The Uphill Battle To Bring Women Into Construction Jobs Could Be Lost Under Trump

Tradeswomen have spent decades fighting for their place in the skilled trades. Now they’re suing the government over its DEI policies.

By Jessica Kutz

March 22, 2025

Source: The 19th

A plumbing apprentice welds pipes at a high rise residence under construction. Photo: Teresa Crawford

For decades, women have worked diligently to carve out a space in the construction workforce, where discrimination and sexual harassment have kept the predominantly male industry, well, male. 

Across the country, they organized for recognition. First in small committees that cropped up in places like Fort Worth, Texas, where in 1953, women came together to create their own support network later called the National Association of Women in Construction. Over the years they worked with their unions and created nonprofits in places like Oregon, Wisconsin, Vermont, Florida and Chicago to advocate for issues affecting women like how to change the hostile workplace culture, and deal with the persistent lack of child care for the early hours they often work. 

The government created its own policies to ensure federal contractors were doing their due diligence to recruit and hire from a diverse workforce. But the Biden administration in particular was a boon to the movement, said Jayne Vellinga, executive director of Chicago Women in Trades (CWIT), a nonprofit aimed at bringing more women into construction jobs. 

Under Biden, the Commerce Department announced its goal to bring a million women into construction jobs, and created a requirement that recipients of large federal grants for semiconductor manufacturing include a plan for child care. The administration had also passed two laws aimed at boosting infrastructure in the country, which created a demand for skilled workers. 

It was the perfect storm of opportunity and funding to expand their programming to bring more women into the workforce. “Our placement numbers have never been higher,” Vellinga said. But when Donald Trump returned to the White House, the forward momentum collapsed almost overnight. In a fiery inauguration speech, he declared he would dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the government and create what he calls a color-blind, merit-based society. He promptly issued two executive orders calling DEI policies immoral and illegal and vowed to claw back funding. 

Just two days later, CWIT received word that all of its federal grants were under review. These grants constitute 40 percent of CWIT’s budget, and the loss would jeopardize the future of the nonprofit’s work. 

“We have complete whiplash,” Vellinga said.

Additionally, the tariffs have disrupted the construction industry, leading to a potential slowdown in projects and consequentially less need for workers, she said. 

The nonprofit, whose participants overwhelmingly identify as Black and Latina women, offers pre-apprenticeship training covering topics like workplace safety and basic technical skills. It also partners with unions and industry leaders to advocate for workplaces free of discrimination and harassment, and trains employers in how to make construction sites more inclusive of women. 

It’s work that is desperately needed in an industry where one in four women say they are always or frequently harassed, and where one in five LGBTQ+ workers say the same, according to findings from the Institute for Women’s Policy and Research. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a report in 2023, which found that discrimination was still rampant in the industry, citing several instances of employers not hiring people because of their gender or race. 

But that report has been erased from the website, and Vellinga said she feels like the reality of who is being discriminated against is being erased, too. “This narrative that women are taking jobs away from more qualified people has never been true. They are qualified and just asking companies to overcome whatever biases to give them a fair shot.” 

The efforts taken to dismantle their work might also not be legal. In February, the nonprofit filed a lawsuit against the administration and several agencies, including the Department of Labor, seeking to declare the DEI executive orders unconstitutional. They are also suing on the grounds that the clawback of federal funds is outside of the jurisdiction of the Executive Branch since they are approved by Congress, and that it’s also infringing on their First Amendment right to free speech. 

“What the Trump administration is trying to do is say that for you to receive this federal funding you have to adopt the administration’s viewpoint that DEI is impermissible, and you have to agree with our political agenda,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, a lawyer from the National Women’s Law Center, one of the organizations that is representing the CWIT in court. “The government is not allowed to do that.” 

Catherine Fisk, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said in effect the orders chill constitutionally protected speech and threaten legal action against organizations who cannot know what it is that they are prohibited from doing because it’s so vague. “That is both a First Amendment violation that is broadly prohibiting advocacy and a due process violation,” she said: “The government is threatening to punish people without being clear of what they are being punished for.”

The 19th reached out to the Department of Labor, The Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice, which were all named as defendants, but did not hear back by press time. 

Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion is not illegal, and these executive orders are a way to attack ideals fundamental to American society, Burroughs said. “When you peel it back, what we’re really talking about is the ability for people to not be discriminated against,” she said. “We do a disservice when we’re saying that it’s an attack on DEI. It’s an attack on civil rights, on workplace anti-discrimination.” 

She continued: “The message that is being conveyed is, if you are not a white heterosexual man, and you are in public life, or you are in a job where you are successful, that you must have gotten there because of some unfair advantage, and that is really a poisonous way of thinking.” 

In addition to endangering federal funding for DEI work, the Trump administration also rescinded an executive order that had been in place since 1965. The order prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in its hiring practices and required them to take affirmative actions to ensure that it was trying to recruit and hire women and people of color for its jobs, which are paid for with taxpayer dollars and in theory should be accessible to anyone who is qualified. Because some groups have been so effectively shut out of certain jobs, that work can look like providing opportunities for specific groups like women to learn skills and receive training to be competitive applicants in the job pool. 

To help enforce the 1965 order, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs could perform audits on job sites to also ensure the workplaces were protecting employers equal rights. Jenny Yang, the former director of the office under Biden, said in some cases an audit has uncovered that women don’t have proper fitting personal protective equipment which can pose a safety risk, or are being harassed or discriminated against in other ways. 

“Having an OFCCP investigator auditing those practices is what often catalyzes change because workers see that the federal government is there,” she said. It also offers workers an opportunity to report issues with their workplace anonymously versus having to file a complaint against their employer, which can open them up to retribution. 

The agency has also played a role in correcting pay discrimination by conducting pay audits, said Yang. From 2014 to 2024 the agency obtained $261 million for employees and job seekers who were discriminated against. That money went to over 250,000 employees and applicants. That number included about 25,000 White people and men, who were alleged to have been discriminated against. “Our anti discrimination laws protect everyone,” Yang said.  

But now that agency is being whittled down to a ghost of itself, with reports that the Department of Labor plans to lay off 90 percent of staff. The order announcing the rescindment said the work going forward would only apply to veterans and people with disabilities. 

“The rescission of the executive order will have devastating consequences for workers and especially for women in the trades, many who have said they wouldn’t have an opportunity to support their families because of the discrimination many women face in that industry,” said Yang.

That’s because the opportunities afforded to women without college degrees pay much differently than those offered to men. It’s a phenomena known as occupation segregation, said Vellinga. “Our culture does not value the caretaking role, the roles that women have traditionally played, as much as they have valued the roles that men have traditionally played,” she said. 

An example she likes to use is the difference between how the country pays certified nursing assistants, of which 88 percent are women, versus carpenters. Neither job requires a college degree, and both are physically demanding. But the median wage for nurse assistants is just $40,000 compared to $61,000 for carpenters according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Carpenters are also more likely to have pensions. 

Now she fears that with a loss of protections in the workplace, and a fear from employers to even engage in DEI, those opportunities for women will just dry up. And her organization’s ability to bridge the gap in employment will be crippled. 

If their federal funds are canceled they won’t be able to offer as many trainings, they won’t be able to work with employers to create workplaces free of discrimination and harassment, and they won’t be able to do as much outreach to educate women and girls that these opportunities even exist in the first place. 

“For an organization who has spent decades trying to change a culture, we are still so far from the finish line,” Vellinga said. Nearly 96 percent of construction workers, to this day, are men. “It is really incredible that you could not acknowledge that reality.”

 

Trump’s Expulsion of South Africa’s Ambassador May Well Backfire

By Medea Benjamin

March 22, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Photo Credit: CODEPINK

The South African ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, left Washington D.C. on March 21 after Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the extraordinary step of declaring him “persona non grata.” The United States is losing a seasoned representative who had previously served as South Africa’s ambassador under President Obama, was a member of South Africa’s National Assembly, and was active (and imprisoned) during his country’s anti-apartheid struggle. And ginning up the conflict with a country that has such tremendous international standing may prove to be a bad move for President Trump.

Secretary Rubio publicly berated Ambassador Rasool in a most undiplomatic tweet on March 14, writing: “South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”

The Trump administration was incensed by remarks the ambassador had made earlier that week when speaking, via video, at a South Africa conference. He commented on the MAGA movement, saying that it is driven by white supremacy and is a response to the growing demographic diversity in the United States. The ambassador also expressed concern about the movement’s global reach, including support from Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and has connections with extreme right movements overseas. The ambassador called his nation, South Africa, “the historical antidote to supremacism.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the decision to expel Rasool was “regrettable” and that “South Africa remains committed to building a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States.”

Rasool’s expulsion is only the latest manifestation of U.S. displeasure with South Africa. On March 17, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce listed a litany of issues the U.S. has with South Africa, including its “unjust land appropriations law”;  its growing relationship with Russia and Iran; and the fact that it accused Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice. Bruce denounced the ambassador’s lack of decorum, which she called obscene, and painted South Africa as a country whose policies make the United States and the entire world less safe.

This is in stark contrast to the view of South Africa from the Global South, where the African nation’s foreign policy is often seen as exemplary. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has embraced a non-aligned foreign policy and has tried to resist pressure from Western countries. South Africa has also continued to show appreciation for nations such as Russia, Cuba and Iran that supported its anti-apartheid struggle. 

South Africa’s non-aligned stance became a bone of contention with the Biden administration after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The United States pushed the world community to condemn Russia, but South Africa, along with many African nations, refused to take sides. South Africa has long had warm relations with Russia, dating back to the days when the Soviet Union trained and supported many of the ANC freedom fighters. Instead of condemning Russia, South Africa led a group of six African nations to advocate for negotiations to end the Russia/Ukraine conflict. 

But it was Israel’s war on Gaza that placed the United States and South Africa on a collision course. Far from supporting the U.S. ally, Israel, South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians at the International Court of Justice. The Biden administration denounced the case as “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever,” but the case triggered an avalanche of global support for South Africa’s principled stand. Dr. Haidar Eid, a Palestinian academic from Gaza, reflected world opinion when he said said, “By bravely standing up for what is right and taking Israel to the ICJ, South Africa showed us that another world is possible: a world where no state is above the law, most heinous crimes like genocide and apartheid are never accepted and the peoples of the world stand together shoulder to shoulder against injustice. Thank You, South Africa.”

When President Trump regained the White House, he not only condemned South Africa for its ICJ case against Israel, but he became embroiled in a policy totally internal to the African nation. Most likely egged on by Elon Musk, Trump denounced South Africa’s Expropriation Act of 2025, which established a program to expropriate unused agricultural land that White owners refused to sell to Black purchasers. White South Africans (Afrikaners) controlled the oppressive apartheid government until it was overthrown in 1994, and Afrikaners continue to own the vast majority of the wealth (the typical Black household owns 5 per cent of the wealth held by the typical White household). But Trump called the White population “racially disfavored landowners” and shockingly, not only punished South Africa by cutting off U.S. aid, but also promoted “the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” While shutting U.S. doors to immigrants of color from around the world, Trump laid out the red carpet for the white Africaners. Little wonder Ambassador Rasool was moved to call the Trump administration a leader in white supremacy.

Trump’s decision to cut aid to South Africa coincides with the administration’s gutting of US AID, which has had a disastrous effect on South Africans suffering from HIV/AIDS. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was a U.S. program launched in 2003 by President Bush to provide life-saving HIV care and treatment. South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world, and the U.S. had contributed 17 percent of the nation’s $400 million HIV budget. This funding supported the anti-retroviral medication for HIV treatment of 5.5 million people annually. According to some estimates,  the aid freeze could cause over half a million deaths in South Africa over the next decade.

In terms of the larger South African economy and possible fallout from U.S. cuts, the United States is South Africa’s second-largest export market (China is number one), with $14.7 billion worth of goods exported to the United States in 2024. South Africa also benefits from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a preferential trade program providing duty-free access to U.S. markets. If the Trump administration removes South Africa from AGOA eligibility, its exports will surely plummet.

To make matters worse, this week the U.S. stopped the disbursement of $2.6 billion to South Africa through the World Bank’s Climate Investment Fund, monies that are supposed to help South Africa transition from coal to cleaner energy sources. 

The Trump administration’s tough stance on South Africa is certainly meant to warn other countries about the consequences of challenging the United States. But Trump’s actions may well backfire. In response to the cut-off in aid and trade, 100 Parliamentarians from around the world penned a letter calling on their own governments to support South Africa’s public health programs and to expand new avenues for international trade as a sign of “international solidarity with the South African people as they face this assault on their right to self-determination.” South Africa is also a key player in the growing alliance of  BRICs, a grouping of large countries trying to counter the economic clout of the United States. The BRICs nations now represent roughly 45 percent of the world’s populations and 35 percent of global GDP.

Trump’s expulsion and threats have also had a unifying effect inside South Africa. Ambassador Rasool, who says he has no regrets, is expected to be greeted by a massive crowd as he lands in Cape Town on Sunday. South Africa’s president is trying to tone down the reception, as he is anxious to repair relations with the U.S. But for the people of South Africa and worldwide who oppose white supremacy, Rasool is not a disgraced ambassador. He is a hero.

Protests against Trump and Musk spring to life — with a mass demonstration set for April 5

Along with rallies held by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, #TeslaTakedown and #HandsOff protests are giving people the opportunity to voice their displeasure with the administration.

David Knowles

YAHOO News Editor
 Tue, March 25, 2025 

Sen. Bernie Sanders with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Denver, a stop on their "Fighting Oligarchy Tour," March 21. (David Zalubowski/AP)

As President Trump and Elon Musk continue their plan to dramatically reshape the federal government, a growing protest movement is emerging to try to stop them.

Over the past few days, thousands of people have gathered to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York castigate the current administration.

“We will not allow America to become an oligarchy,” Sanders told a crowd of 34,000 in Denver. “This nation was built by working people, and we are not going to let a handful of billionaires run the government.”

At five stops in three states — Arizona, Colorado and Nevada — Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez drew crowds that exceeded expectations.

The rallies by the two high-profile politicians have proven to be the biggest demonstrations of the first months of Trump’s second term, but numerous others have been popping up nationwide. On March 7, a “Stand Up for Science” rally drew thousands of people to Washington, D.C., and other cities to demand a restoration of federal scientific funding cut by the Trump administration.

Yet compared with the Women’s March of 2017, which drew millions of citizens to the streets the weekend after Trump’s first-term inauguration to protest what many saw as the newly elected president’s pattern of sexist rhetoric, the second-term protests have, so far, been much smaller.

#TeslaTakedown

Protesters at a downtown Manhattan Tesla dealership decry Elon Musk's powerful role in the Trump administration, March 22. (Andrea Renault/Star Max)

To hear Musk tell it, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the advisory group Trump has tasked him to lead, is playing a crucial role in addressing what Republicans see as out-of-control spending.

“The country is going bankrupt,” Musk said last week in an interview with Fox News in reference to the growing national debt. “If we don’t do something about it, the ship of America is going to sink.”

But in response to Musk’s efforts to slash the federal workforce and pare back popular social programs, so-called Tesla Takedown protests have entered their fifth week at Tesla dealerships across the country. On Saturday, hundreds gathered at Tesla dealerships in Arizona, New Jersey, New York, California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and multiple other states.

Organizers are planning a “global day of action” at Tesla dealerships on March 29.

“Elon Musk is destroying our democracy, and he's using the fortune he built at Tesla to do it. We are taking action at Tesla to stop Musk's illegal coup,” reads the text on ActionNetwork.org, a website that says it “empowers individuals and groups to organize for progressive causes.”

The protests against Musk’s actions as the head of DOGE have sometimes turned violent. Over the weekend, the FBI issued an alert warning that acts of vandalism, including gunfire, have occurred at Tesla dealerships in at least nine states. The FBI warned citizens to “exercise vigilance” and to “look out for suspicious activity” on or around dealership locations. On Monday, the agency announced it was creating a task force to investigate recent attacks on the company.

"The FBI has been investigating the increase in violent activity toward Tesla, and over the last few days, we have taken additional steps to crack down and coordinate our response," FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X. "This is domestic terrorism. Those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice."

Tesla Takedown organizers, however, have distanced themselves from any acts of vandalism.

“Tesla Takedown is a peaceful protest movement. We oppose violence, vandalism and destruction of property. This protest is a lawful exercise of our First Amendment right to peaceful assembly,” Action Network said on its website.
‘Hands Off!’

Another test of the strength of the protest movement against Trump will come on April 5, when a coalition of liberal groups is planning nationwide demonstrations, including one at the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. They’re taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them,” Indivisible, the organization running the so-called Hands Off! protests, said in a social media post.”

Will the demonstrations draw enough people to have an impact on Trump’s agenda? Not according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years," Leavitt told USA Today last week in a statement. "President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers across the country who overwhelmingly reelected him.”

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AOC, Sanders erase Biden as progressive movement moves on

David Weigel
Mon, March 24, 2025

SEMAFOR




The Scene

DENVER, Colo. — Now we know what they really thought.

On Friday afternoon, at the biggest rally of his political career, Sen. Bernie Sanders encouraged some 32,000 people here to organize against “oligarchy,” dismantle the private campaign finance system, and maybe run for office themselves.

He never ran as a Democrat — and they wouldn’t need to, either. The party hadn’t earned it.

“For the last 30 or 40 years, Democrats have turned their backs on the working class of this country,” said Sanders.

The Vermont independent shared the stage with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called for “a Democratic Party that fights harder for us.” They were introduced by Jimmy Williams, the president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, who denounced Democrats for not raising the minimum wage or expanding Social Security when they held the House, Senate, and White House.

“For the Democratic Party to ever win back the majority, they have to represent the working class and not the corporate class,” said Williams.

The blunt talk barely made ripples in Washington, where Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are often covered as problems for their party. But as they reboot their movement, progressives who traded loyalty to Joe Biden for big policy victories — from the Green New Deal to clemency for Leonard Peltier — are breaking ranks with the Democratic Party and its feeble brand. Sanders is stepping up efforts to recruit Democratic and independent candidates, and Ocasio-Cortez is taking a larger role in responding to the Trump administration.

And unencumbered from their 2024 task — to make a progressive case for Biden, and then, for Kamala Harris — they are no longer selling his presidency as a success.
Know More

When he secured the 2020 Democratic nomination, Biden made a deal with Sanders and other progressives, giving them a role in drafting the party platform and incorporating their ideas into his campaign and administration. To progressives’ surprise, he often responded to their direct actions; climate activists protested with Ocasio-Cortez for a New Deal-style “climate conservation corps,” and he created one by executive order.




“When it comes to domestic policy, President Biden probably would go down as one of the most effective presidents that centered the working class,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times in January.

But Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza smothered progressives’ good will. In Denver, Sanders mentioned the former president just once by name, when he denounced Trump for maintaining “the horrific Biden policy of giving more money to Netanyahu to destroy the Palestinian people.”

Now Biden, who’s made just two public appearances since leaving Washington, is a non-factor in his party. His achievements, including trillions of dollars of infrastructure, health care and climate spending, are being pulled down by his successor. Democrats rarely talk about Biden’s role in those programs as they fight (and sue) to save them.

The erasure started before Biden left office, with Sanders crediting Trump’s victory to “Democratic leadership” that defended the “status quo” and lost working class votes.Sanders and other progressives had taken another tone during the campaign, defending Biden and his record. (So had Williams: IAPUT endorsed Biden, then Harris, in the 2024 election, and he praised “Union Joe” as the best president for labor in generations.)

“We came out of that economic downturn a lot faster than anyone dream we would have, and you can thank President Biden for that,” Sanders told a crowd in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on June 28 — the day after the disastrous CNN debate with Trump that unraveled Biden’s campaign and damaged Democrats’ argument that voters could overlook his age. “Biden’s policies, by and large, are for the working class of this country, and we’ve got to appreciate that.”

In conversations on Monday, progressive strategists said that there was no upside to mentioning Biden at all, even when defending programs he funded or created. In Denver, Ocasio-Cortez spoke more positively of the Democrats than Sanders did, praising the state’s senators and Democratic members of Congress by name for opposing the GOP’s spending packages.

“I want you to look at every level of office around you, and support Democrats who actually fight, because those are the ones that can win against Republicans,” she said.

David’s view

Why does it matter if Democrats and progressives wrap up Biden’s presidency into a story of Democratic failure? It explains the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez project, which in part is about disentangling their politics from a toxic brand and turning it into an anti-establishment cause.

“Trump basically said the system is broken, and I’m going to fix it,” Sanders told me before his “Fight Oligarchy” tour began last month. “Democrats more or less said: You know, the status quo is not perfect, but we’re gonna tinker with it around the edges.”

The senator’s new electoral project is recruiting progressives to run against Republicans and beat them, whether they want to run as Democrats or independents.

“There are a whole lot of people, who voted Republican, who are not crazy about the Republican Party,” Sanders told me in Greeley. “Working-class Republicans don’t want tax breaks for billionaires and cuts to veterans programs.” In the story he’s telling, those voters did not have an ally in the White House who did the right thing for four years; neither party has answered those voters’ concerns.

But Republicans have not forgotten about Biden. During his address to Congress last month, Trump mentioned Biden, “the worst president in American history,” 14 times. In remarks to reporters, the president frequently blames Bidens for problems he didn’t leave him, like a stock market correction. The story Trump and the GOP are telling is that their party is delivering for the working class, rescuing it from the costs and failures inflicted by their last president and the Democratic Party.

Defeated parties have been here before. George W. Bush vanished from Republican politics after leaving the presidency in 2009; apart from a few “Miss Me Yet?” memes and Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama presidency’s anti-terrorism strategy, that team played no role in the Tea Party-era GOP rebrand. Republicans built space to attack their former president’s legacy, with conservative candidates taking down incumbents who had supported Bush’s Wall Street bailout. The party won the presidency again with Trump, who has mocked Bush as a failure.

Parties have also swung hard in the other direction. In 2021, when Trump was beaten but able to run again, his party retconned his presidency into a success. They were boom years, with no new foreign wars, undermined only by a deranged anti-Trump deep state and the COVID-19 pandemic. The few Republicans who criticized Trump over his handling of that pandemic, like Florida’s Ron DeSantis, lost to him and endorsed him.

This was never going to happen for Biden, who left office when voters held a far darker view of the economy than they did in 2020. But it’s significant that the progressives are skipping right past it. Democrats’ argument about how they can win back working class voters might start with Biden, who implemented some big progressive ideas and watched more of those voters walk away.

Room for Disagreement

As Biden left office, The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel called him a “remarkably consequential one-term president” who “orchestrated the best recovery in the industrial world” and “consolidated the break with the failed market fundamentalism of the conservative era that Trump began.” It’s the sort of analysis many progressives had of Biden — Gaza record aside — until the results came in from Pennsylvania on Election Night.

Notable

In an interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Sanders said that Biden “should have done much better” to control the U.S.-Mexico border, and that “when the Democrats had control of the Senate, they did virtually nothing for working people.”

The best story on Biden’s first attempts to get back into the conversation and defend his legacy is this NBC News three-hander, which covers a meeting between Biden and the new DNC chair (inconclusive) and the ex-president’s brooding about how the party lost even after forcing him to give up the nomination.

‘Tesla Takedown’ Protesters Planning ‘Biggest Day Of Action’

Organizers are calling for 500 demonstrations at all 277 Tesla showrooms, as well as Supercharger stations, on March 29th.

By Andrew J. Hawkins
March 23, 2025
Source: The Verge

Tesla protesters are planning their “biggest day of action” yet, aiming for 500 demonstrations at Tesla showrooms across the world on March 29th, organizers said during a mobilizing call Wednesday.

The protests started at a handful of Tesla locations in early February, and has grown to hundreds of locations across the world, as more people have come out to demonstrate against CEO Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government. Waving signs and chanting slogans, the so-called Tesla Takedown protesters have become a flashpoint for opposition to Musk’s actions to eliminate federal aid programs and fire tens of thousands of government employees as the head of DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency.

There have also been an uptick in incidents of arson, vandalism, and violence against Tesla showrooms that, while unrelated to the protests, have led to Musk and President Donald Trump labeling them “domestic terrorism.” Other members of the Trump administration have signaled the protesters could come under scrutiny as well. Attorney General Pam Bondi promised “severe consequences on those involved in these attacks, including those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes.”

The hour-long call, which included actors, filmmakers, members of Congress, federal workers, academics, and journalists, tried to steer clear of Trump’s talk of “terrorism,” keeping the focus on Musk and the effort to tank the company’s stock price. Tesla’s stock has lost nearly 40 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, as poor sales and rising competition in the US and overseas have fueled growing pessimism about the company’s future.

“There is no conspiracy, there is no well-funded cabal,” said actor and filmmaker Alex Winter, who helped promote the protests early on on BlueSky. “It’s just Elon Musk who has taken Tesla down.”

Alice Hu, executive director of Planet Over Profit, said that protesters were aiming for 500 events across the world on March 29th, with demonstrations at all 277 Tesla showrooms in the US, as well as hundreds more overseas. Protesters should even feel free to demonstrate at Supercharger stations, she said.

“We need to show Elon that he can throw a tantrum online because his stocks are tanking,” Hu said. “He can get Trump to put on a humiliating used car show in front of the White House. These wannabe authoritarians can try to intimidate us from exercising our First Amendment rights, but they can’t stop us from fighting back.”

Organizers were adamant that their movement was peaceful, often going out of their way to stress the nonviolent nature of the demonstrations.

“The things that we’re fighting for, we are fighting for our country,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) said. “We’re fighting for democracy. We’re fighting for our freedoms. And when I say fighting, I’m saying that figuratively. Obviously, everything that I am promoting is nonviolent.”

With Trump promising domestic terrorism charges for violence against Tesla, organizers advised that protesters consult attorneys to better understand the laws in their states. Some states have statutes that could be used to intimidate protesters, so its worthwhile to know what you’re up against, said Lauren Regan, executive director and senior staff attorney at the Civil Liberties Defense Center. She said in her experience, states are often hesitant to prosecute activists because there’s a strong likelihood those statutes will be found unconstitutional.

“Their goal is to just pluck a few individuals out and scare the rest of us into submission and apathy,” Regan said. “There are going to be some areas of the country that are very conservative and are gonna be hard on dissidents or activists, no matter what the timing.”

The sharp decrease in Tesla’s stock in recent weeks has clearly invigorated the protests. Several speakers spoke of Tesla’s collapse as not only possible, but likely. Micah Lee, an investigative journalist who was among a group of Twitter users to have their accounts banned by Musk shortly after his acquisition of the social platform, said that going after Tesla’s value was a “solid strategy.”

“If we kill the Tesla brand, if we drive down the stock price low enough, we can force him to sell his stock to pay back the billions of dollars of debt that he took on to buy Twitter,” Lee said. “This will drive Tesla’s stock into a death spiral.”

Musk’s status as the richest man in the world is largely thanks to Tesla’s stock price. He owns 13 percent of the company, making him the single largest shareholder. As of today, the company is worth $739 billion — down from 1.08 trillion earlier this year, meaning Musk’s stake is worth about $96 billion. And Tesla’s board of directors is composed of close friends and relatives, raising concerns about its independence from the controversial CEO. Several board members, including chair Robyn Denholm and James Murdoch, have sold over $100 million in Tesla stock in recent weeks.

But it’s not clear that hurting Tesla will actually matter much to Musk. He remains in Trump’s good graces, and is wielding vast amounts of control within the federal government. Even if these protests can seriously affect Tesla, Musk has consolidated so much political power that, after a certain point, it’s not clear whether market forces still apply as strongly.

Musk’s love of memes — he recently quipped “I am become meme” at CPAC — is a sign that the world’s richest man is living in a different reality than most people, which could be an advantage, said Joan Donovan, an assistant professor of journalism and emerging media studies at Boston University who studies media manipulation, disinformation, and online political movements.

“He thinks of himself as this black hat hacker that’s broken into the government and socially engineered his way into the Treasury and he’s gonna abscond with all the data, it’s an obvious data heist,” Donovan said. “But he believes he’s living in a meme, and so we need to be very clear about what our demands are, about what our bright lines are, and that we’re not gonna stop until Tesla is done with Musk.”

In simplest terms, the protesters said they were not backing down.

“Fuck around and find out,” said Keturah Johnson, a veteran and vice president of AFA-CWA. “Protect trans folks, respect veterans, fight it to save lives, and let’s take Tesla the fuck down. Solidarity forever.

The Digital Coup D’état of Musk, Zuckerberg & Trump

By Thomas Klikauer

March 23, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.



Only a few weeks ago, the orange monster of the Unites States was speaking in the very place his Neo-Nazi thugs wanted to destroy not so long ago – the US Congress. In typical showbiz-fashion – the master-propagandist Trump announced that the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over!

Democrats pointed to Elon Musk – an unelected pretend-to-be Uber-administrator currently well on the way to annihilate the US government, including Medical Care.

Meanwhile, it is the unelected South African Elon Musk, who seems to be the mastermind of digital coup, that is ravaging the huge section of the administration of the American state.

He is not alone. Overall, there is the growing power of greedy tech-oligarchs under Donald Trump. Actually, tech-moguls like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have not even liked each other very much for a very long time. But now, things are different.

Now, both belong to the innermost circle of Trump’s oligarchy. With the help of their corporations, digital politics played a substantial role in recent US elections.

Unfortunately, the guiding motto of digital propaganda is digital hype first – think second – unless, of course, thinking can be eliminated at all. Thinking is to be succeeded by hyped-up emotions and, of course, algorithm-driven hate message.

Beyond that, the most important thing to realize is that the time of the big surveillance scandals is over. In fact, the time of surveillance as such is almost over as well. This is the Age of Mass Deception and online manipulation – soon to be driven by artificial intelligence.

It also means that the time when EU-Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen known as Censure-Ursula is also over. In short, the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum is no longer needed in the digital world.

Everyone can post the greatest nonsense on the net. And corporate algorithms will make sure that their far right online scum rises to the top.

Of course, there is a lot of digitally expressed opinion in any election. It illustrates how many digital aspects have become a matter of course, in more or less, all policy areas that are in need of legal regulation.

Some legislatures like the European Union will once again deal with the monitoring of digital communications, administrative digitization (tedious), broadband expansion (too slow), data protection (needed), IT security, digital education, digital health information (important), digital weapons (horrifying), and the climate impact of AI (substantial).

Questions about artificial intelligence (AI) will certainly remain with us for a while – a long while. They will not disappear as quickly as previous tech-hypes such as Y2K, block-chain, Bitcoin, etc.

Rather surprisingly, the debate about data retention will be twenty years old in 2025. It is a topic that is – unfortunately – still not off the table and it might even be getting worse under the orange man’s digital oligarchs now, virtually, running the US government.

Maybe it would be a nice opportunity to hold an anniversary gala for digital oligarchs to celebrate the non-regulation of your online data. In that way, the oligarchs can use, abuse, misuse, buy and sell your private data – at will. The free market, once again, bites you and your private data in the bum.

It is most likely that the digital oligarchs would like to go back on that road instead and shovel even more of your data into their ever growing moneybag. Of course, their orange messiah wants it and even better, he can sell his free market idiocy rather convincingly to his adoring disciples.

So far, when it comes to data storage, the ultras of the free market always prevailed. Certainly, dealing with these topics would have been more meaningful than the topic of, for example, hyping up migration. But then again, racism wins election – data retention policy does not.

Yet, these questions about IT are questions that affect many people in everyday life – whether online or offline. Yet, for Donald Trump and his worshippers, health insurance, for example, will be a little cheaper if it comes without some sort of data protection.

After all, the US has the most expensive health care system that delivers the worst outcome. Even the free market flagship of corporate business – the Harvard Business Review – seems to know it.

Under the digital oligarchs, Americans will be deprived of decisions on whether they should decide if they would rather pay a little more, to be able to decide for themselves whether or not and for how long, and where and by whom their personal health data is stored on the Internet. As democracy takes a backseat under Trump, his digital oligarchy runs under the motto,

Your Digi-Führer knows best!

If, for example, sensitive health data on mental illnesses, abortions or medical restrictions – which are, after all, none of the bosses’ business – end up on the net visible to everyone, including your boss, because the digital oligarchs got their way on IT (in)security, the consequences will – again – be borne by those who saved a few cents.

It’s not just about corporate online platforms – euphemistically known as social media – but also about private data stored in corporately owned clouds.

And it is about your data stored on servers of (perhaps still) public institutions like kindergartens, schools, universities, state and community authorities, but also on servers run by health insurance companies, home insurance companies, the police, the privatized security industry, the courts, and on it goes, the list is endless.

But these digital issues are not even obvious on the side-lines of an election campaign. By now, it becomes clear that there is another digital policy issue, the impact and magnitude of which no-one can fully estimate, yet.

This issue is the digital coup d’etat currently on the way in the US. It came with the kind support of the major US tech companies and adjacent digital oligarchs.

Corporate IT bosses have decided that it is more profitable for them to side with Donald Trump. Capitalism is about profits, not civil society, the future of a nation, global warming nor human rights.

Recently, Trump’s tech-oligarchs were demonstratively sitting behind the new president at his inauguration. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has already announced that he would abolish fact checks on “Meta” (Facebook, Instagram).

This sounds rather un-dramatic at first. Yet, these checks by professional teams have been around since it was proven that the mass dissemination of false information – known as disinformation – via Facebook had led to massacres and mass rapes of the Rohingya in Myanmar starting in 2017.

The deliberately setup, profitable and algorithm-driven dynamics of un-moderated content as transmitted on large corporate platforms can lead to a lot of violence. People will die. What interests Elon Musk pursues with “X” is obvious.

Meanwhile, top-tech-oligarch Musk prefers to show the Hitler salute and called to vote for Germany’s Neo-Nazi party – the AfD. In a campaign video of Germany’s neo-fascist AfD, Trump’s deputy-Führer appeared at the AfD party congress. It all adds up.

A recent study has proven that the mini-Führer’s “X” (Twitter) showed content of Germany’s Neo-Nazi AfD more often than that of Germany’s democratic parties. This too adds up.

Since the change of government in the USA, Trump’s henchman Musk has been actively involved in German politics and US government activities.

Yet, it is unclear in which “official” (read: unelected) function Musk operates. Far right coup d’état leaders do not need officialdom – they need to have their very own thiefdom.

The far right restructuring of the formerly democratic US government is dramatic in so many respects that the digital aspects are not always the focus. However, in reality, they play a significant role.

Far right digi-overlord Musk wants to get access to a lot of data and is rebuilding the software used by the US authorities. This is explicitly his Trump-assigned mandate.

A Trump/Musk-style digital coup d’état also means that all employees of federal authorities are forced to describe their own achievements in an e-mail – in true Stalin-style.

Under mini-Führer Musk, these mails should be evaluated automatically and then be the basis for mass terminations of those who incur the disliking of the new and ideology-driven sub-Führer.

Today, many people might still think that all this is not (yet) relevant outside of the USA. Across the water, Europeans enjoy strong EU laws against hate speech, the incitement of violence, and the EU-wide takeover by a digi-Führer.

Even if US IT-corporations have been very committed to in weakening this, in Europe at least, they are still there – for now.

But if Donald Trump’ Vice-President doubts that freedom of expression is secured in Europe and links this to the role of the US in security policy, it is obvious that the handling of content on US-American media platforms in the EU is changing – not for the better.

This change is directed towards the ideological wishes of digital coup d’état’s Führer and their libertarian everything goes ideology in which hate speech flourishes. Ideologically, this is semi-legitimised as free speech.

Here is what much of this means. The coup d’état leaders of this US government want more racist, anti-Semitic, anti-disabled people, anti-women, and anti-LGBTIQ content.

They fancy the white race. It gets worse. If there is a Wikipedia page called the Racial views of Donald Trump, not much more needs to be said on the issue.

To push his racist agenda, the orange bully-boss wants less intervention by democratic institutions that may play a role in subduing his hate speech. It is dangerous not to realize that their digital coup d’état does stop at US borders.

And the Führers of the digital coup d’état are ready to enforce that. What they do is a clear-cut attack on democratic institutions, on the democracy discourses as well as on democracy itself.

In all honesty, democracy never had found really good conditions on corporate platforms driven by algorithms. Self-evidently, digital corporations are not democratic institutions either.

Virtually all of this is a significant threat to democratic societies – particularly those that are not part of the EU’s civil society umbrella. These may have to face the aggravation of conflicts.

Worse, it’s not just about online platforms. It is also about your personal data stored in corporate-owned cloud servers and your private files – often stored on US-owned corporate cloud servers.

It would be preferable if they were well encrypted, secured and protected from any unwarranted access. But unfortunately, this is not always the case. And the digi-oligarchs never wish for this to be the case.

Meanwhile, Apple has just finished encrypting iCloud in the UK. The idea is that Apple’s secretly-ordered backdoor will not be forced to include an access option for security agencies.

Instead of that, Apple did something much worse: it opened the front door.

This is just one example of how political changes can attack IT and data security. Much worse is on the horizon. A new digital politics is coming, and we should dress ourselves warmly for its impact on us.

One might also look around in search for alternatives. One might not like to rely on the “questionable” promises of Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon to handle your data confidentially – especially now.

In the tech world too, what is euphemistically labelled industry self-regulation remains a myth. It is a pro-business ideology, at best.

But it is not enough for us to look at individual solutions either. For most of us, to find alternatives in some obscure niches of the Internet will not be a viable alternative.

What is missing are serious demands for non-profit, democratically governed and publicly funded online platforms.

Beyond that, there is a need for the breaking up of digital monopolies that are run by those fostering the digital coup d’état that is currently on the way – in the USA, and perhaps, globally.


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Thomas Klikauer has over 800 publications (including 12 books) and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism (2013).