The Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has wrought havoc on the federal government, diminishing its ability to perform essential work—like administering Social Security benefits for retirees, weather forecasting to predict tornadoes, and environmental pollution cleanup—while creating new inefficiencies and increased public costs. Now, many Republican governors and state lawmakers are demonstrating their loyalty to the Trump administration by setting up state-level versions of DOGE.Read more

This blog post was produced in collaboration with The Century Foundation.

With the Trump administration implementing a blizzard of anti-worker initiatives on a near-daily basis, it’s difficult to imagine that these early assaults could be only the tip of the iceberg. But President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk may well have far worse plans to attack U.S. workers and labor relations.

One little-seen proposal from outside the White House has the potential to upend our entire system of labor relations. It comes from the “Coalition for a Democratic Workplace” (CDW)—an anti-union trade association of several hundred employers and employer associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers. The coalition sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to repudiate and invalidate more than a dozen major decisions issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during the Biden administration, and to instruct all NLRB appointees and employees that they cannot treat these properly issued decisions as governing law.

The decisions in question address important issues like which workers have the right to form and join a union and what remedies are available to workers who are illegally fired in retaliation for exercising their rights in the workplace. Like all decisions issued by the NLRB—a multi-member body that acts as a court to adjudicate labor disputes—they were issued after full briefing and consideration of the issues and are treated as precedent governing subsequent cases. 

Ordinarily, the way employers try to get the NLRB to change a decision they disagree with is to challenge the decision on appeal. Many of the decisions identified in the memo have been challenged, and those court proceedings are in progress. Employers also have the ability to argue to the Board in future cases that it should revisit its own precedent. The NLRB would then consider the issue and arguments and decide whether to change its earlier decision. This process comports with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires agencies to engage in “reasoned decision-making” when deciding cases. In other words, the agency has to explain itself when it changes course—it can’t just declare a new rule.

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In just over two months, the Trump administration has laid off tens of thousands of federal workers at several agencies. Probationary employees, foreign aid staff, and workers dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were the first targets of these cuts that have since spread to include dismantling the U.S. Department of Education—with more to follow. These unprecedented cuts follow President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s mission to downsize the federal government under the guise of cost savings and improved efficiency. While courts have ordered some of these workers to be reinstated, the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government have serious implications for federal workers and their families—especially Black workers. 

For decades, the federal government has provided stable employment, excellent benefits, and key protections in hiring and promotions that supported a robust Black middle class. Through executive actions and legislation introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government adopted anti-discrimination and affirmative action practices that increased the number of Black workers in the federal government. Today, Black employees make up 18.5% of the federal workforce, which is greater than their overall share of the U.S. population.

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We recently released our annual report assessing wage growth in the U.S. economy. We highlighted that strong and broadly shared wage growth since 2019 contrasted sharply with much slower and unequal rates of growth before that year. This report’s release is also a good time to be explicit about a judgement we’ve made in recent years at EPI to stop referring to the entire post-1979 period as one of “wage stagnation.”Read more

The piece has been updated to reflect the latest version of the bill passed by the Missouri Senate, which no longer eliminates the state earned income tax credit, reduces the corporate income tax, or changes the graduated income tax rate structure with a flat tax. The estimates of the bill’s overall cost and how much the tax changes would benefit the top 1% have been updated accordingly.

Conservative lawmakers’ preference to cut taxes is nothing new, but Missouri state lawmakers are currently considering a tax measure that would privilege the state’s wealthiest individuals in ways no other state with an income tax has done—by fully exempting all capital gains income from taxation. This change would exacerbate an already regressive state tax system, forcing low- and middle-income Missourians to shoulder a larger share of financing for state public services.

The bill being considered, HB 798, would cost roughly $1 billion in lost revenue.1 Beyond exempting capital gains from taxation, the bill would make other tax changes including some that could help lower-income earners, such as exempting diapers and feminine hygiene products from sales tax and increasing property tax exemptions for seniors. However, the impact of these changes pales in comparison to the benefits that would accrue to those with the highest incomes.

In fact, the bill would give the top 1% in the state an average tax cut that is 320 times larger than the tax benefits going to the middle-fifth of tax filers, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). All told, ITEP estimates that 80% of the proposed tax cuts would go to the top 5% of individuals (those earning $273,000 a year or more) with two-thirds of the benefits going to the top 1% (those with incomes above $660,000 a year).

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• Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attacks on Social Security aren’t about efficiency. The word “efficiency” may be in the name of his initiative to reduce the size of the federal government, but a more accurate description of what President Trump’s advisor is doing to Social Security is sabotage.

• DOGE announced plans to cut Social Security staff by 7,000 workers—12% of the workforce. The Trump administration also plans to shutter or shrink dozens of Social Security Administration offices around the country.

• Administrative costs are less than 1% of Social Security spending. Since almost all Social Security spending goes towards benefits, which are set by statute, gutting the agency won’t save money for participants.

• The only way that slashing the number of workers will save large sums money is by making it hard for people to access benefits they’ve earned. Such backdoor benefit cuts, and making a popular government program look bad, are the real goals behind DOGE attacks on Social Security.

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The Trump administration has ramped up its immigration enforcement over the last month, and claims to be targeting  “the worst of the worst” for detention and deportation. However, several reports detail how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is targeting individuals simply for exercising their right to free speech, even going as far as repealing the immigration status of those who are lawfully in the United States and removing them without any due process. Further, ICE has wrongfully detained a growing number of U.S. citizens in Trump’s crackdown on immigration.    

Last week, ICE agents violently removed organizer and advocate Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez from his car while dropping his partner off at work. Juarez is well known in Washington state for fighting for farmworkers’ basic rights, such as overtime pay and protections from extreme heat. Although Juarez lacks an immigration status and had an order of removal dating back to 2018, he had no criminal record and was thus likely targeted for his work with workers’ rights organizations. He is currently being held in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma.

Nearly half of farmworkers are undocumented immigrants according to government estimates, which means they are much more likely to be the victims of workplace violations like wage theft because they fear deportation if they speak up to defend their rights. The targeting and detention of Alfredo Juarez is a prime example of how employers and the government can exploit an individual’s immigration status to intimidate workers from exercising their right to organize as a means of improving their working conditions. We don’t know how Juarez got on ICE’s radar, but could a disgruntled and anti-union employer have called ICE and told them to look into Juarez? It’s not out of the realm of possibility—and it’s certainly a tactic that employers have at their disposal, especially now under the current White House leadership which ultimately values terrorizing immigrants rather than public safety or workers’ rights.

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Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 228,000 jobs added in March. Read the full thread here. 

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Cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, sometimes called food stamps) are inevitable if Congress and President Trump continue down the budget path they have laid out. Despite President Trump’s claim that he is opposed to cutting Medicaid, he enthusiastically endorsed the budget resolution passed by the House of Representatives in February. The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that achieving the level of spending reductions specified in this resolution would require cuts to Medicaid (and more cuts on top of that). The House FY 2025 budget resolution calls for, among many other things, an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and requires $2 trillion in spending cuts. To pay for this, the budget resolution has asked House committees that oversee both Medicaid and the SNAP to identify hundreds of billions in potential cuts. The anticipated cuts to both Medicaid and SNAP threaten the economic security of millions of working families.Read more

Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on today’s release of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for February. Read the full thread here.

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