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President Trump, President Musk, and the Wedge Issue of Mass Layoffs
Every elected Democrat should be demanding that no taxpayer dollars go to corporations that lay off taxpayers involuntarily. If they don't, what good are they?
Feb 11, 2025
As the Trump-Musk administration takes an axe to the federal government’s budget and personnel, the Democrats have an opening to raise an issue that Musk will hate but Trump can’t ignore—private sector mass layoffs.
Right now, as Acting President Musk goes after agency after agency in the name of cost cutting, the Democrats are focused on public sector job cuts. As they should, tens of thousands of jobs are at risk.
But those numbers pale in comparison to the 1.8 million private sector workers who lost their jobs in December of 2024 due to involuntary layoffs. For the past several decades, more than 20 million jobs per year have been taken away from workers who did nothing wrong.
It won’t be easy to convince private sector workers that cutting federal government costs is a mistake. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you don’t want your tax dollars squandered, and USAID., to many, sounds like a money pit.
If the Democrats act forcefully to defend working-class jobs, they should have better chance to win back Congress from Trump in 2026.
But private sector workers do care about their own job insecurity, and Donald Trump knows it. He has spoken forcefully about keeping worker jobs from migrating to Mexico and elsewhere, and he could take actual action to make that happen with one simple Executive Order:
Corporations that receive taxpayer money via federal contracts and tax subsidies shall not lay off taxpayers involuntarily.
More than $750 billion in contracts for materials and services are made each year by the federal government. Many of the corporate recipients have had no qualms about laying off workers and using the savings to enrich their investors via stock buybacks, and there have been no effective rules to prevent this. (A stock buyback is when a corporation repurchases its own shares, thereby raising the price of the stock without improving the company in any material way.)
Taxpayers know there is a great deal of waste built into federal contracts, especially those massive purchases involving defense and advanced technologies.
It turns out that Musk’s companies, reportedly, have received $20 billion in federal contracts, with $15.4 billion coming to Tesla and Space X in the last decade. Last year, Tesla laid off more than 14,000 workers, and Space X has announced that this year it will lay off more than 10 percent of its workforce, about 6,000 jobs. Imagine if Musk were not allowed to stuff himself with taxpayer money unless he refrained from involuntary layoffs?
To get there the Democrats, for the first time in memory, would need to care about greed-driven private sector layoffs.
That will be difficult because the Democrats are more in tune with highly educated, upper middle-class federal workers. These are the kind of voters who have been trending Democratic while the party has shed the working class. And the Democrats see the federal agencies in which these voters work as part of their legacy, often created and enhanced by legislation they spear-headed. Federal workers are their people, doing the work that the Democrats care most about.
Not so much the private sector, where voters have been drifting away from the Democrats in large numbers for decades, especially in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As I show in Wall Street’s War on Workers, since 1992, as a county’s mass layoff rate has gone up, the Democratic vote has gone down, even as these voters have grown more liberal on social issues.
The Democrats have been losing these working-class voters because they have failed to interfere in private sector layoff decisions, even when job destruction became a campaign issue.
For example, in the run up to the 2024 election, John Deere and Company announced they were shipping more than 1,000 jobs to Mexico while recording $10 billion in profits and conducting $12.2 billion in stock buybacks. Trump immediately called for a 200-percent tariff on all Deere imported goods if they didn’t rescind their layoffs.
The Democrats didn’t say a word about how to stop this needless job destruction and instead attacked the tariffs. Deere’s stock buybacks and profits proved the company had more than enough money to offer voluntary buyout packages for all their workers, not just the executives. But the Democrats did not speak up.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Democrats also remained silent when the Mylan Pharmaceutical plant in Morgantown, WV, moved to India. Workers there begged the Democrats to use the Defense Production Act to keep open the facility, which made generic drugs. If Biden could do it for baby formula, why not for badly needed pharmaceuticals?
But not one Democrat came out in support of these workers, and 1,500 jobs with an average wage of $70,000 per year were tossed away.
Clearly, the Democrats have been pulling away from the working class. Why help these workers, some are saying, when they’re more than likely to vote for Republicans? And why challenge corporate power when you’re trying to win over highly educated executives and financial leaders?
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is up and arms these days about the attacks on federal workers, was very honest about this switch in 2016. I’ve quoted him again and again because he tells us precisely what the Democratic strategy has been all about:
"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio & Illinois & Wisconsin."
At the launch of a second Trump presidency, Schumer’s political acumen has not aged well.
Nor has Ken Martin’s, the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, who has made it clear that billionaires are welcome.
“There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money, but we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires,” Martin said recently.
It is doubtful that Martin ever gave one second’s thought to the fact that most, if not all, of these “good” billionaires that “share our values” have grown wealthy from, to some significant extent, stock buybacks funded through mass layoffs.
The country needs the Democrats to go from defense to offense. If the only activity is mounting a resistance movement to Trump, the odds are slim that enough new voters will be gained to win back the House or the Senate in 2026.
Every elected Democrat should be demanding that no taxpayer dollars go to corporations that lay off taxpayers involuntarily. They should put that message on social media, old media, even billboards all over the swing states. They should challenge every Republican candidate to take a stand on it. It doesn’t cost the taxpayer one dime, but it can protect the livelihoods of millions of working people every year. Or, at least, give them leverage while working out their severance.
Every day Democrats should be asking Trump to sign the order. Does he really want to be seen giving our tax dollars to corporations that lay off taxpayers and funnel the savings to the rich?
And wouldn’t it be good for our weary souls to see Musk squirm because he wouldn’t be able to sup at the federal trough while casually laying off his employees?
You have to wonder if the Democrats are capable of such a move, or anything remotely close to it. Only if they truly are willing to take on Wall Street and the billionaire class. They need to believe, not just mouth the words, that they will fight the wealthy to protect the livelihoods of working people.
If the Democrats act forcefully to defend working-class jobs, they should have better chance to win back Congress from Trump in 2026. But in the short term, pushing Trump to defend his populist flank might help put a wedge between Trump and his billionaire bros, and get some relief for workers from financialized layoffs.
But don’t hold your breath. All those “good” Democratic billionaires might get upset.
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Climate Group Reaches Over 4 Million Voters to Elect Harris Then 'Organize Like Hell'
"Young people know what's at stake in this election," said one Sunrise Movement leader.
Nov 05, 2024
After setting out to reach 1.5 million young voters between late August and Election Day, the youth-led Sunrise Movement announced Tuesday that it made over 4 million voter contacts with a campaign targeting seven battleground states.
"Sunrise's program focused on presidential swing states where young, climate-minded voters were poised to decide the election: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Georgia," explains the group's new report. "Our voter contact universe was made up of people under the age of 35 who were very likely to be concerned about climate change."
The report lays out how Sunrise—sometimes partnering with other progressive groups—reached voters via digital advertising, phone calls, text messages, and door-knocking.
"We have six years left to stop catastrophic climate change. The next president will shape the planet for generations to come."
"I'm blown away by how many people stepped up to help us reach a record number of young voters this fall," said Sunrise communications director Stevie O'Hanlon in a statement. "We set a goal of reaching 1.5 million voters, and we blew past that goal, surpassing even our 2020 reach."
The report notes that this past spring, polls showed some young voters backing former Republican President Donald Trump over Democratic President Joe Biden—who dropped out and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris this summer—but Sunrise "employed a four-part strategy to turn these numbers around."
The strategy was:
- One of the largest youth voter programs nationwide;
- Use direct action and social media to spotlight the GOP's deeply unpopular climate policies;
- Pressure Democrats to back and emphasize policies that would motivate young voters; and
- Make the case to young progressives and disillusioned voters to vote for Harris.
Trump made clear that he would drive up emissions with plans to "drill, baby, drill" and pledged to roll back the Biden-Harris climate policies if fossil fuel executives poured just $1 billion into his campaign. While Harris is widely endorsed by green groups, she has worried some with her embrace of hydraulic fracturing—or fracking—and promotion of "the largest increase in domestic oil production in history."
Still, many organizers for climate action and other key issues—including Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal war on the Gaza Strip—have emphasized during this cycle that Harris is the best choice and the only candidate capable of denying Trump another term.
Sunrise's report acknowledges that "from the war in Gaza to the economy, frustration and disillusionment among young people is at historic levels. This has led many young voters to consider voting for third parties or sitting out altogether."
"We held 'Beyond the Ballot' trainings to dig into our four-year plan to win bold climate action if Harris wins," the publication says. "In those sessions, we dug into how much harder these plans would be under a Trump presidency."
"Through phone and text conversations, Sunrise directly persuaded thousands of voters in this position to vote for Harris," the report continues. "Sunrise also put out social media and press content making this case. These posts reached over 1.5 million people on Instagram alone."
Sunrise campaign director Kidus Girma declared Tuesday that "young people know what's at stake in this election."
"We have six years left to stop catastrophic climate change. The next president will shape the planet for generations to come," Girma added. "No matter who wins, our movement is stronger than before and prepared to take bold action to force the next president and Congress to act."
The report followed a Monday video in which Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said that "one of the hardest things about this election cycle has been watching the left absolutely rip ourselves apart. If you vote for Harris, you're accused of supporting genocide, and if you vote third party or don't vote, you're accused of supporting fascism—and I wish we would just be a little bit more compassionate to ourselves because the truth is we're in a really shitty situation."
"This system was not built for everyday people to have power; it was not built for the left to be able to build power," Shiney-Ajay stressed, detailing the group's rise—from early climate strikes to Biden launching the American Climate Corps and signing the Inflation Reduction Act—and Sunrise's plans for the future.
"First we elect Kamala Harris, because frankly the terrain that we're going to be organizing under Harris is going to be a lot easier for the next few years," she said. "Then, we organize like hell, especially around school strikes and campus takeovers, and we actually use the student power that we have to be able to go on indefinite school strikes and bring society to the realization that we need dramatic change fast. We pair that with escalations in city hubs."
"All of that builds up to 2028," the movement leader continued, highlighting the United Auto Workers' call for a general strike. That nationwide action, she argued, is an opportunity to call for "big climate legislation, structural reform to our democracy, and labor protections."
Shiney-Ajay added that "we can use that organizing power that we build to call for... a Democratic primary in 2028 to actually make sure that the next candidate that we get running for president is actually going to stand up for the values and the world that we know we deserve."
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'No Democracy Without Press Freedom': Journalism Crisis Found in Key Swing States
"It's critically important to understand the issues confronting the news media in the places that are most pivotal in American presidential elections," said the head of Reporters Without Borders.
Oct 29, 2024
Known for its World Press Freedom Index, the global advocacy group Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday turned its attention to four U.S. states that are expected to be crucial in deciding the winner of the presidential election next week—and found that journalism is grappling with numerous crises in states where voters are especially reliant on the media in the last days of the campaign.
The group, also known by its French name, Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF), focused on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada in the report, titled Press Freedom in the Swing States: The Climate for U.S. Journalism Ahead of the 2024 Election, and found that journalists they surveyed were concerned about hostility from local and state officials as well as the "economic viability" of local newsrooms and individual reporters.
"There can be no democracy without press freedom, so it's critically important to understand the issues confronting the news media in the places that are most pivotal in American presidential elections," said Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF USA.
Across the swing states, 94% of respondents said they have found that public officials ignore public records requests or stall in providing records, making reporting difficult and robbing news consumers of information. Arizona officials were found to be the most "egregious offenders," and the state had the lowest overall political score in the report.
The report comes days after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said at a rally in Arizona that the press is "the enemy of the people"—recycling comments he frequently made during his presidential term.
Eighty-five percent of journalists in Arizona reported that "leading politicians and political party leaders explicitly insult, threaten, or incite hatred against journalists" and "act in an antagonistic manner towards the media."
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets."
But Arizona was one of the swing states surveyed that has made an effort to protect journalistic sources, through a shield law that ensures reporters can protect their sources' identities; the Arizona Media Subpoena Law, which restricts subpoenas against journalists; and a recently strengthened anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law, which now protects free speech and press freedom.
The same cannot be said for Florida, which does not have a shield law and has only a "vaguely worded" anti-SLAPP measure.
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida's government has become increasingly hostile to journalists, with DeSantis championing bills to make it easier to sue media outlets.
"The state is withholding public records about the governor's travel," said an anonymous news director interviewed by RSF. "Violent threats to journalists from the public is a weekly regularity."
The report points to attacks on the media by a number of Florida agencies under DeSantis, including a letter from the state health department to a Tampa TV station that threatened the general manager with jail time if the station aired an ad promoting an abortion rights-focused ballot initiative.
"The hostile political environment for the press exacerbates the economic pressures facing media outlets," said RSF. "It likely also contributes to Florida's serious news desert problem. Over 300,000 Floridians have no local news source, the third highest figure of any U.S. state."
Annual wage data for Florida was not available to RSF, but reporters in Pennsylvania told the group that their biggest concerns are economic and center on whether journalists in the state will be able to continue providing their audiences with news that could affect their lives.
Eight-one percent of respondents in Pennsylvania said that "the average media outlet struggles economically and that journalists are generally unable to earn a living wage." The median wage for journalists in the state is barely half Pennsylvania's living wage, according to the report.
Ninety-four percent of journalists and media experts in the Keystone State also said they were concerned about animosity from politicians and the public, with reporters facing "persistent online harassment" and some reporting a bomb threat that targeted a newsroom, "being followed by unknown agitators," and one incident in which journalists were "in the sights" of a rooftop militiaman with a rifle.
"County commissioners and much of the GOP establishment will not speak with us because they believe we are biased against them, mainly because we reported on local [January 6 rioters], on our congressman voting against certifying Pennsylvania electoral votes in 2020, and our continued reporting on religious and right-wing groups inciting hate against LGBTQ people and all the associated campaigns, such as banning books from school libraries and changing school curricula," one editor told RSF.
Nevada had the highest overall press freedom score, with strong anti-SLAPP laws, widespread news distribution and few news deserts, and a median reporter salary slightly exceeding the state's living wage.
But 80% of respondents in the state said officials stall or ignore public records requests all or most of the time.
Several of RSF's recommendations for legislators centered on increasing government transparency to better allow journalists to do their jobs and to serve the public interest. The group called on legislators to:
- Ensure adequate funding and staffing levels in the offices tasked with responding to public records requests;
- Establish simple, coherent processes with clearly articulated timelines;
- Improve training for officials tasked with processing and responding to these requests; and
- Lead by example at the political level to encourage a culture of transparency.
To help newsrooms cope with volatile economic conditions and dwindling resources, RSF said state legislatures should "innovate new models" including increased public funding, tax rebates for news subscriptions, and policies requiring social media companies to compensate the news media for using their content.
"RSF," said Weimers, "hopes that this report will provide a starting point for all Americans to demand improvements in their states' media ecosystems: greater transparency, better access to information, and a marketplace that enables journalism to thrive."
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