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popular democracy
US Labor Day Rallies Planned to Protest 'Trump's Authoritarian Anti-Worker Agenda'
"Billionaires are making record profits while we are losing people every day," said one organizer. "And we are facing the moment, through mobilizations, conversations, and training. There's more of us than there are of them."
Aug 06, 2025
On Labor Day this year, unions and workers' rights groups are calling on advocates to forgo the traditional barbecues and picnics known for ending the summer season, and to instead hold thousands of nationwide rallies "to expose the billionaire agenda" that's harming working families and fueling U.S. President Donald Trump's authoritarian rise.
Unions representing teachers and other workers are joining with other advocacy organizations to turn Labor Day 2025 on September 1 into "a day of protest and recruitment," and an opportunity to fortify their national campaigns against Trump's attacks on healthcare, Social Security, and other safety net programs.
With the Trump administration overseeing mass firings in the federal government and gutting worker protections and social services in the interest of transferring more than $1 trillion in tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans, groups including Public Citizen and Popular Democracy will spend the holiday "connecting with 30 million workers, training thousands of new leaders to create 'strike ready' cities and states, and supporting each others' local fights to stop abuses in the workplace," according to the former group.
"The Trump regime is perpetrating the most anti-union, anti-worker agenda in modern American history," said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. "Trump's union-busting efforts are an order of magnitude greater than [former President Ronald] Reagan's attack on the air traffic employee union; he is working to destroy the independence of the [National Labor Relations Board] and he has perpetrated possibly the largest ever transfer of wealth from working people to the super rich. This Labor Day, Americans are joining together to reject Trump's authoritarian anti-worker agenda and demanding the society we want and need."
"On Labor Day, workers of every race and every corner of this country will stand together to show them, stop their agenda, and push forward a democracy that actually puts working people's needs first."
The groups are building on nationwide actions that have already taken place in thousands of cities and towns as part of the Hands Off, No Kings, and Good Trouble Lives On mobilizations, where demonstrators have spoken out against Trump's mass deportation agenda, attacks on voting rights through the administration's mass collection of voter data, and his assault on federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency's cuts.
"Since May Day, we've see the onslaught of attacks on our communities escalating, [and] our organizing has to escalate with it," said Neidi Dominguez, executive director of Organized Power in Numbers, which participated in nationwide protests on May Day. "We know that billionaires are making record profits while we are losing people every day. And we are facing the moment, through mobilizations, conversations, and training. There's more of us than there are of them. We just have to organize ourselves together."
The rallies will "center the conversation on the impact on working people specifically," and will demand a unifying platform of:
- Stopping the billionaire takeover and rampant corruption of the Trump administration;
- Protecting and defending Medicaid, Social Security, and other programs for working people;
- Fully funding schools, healthcare, and housing for all;
- Stopping the attacks on immigrants, Black, Indigenous, trans people, and all our communities; and
- Investing in people not wars.
"The only thing to stop billionaires like Trump or [tech mogul] Peter Thiel from bulldozing working families' economic security and the safety nets we've built to take care of each other is people power," said Analilia Mejia, co-director of Popular Democracy. "They attack our democracy in order to get away with stealing our schools, our healthcare, and our futures. On Labor Day, workers of every race and every corner of this country will stand together to show them, stop their agenda, and push forward a democracy that actually puts working people's needs first."
In a separate action, the AFL-CIO is organizing nationwide rallies, picnics, and parades as part of its Workers' Labor Day, following a Workers Deserve Labor Day week of action.
The union has spent two months crisscrossing the country on a bus tour, highlighting workers' organizing efforts and fights to win fair contracts and working conditions.
Despite Trump's deregulatory attacks on workers, the AFL-CIO noted that more than 70% of Americans and nearly 90% of people under 30 support unions.
"The fight for freedom, fairness, and security has never been more popular," said the union.
Fred Redmond, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, said that despite Republicans' efforts to divide Americans, "working people are more united than ever to restore our fundamental freedoms and spark an organizing renaissance that sets our country on a new course."
"The CEOs and billionaires are scared of us. That's why they're attacking us," said Redmond. "I've got a message for those who are assaulting our rights: You're right to be scared. Working people are the backbone of this country, and when we join together in solidarity, nothing can stop us."
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By Limiting Nationwide Injunctions, Supreme Court Declares 'Open Season on All Our Rights'
In a ruling that stems from the president's birthright citizenship order, the "conservative supermajority just took away lower courts' single most powerful tool for reining in the Trump administration's lawless excesses."
Jun 27, 2025
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a flurry of decisions Friday morning, including a ruling related to U.S. President Donald Trump's attack on birthright citizenship that led legal experts, elected Democrats, immigrants, and rights advocates to warn—as MoveOn Civic Action spokesperson Britt Jacovich put it—that the justices "just made it easier for Trump to take away your rights."
Three different federal judges had granted nationwide injunctions blocking Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship with an executive order that Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, described as "blatantly illegal and cruel." Rather than considering the constitutionality of the president's order, the justices examined the relief provided by lower courts.
"The Supreme Court has green-lighted Trump to run roughshod over a critical constitutional right. This is not a slide into authoritarianism—this is a one-way plummet."
In Friday's 6-3 ruling for Trump v. CASA, the right-wing justices held that "universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts," with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, delivering the majority opinion.
"The Supreme Court's conservative supermajority just took away lower courts' single most powerful tool for reining in the Trump administration's lawless excesses," wrote Slate's Mark Joseph Stern. "I understand there is some debate about the scope of this ruling, but my view remains that the Supreme Court has just effectively abolished universal injunctions, at least as we know them. The question now is really whether lower courts can craft something to replace them that still sweeps widely."
"Trump's Justice Department is about to file a motion in every lower court where it faces a universal injunction citing this case and arguing that the injunction must be narrowed," the journalist explained. "This will have huge downstream consequences for a ton of other extraordinarily important and controversial cases."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent, joined by the other two liberals, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also wrote her own. Many other critics of the high court's majority decision echoed their warnings about the expected consequences of the ruling.
"The Supreme Court has green-lighted Trump to run roughshod over a critical constitutional right. This is not a slide into authoritarianism—this is a one-way plummet," said Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper, co-executive directors of the grassroots coalition Popular Democracy, in a Friday statement.
"This ruling takes away the power of lower courts to block unconstitutional moves from the government on a federal level— allowing the government to act with impunity and apply law inconsistently across the country," they stressed. "As Justice Sotomayor wrote, 'No right is safe in the new legal regime this court creates.'"
Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants and a citizen by birthright, said Friday that "I agree, Judge Sotomayor, no right is safe under the new regime, not even the ones clearly guaranteed under our Constitution."
"For more than 100 years, the 14th Amendment has reaffirmed that all people born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens, with equal rights under the law. It has been and is the law of the land, consistently upheld by courts and scholars across the political spectrum," she noted. "But in limiting nationwide injunctions, Trump's loyalists have decided to—once again—put him above the rule of law, our Constitution, and the principles of our nation."
Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, highlighted that same line from Sotomayor and also explained that "results like this are the result of a yearslong takeover by Trump and special interest allies to capture the courts and install conservative majorities that help him advance an extreme ideological agenda."
"Let's be clear: The Trump administration appealed this case to undermine the power of federal judges, rather than address his blatantly unconstitutional executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship," Ciccone said.
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs at the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said that "as Justice Jackson notes, 'The court's decision to permit the executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.'"
"Today, six justices on the Supreme Court eliminated one of the most effective checks on Donald Trump, clearing a path for him to impose his extreme, anti-democratic agenda on any American who can't afford a lawyer or doesn't join the game of litigation Whac-A-Mole now required to protect their basic rights," he added. "This ruling should send a chill down every American's spine."
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) also described the decision as chilling and argued on social media that "the Supreme Court is declaring open season on all our rights."
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, called out the high court for failing "every American," and said that "we must heed Justice Jackson's warning," citing that same line from her dissent.
Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the group Demand Justice, pointed to another line, agreeing that "as Justice Jackson wrote in her dissent, the court has created an 'existential threat' to the rule of law and the system of checks and balances upon which our nation was founded."
"The same six justices who gave Trump king-like immunity for criminal acts have now limited the ability of the judicial branch to protect everyday Americans from unconstitutional or illegal executive overreach," she said, referring to a decision issued a year ago. "Just as Republican leaders in Congress duck their heads and carry out Trump's bidding, the Republican appointees on the court do so as well."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also took aim at both his GOP colleagues and the justices, saying that "the Supreme Court's decision to limit courts of their long-held authority to block illegal executive actions is an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court."
"Congressional Republicans have to choose between being bystanders or co-conspirators," Schumer added, urging them to challenge Trump. "Congress must check this unimpeded power, but for that to happen, Republican members must stand up for core American democratic values and not for unchecked presidential power of the kind that our Founders most deeply feared."
In addition to sounding the alarm about what the high court's decision means for all future legal battles, critics noted that although the justices didn't weigh in on Trump's birthright citizenship order, it could soon start to impact families nationwide.
"The administration's attempt to deny citizenship to many children born in the United States is unquestionably unconstitutional, and nothing in today's Supreme Court opinion suggests otherwise. Yet, the court has nonetheless created a real risk that the administration's unconstitutional order will go into effect in many parts of the country in 30 days," said Sam Spital, associate director-counsel at the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), vowing to continue the fight against the order.
FWD.us president Todd Schulte pointed out that with its new ruling, "the Supreme Court has opened the door to a fractured system in which a child born in one state is recognized as a citizen, but a child born in another is not."
"If the president's order is allowed to go into effect by the lower courts, there will be immediate chaos for parents, hospitals, and local officials, and long-term harm for families and communities across the country," he warned.
Juana, a pregnant mother, CASA member, and named plaintiff in a lawsuit over the order, said Friday that "I'm heartbroken that the Supreme Court chose to limit protections instead of standing firmly for all families like mine."
"Every child born here deserves the same rights, no matter who their parents are," Juana declared. "I joined this lawsuit not just for my baby, but for every child who deserves to be recognized as fully American from their first breath. We won't stop fighting until that promise is real for everyone."
Shortly after the ruling, organizations including the ACLU, Democracy Defenders Fund, and LDF filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a proposed class of babies subject to Trump's executive order and their parents.
"The Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship, and no procedural ruling will stop us from fighting to uphold that promise," said Tianna Mays, legal director for Democracy Defenders Fund. "Our plaintiffs, and millions of families across this country, deserve clarity, stability, and justice. We look forward to making our case in court again."
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'You Will Kill Me': Dozens Arrested Protesting GOP Medicaid Cuts at US Capitol
"The only humane thing to do is to kill the bill before it kills all of us," said the co-leader of Popular Democracy in Action.
May 13, 2025
Over two dozen people were arrested at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday for protesting Republicans' plans to cut Medicaid as part of a sweeping reconciliation package that would gut programs for the working class to provide tax giveaways to the wealthy.
"Around 2:00 pm, 25 people were arrested for illegally demonstrating in the Rayburn House Office Building," a Capitol Police spokesperson told Axios.
"It is against the law to protest inside the congressional buildings," the spokesperson said. "More arrests are currently being made."
While the effort to pass the package spans several panels, these protesters were targeting a U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. As Politico reported:
Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) repeatedly pounded his gavel and said that "disruption of congressional business is a violation of law and is a criminal offense."
"People feel very strongly because they know they're losing their healthcare," said Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), asking police not to arrest protesters if possible. "Many of them are disabled and I don't want to see them further hurt with their disability in the process of being arrested."
Protesters also lined the halls outside the hearing, many of them in wheelchairs, chanting as police threatened to take more people into custody. Julie Farrar—an activist with ADAPT, a disability rights organization—said there were about 90 people with her group, many of whom are on Medicaid and some who are direct care workers.
Popular Democracy in Action shared video footage of the protesters' chants against Medicaid cuts and comments from one wheelchair user who shouted at lawmakers while being wheeled out by a police officer: "You will kill me! I'm HIV positive. For 20 years, I have survived on my meds that are $10,000 a month... You look at me—I'm from Youngstown, Ohio."
An analysis released by the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday estimated that under the committee's proposal, by 2034, Medicaid enrollment would drop by 10.3 million people and the number of uninsured individuals would rise by 7.6 million.
President Donald Trump and his Republican Party "are attempting to get away with the daylight robbery of working Americans with this budget," Analilia Mejia, co-executive director of Popular Democracy in Action, said in a Tuesday statement. "Their message is abundantly clear: They do not care about the health and well-being of working people. They only care about filling their pocketbooks, even if it kills the people that depend on these services."
"The only humane thing to do is to kill the bill before it kills all of us," Mejia declared. "Working people across the country need to call their congressional representatives to let them know what a disgrace this is, and urge them to oppose the Republican budget proposal."
As Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is mobilizing organizers in swing districts he has recently visited on his Fighting Oligarchy Tour to urge constituents to pressure their representatives to oppose the emerging GOP package.
Additionally, Indivisible is using its Neighbor2Neighbor tool to connect opponents of the GOP's proposed cuts to Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), "and other vital programs to pay for tax breaks for billionaires."
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