TRUMP REGIME

Vox -   President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk have become an inseparable duo. Since Trump’s reelection, the richest man in the world — and one of Trump’s top campaign donors — has been a shadow trailing him at his Florida residence. The tech billionaire has taken center stage in the incoming administration, promising to slash $2 trillion from the federal government’s budget.

A whirlwind relationship developing between a politician — in this case, the president-elect — and a financial backer isn’t unusual. What stands out is how much the donor himself is in the spotlight. Tim Walz’s joke that Musk, not JD Vance, was Trump’s running mate, rings more true every day. “We’ve never really seen anyone be that directly connected with a campaign unless they were the candidate,” says Jason Seawright, a political science professor at Northwestern University and co-author of Billionaires and Stealth Politics.

It makes Musk an oddity among his billionaire class, who almost always use their influence quietly. More

Axios - Trump and his allies have telegraphed unprecedented steps to put loyalists in roles that have historically been apolitical.

1. FBI director: Trump has signaled he will fire Christopher Wray, whose 10-year term would run into 2027.
2. Attorney general: The nomination of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who represented Trump at his first impeachment trial, would put a close ally in a position that by tradition (though not always in practice) has a level of independence from the president.
3. Special counsels: Jack Smith moved to dismiss his cases against Trump after the election and is likely to resign before Inauguration Day.
4. Inspectors general: Watchdogs for government agencies could also be on the chopping block, with Trump's allies calling for their removal, Politico reports.

 

In These Times - These are just a few of the major changes in policy that workers can likely expect in the Trump-Vance administration: 

1. Ending proactive government support for the right to form a union. One of the first and easiest moves to expect would be removing Jennifer Abruzzo, who is the General Counsel at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Abruzzo is arguably one of the most effective forces for workers in the Biden administration, and has taken many proactive steps to defend the right to form and join unions. Her office has put checks on bosses surveilling workers, gotten workers rehired when their employer illegally fired them for trying to form a union, and held employers accountable for illegal union-busting — all of which has put her squarely in the crosshairs of the pro-corporate lobby. Billionaire Trump advisor and federal government contractor Elon Musk has even challenged the NLRB’s constitutionality in court...

2. Further crackdowns on immigrants in the workplace. Trump and his allies have pledged to re-ignite an aggressive wave of worksite immigration raids, large-scale deportations, and the stripping of temporary work authorization statuses. These actions could economically devastate immigrant workers, the industries they work in, and all those who live and work alongside them. There are 31 million immigrants in the U.S. workforce, representing about 18.6% of all workers in the U.S. in 2023. All workers — U.S.-born, citizens and r immigrants alike — lose out when immigrants are targeted at work and put at risk of deportation. Why? Because employers will take advantage of fear over their status to exploit them, pushing down wages and working conditions for everyone.

3. Rolling back pro-worker laws and giving employers more power. Unions boost wages and working conditions for non-union workers as well. Still, not all workers will be able to win union representation — and some, like many farmworkers, are explicitly prohibited from doing so. This is why broad worker protection policies are also important. President Trump’s allies have pushed an anti-regulations crusade that would make workplaces less safe, take away overtime pay, open the door to further rolling back laws against child labor and attack the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ability to fight back on behalf of workers facing sexual harassment or racial discrimination on the job.

 

Hartmann Report -  Trump is taking off the mask, after lying to us for over a year about not knowing anything about Project 2025. Former President Trump, who previously kept his distance from Project 2025, is now selecting its key architects for potential cabinet positions and wow, are they doozies. The 900-page conservative policy blueprint, which has alarmed Democrats, appears to be moving from the sidelines to center stage in Trump's plans for a potential second term. His choice of Russell Vought, a co-author of Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, along with several other picks tied to the project, tells us he was lying (surprise!) when he repeatedly disavowed the Heritage Foundation’s project to take apart America’s government; we saw a smaller version of this in 1981 when Reagan took Heritage’s 1980 “Mandate for Leadership” and implemented nearly 80 percent of its suggestions, including massive tax breaks for billionaires and deregulation of pollution and consumer protections for corporations.