A mass movement is growing against the Trump regime. Trump, the Republican Party, and his billionaire cabinet are leading attacks against working people here and around the world, using many policies from Biden and previous Democratic and Republican administrations.
The Trump administration is sending the military into cities, using National Guard and federal police agencies to patrol, harass, and intimidate working-class neighborhoods. Militarized federal and local police join ICE raids to terrorize our schools, hospitals, and communities, abducting innocent working people off the streets, taking them away from their families, disappearing them into private prisons with inhuman conditions. This is MAGA “freedom.”
The Trump regime, along with Democratic Party complicity, continues the funding and defense of genocide in Gaza despite claims of a “peace agreement.” The repression against pro-Palestinian protestors continues along with the ramping up of imperialist threats and proxy wars including bombing Iran and murdering Venezuelans. Trump and Co. are now threatening to invade Venezuela. All the Venezuelan oil, natural gas, lithium, and gold deposits are too much for the billionaire-run U.S. government to pass up. The demonization and sanctions by Biden, Obama, etc. against Venezuela have paved the way for more war and plunder.
Trump and the right are using a divide-and-conquer strategy against working people including mass deportations of immigrants, attacks on trans rights and civil rights in general, cuts in education, and healthcare. Union busting and mass layoffs are being used against federal government workers. All of these policies are based on federal or state laws previously enacted by both corporate parties.
While sections of the working class are already experiencing the Trump regime’s repression, racism, assaults on our rights, and living standards, the attacks are quickly expanding. The economic austerity, cuts in social benefits and a range of government services, as well as the crushing of civil liberties will soon hit everyone except the millionaires and billionaires. This is MAGA “freedom.”
Rents are too high. College is too expensive and burdens millions with decades worth of student loan debts. Wages aren’t enough to cover the increased costs of living, and millions are losing access to their healthcare and SNAP food subsidy benefits due to Trump’s Big Ugly Bill. The economic austerity and increasing crushing of civil liberties are being more strongly felt by wider layers of working people.
The so-called “resistance” of the corporate Democratic Party has not stopped Trump and the Republicans. Lawyers and lawsuits won’t save us. Under the Biden administration, Democrats failed to reverse attacks on LGBTQ rights, and when Roe was removed in 2022, they failed to protect abortion rights. The Democratic Party, when in power, helped to fund and back the Israeli state’s genocide of Palestinians. The Democrats have capitulated to many of Trump’s attacks on cities through the use of the military, National Guard, and ICE, even supporting a resolution praising ICE for “protecting the homeland.” This should come as no surprise, the Democratic Party has initiated and promoted the militarization of police and increased funding for ICE for many years. During the LA protests, mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom have implemented curfews and increased the use of police, arresting almost 400 protestors. Newsom’s complaints about Trump not consulting him when using National Guard troops were not any sort of “resistance” since Newsom had no problem throwing 8,000 National Guard troops against Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Democrats helped lay the groundwork for Trump by shifting to the right, campaigning in 2024 on increased military power and focusing on “border issues” and further limiting immigrant rights. Biden’s promises that weren’t delivered on or seriously attempted, even when the Democratic Party controlled Congress and the Presidency include:
- the Equality Act that would have further protected workers from discrimination based on gender and sexuality
- the codifying of Roe to protect abortion rights
- the defense of LGBTQ asylum seekers
- the pro-union Protect the Right to Organize Act which Biden promised to labor leaders during his campaign for President.
Part of the hidden history of the working class is that most great victories of union and social movements in the U.S., including in the 1930’s, the civil rights and black power struggles in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the anti war, women’s movement, and the organizing of public sector unions in the late 1960’s and 1970’s were all heavily influenced and strengthened by socialist and Marxist ideas and often led by socialist, communist, and other left activists.
Federal union workers are facing mass layoffs and union busting. Will union leaders repeat the PATCO air traffic controllers’ defeat and refuse to organize solidarity strike action in support of the federal workers? Or will rank-and-file union members and militant union leaders organize wildcat strikes like the postal workers in 1970 and the Red for Ed teachers’ strikes in 2018 in West Virginia? Will the unions continue to fund Democrats or will they build a workers party which could help unite the labor movement and the anti-Trump movement.
The Independent Socialist Group (ISG) calls for unions to join with the anti-Trump protests to organize local, state, and national emergency assemblies to adopt a program that should include these core demands:
- Unions unite to organize regional strike action leading up to a general strike. Union action can reverse the mass layoffs and cuts to healthcare and social benefits, stop the ICE raids, fight for union rights, and win the right to strike for all public sector workers.
- Mass union drives to win improved wages, benefits, and working conditions for all, including immigrant workers.
- Organize active solidarity and mass rallies to stop the ICE raids and release detainees. Abolish ICE and stop the deportations. An Injury to One is an Injury to All.
- No one is “illegal”! Amnesty for all undocumented immigrants.
- A $30-an-hour federal minimum wage.
- Free universal healthcare.
- A national rent control law and mass construction of quality affordable public housing
- Free public higher education and cancelling student debt.
- End the genocide in Gaza. Cut U.S. military spending, including ending all military aid to Israel.
- Immediately run independent candidates as part of organizing a workers’ party independent of the billionaires and the two corporate parties. Build a party of, by, and for working people to fight for the demands above and for public ownership of the major sectors of the economy.
- Organize a mass socialist movement for equality and international working-class solidarity!
Independent Socialist Group 