SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
A union member listens to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden stump in New Alexandria, Pa., on September 30, 2020. (Photo: Roberto Schmidt/Afp via Getty Images)
Although President Donald Trump will be leaving the White House, progressives must reckon with the fact that 74 million people -- almost a third of whom came from households making under $50,000--voted for him. It is alarming that so many working-class people would vote against their class interests, but perhaps most alarming of all are the union members who were drawn in by Trumpism. Before the 2016 election, Democratic presidential candidates had long won union households by comfortable double-digit margins; but in 2016 and 2020, Trump eroded those margins. If the Left is to win progressive policies (and the next presidential election), it needs a militant labor movement. Unions, after all, are one of the only effective working-class institutions in this country that can engage workers to build power on the job and in society at large. We must understand who these union Trump voters are, why they voted for Trump, and what can be done to win them back.
Many on the Left have written off Trump supporters as a lost cause or unworthy of effort. This response is understandable, particularly for people of color and others directly harmed by Trump policies. And we should by no means court the vocal subset of Trumpists who are virulent white supremacists.
If the goal of reaching out to Trump voters is to activate their progressive beliefs strongly enough to influence their voting behavior, then union Trump voters should be a promising place to start.
But most Americans hold a confusing mix of political beliefs that will never fit squarely within the Democratic and Republican parties. When the group Working America held in-depth conversations with more than 2,300 working-class voters in so-called battleground states in 2016 and 2017, it found that beliefs didn't map to party lines: Voters believed in both expanding the coal industry and protecting the environment; in both universal healthcare and keeping out "freeloading" refugees; in both banning abortion and lowering healthcare costs. A 2019 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook Political Report found that, in battleground states, 70% of respondents supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and yet 71% felt it was a bad idea not to detain people who crossed the border without documentation. Not every issue drives voting behavior: 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, and yet the presidential candidate championing the policy (Sen. Bernie Sanders) came up short.
If the goal of reaching out to Trump voters is to activate their progressive beliefs strongly enough to influence their voting behavior, then union Trump voters should be a promising place to start. A good union naturally ties the fate of the worker to others, a powerful counter-narrative to the rugged individualism our society (and Trump) promotes. Union members are also (theoretically) trained and experienced in fighting their bosses. Being part of a struggle against a boss means reliance on fellow workers, regardless of race and gender and other social divisions. Unions themselves, of course, need to embark on a far-reaching program for membership to put these struggles in context -- one that doesn't shy away from tough questions in fear of upsetting a (tenuous) sense of unity.
Discussions around immigration and racism, for example, are challenging in their own right but have become especially charged since Trump took office. Avoiding these topics may preserve a sense of unity in the short term but damages the long-term ability of workers to forge solid bonds of solidarity and organize to fight against racism and social programs like Medicare for All.
To understand how unions might reach the union Trump voter, we can look at how similar efforts have succeeded and failed -- and get to know union Trump voters themselves.
Tony Reitano, 49, works in maintenance at a Bridgestone plant in Iowa. He is a member of the United Steelworkers and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Reitano tells In These Times, "I liked what [Trump] said about trade deals in 2016; that was a big thing for me ... bringing jobs back to America." He adds, "And this time around, [Trump] did, or tried to accomplish, all of the things he said he was going to do ... like backing away from the [Trans-Pacific Partnership]." (The United Steelworkers, which endorsed Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016, opposes the trade deal, on the grounds that jobs would be lost.)
Trump voters often cite their concern with jobs and wages as the reason they voted for him. While most voters rank the economy as one of their most important issues, 84% of Trump voters rated the economy as "very important" in 2020, compared to Biden supporters' 66%.
Lynne (who didn't want her last name used for fear of social retaliation), 62, is a retired teacher and union member in the suburbs of Philadelphia. A registered Independent, Lynne voted for Obama in 2008, moved by his message of hope and change. Like Reitano, she was drawn to Trump in 2016 by his economic promises -- and voted Trump again in 2020. "You can't care about other policies if you're worried about losing your house or if your children don't have food or if your heat may get turned off," Lynne tells In These Times. "Having shelter and food is everyone's number one concern. And with Trump, we had the lowest unemployment rate in this country ... for everyone, including Latinos and Blacks."
Trump clearly understood that a strong economic message would be the key to victory, boasting about the unemployment rate on the 2020 campaign trail. But the Trump unemployment rate only decreased slightly before the pandemic, and likely because of Obama-era policies. Meanwhile, wage growth has stagnated or declined for the bottom 70% of workers since the 1970s and the Job Quality Index (a proxy for the overall health of the U.S. jobs market) fell significantly after 2006 and never recovered.
"Democrats' lack of willingness to name the enemy--runaway corporate power--just left a huge vacuum for the Right to use race and immigration."
Amid this uncertainty, Trump parlayed economic concerns into his brand of racism to drive white voters. Of course, many Trump voters do not consider Trump an ardent racist. For example, Ernie Justice, 76, a retired coal miner in Kentucky, tells In These Times that "there's not a racist drop of blood in Donald Trump." Like Lynne, Justice also voted for Obama and later Trump. Lynne, too, says she "doesn't really see the racism."
But Trump certainly associated the decline in quality of life experienced by white workers with not only the Democratic Party, but immigrants and other people of color. George Goehl, director of the national grassroots organizing network People's Action, says "Democrats' lack of willingness to name the enemy -- runaway corporate power -- just left a huge vacuum for the Right to use race and immigration."
While Republicans authored the so-called right-to-work legislation that has undermined union organizing, Democrats are the proponents of the free trade agreements that have decreased wages and off-shored jobs. Decades of economic devastation -- including loss of good union jobs in the Rust Belt, factories moving abroad and stagnant wages-- opened a door for Trump to step through. Goehl says people have "clearly been punched in the gut tons of times by neoliberalism" -- and Trump's campaign capitalized on that by promising to bring back manufacturing jobs.
This landscape is difficult for both unions and the Democratic Party. While union leadership has thrown its weight behind Democrats in hopes of better organizing terrain, establishment Democrats are caught between unions and their party's allegiance to big business. And the Democrats have a history of making labor promises they don't keep. In 2008, Obama ran on passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made the process of unionization faster and easier -- but didn't champion the bill once elected. And unions, which are no match for lobbying efforts by giant corporations like Walmart or Home Depot, couldn't win the law alone. Repeated disappointments have led union members to lose faith in institutions they once held dear.
That loss of faith played out in the 2016 and 2020 elections. After unions spent record amounts on campaigns to defeat Trump, Hillary Clinton won union households by only 8% in 2016 (to Obama's 18% in 2012), a small enough margin to cost her Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (and the election). And after unions broke that 2016 record in 2020, Biden won union households by 16% (and won those three states back), but Trump won union households in Ohio by 12% (which Obama had won by 23%). Unions can spend huge amounts of money and mobilize the votes of a (declining) portion of their members, but to keep those members from slipping away, they'll need to do much more.
Each of the three Trump voters who spoke with In These Times for this story mentioned jobs and the economy as big issues, but all independently shared concerns about open borders, later abortions, and the creep of socialism and communism. These issues are discussed nearly constantly on Fox News and by conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. And as trust of the media is at an almost all-time low, many Trump supporters only tune into media that reflects what they already believe -- just as centrist and liberal Democrats watch CNN or MSNBC. Never mind that the U.S.-Mexico border wall was started under President Bill Clinton, later abortions are exceedingly rare and most socialist organizing is about basic rights, like healthcare and a living wage.
Unions need to cut through the right-wing fog of disinformation by offering educational programs of their own to explain the systemic problems causing the decline in workers' conditions.
The constant onslaught of hateful messages from rightwing media and the war waged against the working class by the rich has led U.S. workers into a fog of confusion without an ideological beacon to help clarify and fight back. The unions that have survived have become more insular, increasingly focused on the immediate issues of their own members, taking a concessionary approach that treats bosses like coalition partners. If the Left and unions hope to make appeals to union Trump voters (and other sections of the working class), this strategy must change.
Unions need to cut through the right-wing fog of disinformation by offering educational programs of their own to explain the systemic problems causing the decline in workers' conditions. One model, offered by People's Action, has shown that talking with Trump supporters about systemic issues can effectively shift attitudes. Beginning in 2017, George Goehl and People's Action embarked on a rural and small-town organizing project, focused on "deep canvassing," to show white people how systemic racism is real and actively harming them and their communities. (Some of these people are union members, though many are not.) While many (especially nonwhite) people on the Left find it difficult to have conversations with Trump supporters (fearing abuse or just afraid of wasted energy), Goehl sees the talks as crucial. "While you are much more likely to live in poverty if you are Black or Latino, the largest group of people living in poverty are white people," Goehl says. "And a Left saying, 'We are not going to be in relationship with the largest group of people living in poverty' ... seems nuts."
People's Action has had nearly 10,000 conversations in rural areas since the 2016 election, mostly with Obama voters who flipped to Trump. While immigration is a controversial issue all over the country (including inside the Democratic Party), objection to a wider immigration policy is higher in rural areas, presumably because of the ease of blaming immigrants for a lack of jobs. During their deep canvasses, People's Action organizers found that the mostused word was "lack," and that economic insecurity reverberated through all responses. "When we asked people who they saw as responsible for the declining conditions," Goehl says, "people were able to pick multiple answers, and 41% of people said undocumented immigrants, but 81% [said] a government encaptured by corporations."
Onah Ossai, an organizer with Pennsylvania Stands Up, which is affiliated with People's Action, tells In These Times, "People at the top [are] using race and class to divide us so that they can turn around and pick our pockets. ... Everyone [whose door we knock on] agrees with that."
Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and secretary treasurer of the Ohio AFL-CIO, echoes Goehl, telling In These Times, "It's hard to get out and have these grassroots-level conversations, but we need to invest in grassroots organizers from the communities who can have these conversations and can work [on solutions] with the community."
Unions can follow People's Action by holding more political discussions with their members about how the labor movement (and the Left) fights for working people. But they must also show the path forward -- how workers themselves can join the fight to rein in corporate power.
Rebuilding unions -- organizing more workers -- is the first step toward a broader worker coalition. But People's Action and progressive unionists also believe race and class issues are keys to a coherent Left -- because if we ignore them, the Right will use them to drive a white, reactionary, populist movement.
"[Labor leaders] have to ... explain the construction of race and capitalism," says Bill Fletcher Jr., executive editor of The Global African Worker and former AFL-CIO staffer. "The absence of that, and the reliance on so-called diversity programs, at best teaches tolerance but does not get at the particular role that race plays as a division of the working class. They need to embark on massive internal educational efforts."
Unions should place a higher premium on building solidarity among the working class as a whole, in all of its diversity. One example is the 2020 partnership between the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The groups formed the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee to help workers organize on the job in the midst of Covid-19. It's exactly the kind of alliance the Left and the labor movement should forge, amplifying both groups' impacts by organizing new workers and engaging existing membership.
These types of alliances demonstrate an attitude of "not me, us" (to quote Sanders' presidential campaign slogan)-- the key to building worker trust and taking on the powerful forces ultimately responsible for the economic inequality so many experience. Reitano believes strongly in his union, but he worries that new hires, who are immigrants, won't join the union or won't fight for higher wages, because they are used to lower wage standards. "If the union can educate these people so they understand that we have to stand together, I think it'll be okay," he says. In a situation like this, a union political education program could not only engage new members, as Reitano suggests, but also forge solidarity and trust across the old guard/ new guard divide.
Currently, however, many unions focus primarily on mobilizing their members to vote, rather than on a more robust political program. In many cases, members don't have a mechanism to even offer input on the political endorsements of their locals and internationals. Instead, every union shop should have stewards who constantly engage workers in educational programs and struggles on the shop floor. Unions launched campaigns like this in anticipation of the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision, which allowed public-sector employees in union shops to get the benefits of the union without paying for them. Many unions around the country began proactive campaigns to talk one-on-one with their members about the importance of their union. In the conversations, they stressed the power of collective action and exposed the right-wing forces trying to undermine unions through Janus and other measures. They encouraged members to recommit to being dues-paying members even though they would soon have the ability to become "free riders."
None of this work will be easy, but unless unions commit to this educational work, Trumpism will continue to grow and the possibility of achieving policy that can actually help working people will diminish. (Left unchecked, Trumpism also could drive an increasingly violent alt-Right.) The Left must support unions in this work by engaging in partnerships (like the DSA/UE partnership) and encouraging workers to organize and unionize.
The Democratic Party, for its part, must prove itself worthy of the union vote. Right now, tens of millions of workers (both union and nonunion) are suffering through unemployment, housing insecurity, hunger and a lack of healthcare in a devastating pandemic. The Democratic Party leadership has barely lifted a finger to put up a real fight to win relief that is desperately needed by so many. They could take example from Sen. Sanders, who has voiced his opposition to the most recent proposed "compromise" stimulus bill. While millions suffer through the coronavirus pandemic with woefully inadequate federal support, Democratic Party leadership has refused to go big, choosing to ignore the progressive Dems' early push for monthly cash payments and expanded Medicare. Without these steps, the Democrats should not expect working people to vote for them without question.
Without countermeasures from unions and Democrats alike, Republicans will continue to turn the union vote. A 2020 Delaware Senate race between Republican challenger Lauren Witzke and Democratic incumbent Sen. Christopher Coons offers a glimpse of what's to come. Though she lost (with 38% of the vote), Witzke ran on an "America First" platform including support for unions and collective bargaining, opposition to immigration (on the basis that migrant workers worsen conditions of all workers), and an anti-abortion stance.
While Trump's racism likely provoked many white professionals to vote against him in 2020, it did not deter a growing group of people of color -- and what's even more alarming than a whites-only right-wing movement is a multiracial one. To counter the appeal of Trumpism, we need to build a multiracial, working-class labor movement that can arm workers with solidarity and a renewed commitment to struggle for the world we deserve.
Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, justice, and a free press are escalating — putting everything we stand for at risk. We believe a better world is possible, but we can’t get there without your support. Common Dreams stands apart. We answer only to you — our readers, activists, and changemakers — not to billionaires or corporations. Our independence allows us to cover the vital stories that others won’t, spotlighting movements for peace, equality, and human rights. Right now, our work faces unprecedented challenges. Misinformation is spreading, journalists are under attack, and financial pressures are mounting. As a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, your support is crucial to keep this journalism alive. Whatever you can give — $10, $25, or $100 — helps us stay strong and responsive when the world needs us most. Together, we’ll continue to build the independent, courageous journalism our movement relies on. Thank you for being part of this community. |
Although President Donald Trump will be leaving the White House, progressives must reckon with the fact that 74 million people -- almost a third of whom came from households making under $50,000--voted for him. It is alarming that so many working-class people would vote against their class interests, but perhaps most alarming of all are the union members who were drawn in by Trumpism. Before the 2016 election, Democratic presidential candidates had long won union households by comfortable double-digit margins; but in 2016 and 2020, Trump eroded those margins. If the Left is to win progressive policies (and the next presidential election), it needs a militant labor movement. Unions, after all, are one of the only effective working-class institutions in this country that can engage workers to build power on the job and in society at large. We must understand who these union Trump voters are, why they voted for Trump, and what can be done to win them back.
Many on the Left have written off Trump supporters as a lost cause or unworthy of effort. This response is understandable, particularly for people of color and others directly harmed by Trump policies. And we should by no means court the vocal subset of Trumpists who are virulent white supremacists.
If the goal of reaching out to Trump voters is to activate their progressive beliefs strongly enough to influence their voting behavior, then union Trump voters should be a promising place to start.
But most Americans hold a confusing mix of political beliefs that will never fit squarely within the Democratic and Republican parties. When the group Working America held in-depth conversations with more than 2,300 working-class voters in so-called battleground states in 2016 and 2017, it found that beliefs didn't map to party lines: Voters believed in both expanding the coal industry and protecting the environment; in both universal healthcare and keeping out "freeloading" refugees; in both banning abortion and lowering healthcare costs. A 2019 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook Political Report found that, in battleground states, 70% of respondents supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and yet 71% felt it was a bad idea not to detain people who crossed the border without documentation. Not every issue drives voting behavior: 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, and yet the presidential candidate championing the policy (Sen. Bernie Sanders) came up short.
If the goal of reaching out to Trump voters is to activate their progressive beliefs strongly enough to influence their voting behavior, then union Trump voters should be a promising place to start. A good union naturally ties the fate of the worker to others, a powerful counter-narrative to the rugged individualism our society (and Trump) promotes. Union members are also (theoretically) trained and experienced in fighting their bosses. Being part of a struggle against a boss means reliance on fellow workers, regardless of race and gender and other social divisions. Unions themselves, of course, need to embark on a far-reaching program for membership to put these struggles in context -- one that doesn't shy away from tough questions in fear of upsetting a (tenuous) sense of unity.
Discussions around immigration and racism, for example, are challenging in their own right but have become especially charged since Trump took office. Avoiding these topics may preserve a sense of unity in the short term but damages the long-term ability of workers to forge solid bonds of solidarity and organize to fight against racism and social programs like Medicare for All.
To understand how unions might reach the union Trump voter, we can look at how similar efforts have succeeded and failed -- and get to know union Trump voters themselves.
Tony Reitano, 49, works in maintenance at a Bridgestone plant in Iowa. He is a member of the United Steelworkers and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Reitano tells In These Times, "I liked what [Trump] said about trade deals in 2016; that was a big thing for me ... bringing jobs back to America." He adds, "And this time around, [Trump] did, or tried to accomplish, all of the things he said he was going to do ... like backing away from the [Trans-Pacific Partnership]." (The United Steelworkers, which endorsed Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016, opposes the trade deal, on the grounds that jobs would be lost.)
Trump voters often cite their concern with jobs and wages as the reason they voted for him. While most voters rank the economy as one of their most important issues, 84% of Trump voters rated the economy as "very important" in 2020, compared to Biden supporters' 66%.
Lynne (who didn't want her last name used for fear of social retaliation), 62, is a retired teacher and union member in the suburbs of Philadelphia. A registered Independent, Lynne voted for Obama in 2008, moved by his message of hope and change. Like Reitano, she was drawn to Trump in 2016 by his economic promises -- and voted Trump again in 2020. "You can't care about other policies if you're worried about losing your house or if your children don't have food or if your heat may get turned off," Lynne tells In These Times. "Having shelter and food is everyone's number one concern. And with Trump, we had the lowest unemployment rate in this country ... for everyone, including Latinos and Blacks."
Trump clearly understood that a strong economic message would be the key to victory, boasting about the unemployment rate on the 2020 campaign trail. But the Trump unemployment rate only decreased slightly before the pandemic, and likely because of Obama-era policies. Meanwhile, wage growth has stagnated or declined for the bottom 70% of workers since the 1970s and the Job Quality Index (a proxy for the overall health of the U.S. jobs market) fell significantly after 2006 and never recovered.
"Democrats' lack of willingness to name the enemy--runaway corporate power--just left a huge vacuum for the Right to use race and immigration."
Amid this uncertainty, Trump parlayed economic concerns into his brand of racism to drive white voters. Of course, many Trump voters do not consider Trump an ardent racist. For example, Ernie Justice, 76, a retired coal miner in Kentucky, tells In These Times that "there's not a racist drop of blood in Donald Trump." Like Lynne, Justice also voted for Obama and later Trump. Lynne, too, says she "doesn't really see the racism."
But Trump certainly associated the decline in quality of life experienced by white workers with not only the Democratic Party, but immigrants and other people of color. George Goehl, director of the national grassroots organizing network People's Action, says "Democrats' lack of willingness to name the enemy -- runaway corporate power -- just left a huge vacuum for the Right to use race and immigration."
While Republicans authored the so-called right-to-work legislation that has undermined union organizing, Democrats are the proponents of the free trade agreements that have decreased wages and off-shored jobs. Decades of economic devastation -- including loss of good union jobs in the Rust Belt, factories moving abroad and stagnant wages-- opened a door for Trump to step through. Goehl says people have "clearly been punched in the gut tons of times by neoliberalism" -- and Trump's campaign capitalized on that by promising to bring back manufacturing jobs.
This landscape is difficult for both unions and the Democratic Party. While union leadership has thrown its weight behind Democrats in hopes of better organizing terrain, establishment Democrats are caught between unions and their party's allegiance to big business. And the Democrats have a history of making labor promises they don't keep. In 2008, Obama ran on passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made the process of unionization faster and easier -- but didn't champion the bill once elected. And unions, which are no match for lobbying efforts by giant corporations like Walmart or Home Depot, couldn't win the law alone. Repeated disappointments have led union members to lose faith in institutions they once held dear.
That loss of faith played out in the 2016 and 2020 elections. After unions spent record amounts on campaigns to defeat Trump, Hillary Clinton won union households by only 8% in 2016 (to Obama's 18% in 2012), a small enough margin to cost her Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (and the election). And after unions broke that 2016 record in 2020, Biden won union households by 16% (and won those three states back), but Trump won union households in Ohio by 12% (which Obama had won by 23%). Unions can spend huge amounts of money and mobilize the votes of a (declining) portion of their members, but to keep those members from slipping away, they'll need to do much more.
Each of the three Trump voters who spoke with In These Times for this story mentioned jobs and the economy as big issues, but all independently shared concerns about open borders, later abortions, and the creep of socialism and communism. These issues are discussed nearly constantly on Fox News and by conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. And as trust of the media is at an almost all-time low, many Trump supporters only tune into media that reflects what they already believe -- just as centrist and liberal Democrats watch CNN or MSNBC. Never mind that the U.S.-Mexico border wall was started under President Bill Clinton, later abortions are exceedingly rare and most socialist organizing is about basic rights, like healthcare and a living wage.
Unions need to cut through the right-wing fog of disinformation by offering educational programs of their own to explain the systemic problems causing the decline in workers' conditions.
The constant onslaught of hateful messages from rightwing media and the war waged against the working class by the rich has led U.S. workers into a fog of confusion without an ideological beacon to help clarify and fight back. The unions that have survived have become more insular, increasingly focused on the immediate issues of their own members, taking a concessionary approach that treats bosses like coalition partners. If the Left and unions hope to make appeals to union Trump voters (and other sections of the working class), this strategy must change.
Unions need to cut through the right-wing fog of disinformation by offering educational programs of their own to explain the systemic problems causing the decline in workers' conditions. One model, offered by People's Action, has shown that talking with Trump supporters about systemic issues can effectively shift attitudes. Beginning in 2017, George Goehl and People's Action embarked on a rural and small-town organizing project, focused on "deep canvassing," to show white people how systemic racism is real and actively harming them and their communities. (Some of these people are union members, though many are not.) While many (especially nonwhite) people on the Left find it difficult to have conversations with Trump supporters (fearing abuse or just afraid of wasted energy), Goehl sees the talks as crucial. "While you are much more likely to live in poverty if you are Black or Latino, the largest group of people living in poverty are white people," Goehl says. "And a Left saying, 'We are not going to be in relationship with the largest group of people living in poverty' ... seems nuts."
People's Action has had nearly 10,000 conversations in rural areas since the 2016 election, mostly with Obama voters who flipped to Trump. While immigration is a controversial issue all over the country (including inside the Democratic Party), objection to a wider immigration policy is higher in rural areas, presumably because of the ease of blaming immigrants for a lack of jobs. During their deep canvasses, People's Action organizers found that the mostused word was "lack," and that economic insecurity reverberated through all responses. "When we asked people who they saw as responsible for the declining conditions," Goehl says, "people were able to pick multiple answers, and 41% of people said undocumented immigrants, but 81% [said] a government encaptured by corporations."
Onah Ossai, an organizer with Pennsylvania Stands Up, which is affiliated with People's Action, tells In These Times, "People at the top [are] using race and class to divide us so that they can turn around and pick our pockets. ... Everyone [whose door we knock on] agrees with that."
Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and secretary treasurer of the Ohio AFL-CIO, echoes Goehl, telling In These Times, "It's hard to get out and have these grassroots-level conversations, but we need to invest in grassroots organizers from the communities who can have these conversations and can work [on solutions] with the community."
Unions can follow People's Action by holding more political discussions with their members about how the labor movement (and the Left) fights for working people. But they must also show the path forward -- how workers themselves can join the fight to rein in corporate power.
Rebuilding unions -- organizing more workers -- is the first step toward a broader worker coalition. But People's Action and progressive unionists also believe race and class issues are keys to a coherent Left -- because if we ignore them, the Right will use them to drive a white, reactionary, populist movement.
"[Labor leaders] have to ... explain the construction of race and capitalism," says Bill Fletcher Jr., executive editor of The Global African Worker and former AFL-CIO staffer. "The absence of that, and the reliance on so-called diversity programs, at best teaches tolerance but does not get at the particular role that race plays as a division of the working class. They need to embark on massive internal educational efforts."
Unions should place a higher premium on building solidarity among the working class as a whole, in all of its diversity. One example is the 2020 partnership between the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The groups formed the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee to help workers organize on the job in the midst of Covid-19. It's exactly the kind of alliance the Left and the labor movement should forge, amplifying both groups' impacts by organizing new workers and engaging existing membership.
These types of alliances demonstrate an attitude of "not me, us" (to quote Sanders' presidential campaign slogan)-- the key to building worker trust and taking on the powerful forces ultimately responsible for the economic inequality so many experience. Reitano believes strongly in his union, but he worries that new hires, who are immigrants, won't join the union or won't fight for higher wages, because they are used to lower wage standards. "If the union can educate these people so they understand that we have to stand together, I think it'll be okay," he says. In a situation like this, a union political education program could not only engage new members, as Reitano suggests, but also forge solidarity and trust across the old guard/ new guard divide.
Currently, however, many unions focus primarily on mobilizing their members to vote, rather than on a more robust political program. In many cases, members don't have a mechanism to even offer input on the political endorsements of their locals and internationals. Instead, every union shop should have stewards who constantly engage workers in educational programs and struggles on the shop floor. Unions launched campaigns like this in anticipation of the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision, which allowed public-sector employees in union shops to get the benefits of the union without paying for them. Many unions around the country began proactive campaigns to talk one-on-one with their members about the importance of their union. In the conversations, they stressed the power of collective action and exposed the right-wing forces trying to undermine unions through Janus and other measures. They encouraged members to recommit to being dues-paying members even though they would soon have the ability to become "free riders."
None of this work will be easy, but unless unions commit to this educational work, Trumpism will continue to grow and the possibility of achieving policy that can actually help working people will diminish. (Left unchecked, Trumpism also could drive an increasingly violent alt-Right.) The Left must support unions in this work by engaging in partnerships (like the DSA/UE partnership) and encouraging workers to organize and unionize.
The Democratic Party, for its part, must prove itself worthy of the union vote. Right now, tens of millions of workers (both union and nonunion) are suffering through unemployment, housing insecurity, hunger and a lack of healthcare in a devastating pandemic. The Democratic Party leadership has barely lifted a finger to put up a real fight to win relief that is desperately needed by so many. They could take example from Sen. Sanders, who has voiced his opposition to the most recent proposed "compromise" stimulus bill. While millions suffer through the coronavirus pandemic with woefully inadequate federal support, Democratic Party leadership has refused to go big, choosing to ignore the progressive Dems' early push for monthly cash payments and expanded Medicare. Without these steps, the Democrats should not expect working people to vote for them without question.
Without countermeasures from unions and Democrats alike, Republicans will continue to turn the union vote. A 2020 Delaware Senate race between Republican challenger Lauren Witzke and Democratic incumbent Sen. Christopher Coons offers a glimpse of what's to come. Though she lost (with 38% of the vote), Witzke ran on an "America First" platform including support for unions and collective bargaining, opposition to immigration (on the basis that migrant workers worsen conditions of all workers), and an anti-abortion stance.
While Trump's racism likely provoked many white professionals to vote against him in 2020, it did not deter a growing group of people of color -- and what's even more alarming than a whites-only right-wing movement is a multiracial one. To counter the appeal of Trumpism, we need to build a multiracial, working-class labor movement that can arm workers with solidarity and a renewed commitment to struggle for the world we deserve.
Although President Donald Trump will be leaving the White House, progressives must reckon with the fact that 74 million people -- almost a third of whom came from households making under $50,000--voted for him. It is alarming that so many working-class people would vote against their class interests, but perhaps most alarming of all are the union members who were drawn in by Trumpism. Before the 2016 election, Democratic presidential candidates had long won union households by comfortable double-digit margins; but in 2016 and 2020, Trump eroded those margins. If the Left is to win progressive policies (and the next presidential election), it needs a militant labor movement. Unions, after all, are one of the only effective working-class institutions in this country that can engage workers to build power on the job and in society at large. We must understand who these union Trump voters are, why they voted for Trump, and what can be done to win them back.
Many on the Left have written off Trump supporters as a lost cause or unworthy of effort. This response is understandable, particularly for people of color and others directly harmed by Trump policies. And we should by no means court the vocal subset of Trumpists who are virulent white supremacists.
If the goal of reaching out to Trump voters is to activate their progressive beliefs strongly enough to influence their voting behavior, then union Trump voters should be a promising place to start.
But most Americans hold a confusing mix of political beliefs that will never fit squarely within the Democratic and Republican parties. When the group Working America held in-depth conversations with more than 2,300 working-class voters in so-called battleground states in 2016 and 2017, it found that beliefs didn't map to party lines: Voters believed in both expanding the coal industry and protecting the environment; in both universal healthcare and keeping out "freeloading" refugees; in both banning abortion and lowering healthcare costs. A 2019 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Cook Political Report found that, in battleground states, 70% of respondents supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and yet 71% felt it was a bad idea not to detain people who crossed the border without documentation. Not every issue drives voting behavior: 70% of Americans support Medicare for All, and yet the presidential candidate championing the policy (Sen. Bernie Sanders) came up short.
If the goal of reaching out to Trump voters is to activate their progressive beliefs strongly enough to influence their voting behavior, then union Trump voters should be a promising place to start. A good union naturally ties the fate of the worker to others, a powerful counter-narrative to the rugged individualism our society (and Trump) promotes. Union members are also (theoretically) trained and experienced in fighting their bosses. Being part of a struggle against a boss means reliance on fellow workers, regardless of race and gender and other social divisions. Unions themselves, of course, need to embark on a far-reaching program for membership to put these struggles in context -- one that doesn't shy away from tough questions in fear of upsetting a (tenuous) sense of unity.
Discussions around immigration and racism, for example, are challenging in their own right but have become especially charged since Trump took office. Avoiding these topics may preserve a sense of unity in the short term but damages the long-term ability of workers to forge solid bonds of solidarity and organize to fight against racism and social programs like Medicare for All.
To understand how unions might reach the union Trump voter, we can look at how similar efforts have succeeded and failed -- and get to know union Trump voters themselves.
Tony Reitano, 49, works in maintenance at a Bridgestone plant in Iowa. He is a member of the United Steelworkers and voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Reitano tells In These Times, "I liked what [Trump] said about trade deals in 2016; that was a big thing for me ... bringing jobs back to America." He adds, "And this time around, [Trump] did, or tried to accomplish, all of the things he said he was going to do ... like backing away from the [Trans-Pacific Partnership]." (The United Steelworkers, which endorsed Biden in 2020 and Clinton in 2016, opposes the trade deal, on the grounds that jobs would be lost.)
Trump voters often cite their concern with jobs and wages as the reason they voted for him. While most voters rank the economy as one of their most important issues, 84% of Trump voters rated the economy as "very important" in 2020, compared to Biden supporters' 66%.
Lynne (who didn't want her last name used for fear of social retaliation), 62, is a retired teacher and union member in the suburbs of Philadelphia. A registered Independent, Lynne voted for Obama in 2008, moved by his message of hope and change. Like Reitano, she was drawn to Trump in 2016 by his economic promises -- and voted Trump again in 2020. "You can't care about other policies if you're worried about losing your house or if your children don't have food or if your heat may get turned off," Lynne tells In These Times. "Having shelter and food is everyone's number one concern. And with Trump, we had the lowest unemployment rate in this country ... for everyone, including Latinos and Blacks."
Trump clearly understood that a strong economic message would be the key to victory, boasting about the unemployment rate on the 2020 campaign trail. But the Trump unemployment rate only decreased slightly before the pandemic, and likely because of Obama-era policies. Meanwhile, wage growth has stagnated or declined for the bottom 70% of workers since the 1970s and the Job Quality Index (a proxy for the overall health of the U.S. jobs market) fell significantly after 2006 and never recovered.
"Democrats' lack of willingness to name the enemy--runaway corporate power--just left a huge vacuum for the Right to use race and immigration."
Amid this uncertainty, Trump parlayed economic concerns into his brand of racism to drive white voters. Of course, many Trump voters do not consider Trump an ardent racist. For example, Ernie Justice, 76, a retired coal miner in Kentucky, tells In These Times that "there's not a racist drop of blood in Donald Trump." Like Lynne, Justice also voted for Obama and later Trump. Lynne, too, says she "doesn't really see the racism."
But Trump certainly associated the decline in quality of life experienced by white workers with not only the Democratic Party, but immigrants and other people of color. George Goehl, director of the national grassroots organizing network People's Action, says "Democrats' lack of willingness to name the enemy -- runaway corporate power -- just left a huge vacuum for the Right to use race and immigration."
While Republicans authored the so-called right-to-work legislation that has undermined union organizing, Democrats are the proponents of the free trade agreements that have decreased wages and off-shored jobs. Decades of economic devastation -- including loss of good union jobs in the Rust Belt, factories moving abroad and stagnant wages-- opened a door for Trump to step through. Goehl says people have "clearly been punched in the gut tons of times by neoliberalism" -- and Trump's campaign capitalized on that by promising to bring back manufacturing jobs.
This landscape is difficult for both unions and the Democratic Party. While union leadership has thrown its weight behind Democrats in hopes of better organizing terrain, establishment Democrats are caught between unions and their party's allegiance to big business. And the Democrats have a history of making labor promises they don't keep. In 2008, Obama ran on passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made the process of unionization faster and easier -- but didn't champion the bill once elected. And unions, which are no match for lobbying efforts by giant corporations like Walmart or Home Depot, couldn't win the law alone. Repeated disappointments have led union members to lose faith in institutions they once held dear.
That loss of faith played out in the 2016 and 2020 elections. After unions spent record amounts on campaigns to defeat Trump, Hillary Clinton won union households by only 8% in 2016 (to Obama's 18% in 2012), a small enough margin to cost her Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (and the election). And after unions broke that 2016 record in 2020, Biden won union households by 16% (and won those three states back), but Trump won union households in Ohio by 12% (which Obama had won by 23%). Unions can spend huge amounts of money and mobilize the votes of a (declining) portion of their members, but to keep those members from slipping away, they'll need to do much more.
Each of the three Trump voters who spoke with In These Times for this story mentioned jobs and the economy as big issues, but all independently shared concerns about open borders, later abortions, and the creep of socialism and communism. These issues are discussed nearly constantly on Fox News and by conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. And as trust of the media is at an almost all-time low, many Trump supporters only tune into media that reflects what they already believe -- just as centrist and liberal Democrats watch CNN or MSNBC. Never mind that the U.S.-Mexico border wall was started under President Bill Clinton, later abortions are exceedingly rare and most socialist organizing is about basic rights, like healthcare and a living wage.
Unions need to cut through the right-wing fog of disinformation by offering educational programs of their own to explain the systemic problems causing the decline in workers' conditions.
The constant onslaught of hateful messages from rightwing media and the war waged against the working class by the rich has led U.S. workers into a fog of confusion without an ideological beacon to help clarify and fight back. The unions that have survived have become more insular, increasingly focused on the immediate issues of their own members, taking a concessionary approach that treats bosses like coalition partners. If the Left and unions hope to make appeals to union Trump voters (and other sections of the working class), this strategy must change.
Unions need to cut through the right-wing fog of disinformation by offering educational programs of their own to explain the systemic problems causing the decline in workers' conditions. One model, offered by People's Action, has shown that talking with Trump supporters about systemic issues can effectively shift attitudes. Beginning in 2017, George Goehl and People's Action embarked on a rural and small-town organizing project, focused on "deep canvassing," to show white people how systemic racism is real and actively harming them and their communities. (Some of these people are union members, though many are not.) While many (especially nonwhite) people on the Left find it difficult to have conversations with Trump supporters (fearing abuse or just afraid of wasted energy), Goehl sees the talks as crucial. "While you are much more likely to live in poverty if you are Black or Latino, the largest group of people living in poverty are white people," Goehl says. "And a Left saying, 'We are not going to be in relationship with the largest group of people living in poverty' ... seems nuts."
People's Action has had nearly 10,000 conversations in rural areas since the 2016 election, mostly with Obama voters who flipped to Trump. While immigration is a controversial issue all over the country (including inside the Democratic Party), objection to a wider immigration policy is higher in rural areas, presumably because of the ease of blaming immigrants for a lack of jobs. During their deep canvasses, People's Action organizers found that the mostused word was "lack," and that economic insecurity reverberated through all responses. "When we asked people who they saw as responsible for the declining conditions," Goehl says, "people were able to pick multiple answers, and 41% of people said undocumented immigrants, but 81% [said] a government encaptured by corporations."
Onah Ossai, an organizer with Pennsylvania Stands Up, which is affiliated with People's Action, tells In These Times, "People at the top [are] using race and class to divide us so that they can turn around and pick our pockets. ... Everyone [whose door we knock on] agrees with that."
Melissa Cropper, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers and secretary treasurer of the Ohio AFL-CIO, echoes Goehl, telling In These Times, "It's hard to get out and have these grassroots-level conversations, but we need to invest in grassroots organizers from the communities who can have these conversations and can work [on solutions] with the community."
Unions can follow People's Action by holding more political discussions with their members about how the labor movement (and the Left) fights for working people. But they must also show the path forward -- how workers themselves can join the fight to rein in corporate power.
Rebuilding unions -- organizing more workers -- is the first step toward a broader worker coalition. But People's Action and progressive unionists also believe race and class issues are keys to a coherent Left -- because if we ignore them, the Right will use them to drive a white, reactionary, populist movement.
"[Labor leaders] have to ... explain the construction of race and capitalism," says Bill Fletcher Jr., executive editor of The Global African Worker and former AFL-CIO staffer. "The absence of that, and the reliance on so-called diversity programs, at best teaches tolerance but does not get at the particular role that race plays as a division of the working class. They need to embark on massive internal educational efforts."
Unions should place a higher premium on building solidarity among the working class as a whole, in all of its diversity. One example is the 2020 partnership between the United Electrical Workers (UE) and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The groups formed the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee to help workers organize on the job in the midst of Covid-19. It's exactly the kind of alliance the Left and the labor movement should forge, amplifying both groups' impacts by organizing new workers and engaging existing membership.
These types of alliances demonstrate an attitude of "not me, us" (to quote Sanders' presidential campaign slogan)-- the key to building worker trust and taking on the powerful forces ultimately responsible for the economic inequality so many experience. Reitano believes strongly in his union, but he worries that new hires, who are immigrants, won't join the union or won't fight for higher wages, because they are used to lower wage standards. "If the union can educate these people so they understand that we have to stand together, I think it'll be okay," he says. In a situation like this, a union political education program could not only engage new members, as Reitano suggests, but also forge solidarity and trust across the old guard/ new guard divide.
Currently, however, many unions focus primarily on mobilizing their members to vote, rather than on a more robust political program. In many cases, members don't have a mechanism to even offer input on the political endorsements of their locals and internationals. Instead, every union shop should have stewards who constantly engage workers in educational programs and struggles on the shop floor. Unions launched campaigns like this in anticipation of the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision, which allowed public-sector employees in union shops to get the benefits of the union without paying for them. Many unions around the country began proactive campaigns to talk one-on-one with their members about the importance of their union. In the conversations, they stressed the power of collective action and exposed the right-wing forces trying to undermine unions through Janus and other measures. They encouraged members to recommit to being dues-paying members even though they would soon have the ability to become "free riders."
None of this work will be easy, but unless unions commit to this educational work, Trumpism will continue to grow and the possibility of achieving policy that can actually help working people will diminish. (Left unchecked, Trumpism also could drive an increasingly violent alt-Right.) The Left must support unions in this work by engaging in partnerships (like the DSA/UE partnership) and encouraging workers to organize and unionize.
The Democratic Party, for its part, must prove itself worthy of the union vote. Right now, tens of millions of workers (both union and nonunion) are suffering through unemployment, housing insecurity, hunger and a lack of healthcare in a devastating pandemic. The Democratic Party leadership has barely lifted a finger to put up a real fight to win relief that is desperately needed by so many. They could take example from Sen. Sanders, who has voiced his opposition to the most recent proposed "compromise" stimulus bill. While millions suffer through the coronavirus pandemic with woefully inadequate federal support, Democratic Party leadership has refused to go big, choosing to ignore the progressive Dems' early push for monthly cash payments and expanded Medicare. Without these steps, the Democrats should not expect working people to vote for them without question.
Without countermeasures from unions and Democrats alike, Republicans will continue to turn the union vote. A 2020 Delaware Senate race between Republican challenger Lauren Witzke and Democratic incumbent Sen. Christopher Coons offers a glimpse of what's to come. Though she lost (with 38% of the vote), Witzke ran on an "America First" platform including support for unions and collective bargaining, opposition to immigration (on the basis that migrant workers worsen conditions of all workers), and an anti-abortion stance.
While Trump's racism likely provoked many white professionals to vote against him in 2020, it did not deter a growing group of people of color -- and what's even more alarming than a whites-only right-wing movement is a multiracial one. To counter the appeal of Trumpism, we need to build a multiracial, working-class labor movement that can arm workers with solidarity and a renewed commitment to struggle for the world we deserve.
"It is hard to see," said the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists, "if Israel can wipe out an entire news crew without the international community so much as batting an eye, what will stop further attacks on reporters."
Nearly two years into Israel's assault on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces' killing of six journalists this week provoked worldwide outrage—but a leading press freedom advocate said Wednesday that the slaughter of the Palestinian reporters can "hardly" be called surprising, considering the international community's refusal to stop Israel from killing hundreds of journalists and tens of thousands of other civilians in Gaza since October 2023.
Israel claimed without evidence that Anas al-Sharif, a prominent Al Jazeera journalist who was killed in an airstrike Sunday along with four of his colleagues at the network and a freelance reporter, was the leader of a Hamas cell—an allegation Al Jazeera, the United Nations, and rights groups vehemently denied.
Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, wrote in The Guardian that al-Sharif was one of at least 26 Palestinian reporters that Israel has admitted to deliberately targeting while presenting "no independently verifiable evidence" that they were militants or involved in hostilities in any way.
Israel did not publish the "current intelligence" it claimed to have showing al-Sharif was a Hamas operative, and Ginsberg outlined how the IDF appeared to target al-Sharif after he drew attention to the starvation of Palestinians—which human rights groups and experts have said is the direct result of Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid.
"The Committee to Protect Journalists had seen this playbook from Israel before: a pattern in which journalists are accused by Israel of being terrorists with no credible evidence," wrote Ginsberg, noting the CPJ demanded al-Sharif's protection last month as Israel's attacks intensified.
The five other journalists who were killed when the IDF struck a press tent in Gaza City were not accused of being militants.
The IDF "has not said what crime it believes the others have committed that would justify killing them," wrote Ginsberg. "The laws of war are clear: Journalists are civilians. To target them deliberately in war is to commit a war crime."
"It is hardly surprising that Israel believes it can get away with murder. In the two decades preceding October, Israeli forces killed 20 journalists."
Just as weapons have continued flowing from the United States and other Western countries to Israel despite its killing of at least 242 Palestinian journalists and more than 61,000 other civilians since October 2023, Ginsberg noted, Israel had reason to believe it could target reporters even before the IDF began its current assault on Gaza.
"It is hardly surprising that Israel believes it can get away with murder," wrote Ginsberg. "In the two decades preceding October, Israeli forces killed 20 journalists. No one has ever been held accountable for any of those deaths, including that of the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, whose killing in 2022 sent shock waves through the region."
The reaction to the killing of the six journalists this week from the Trump administration—the largest international funder of the Israeli military—and the corporate media in the U.S. has exemplified what Ginsberg called the global community's "woeful" response to the slaughter of journalists by Israel, which has long boasted of its supposed status as a bastion of press freedom in the Middle East.
As Middle East Eye reported Tuesday, at the first U.S. State Department briefing since al-Sharif and his colleagues were killed, spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the airstrike targeting journalists was a legitimate attack by "a nation fighting a war" and repeated Israel's unsubstantiated claims about al-Sharif.
"I will remind you again that we're dealing with a complicated, horrible situation," she told a reporter from Al Jazeera Arabic. "We refer you to Israel. Israel has released evidence al-Sharif was part of Hamas and was supportive of the Hamas attack on October 7. They're the ones who have the evidence."
A CNN anchor also echoed Israel's allegations of terrorism in an interview with Foreign Press Association president Ian Williams, prompting the press freedom advocate to issue a reminder that—even if Israel's claims were true—journalists are civilians under international law, regardless of their political beliefs and affiliations.
"Frankly, I don't care whether al-Sharif was in Hamas or not," said Williams. "We don't kill journalists for being Republicans or Democrats or, in Britain, Labour Party."
Ginsberg warned that even "our own journalism community" across the world has thus far failed reporters in Gaza—now the deadliest war for journalists that CPJ has ever documented—compared to how it has approached other conflicts.
"Whereas the Committee to Protect Journalists received significant offers of support and solidarity when journalists were being killed in Ukraine at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, the reaction from international media over the killings of our journalist colleagues in Gaza at the start of the war was muted at best," said Ginsberg.
International condemnation has "grown more vocal" following the killing of al-Sharif and his colleagues, including Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammad al-Khaldi, said Ginsberg.
"But it is hard to see," she said, "if Israel can wipe out an entire news crew without the international community so much as batting an eye, what will stop further attacks on reporters."
Three U.N. experts on Tuesday demanded an immediate independent investigation into the journalists' killing, saying that a refusal from Israel to allow such a probe would "reconfirm its own culpability and cover-up of the genocide."
"Journalism is not terrorism. Israel has provided no credible evidence of the latter against any of the journalists that it has targeted and killed with impunity," said the experts, including Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
"These are acts of an arrogant army that believes itself to be impune, no matter the gravity of the crimes it commits," they said. "The impunity must end. The states that continue to support Israel must now place tough sanctions against its government in order to end the killings, the atrocities, and the mass starvation."
Fire-related deaths were reported in Turkey, Spain, Montenegro, and Albania.
With firefighters in southern Europe battling blazes that have killed people in multiple countries and forced thousands to evacuate, Spain's environment minister on Wednesday called the wildfires a "clear warning" of the climate emergency driven by the fossil fuel industry.
While authorities have cited a variety of causes for current fires across the continent, from arson to "careless farming practices, improperly maintained power cables, and summer lightning storms," scientists have long stressed that wildfires are getting worse as humanity heats the planet with fossil fuels.
The Spanish minister, Sara Aagesen, told the radio network Cadena SER that "the fires are one of the parts of the impact of that climate change, which is why we have to do all we can when it comes to prevention."
"Our country is especially vulnerable to climate change. We have resources now but, given that the scientific evidence and the general expectation point to it having an ever greater impact, we need to work to reinforce and professionalize those resources," Aagesen added in remarks translated by The Guardian.
The Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, said on social media Wednesday that "the danger of wildfires continues at very high or extreme levels in most of Spain, despite the likelihood of showers in many areas," and urged residents to "take extreme precautions!"
The heatwave impacting Spain "peaked on Tuesday with temperatures as high as 45°C (113°F)," according to Reuters. AEMET warned that "starting Thursday, the heat will intensify again," and is likely to continue through Monday.
The heatwave is also a sign of climate change, Akshay Deoras, a research scientist in the Meteorology Department at the U.K.'s University of Reading, told Agence France-Presse this week.
"Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world," Deoras said, adding that "many still underestimate the danger."
There have been at least two fire-related deaths in Spain this week: a man working at a horse stable on the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid, and a 35-year-old volunteer firefighter trying to make firebreaks near the town of Nogarejas, in the Castile and León region.
Acknowledging the firefighter's death on social media Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez sent his "deepest condolences to their family, friends, and colleagues," and wished "much strength and a speedy recovery to the people injured in that same fire."
According to The New York Times, deaths tied to the fires were also reported in Turkey, Montenegro, and Albania. Additionally, The Guardian noted, "a 4-year-old boy who was found unconscious in his family's car in Sardinia died in Rome on Monday after suffering irreversible brain damage caused by heatstroke."
There are also fires in Greece, France, and Portugal, where the mayor of Vila Real, Alexandre Favaios, declared that "we are being cooked alive, this cannot continue."
Reuters on Wednesday highlighted Greenpeace estimates that investing €1 billion, or $1.17 billion, annually in forest management could save 9.9 million hectares or 24.5 million acres—an area bigger than Portugal—and tens of billions of euros spent on firefighting and restoration work.
The European fires are raging roughly three months out from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, which is scheduled to begin on November 10 in Belém, Brazil.
"These are not abstract numbers," wrote National Education Association president Becky Pringle. "These are real children who show up to school eager to learn but are instead distracted by hunger."
The leader of the largest teachers union in the United States is sounding the alarm over the impact that President Donald Trump's newly enacted budget law will have on young students, specifically warning that massive cuts to federal nutrition assistance will intensify the nation's child hunger crisis.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA)—which represents millions of educators across the U.S.—wrote for Time magazine earlier this week that "as families across America prepare for the new school year, millions of children face the threat of returning to classrooms without access to school meals" under the budget measure that Trump signed into law last month after it cleared the Republican-controlled Congress.
Estimates indicate that more than 18 million children nationwide could lose access to free school meals due to the law's unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, which are used to determine eligibility for free meals in most U.S. states.
The Trump-GOP budget law imposes more strict work-reporting requirements on SNAP recipients and expands the mandates to adults between the ages of 55 and 64 and parents with children aged 14 and older. The Congressional Budget Office said earlier this week that the more aggressive work requirements would kick millions of adults off SNAP over the next decade—with cascading effects for children and other family members who rely on the program.
"Educators see this pain every day, and that's why they go above and beyond—buying classroom snacks with their own money—to support their students."
Pringle wrote in her Time op-ed that "our children can't learn if they are hungry," adding that as a middle school science teacher she has seen first-hand "the pain that hunger creates."
"Educators see this pain every day, and that's why they go above and beyond—buying classroom snacks with their own money—to support their students," she wrote.
The NEA president warned that cuts from the Trump-GOP law "will hit hardest in places where families are already struggling the most, especially in rural and Southern states where school nutrition programs are a lifeline to many."
"In Texas, 3.4 million kids, nearly two-thirds of students, are eligible for free and reduced lunch," Pringle wrote. "In Mississippi, 439,000 kids, 99.7% of the student population, were eligible for free and reduced-cost lunch during the 2022-23 school year."
"These are not abstract numbers," she added. "These are real children who show up to school eager to learn but are instead distracted by hunger and uncertainty about when they will eat again. America's kids deserve better.
Pringle's op-ed came as school leaders, advocates, and lawmakers across the country braced for the impacts of Trump's budget law.
"We're going to see cuts to programs such as SNAP and Medicaid, resulting in domino effects for the children we serve," Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) said during a recent gathering of lawmakers and experts. "For many of our communities, these policies mean life or death."