Sep 15, 2011
"Panama is the sink where the dirtiest money is laundered," writes Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens. Unfortunately, it is also one of the countries with which the Obama administration is dead-set on implementing a Bush-negotiated free-trade agreement.

Negotiated by President Bush in 2004-2006, the U.S.-Panama free-trade agreement has since stalled in the face of congressional opposition. However, recent House votes have suggested a renewed interest in ratifying the agreement, which would normalize Panama's status as a notorious tax haven for U.S.-based corporations, along with other, seedier entities.
Tax havens such as Panama (or "secrecy jurisdictions") launder drug money, divert aid, bribe governments, fund paramilitaries, defraud shareholders, and embezzle public funds. They take one of every four dollars out of circulation in the legitimate economy. The geopolitics of Latin America can't be understood without taking tax havens into account, and neither can our current U.S. quagmire.
A False Flag Operation
Panama began its nefarious career sheltering U.S.-based corporations in 1919, as a "flag of convenience" for Standard Oil. Maritime law requires each ship to fly the flag of its registry. Panama, by hiring out its flag, allowed Standard Oil to skirt the 1915 Seamen's Act, which established the rights of sailors and provided for safety inspections of ships. Panama is now the number-one purveyor of mercenary flags, with over 8,000 registered ships and 23 percent of the world's Dead Weight Tonnage (DWT). The Seamen's Act also specified that officers and crew should speak a common language. But 40 percent of "Panamanian" crew members turn out to be Chinese workers, who earn $2-3,000 per year working on ships termed "floating sweatshops" by the AFL-CIO. Flags of convenience also enable illegal fishing vessels to avoid fisheries' regulation and control, a practice that a former EU Fisheries Commissioner has called "a serious menace to today's maritime world."
The ships' owners are hidden behind a complex web of corporate entities. The key device for protecting their identity is the use of "bearer shares," unmarked shareholder bonds that grant ownership to the physical holder of the document and can be untraceably exchanged like money. Some jurisdictions require a director to be named, in which case a proxy nominee legally sworn to secrecy is part of the service.
This anonymity sets the stage for arms smuggling, drug running, human trafficking, and even terrorism. Terrorism? Unlike idling your car by an airport, parking your unmarked liquefied gas carrier by a major city is perfectly legal. Jack Blum, a senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network (TJN), put it best in his testimony to the Senate Finance Committee: "[Even] if the nominee directors and officers were waterboarded, they could not tell you what the corporation was doing or who owned it."
Ships under Panama's flag were blacklisted by The Hague in 1978 and were placed on the U.S. Coast Guard Target List. Since 1958, the Geneva Convention of the High Seas has required a genuine link between a ship's flag and its owners or crew. Yet by 2006 the UN Treaty for Registration of Ships had gathered only 14 signatories. This leaves the burden of inspection on port countries, which have the power to detain a ship and imprison its officers but cannot identify, much less reach, its owner. Unthreatened by legal ramifications, the owner can make unlimited profits from whatever weapons, heroin, or child prostitutes that do slip through. Although those doing the dirty work are prosecuted, the owners can never lose more than their investment. Heads, I win, tails, you lose.
One-Stop Shopping
Today's Panamanian law firms are one-stop shops where a gentleman can register his 2,000-ton cargo carrier, license his "pleasure vessel," offshore his corporation, and squirrel away his own personal nut stash. TJN estimated in 2005 that "high-net-worth individuals" held $11.5 trillion in tax havens like Panama, a figure amounting to a quarter of global wealth and nearly equaling U.S. GDP. In hundred dollar bills laid out end-to-end, it would stretch 23 times to the moon and back. According to TJN, the resulting $250 billion in lost taxes on annual interest was almost triple the global budget to tackle poverty.
But that's not all. Global Financial Integrity estimates that $1.2 trillion in illicit financial flows are leaking out of developing countries annually and into secrecy jurisdictions. Criminal money makes up a third of this and another 3 percent comes from corruption. But the rest is just business as usual-- the everyday, ordinary work of corporations. This is why, for every dollar given in aid to impoverished countries, 10 dollars fly out the window and over the ocean to nest in these secret accounts.
Tax transference is the primary way that corporations offshore profits. Losses are registered in the highest-tax countries while gains are calculated where taxes are low or, as in Panama, nonexistent. Apple, which claims that less than 14 percent of its profit is earned in the United States, is leading a lobbying campaign with Google, Pfizer, and other U.S. corporations to repatriate their collective $1.2 trillion in offshore holdings at a 5.25 percent tax rate, rather than the 35 percent due.
According to Public Citizen's 2009 Panama Tax Evasion Report, 350,000 corporations are registered in Panama, the largest number after Hong Kong. Many of the top recipients of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, such as AIG, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley, have subsidiaries in Panama. In 2008 Goldman Sachs paid an effective federal tax rate of 1 percent, while last year, GE, Pfizer, and Verizon paid nothing. Federal contractors like Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, and General Mills have Panamanian subsidiaries, as do recipients of U.S. oil and agricultural subsidies. In Other Words, IPS Senior Scholar Chuck Collins writes: "these same companies use our public infrastructure, hire workers trained in our schools, and depend on the U.S. court system to protect their property. Our military defends their assets, yet they're not paying their share of the bill."
WikiLeaked
A Wikileaked 2006 memo from the U.S. embassy in Panama observed that "[a]long with its sophisticated banking services, Panama remains an environment conducive to laundering the proceeds from criminal activity and creates a vulnerability to terrorist financing....The money laundering process of: placement (putting money into a legitimate financial institution), layering (distancing the money from its origin) and integration (causing the money to re-enter the economy in legitimate-looking form) is perfectly replicated in Panama."
This was recently illustrated in a 2009 U.S. embassy cable on Panama's failure to report Colombian kingpin David Murcia Guzman's laundering of drug money. Guzman has links to former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and current Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli, who is suspected of using his chain of Super 99 stores to whitewash the money. Panama's lead drug prosecutor left office suddenly while investigating the scandal when he was promoted to the Supreme Court. But when Attorney General Ana Matilde Gomez refused to prosecute Martinelli's rivals, Panama's Supreme Court removed her from office.
The U.S. government is cutting unemployment benefits to help close the federal deficit. But in the parallel universe of tax havens, the entire U.S. GDP has been siphoned into private, tax-free pockets. Here the war on drugs has crammed prisons past capacity, while in Panama drugs have fueled the economy and boosted yacht sales. The U.S. flag is a symbol that we'll kill and occasionally die for, but Panama's flag has been forced into prostitution. The Panama of today is not a Latin American country but a fictional entitlement invented by corporations. Is this really the best we can do in a free-trade partner?
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I've ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets. That's why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we've ever done. Our small but mighty team is a progressive reporting powerhouse, covering the news every day that the corporate media never will. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. And to ignite change for the common good. Now here's the key piece that I want all our readers to understand: None of this would be possible without your financial support. That's not just some fundraising cliche. It's the absolute and literal truth. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. The final deadline for our crucial Summer Campaign fundraising drive is just hours away, and we’re falling short of our must-hit goal. Will you donate now to help power the nonprofit, independent reporting of Common Dreams? Thank you for being a vital member of our community. Together, we can keep independent journalism alive when it’s needed most. - Craig Brown, Co-founder |
© 2023 Foreign Policy In Focus
Tereza Coraggio
Tereza Coraggio is a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, author and host of the radio show Third Paradigm at thirdparadigm.org.
"Panama is the sink where the dirtiest money is laundered," writes Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens. Unfortunately, it is also one of the countries with which the Obama administration is dead-set on implementing a Bush-negotiated free-trade agreement.
Negotiated by President Bush in 2004-2006, the U.S.-Panama free-trade agreement has since stalled in the face of congressional opposition. However, recent House votes have suggested a renewed interest in ratifying the agreement, which would normalize Panama's status as a notorious tax haven for U.S.-based corporations, along with other, seedier entities.
Tax havens such as Panama (or "secrecy jurisdictions") launder drug money, divert aid, bribe governments, fund paramilitaries, defraud shareholders, and embezzle public funds. They take one of every four dollars out of circulation in the legitimate economy. The geopolitics of Latin America can't be understood without taking tax havens into account, and neither can our current U.S. quagmire.
A False Flag Operation
Panama began its nefarious career sheltering U.S.-based corporations in 1919, as a "flag of convenience" for Standard Oil. Maritime law requires each ship to fly the flag of its registry. Panama, by hiring out its flag, allowed Standard Oil to skirt the 1915 Seamen's Act, which established the rights of sailors and provided for safety inspections of ships. Panama is now the number-one purveyor of mercenary flags, with over 8,000 registered ships and 23 percent of the world's Dead Weight Tonnage (DWT). The Seamen's Act also specified that officers and crew should speak a common language. But 40 percent of "Panamanian" crew members turn out to be Chinese workers, who earn $2-3,000 per year working on ships termed "floating sweatshops" by the AFL-CIO. Flags of convenience also enable illegal fishing vessels to avoid fisheries' regulation and control, a practice that a former EU Fisheries Commissioner has called "a serious menace to today's maritime world."
The ships' owners are hidden behind a complex web of corporate entities. The key device for protecting their identity is the use of "bearer shares," unmarked shareholder bonds that grant ownership to the physical holder of the document and can be untraceably exchanged like money. Some jurisdictions require a director to be named, in which case a proxy nominee legally sworn to secrecy is part of the service.
This anonymity sets the stage for arms smuggling, drug running, human trafficking, and even terrorism. Terrorism? Unlike idling your car by an airport, parking your unmarked liquefied gas carrier by a major city is perfectly legal. Jack Blum, a senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network (TJN), put it best in his testimony to the Senate Finance Committee: "[Even] if the nominee directors and officers were waterboarded, they could not tell you what the corporation was doing or who owned it."
Ships under Panama's flag were blacklisted by The Hague in 1978 and were placed on the U.S. Coast Guard Target List. Since 1958, the Geneva Convention of the High Seas has required a genuine link between a ship's flag and its owners or crew. Yet by 2006 the UN Treaty for Registration of Ships had gathered only 14 signatories. This leaves the burden of inspection on port countries, which have the power to detain a ship and imprison its officers but cannot identify, much less reach, its owner. Unthreatened by legal ramifications, the owner can make unlimited profits from whatever weapons, heroin, or child prostitutes that do slip through. Although those doing the dirty work are prosecuted, the owners can never lose more than their investment. Heads, I win, tails, you lose.
One-Stop Shopping
Today's Panamanian law firms are one-stop shops where a gentleman can register his 2,000-ton cargo carrier, license his "pleasure vessel," offshore his corporation, and squirrel away his own personal nut stash. TJN estimated in 2005 that "high-net-worth individuals" held $11.5 trillion in tax havens like Panama, a figure amounting to a quarter of global wealth and nearly equaling U.S. GDP. In hundred dollar bills laid out end-to-end, it would stretch 23 times to the moon and back. According to TJN, the resulting $250 billion in lost taxes on annual interest was almost triple the global budget to tackle poverty.
But that's not all. Global Financial Integrity estimates that $1.2 trillion in illicit financial flows are leaking out of developing countries annually and into secrecy jurisdictions. Criminal money makes up a third of this and another 3 percent comes from corruption. But the rest is just business as usual-- the everyday, ordinary work of corporations. This is why, for every dollar given in aid to impoverished countries, 10 dollars fly out the window and over the ocean to nest in these secret accounts.
Tax transference is the primary way that corporations offshore profits. Losses are registered in the highest-tax countries while gains are calculated where taxes are low or, as in Panama, nonexistent. Apple, which claims that less than 14 percent of its profit is earned in the United States, is leading a lobbying campaign with Google, Pfizer, and other U.S. corporations to repatriate their collective $1.2 trillion in offshore holdings at a 5.25 percent tax rate, rather than the 35 percent due.
According to Public Citizen's 2009 Panama Tax Evasion Report, 350,000 corporations are registered in Panama, the largest number after Hong Kong. Many of the top recipients of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, such as AIG, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley, have subsidiaries in Panama. In 2008 Goldman Sachs paid an effective federal tax rate of 1 percent, while last year, GE, Pfizer, and Verizon paid nothing. Federal contractors like Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, and General Mills have Panamanian subsidiaries, as do recipients of U.S. oil and agricultural subsidies. In Other Words, IPS Senior Scholar Chuck Collins writes: "these same companies use our public infrastructure, hire workers trained in our schools, and depend on the U.S. court system to protect their property. Our military defends their assets, yet they're not paying their share of the bill."
WikiLeaked
A Wikileaked 2006 memo from the U.S. embassy in Panama observed that "[a]long with its sophisticated banking services, Panama remains an environment conducive to laundering the proceeds from criminal activity and creates a vulnerability to terrorist financing....The money laundering process of: placement (putting money into a legitimate financial institution), layering (distancing the money from its origin) and integration (causing the money to re-enter the economy in legitimate-looking form) is perfectly replicated in Panama."
This was recently illustrated in a 2009 U.S. embassy cable on Panama's failure to report Colombian kingpin David Murcia Guzman's laundering of drug money. Guzman has links to former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and current Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli, who is suspected of using his chain of Super 99 stores to whitewash the money. Panama's lead drug prosecutor left office suddenly while investigating the scandal when he was promoted to the Supreme Court. But when Attorney General Ana Matilde Gomez refused to prosecute Martinelli's rivals, Panama's Supreme Court removed her from office.
The U.S. government is cutting unemployment benefits to help close the federal deficit. But in the parallel universe of tax havens, the entire U.S. GDP has been siphoned into private, tax-free pockets. Here the war on drugs has crammed prisons past capacity, while in Panama drugs have fueled the economy and boosted yacht sales. The U.S. flag is a symbol that we'll kill and occasionally die for, but Panama's flag has been forced into prostitution. The Panama of today is not a Latin American country but a fictional entitlement invented by corporations. Is this really the best we can do in a free-trade partner?
Tereza Coraggio
Tereza Coraggio is a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, author and host of the radio show Third Paradigm at thirdparadigm.org.
"Panama is the sink where the dirtiest money is laundered," writes Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens. Unfortunately, it is also one of the countries with which the Obama administration is dead-set on implementing a Bush-negotiated free-trade agreement.
Negotiated by President Bush in 2004-2006, the U.S.-Panama free-trade agreement has since stalled in the face of congressional opposition. However, recent House votes have suggested a renewed interest in ratifying the agreement, which would normalize Panama's status as a notorious tax haven for U.S.-based corporations, along with other, seedier entities.
Tax havens such as Panama (or "secrecy jurisdictions") launder drug money, divert aid, bribe governments, fund paramilitaries, defraud shareholders, and embezzle public funds. They take one of every four dollars out of circulation in the legitimate economy. The geopolitics of Latin America can't be understood without taking tax havens into account, and neither can our current U.S. quagmire.
A False Flag Operation
Panama began its nefarious career sheltering U.S.-based corporations in 1919, as a "flag of convenience" for Standard Oil. Maritime law requires each ship to fly the flag of its registry. Panama, by hiring out its flag, allowed Standard Oil to skirt the 1915 Seamen's Act, which established the rights of sailors and provided for safety inspections of ships. Panama is now the number-one purveyor of mercenary flags, with over 8,000 registered ships and 23 percent of the world's Dead Weight Tonnage (DWT). The Seamen's Act also specified that officers and crew should speak a common language. But 40 percent of "Panamanian" crew members turn out to be Chinese workers, who earn $2-3,000 per year working on ships termed "floating sweatshops" by the AFL-CIO. Flags of convenience also enable illegal fishing vessels to avoid fisheries' regulation and control, a practice that a former EU Fisheries Commissioner has called "a serious menace to today's maritime world."
The ships' owners are hidden behind a complex web of corporate entities. The key device for protecting their identity is the use of "bearer shares," unmarked shareholder bonds that grant ownership to the physical holder of the document and can be untraceably exchanged like money. Some jurisdictions require a director to be named, in which case a proxy nominee legally sworn to secrecy is part of the service.
This anonymity sets the stage for arms smuggling, drug running, human trafficking, and even terrorism. Terrorism? Unlike idling your car by an airport, parking your unmarked liquefied gas carrier by a major city is perfectly legal. Jack Blum, a senior advisor to the Tax Justice Network (TJN), put it best in his testimony to the Senate Finance Committee: "[Even] if the nominee directors and officers were waterboarded, they could not tell you what the corporation was doing or who owned it."
Ships under Panama's flag were blacklisted by The Hague in 1978 and were placed on the U.S. Coast Guard Target List. Since 1958, the Geneva Convention of the High Seas has required a genuine link between a ship's flag and its owners or crew. Yet by 2006 the UN Treaty for Registration of Ships had gathered only 14 signatories. This leaves the burden of inspection on port countries, which have the power to detain a ship and imprison its officers but cannot identify, much less reach, its owner. Unthreatened by legal ramifications, the owner can make unlimited profits from whatever weapons, heroin, or child prostitutes that do slip through. Although those doing the dirty work are prosecuted, the owners can never lose more than their investment. Heads, I win, tails, you lose.
One-Stop Shopping
Today's Panamanian law firms are one-stop shops where a gentleman can register his 2,000-ton cargo carrier, license his "pleasure vessel," offshore his corporation, and squirrel away his own personal nut stash. TJN estimated in 2005 that "high-net-worth individuals" held $11.5 trillion in tax havens like Panama, a figure amounting to a quarter of global wealth and nearly equaling U.S. GDP. In hundred dollar bills laid out end-to-end, it would stretch 23 times to the moon and back. According to TJN, the resulting $250 billion in lost taxes on annual interest was almost triple the global budget to tackle poverty.
But that's not all. Global Financial Integrity estimates that $1.2 trillion in illicit financial flows are leaking out of developing countries annually and into secrecy jurisdictions. Criminal money makes up a third of this and another 3 percent comes from corruption. But the rest is just business as usual-- the everyday, ordinary work of corporations. This is why, for every dollar given in aid to impoverished countries, 10 dollars fly out the window and over the ocean to nest in these secret accounts.
Tax transference is the primary way that corporations offshore profits. Losses are registered in the highest-tax countries while gains are calculated where taxes are low or, as in Panama, nonexistent. Apple, which claims that less than 14 percent of its profit is earned in the United States, is leading a lobbying campaign with Google, Pfizer, and other U.S. corporations to repatriate their collective $1.2 trillion in offshore holdings at a 5.25 percent tax rate, rather than the 35 percent due.
According to Public Citizen's 2009 Panama Tax Evasion Report, 350,000 corporations are registered in Panama, the largest number after Hong Kong. Many of the top recipients of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, such as AIG, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley, have subsidiaries in Panama. In 2008 Goldman Sachs paid an effective federal tax rate of 1 percent, while last year, GE, Pfizer, and Verizon paid nothing. Federal contractors like Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, and General Mills have Panamanian subsidiaries, as do recipients of U.S. oil and agricultural subsidies. In Other Words, IPS Senior Scholar Chuck Collins writes: "these same companies use our public infrastructure, hire workers trained in our schools, and depend on the U.S. court system to protect their property. Our military defends their assets, yet they're not paying their share of the bill."
WikiLeaked
A Wikileaked 2006 memo from the U.S. embassy in Panama observed that "[a]long with its sophisticated banking services, Panama remains an environment conducive to laundering the proceeds from criminal activity and creates a vulnerability to terrorist financing....The money laundering process of: placement (putting money into a legitimate financial institution), layering (distancing the money from its origin) and integration (causing the money to re-enter the economy in legitimate-looking form) is perfectly replicated in Panama."
This was recently illustrated in a 2009 U.S. embassy cable on Panama's failure to report Colombian kingpin David Murcia Guzman's laundering of drug money. Guzman has links to former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and current Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli, who is suspected of using his chain of Super 99 stores to whitewash the money. Panama's lead drug prosecutor left office suddenly while investigating the scandal when he was promoted to the Supreme Court. But when Attorney General Ana Matilde Gomez refused to prosecute Martinelli's rivals, Panama's Supreme Court removed her from office.
The U.S. government is cutting unemployment benefits to help close the federal deficit. But in the parallel universe of tax havens, the entire U.S. GDP has been siphoned into private, tax-free pockets. Here the war on drugs has crammed prisons past capacity, while in Panama drugs have fueled the economy and boosted yacht sales. The U.S. flag is a symbol that we'll kill and occasionally die for, but Panama's flag has been forced into prostitution. The Panama of today is not a Latin American country but a fictional entitlement invented by corporations. Is this really the best we can do in a free-trade partner?
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.
LATEST NEWS
'Brazenly Anti-Worker': Labor Day Reports Highlight Trump Attacks on Unions
"This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.
Sep 01, 2025
Although US President Donald Trump's administration likes to boast that he puts "American workers first," several news reports published on Monday document the president's attacks on the rights of working people and labor unions.
As longtime labor reporter Steven Greenhouse explained in The Guardian, Trump throughout his second term has "taken dozens of actions that hurt workers, often by cutting their pay or making their jobs more dangerous."
Among other things, Greenhouse cited Trump's decision to halt a regulation intended to protect coal miners from lung disease, as well as his decision to strip a million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, told Greenhouse that Trump's actions amount to a "big betrayal" of his promises to look out for US workers during the 2024 presidential campaign.
"His attacks on unions are coming fast and furious," she said. "He talks a good game of being for working people, but he's doing the absolute opposite. This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires."
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, similarly told Greenhouse that Trump has been "absolutely, brazenly anti-worker," and she cited him ripping away an increase in the minimum wage for federal contractors that had been enacted by former President Joe Biden as a prime example.
"The minimum wage is incredibly popular," she said. "He just took away the minimum wage from hundreds of thousands of workers. That blew my mind."
NPR published its own Labor Day report that zeroed in on how the president is "decimating" federal employee unions by issuing March and August executive orders stripping them of the power to collectively bargain for better working conditions.
So far, nine federal agencies have canceled their union contracts as a result of the orders, which are based on a provision in federal law that gives the president the power to terminate collective bargaining at agencies that are primarily involved with national security.
The Trump administration has embraced a maximalist interpretation of this power and has demanded the end of collective bargaining at departments that aren't primarily known as national security agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Weather Service.
However, Trump's attacks on organized labor haven't completely intimidated government workers from joining unions. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the Trump administration's cuts to the National Park Service earlier this year inspired hundreds of workers at the California-based Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon national parks to unionize.
Although labor organizers had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get park workers to sign on, that changed when the Trump administration took a hatchet to parks' budgets and enacted mass layoffs.
"More than 97% of employees at Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks who cast ballots voted to unionize, with results certified last week," wrote the Los Angeles Times. "More than 600 staffers—including interpretive park rangers, biologists, firefighters, and fee collectors—are now represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees."
Even so, many workers who succeed in forming unions may no longer get their grievances heard given the state of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
As documented by Timothy Noah in The New Republic, the NLRB is now "hanging by a thread" in the wake of a court ruling that declared the board's structure to be unconstitutional because it barred the president from being able to fire NLRB administrative judges at will.
"The ruling doesn't shut down the NLRB entirely because it applies only to cases in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, where the 5th Circuit has jurisdiction," Noah explained. "But Jennifer Abruzzo, who was President Joe Biden's NLRB general counsel, told me that the decision will 'open the floodgates for employers to forum-shop and seek to get injunctions' in those three states."
Noah noted that this lawsuit was brought in part by SpaceX owner and one-time Trump ally Elon Musk, and he accused the Trump NLRB of waging a "half-hearted" fight against Musk's attack on workers' rights.
Thanks to Trump and Musk's actions, Noah concluded, American oligarchs "can toast the NLRB's imminent destruction."
Trump Voter ID Threat Condemned as 'Unconstitutional'
"The Constitution gives this authority to the states and Congress, not you!" said the head of Democracy Defenders Fund, threatening a lawsuit.
Sep 01, 2025
US President Donald Trump continued his "authoritarian takeover of our election system" over the weekend, threatening an executive order requiring every voter to present identification, which experts swiftly denounced as clearly "unconstitutional."
"Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late Saturday. "I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!! Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military. USE PAPER BALLOTS ONLY!!!"
Less than two weeks ago, Trump declared on the platform that "I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES." He claimed, without evidence, that voting by mail leads to "MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD," and promised to take executive action ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Those posts came as battles over his March executive order (EO), "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," are playing out in federal court. The measure was largely blocked by multiple district judges, but the president is appealing.
Trump's voter ID post provoked a new threat of legal action to stop his unconstitutional attacks on the nation's election system.
"Go ahead, make my day Mr. Trump," said Norm Eisen, who co-founded Democracy Defenders Fund and served as White House special counsel for ethics and government reform during the Obama administration.
"We at Democracy Defenders Fund immediately sued you and got an injunction on your first voting EO," he noted. "We will do the same here if you try it again. The Constitution gives this authority to the states and Congress, not you!"
In addition to pointing out that Trump is "an absentee voter himself," Democracy Docket explained Sunday that "the US Constitution gives the states the primary authority to regulate elections, while empowering Congress to 'at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.' The Framers never considered authorizing the president to oversee elections."
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures: "Thirty-six states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. The remaining 14 states and Washington, DC use other methods to verify the identity of voters."
Those laws already prevent Americans from participating in elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
"Overly burdensome photo ID requirements block millions of eligible American citizens from voting," the center's voter ID webpage says. "As many as 11% of eligible voters do not have the kind of ID that is required by states with strict ID requirements, and that percentage is even higher among seniors, minorities, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students."
Israel's Actions in Gaza 'Meet the Legal Definition of Genocide,' Say Leading Scholars
The resolution is "a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide," said the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Sep 01, 2025
Israel's actions in Gaza "meet the legal definition of genocide," an overwhelming majority of the world's leading scholars on the subject said on Monday.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has passed a three-page resolution that outlines a wide range of Israeli actions that it says constitute genocide, including deliberate attacks against civilians, starvation, deprivation of humanitarian aid, sexual violence, and forced displacement of the population.
In addition to the actions of the Israeli military, the resolution also references statements by high-level Israeli government officials as proof of genocidal intent.
Specifically, the resolution cites "Israeli governmental leaders, war cabinet ministers, and senior army officers" who "have made explicit statements of 'intent to destroy,' characterizing Palestinians in Gaza as a whole as enemies and 'human animals' and stating the intention of inflicting 'maximum damage' on Gaza, 'flattening Gaza,' and turning Gaza into 'hell.'"
The scholars also note Israeli officials' support for a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to expel all Palestinians from Gaza, which they contend "amounts to ethnic cleansing."
The resolution, which passed with the support of 86% of IAGS members who voted on it, concludes by calling on the Israeli government to stop all genocidal actions in Gaza; comply with the provisional measures orders issued earlier this year by the International Court of Justice; and "support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza."
Melanie O'Brien, president of IAGS and professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Guardian that the scholars' resolution is "a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide."
The IAGS resolution comes just a little more than a week after the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza that it warned was projected to get even worse in the coming weeks.
"Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis," the IPC stated. "Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58%). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly."
The Gaza Health Ministry currently estimates that more than 330 people in Gaza, including over 120 children, have so far died from severe hunger as a result of the Israeli blockade that has for months prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Most Popular
Together, we can defend the truth when it’s under siege.
Your support powers the fearless, independent reporting that democracy depends on.