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"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."
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:
"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."
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."
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."
"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.
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."
"Trump isn't king, but if Congress capitulates, he could be," warned the leaders of Popular Democracy.
Since U.S. President Trump's return to office on Monday—at an inauguration ceremony full of American oligarchs—as the Republican has issued a flurry of executive orders and other actions, progressive leaders and organizers have expressed alarm and vowed to fight against his "authoritarian" agenda.
On his first day back at the White House, Trump issued 26 executive orders, 12 memos, and four proclamations, plus withdrew 78 of former President Joe Biden's executive actions, according to a tally from The Hill. Those moves related to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the death penalty, federal workers, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, prescription drug prices, and more.
"In the last 24 hours, Trump has passed dozens of executive orders—many beyond his powers," said Popular Democracy co-director Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper in a Tuesday statement. "Yet, not one of them has lowered prices or made life better for Americans. Instead, he's focused on eroding democracy, attacking constitutional rights, and spreading fear, cruelty, and chaos.
"Trump has taken aim at the 14th Amendment's rights of equal protection and citizenship—the fundamental American right to live and participate in our democracy—with an executive order targeting birthright citizenship," they noted, referencing a policy that is already facing legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and state attorneys general.
Announcing one of the lawsuits, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said that "this order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans. We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged. The Trump administration's overreach is so egregious that we are confident we will ultimately prevail."
Mejia and Cooper said that "his ineffective and inhumane executive orders targeting immigrants misuse military power and double down on damaging our communities."
The group America's Voice similarly expressed concern over Trump's "authoritarian notions of deploying the military on U.S. streets," with the group's executive director, Vanessa Cárdenas, saying that "this is an attack on American families and our American values. Trump's framing of our nation being 'invaded' coupled with the attacks on birthright citizenship and policies that will throw our immigration system further into chaos show that this is a hateful campaign to justify a nativist agenda that seeks to redefine 'American' and move this nation backwards."
Popular Democracy's leaders also called out various other items from Trump's first day that are expected to face legal hurdles—though the Republican spent his first term working with GOP lawmakers to pack the federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court, with far-right appointees, so the effectiveness of such suits remains to be seen.
"Trump's rollbacks of critical climate policy sell out future generations to the profit of oil and gas polluters, and further endangers the poor, Black, brown, and Indigenous people who have been at the frontlines of climate disaster," they said. Trump not only repealed various Biden-era policies but also declared a "national energy emergency" to "drill, baby, drill" for fossil fuels.
Climate campaigners slammed Trump for invoking "authoritarian powers on Day 1 to gut environmental protections," in the words of the Center for Biological Diversity. The organization's executive director, Kierán Suckling, vowed that "no matter how extreme he becomes, we'll confront Trump with optimism and a fierce defense of our beloved wildlife and the planet's health."
"The United States has some of the strongest environmental laws in the world, and no matter how petulantly Trump behaves, these laws don't bend before the whims of a wannabe dictator," Suckling stressed. "The use of emergency powers doesn't allow a president to bypass our environmental safeguards just to enrich himself and his cronies."
The president's attacks on health are expansive. As Mejia and Cooper detailed: "Trump's sweeping changes to healthcare will rip away access for millions, line the pockets of Big Pharma, and undo strides in reproductive rights. They also single out trans Americans, denying them lifesaving healthcare and the right to live freely and authentically."
Imara Jones, a Black trans woman, CEO of TransLash Media, and an expert on the anti-trans political movement, said in a Tuesday statement that "Trump's recognition of only 'two genders' means a war on trans people, as well as any cis person with a gender expression outside of the gender binary."
"This is not political theater, this is the beginning of a potential authoritarian takeover of the United States, one that starts with targeting one of the smallest and most vulnerable groups: transgender people," Jones emphasized. "They seek to erase trans people from public life and want to see if they can get away with it, as a prelude to much more. This should worry all of us."
Another development that provoked intense worry—and even
led the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention to issue a "red flag alert for genocide in the United States"—was Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth and a key Trump ally, twice raising his arm in what was widely seen as a Nazi salute during a post-inauguration celebration.
Trump's Monday night decision to pardon over 1,500 people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, an insurrection incited by the president himself as he contested his 2020 electoral loss, elicited similar warnings.
"By granting clemency to these individuals, who sought to overturn the peaceful transfer of power, Trump is signaling that political violence and the rejection of democratic norms are acceptable tactics in service to his authoritarian agenda," said Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese. "This is a direct threat to the foundations of our democracy and the safety of our communities."
The leaders of Popular Democracy highlighted that "undergirding this extreme authoritarian agenda is a claim that Trump has a mandate to act like a despot—no such mandate exists, much less is acceptable to the American people."
"Trump isn't king, but if Congress capitulates, he could be," they warned, just weeks after Republicans took slim control of both chambers. "Popular Democracy is prepared to push back against Trump's assault on our communities. We will stand up against an unconstitutional power grab, and hold our representatives accountable in this fight."
"Billionaires see housing as a way to boost their bottom line, instead of a necessity to survive."
A new report out Monday puts "into numbers the trend that ordinary Americans have known to be true for years," said economic justice advocates behind the analysis: "Their everyday struggles of affording a home are made worse by the sweeping influence that billionaires have over the market."
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) joined Popular Democracy in compiling a 71-page report titled Billionaire Blowback on Housing, aiming to get to the bottom of growing concerns in recent years about how Wall Street, as Democratic vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this month, is "buying up housing and making them less affordable."
The two groups found that a small number of wealthy individuals and their investment arms, who control "huge pools of wealth," have spent some of their vast resources on "predatory investment and wealth-parking in luxury housing"—contributing significantly to the crises of unaffordable rents, out-of-reach homeownership, and homelessness.
Billionaires are "supercharging existing problems" in the housing market, according to the report.
The authors take issue with assumptions about what is driving the housing crisis, which is characterized by record-breaking homelessness in 2023 with more than 653,000 people unhoused; half of tenants paying more than 30% of their income on rent, making them cost-burdened; and a significantly widened gap between the income needed to buy a house and the actual cost of a home.
"The real estate industry would like you to believe the problem is entirely one based on supply and demand," and that regulations need to be changed to allow for the construction of more affordable housing, reads the report. But with 16 million vacant homes across the U.S.—28 for every unhoused person—"the reality is that the owners of concentrated wealth... are playing a more pronounced role in residential housing, thereby creating price inflation, distortions, and inefficiencies in the market."
Signifying the U.S. real estate market's "emerging status as global tax haven," the number of vacant units in some communities exceed the number of unhoused people partially because wealthy investors are acquiring property and intentionally leaving it vacant, found IPS and Popular Democracy.
"The reality is that the owners of concentrated wealth... are playing a more pronounced role in residential housing, thereby creating price inflation, distortions, and inefficiencies in the market."
For example, in 2017 there were more than 93,500 vacant units in Los Angeles and an estimated 36,000 unhoused residents, with vacancies treated as "a structural feature of the market thanks to the presence of a small class of wealthy investors who engage in speculative financial behavior."
Billionaires and their investment firms, such as Blackstone—now the world's largest corporate landlord—are also "taking advantage of the tight low-income rental market, lack of publicly funded affordable housing, displacement after the foreclosure crisis, and inaccessible homeownership to get into the business of single-family and multifamily home rentals, and buying up mobile home parks," the report reads.
In one section of North Minneapolis, private equity firms including Pretium Partners "snatched up blocks of single-family rental homes, added fees on top of rent, and then proceeded to neglect the maintenance and upkeep of their properties."
Blackstone now owns 300,000 residential units across the U.S. and nearly doubled its portfolio in 2021. With $1 trillion in assets, it owns 63,000 single-family homes, 149,000 apartment units, and 70 mobile home parks.
Corporate ownership of rental housing stock "has not translated into housing stability, particularly for working-class households and communities of color," reads the report. "Rather, corporate landlords have concentrated their predatory investment practices—flipping, rent gouging, habitability violations, and evictions—in lower-income communities of color."
The billionaire class and its private equity firms, said Chuck Collins, co-author of the report and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at IPS, has "severely disrupted" the housing market.
"This is not your grandparent's gentrification—but a hyper-gentrification fueled by concentrated wealth driving up land and housing costs, expanding short-term rentals, and treating housing like a commodity to speculate on or a place to park wealth," said Collins. "The billionaires are displacing the millionaires, and the millionaires are disrupting the housing market for everyone else."
The report calls on policymakers to expand social housing—housing developed by the government or a not-for-profit entity to ensure individuals, households, and families are guaranteed housing as a human right, which cannot be sold for profit.
Social housing could be paid for by levying mansion taxes, regulating predatory practices in the real estate market, and taxing billionaires.
Local communities can also protect residents and generate revenue for affordable housing through actions including:
"Billionaires see housing as a way to boost their bottom line, instead of a necessity to survive. This current system doesn't serve our communities," said Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper, co-executive directors for Popular Democracy. "We need to do better. That starts with re-shaping our systems to look out for the needs and desires of working families, instead of billionaire investment and speculation. We need to safeguard renters' rights, and drastically expand the availability of permanently and truly affordable quality housing."