regime change in Venezuela.
The Caribbean, once imagined as America’s “backyard,” has become the theater where emergency powers are rehearsed as everyday statecraft.
The economic arm of this doctrine operates on the same logic. On October 17, the administration announced a $40 billion bailout for Argentine President Javier Milei, the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” who wields a chainsaw as a symbol of his promise to “cut the state.” Half of the funds came from US public reserves and half from private investors, without congressional approval.
The measure was less about stabilizing Argentina’s economy than about underwriting a radical neoliberal experiment that mirrors Trump’s domestic agenda. Milei’s program, including privatizing pensions, slashing social services, and gutting labor protections, has been hailed in Washington as proof of “fiscal responsibility.”
But as Mother Jones revealed, hedge-fund billionaire Rob Citrone, who had recently invested heavily in Argentine debt, maintained close ties with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, raising questions about conflicts of interest and influence peddling.
In this context, the bailout secures a government ideologically aligned with Trumpism while reinforcing US financial dominance. More importantly, the US taxpayers’ bailout played a key role in Milei’s victory on October 26’s legislative elections, giving him a lifeline to address the economic stability exacerbated by Milei’s own policies. Thus, through the language of crisis management, the executive transforms financial rescue into a form of governance by decree.
The military dimension of this doctrine is even more telling. The Caribbean has become the primary stage for the remilitarization of US power and the enactment of presidential emergency authority abroad. In recent months, the Pentagon launched the largest regional deployment in decades.
In late October, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford left the Croatian port of Split for the Caribbean, joined by seven other warships and dozens of fighter jets. More than 10,000 US troops are currently deployed in the area, half aboard naval vessels and half stationed in Puerto Rico. The deployment followed a series of military practices and intelligence operations aimed at destabilizing the government of Nicolas Maduro, all justified by executive authorizations and emergency powers.
Here, Puerto Rico plays a decisive role. The archipelago’s colonial status allows the administration to deploy forces, intelligence, and financial instruments beyond the constraints of congressional oversight. Its ports and bases have been reactivated as platforms for surveillance, drone operations, and logistics under the pretext of “regional security.” The remilitarization of the archipelago echoes the Cold War, when Puerto Rico served as the hinge for US interventions in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, and Central America. To its environmental, social, and politico-economic detriment, Puerto Rico has been placed at the center of the US intervention on Venezuela, Colombia, and other “enemies” of the Trump administration.
Parallel to the military buildup, the administration has expanded its economic warfare campaign across the hemisphere. Economic and financial sanctions on Venezuela have deepened, further debilitating its oil sector and currency circulation, while the Treasury has introduced new tariffs and sanctions on Brazil, Colombia, and Cuba. The coordination between the State Department and Treasury has transformed sanctions into weapons of punishment, instrumentalizing law to produce political compliance.
Furthermore, on November 5, the US Supreme Court heared arguments in a case on that could redefine the presidential emergency powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The case stems from President Trump’s use of IEEPA to impose sweeping global tariffs, actions he justified as responses to “unusual and extraordinary threats” to US national security and the economy. The court’s decision will determine whether the president can unilaterally wield emergency powers to reshape trade policy, bypassing Congress and potentially transforming emergency authority into a routine tool of governance.
These sanctions, tarrifs, and “boat strike” authorizations were issued through executive orders, bypassing both congressional approval and multilateral oversight. Emergency powers serve as the connective tissue linking military strikes, financial bailouts, and sanctions into a coherent system of hemispheric governance.
Within this architecture, Puerto Rico stands as the linchpin. Its colonial legal status allows Washington to merge colonial governance with global military reach. The archipelago is now both a financial enclave and a military platform, where the imperial presidency meets authoritarian neoliberalism.
Thus, what is emerging is a new doctrine of foreign policy based on emergency powers. This policy deploys tools once reserved for domestic crises to govern an entire hemisphere. Under Trump, Latin America and the Caribbean have become extensions of the US executive powers, managed through decrees, loans, and strikes, all justified as acts of necessity, all serving the same logic of control.
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By Attacking Anti-Fascism, Trump Defends Fascism as a Good Thing
While there was little doubt before as to where Trump stood on democracy and human decency, he has made it clear with his decision to designate Antifa a “terrorist” organization that he and his coterie are clearly on the side of fascism.
Sep 27, 2025
Trump’s executive order designating Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” has spurred widespread interest in the anti-fascist movement. Of course, it is well understood that Antifa is not a single organization but an umbrella term for loosely affiliated groups of activists scattered across the United States and parts of Europe that confront and combat fascism and racism. Antifa, however, is more of an idea than an actual organization, so Trump’s order calling on US authorities to act against “any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support" isn’t simply idiotic and unconstitutional but says a great deal about where the “beloved leader” stands on free speech and fascism itself.
Simply put, by vilifying anti-fascist struggles, Trump is defending fascism as a good thing. So is his “comrade-in-arms” Viktor Orbán who has also proposed taking similar action in Hungary while his Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó has gone even further by urging the European Union to follow Donald Trump’s lead and designate Antifa a terrorist organization.
In the age of right-wing authoritarianism and proto-fascist strongmen, it is understandable that Trump and Orban wish to ban anti-fascist struggles. Relying on repression to consolidate power is an obligatory measure for all authoritarian regimes. Netanyahu might be the next unhinged leader to take action against Antifa. Anti-fascists in Israel have long been the target of far-right Israeli extremists; moreover, there have been voices inside the country saying that “only an anti-fascist front” can stop Israel’s slide toward fascism. That’s dangerous talk in the current political climate in Israel.
Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Benjamin Netanyahu are central figures in the global far-right movement. Indeed, the holy trinity of neofascism is represented today by Israel, Hungary, and the United States. Far-right movements and parties are on the rise worldwide, and they are expanding beyond national borders, “engaging in cross-border networking to export their ideologies worldwide,” according to Thomas Greven from Freie Universität Berlin. What unites them are anti-immigrant politics, anti-leftism, traditional family values, Islamophobia, anti-LGBTQ, and rejection of the ideals and values of Western European Enlightenment.
Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Benjamin Netanyahu are central figures in the global far-right movement. Indeed, the holy trinity of neofascism is represented today by Israel, Hungary, and the United States.
Far-right movements and neofascist parties believe that cultural hegemony is as important as political influence. Hence the attack on “woke” culture, gender ideology, and secularism. Of course, the far right is not a monolith, but there are lots of overlaps among the far-right’s varied movements. However, in the pursuit of creating an ultranationalistic state and building a homogeneous society, crushing the forces of the left becomes nothing short of an urgent political necessity for far-right movements and neofascist parties because of their awareness that especially the so-called "radical left" represents the only real political resistance to their dystopian vision.
Whether there are parallels between the state of liberal democracies today and that of the 1930s is tricky business. Nonetheless, today’s left could learn vital lessons by studying the antifascist struggles of the 1930s and 1940s. For the main task today is, again, defeating the forces of reaction, most powerfully represented by an idiotic bully and wannabe dictator in Washington, DC, an autocrat in Budapest, and the “butcher of Gaza” in Jerusalem.
For starters, the left needs to be united and thus avoid infighting. Liberals must also be seen as potential allies in the fight against right-wing authoritarianism and “proto-fascism.” The ability of the Nazis in Germany to overpower the opposition prior to Hitler’s rise to power surely relied on a sustained campaign of terror against the labor movement, communists, and anti-fascist activists while the state looked the other way, but it was also due to the fact that the left was fractured while the right united behind Hitler. The left was also divided in Italy while the fascists marched through towns beating and killing hundreds of labor leaders, socialists, and communists. Sadly enough, a similar phenomenon was encountered in Spain, with the left struggling to unite both before and during the Spanish Civil War.
Nonetheless, the anti-fascist struggles of the pre-war period remain of paramount importance and have in fact shaped the left of today, as Joseph Fronczak has argued in his book Everything Is Possible: Antifascism and the Left in the Age of Fascism. The first antifascist organization was the Arditi del Popolo (People’s Shock Troops) in Italy, formed in 1921 by various militants (anarchists, left socialists, communists, and Republicans) who saw that the Socialist Party was either incapable or unwilling to take the fight to the fascists. Working-class defense organizations existed in Italy both before and after World War I, but the emergence of the Arditi del Popolo was driven by the urgent need to “defend the persons and institutions of the working class from fascist squadrism by openly confronting fascism on the same terrain of violence chosen by the Mussolini movement,” as the Italian scholar Antonio Sonnessa has pointed out.
The ultimate organized resistance to Italian fascism took place in August 1922 in the city of Parma when the Arditi del Popolo and their allies Formazioni di difesa proletaria (Proletarian Defense Formations), outnumbered and outgunned, repelled and totally humiliated thousands of fascists. This event represented a rare moment of unity among the different strands of the Italian left, although the fascists may not have been repelled if it wasn’t for the valiant support provided by the working-class people of Parma. As Guido Picelli, the head of the Arditi del Popolo of Parma later recalled:
Working-class people took to the streets—as bold as the waters of a river which is bursting its banks. With their shovels, pick-axes, iron bars and all sorts of tools, they helped the Arditi del Popolo to dig up the cobblestones and tram tracks, to dig trenches, and to erect barricades using carts, benches, timber, iron girders and anything else they could get their hands on. Men, women, old people, young people from all parties and from no party at all were all there, united in a single iron will: resist and fight.
Nevertheless, the main parties of the left went on afterwards to abandon the Arditi del Popolo and Mussolini was in power just ten weeks after his horde of fascist thugs were defeated in Parma.
In 1932, the German Communist Party (KPD) launched Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action), but the antifa movement failed to create antifascist unity as the KPD’s ideology and strategy was formed by Stalinism which had branded the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) as “social fascists.” That said, the SPD also had nothing but contempt and even hatred for the KPD and the party’s ideology, structure, and political culture, as Donna Harsch has argued in her path-breaking work German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism, left it incapable of taking on the Nazis and helping to avert the collapse of the Weimar Republic. In this sense, as David Karvala, one of the spokespeople of Unity Against Fascism and Racism Catalonia, has stressed, “The disastrous failure of the anti-fascist action strategy should serve as a warning to activists who want to stop fascism today.”
On October 4, 1936, an estimated 300,000 Londoners, socialists, trade unionists, communists, Jews (who had been told by the Jewish Chronicle to stay home), and Irish dockworkers, blocked a march through the East End of London, home to the city’s largest Jewish community, organized by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF). As the British historian and author Martin Gilbert wrote, the BUFs’ “aim was to intimidate the local Jewish community and the local anti-Fascist working class.” The antifascist protesters erected barricades against the fascist march and engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with Mosley’s thugs and their police escorts in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street. Undoubtedly, the Battle of Cable Street was a major anti-fascist victory, but it also shows that a call to action against fascism, which is rooted in violence and intimidation, cannot be confined to passive demonstrations. When the march of fascism becomes an actual threat, “it has to be physically challenged.”
But let us not remain in the distant past. In early August 2024, a fascist pogrom was defeated in Bristol, England, when thousands of people, young and old, came together to counter an anti-immigration rally and to show that Bristol will not tolerate fascism.
Since then, there have been many other anti-fascist protests and demonstrations all across Europe and the United States, especially as the far right now feels empowered by Trump’s return to the White House and makes no bones about the fact that it is racist and sees neofascism as a political necessity in today’s world. This was all in display in London, for example, just a couple of weeks ago, in the protest organized by far-right activist Tommy Robinson and in which scores of police officers were injured while Elon Musk spoke to the fascists over a video link and urged them to use violence.
While there was little doubt before as to where Trump stood on democracy and human decency, he has made it clear with his decision to designate Antifa a “terrorist” organization that he and his coterie are clearly on the side of fascism. But if they really believe that antifascism is now dead, they are in for a rude awakening.
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As Trump Signs TikTok Order, Critics Sound Alarm Over Corruption and US Propaganda
One watchdog leader noted that the president's deal involves "one of his major crypto business partners that generates tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trump family."
Sep 25, 2025
President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an executive order claiming to "save" TikTok from a federal law that would ban the video-sharing platform in the United States, but critics are condemning the Republican's deal as yet another case of him "picking winners and losers in government policy based on who is enriching his family."
Trump initially kicked off efforts to force TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest with an August 2020 executive order, but Democratic former President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation that would ban the platform based on national security concerns last year.
Since returning to office, Trump has pledged to "save" TikTok, delaying enforcement of the law and negotiating a deal under which, according to a White House fact sheet, the US application "will be majority-owned by US investors, operated in the US by a board of directors with national security and cybersecurity credentials, and subject to strict rules to protect Americans' data and our national security."
The fact sheet also confirms that "ByteDance will hold less than 20% of the stock as required by law," and "Oracle—one of the nation's leading technology companies—will act as TikTok’s security provider and independently monitor and assure the safety of all operations in the US."
Critics have expressed alarm about both the anticipated quality of the US platform and the reported investors.
OpenSecrets noted Thursday that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is "a Trump supporter and major bankroller of Republican candidates and causes," and the company "has spent at least $11 million on federal-level government lobbying during each of the past four full years," a trend that is set to continue this year.
Citing unnamed sources, CNBC reported Thursday that, in addition to Oracle, the main investors will be Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi's MGX. Previous reporting has also suggested involvement from venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
Trump on the TikTok deal: "Rupert Murdoch is involved."
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 25, 2025 at 4:35 PM
While some opponents of the Trump plan have highlighted his ties to Ellison, Andreessen, and Horowitz, Tony Carrk, executive director of the watchdog group Accountable.US, focused on his relationship with MGX in a Thursday statement.
"President Trump's use of his office to enrich himself and his friends seems to know no bounds," Carrk said. "His grand scheme to 'save' TikTok just so happens to involve the enrichment of one of his major crypto business partners that generates tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trump family."
"That's no coincidence for the only US president in history that has seen his bottom line grow by billions from the White House," he asserted. "Meanwhile, working Americans see their costs continue to increase, from groceries to healthcare to housing. It's clear the president's priority is himself, not the rest of us."
Trump's Thursday order affirms that the deal complies with last year's law and allows another 120 days to finalize the details.
The Associated Press reported that "Trump said Thursday that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has agreed to move forward with it. However, the Chinese embassy in Washington didn't immediately respond to an AP inquiry seeking confirmation that China has formally signed off on the proposed framework deal."
US political leaders have long claimed that under ByteDance's control, users may encounter content favored by the Chinese government. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said earlier this week that "if the concern had been that TikTok could be a conduit for Chinese government propaganda—a concern the Supreme Court declined to even consider—people can now be concerned that TikTok could be a conduit for US government propaganda."
Joining Trump in the Oval Office for the executive order signing on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance seemed to confirm that's the plan, telling reporters that "the US company will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users, and that was a very important part of it."
Responding to Vance's remarks, one social media user quipped, "Ahh, so it was just an issue of *whose* propaganda."
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Trump's Designation of Antifa as Domestic Terror Is Legal Nonsense
Trump and his minions do not have the constitutional or statutory authority to create a terrorist designation pertaining to an amorphous political belief. Period.
Sep 25, 2025
On Monday the Trump regime signed yet another executive order that plainly states what many of us have known for a while now—that the cabal currently in power are unabashed fascists. US President Donald Trump declared that those opposed to fascism, those who are anti-fascist in this county—a country that has fought wars against fascism—are now labeled as “domestic terrorists” by this current government—in essence, enemies of the state.
Trump and his minions do not have the constitutional or statutory authority to create a terrorist designation pertaining to an amorphous political belief. Period. The First Amendment continues to protect freedom of speech and association, and would thus prevent any congressional attempt to enact a law that would allow the US government to designate US groups as terrorist organizations based simply upon their political activities. But, as we know with this regime, there is the law as it has existed for over 100 years, and then there is their attack on the law.
This EO targets “Antifa” which is obviously short for “anti-fascist.” Anti-fascists are opposed to fascists. Fascism rejects democracy. Fascists sign executive orders (no democratic process involved) that seek to malign or punish their political opponents, because that is the only way they can take more control from the people in a democratic country. Fascists attempt to undermine democratic elections, erase actual history, and manipulate words to falsely justify their propaganda. This EO is another example of Trump’s war of words—an attempt to recreate reality in order to solidify a fascist dictatorship.
Antifa is not an organization or an “enterprise.” There are no “members.” It is a social movement opposed to fascism, similar to feminism or anti-racism—not a single group or entity. One of our trial experts explained fascism thusly:
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional beliefs, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
The majority of Americans hold anti-fascist political beliefs. Those beliefs, opinions, and associations are the foundations of US First Amendment constitutional safeguards. Anti-fascist beliefs are also closely intertwined with anti-racist beliefs. During the 1930’s Spanish Civil War, many Americans went to fight fascists (including my great-uncle). As the Smithsonian explains in “A Brief History of Anti-Fascism,” about one of these American antifascists:
Eluard Luchell McDaniels traveled across the Atlantic in 1937 to fight fascists in the Spanish Civil War, where he became known as "El Fantastico" for his prowess with a grenade. As a platoon sergeant with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades, the 25-year-old African American from Mississippi commanded white troops and led them into battle against the forces of General Franco, men who saw him as less than human. It might seem strange for a Black man to go to such lengths for the chance to fight in a white man’s war so far from home—wasn’t there enough racism to fight in the United States?—but McDaniels was convinced that anti-fascism and anti-racism were one and the same. ‘"I saw the invaders of Spain [were] the same people I’ve been fighting all my life," Historian Peter Carroll quotes McDaniels as saying. "I’ve seen lynching and starvation, and I know my people’s enemies." McDaniels was not alone in seeing anti-fascism and anti-racism as intrinsically connected; the anti-fascists of today are heirs to almost a century of struggle against racism.
When Hitler’s fascist regime and the Axis powers seized control of Germany, other global countries, including the US, France, UK, USSR, and many others, became the Allies, who ultimately won that war and stuffed fascism back down into the dark evil place where it has mostly slumbered. It may take similar global action to stop the US from spiraling into full-blown fascism, and it could take generations to restore democracy if it is lost.
Weak political leaders must also target their political opponents’ funding in order to maintain fake power (think political ads, campaign staff, political signs, etc.). Because anti-fascist beliefs are not an organization or enterprise, and because a belief does not have “members,” it is also obvious that “Antifa” is not funded. It never has been. It doesn’t have a mailbox or bank account or hierarchy. Clearly the Trump fascist regime wants to go after George Soros, a billionaire liberal philanthropist, and is using this as an obvious weapon to actually go after democrat-leaning funding sources, which are in fact the regime’s political opponents. The goal is to target and destroy the funding of the regime’s political opponents; money they will use to oppose fascist authoritarians and their kind within the democratic electoral process. A truly fair election will likely remove the fascist dictator by overwhelming popular vote—so of course this fascist regime is also targeting the electoral system. To date, Soros has not sent a check to “Antifa.”
The Trump regime tried labeling anti-fascists as domestic terrorists in a 2017 EO as well, and that failed. Trump’s own Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director said that enforcing that EO would be difficult because Antifa is an ideology, not an organization, and it lacks the hierarchical structure that would usually be required to designate it as a federal terror group. Nothing has changed within the US Constitution or our system of laws, or the facts about anti-fascists in the US during this intervening time period.
The protests happening around the country are not Antifa protests. They are the American people standing up to disgusting, cowardly, racist, ignorant executive branch power.
The wording of this EO is what we call in lawyer talk “sloppy.” For instance, the EO references “material support” provided by anyone “claiming to act on behalf of Antifa” to “any and all illegal operations—especially those involving terrorist actions”—without even citing to the federal material support statute, 18 USC § 2339A. The existing legal precedent regarding “material support” comes from prosecutions related to material support of FOREIGN terrorist organizations (and a few states with domestic material support statutes). The US secretary of state is authorized to designate foreign groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs). No congressional approval is needed for the secretary to make this designation, but they must inform Congress seven days prior to doing so. Once designated, it is illegal under US law to give money to an FTO—and, significant to the Trump regime, the US could also freeze any assets held by members of the designated group in a US bank, and members could be threatened with sanctions.
TO BE CLEAR, THERE IS NO EQUIVALENT DOMESTIC TERRORISM LAW, which is why this Trump declaration is just bullshit without legal authority. There is no federal statute that would allow him to designate a domestic, US-based group as a terrorist organization. In part, this is because of the serious First Amendment concerns that would obviously result. Constitutional law scholars all agree that this “declaration” has no legal impact.
In the 2010 US Supreme Court case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 US 1 (2010), a case involving foreign organizations, Justice John Roberts ruled that attempts to criminalize support for designated domestic terrorist groups would not “survive First Amendment scrutiny,” and “Congress could [not] extend the same prohibition on material support at issue [in this case regarding a foreign org] to domestic organizations.” Will Roberts overrule himself? Not likely….
Holder and the First Amendment remain the law of the land, and this executive order is flagrantly unconstitutional. It doesn’t stand a chance of passing legal muster in a legitimate courtroom.
But that doesn’t prevent this EO from causing harm to Americans until the judicial branch of government finds it to be unconstitutional and illegal. The Trump regime will likely use this EO to increase surveillance and criminalization of its adversaries (increasingly similar to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where political opponents are murdered in prisons). They may attempt to use it to target, threaten, and punish people who openly protest the regime’s policies and actions. When the FBI has carried out previous domestic terrorism investigations against neo-Nazi groups like the Base and Atomwaffen Division, US prosecutors used criminal enterprise laws like Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO). We’ve seen an uptick in the State’s use of RICO to target political expression—e.g. the Atlanta Cop City cases, where a judge recently tossed out the abusive and illegal use of RICO against activists.
The regime may use this designation to place the military in US cities to enforce the will of the dictator, and justify it as “fighting Antifa protests.” To be clear, the protests happening around the country are not Antifa protests. They are the American people standing up to disgusting, cowardly, racist, ignorant executive branch power.
No matter what the new bullshit of the day is, know that Civil Liberties Defense Center will be there to defend you in court if needed. We offer pro-bono legal representation for people who are targeted for their political activism and constitutionally protected activities. We have lots of know your rights and risks legal resources too—even if you think your rights will be trampled upon, you still need to assert them in order to be able to raise them in court. It’s critically important for Americans to continue to fight against fascism and to defend our imperfect democracy.
This piece was originally published on the Civil Liberties Defense Center website.
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Trump’s New Substance Use Policy Would Have Made My Own Recovery Impossible
My daughter exists because someone gave me a hotel room, a hospital bed, and a second chance. If EO 14321 had been in place, I would have been treated like a criminal, not a patient.
Aug 30, 2025
Last month, US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14321—“Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” By criminalizing homelessness, addiction, and mental health crises, the order strips federal support from lifesaving public health solutions like Housing First and harm reduction—the very policies that saved my life and my daughter’s, and made my nearly three years of recovery possible.
I spent over a decade unhoused in San Francisco. I was already used to instability—much of my childhood was spent living in cars, motels, and campgrounds, until I landed in foster care. They kept placing me in institutions, each more restrictive than the last. I ran away often. The threat of forced placements where abuse was common taught me early to value my freedom. But freedom, without any foundation, can come at the cost of survival. I used substances to manage trauma I had no tools to process. It wasn’t glamorous. I did what I had to do to survive.
By age 29, I was pregnant and living in a makeshift shelter beside the freeway with my partner. A massive storm hit and everything we had was washed away. We were soaked, freezing, and standing in knee-deep water when the city’s Homeless Outreach Team arrived. No judgment. Just one question: “Are you safe where you are right now?” They got us into a hotel that night. That simple act saved my life—and gave me a chance.
With shelter, I was able to schedule a prenatal appointment. When I missed it due to withdrawal symptoms, a public health nurse came to me and helped get me into a hospital bed to safely taper off opioids. I spent the rest of my pregnancy hospitalized due to complications. My daughter was born prematurely and spent two months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It was a long road, but we made it. That wouldn’t have been possible under Trump’s executive order.
If Trump chooses cages, we can choose clinics. If he chooses punishment, we can choose prevention. If he chooses fear, we must choose humanity.
EO 14321 eliminates federal support for Housing First policies—programs that provide housing without requiring sobriety. It prioritizes forced institutionalization over voluntary care. It defunds services like naloxone distribution, clean syringes, and mobile health teams that meet people where they are. It punishes cities like San Francisco for offering compassionate, evidence-based care.
After giving birth, I entered treatment, using methadone to taper slowly. I’ve been sober nearly three years. That wouldn’t have happened if I’d been forced to quit cold turkey. The first time I was pregnant, I did exactly that—thinking it was best for the baby. I got violently ill and miscarried. I didn’t know opioid withdrawal could be fatal during pregnancy.
That’s why harm reduction matters. When you’ve used for years, quitting all at once can kill you. I needed time, support, and nonjudgmental care. If someone had tried to force me into abstinence, I would’ve run. The only reason I could stay was because I was met with dignity, not demands.
Harm reduction tools—like clean syringes and naloxone—kept me and my partner alive long enough to heal. Narcan brought us back more than once. These aren’t fringe ideas. They’re public health basics. Without them, I wouldn’t be a mother today.
My daughter is 2 now—chubby, curious, thriving. I still receive medication-assisted treatment, not because I’m still using, but because my tolerance was high after years on the street. My partner is now in the sheet metal union. We have housing. We have hope. But under EO 14321, the very services that helped build this life would have been gone. The care I needed would’ve been criminalized.
Trump’s order doesn’t just shift funding—it reshapes the system around coercion. It calls for expanded civil commitment laws that make forced treatment easier. But science and lived experience say the same thing: Coercion kills, voluntary care heals. I was institutionalized for nearly a year at 16—not because I was violent, but because I was suffering. It didn’t help. It hurt. It made me distrustful and traumatized. If you strip away someone’s autonomy, you strip away their will to recover.
This order tries to legislate suffering. It replaces housing and support with jail cells, locked wards, and abstinence-only programs that don’t work for most people. It replaces hope with fear. But addiction doesn’t respond to punishment. Recovery grows in trust, safety, and connection.
So what does compassion look like in practice? Start with Housing First—always. Fund syringe access and safe-use spaces. Offer medication-assisted treatment without strings attached. Train outreach workers in trauma-informed care. Build trust. Respect autonomy. Celebrate survival instead of punishing it.
San Francisco has already shown it’s possible. Our city is on track to become the first major US city with no new HIV infections—precisely because we invested in harm reduction and met people where they were, without shame. As the federal government rolls back those strategies, we face a choice. Do we follow them down a path of fear and criminalization, or do we lead with evidence, compassion, and courage?
My daughter exists because someone gave me a hotel room, a hospital bed, and a second chance. If EO 14321 had been in place, I would have been treated like a criminal, not a patient. I might not be here. She definitely wouldn’t be. Until a person dies, there is hope. That hope is sacred. It’s not flashy. It takes time. But it works. If Trump chooses cages, we can choose clinics. If he chooses punishment, we can choose prevention. If he chooses fear, we must choose humanity. Let’s not squander the hope we still have.
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Trump Order Ramps Up Assault on Union Rights of Federal Workers
One labor leader called it "another clear example of retaliation against federal employee union members who have bravely stood up against his anti-worker, anti-American plan to dismantle the federal government."
Aug 28, 2025
In the lead-up to Labor Day in the United States, President Donald Trump on Thursday escalated his attack on the union rights of federal employees at a list of agencies with an executive order that claims to "enhance" national security.
Trump previously issued an order intended to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of government employees in March, provoking an ongoing court fight. A federal judge blocked the president's edict—but then earlier this month, a panel from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit allowed the administration to proceed.
Government agencies were directed not to terminate any collective bargaining agreements while the litigation over Trump's March order continued, but some have begun to do so, according to Government Executive. On Monday, the 9th Circuit said in a filing that it would vote on whether the full court will rehear the case.
Amid that court fight, Trump issued Thursday's order, which calls for an end to collective bargaining for unionized workers at the Bureau of Reclamation's hydropower units; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service; National Weather Service; Patent and Trademark Office; and US Agency for Global Media.
Like the earlier order, this one cites the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. As Government Executive reported Thursday:
Matt Biggs, national president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, whose union represents a portion of NASA's workforce along with the American Federation of Government Employees, suggested that the administration's targeting of NASA—IFPTE's largest union—was in retaliation for its own lawsuit challenging the spring iteration of the executive order, filed last month.
"It's not surprising, sadly," Biggs said. "What is surprising is that on the eve of Labor Day weekend, when workers are to be celebrated, the Trump administration has doubled down on being the most anti-labor, anti-worker administration in US history. We will continue to fight in the courts, on the Hill, and at the grassroots levels against this."
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which also sued over the March order, said that "President Trump's decision to issue a Labor Day proclamation shortly after stripping union rights from thousands of civil servants, a third of whom are veterans, should show American workers what he really thinks about them."
"This latest executive order is another clear example of retaliation against federal employee union members who have bravely stood up against his anti-worker, anti-American plan to dismantle the federal government," Kelley declared, taking aim at the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
"Several agencies including NASA and the National Weather Service have already been hollowed out by reckless DOGE cuts, so for the administration to further disenfranchise the remaining workers in the name of 'efficiency' is immoral and abhorrent," the union leader said. "AFGE is preparing an immediate response and will continue to fight relentlessly to protect the rights of our members, federal employees, and their union."
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