The fireworks, in the form of protests directed at Trump’s “big beautiful bill” over the holiday weekend, were only a taste of the firestorm of opposition to the bill’s effects that has begun to sweep the nation and will culminate in mass actions from coast to coast on Labor Day.
Fred Redmond, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, discussed a dramatic upcoming nationwide bus tour beginning this week to culminate on Labor Day as he blasted the Republican Party’s recent policy decisions and emphasized the need to protect democracy.
The bus tour will end with 50 simultaneous rallies nationwide. Redmond explained that the tour aims to give workers a voice amidst federal government policies that negatively impact working families.
The labor federation plans to visit picket lines, support contract campaigns, and hold rallies, beginning in “swing” states to highlight workers’ issues and protest against what they say are attacks on labor rights and the largest ever transfer of wealth in U.S. history from the working class to the rich. That announcement was made on Sunday on national cable TV networks by Liz Shuler, the federation’s president.
Redmond noted what he described as “the intensity of and the rapidity with which the Republican Party has implemented policies outlined in Project 2025,” a right-wing policy blueprint that Trump disavowed when he was running for president. He criticized the GOP for rubber-stamping a program that he believes will seriously affect working families’ healthcare, education, and social services.
The Republican dedication to carrying out the Project 2025 objectives was also noted this weekend by Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who said the Democrats will develop a Project 2026 to counter that right-wing document.
AFL-CIO leaders are also emphasizing the importance of preserving democracy and resisting what Redmond views as “a shift towards a fascist, totalitarian form of government.”
Redmond called for unity among all working people, union and non-union alike, to fight against policies that favor billionaires at the expense of the working class. He stressed the need to maintain the separation of powers and representative government, rejecting the idea of rule by “King Donald.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said, in her talks on national television, that Trump “signed into law the worst job-killing bill in U.S. history It will rip health care from 17 million workers to pay for massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations, amounting to the country’s largest money grab from the working class to the ultra-rich.”
The nation’s largest labor federation, which she leads, promises to put thousands of people to work canvassing colleagues, friends and families, reminding all, every day, of the Trump-GOP law’s harms—a $1.1 trillion Medicaid cut, $300 billion cuts in a key special nutrition program and in Obamacare and an 80% cut in federal aid to K-12 schools, for starters. Campaigners will beat the drum from now through November 2026, and beyond.
“Every member of Congress who voted for this devastating bill picked the pockets of working people to hand billionaires a $5 trillion gift. If the politicians who rammed through this shameful bill think they can sneak away without anyone knowing the damage they’ve done and the chaos they’ve created, they don’t know anything about the labor movement,” declared Shuler.
“The AFL-CIO will make sure all working people…hear the truth about what happened this week in Washington and the dire consequences the bill will have on all of our lives. As part of the labor movement’s year-round organizing, we’ll be talking to workers today and every day…to make sure they know who sold us out, who is taking our jobs, our health care, our paychecks and our kids’ emergency rooms and parents’ nursing home beds, just so some rich people could get even richer. We won’t rest until the grave harms of this bill are wiped away.”
Labor’s powerful allies have condemned the passage of the bill and are joining the national mobilization to fight its effects. Leading that fight is the Rev. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “Congress passed one of the most morally-bankrupt pieces of legislation in our nation’s history,” he said. “This big ugly bill is the largest cut to healthcare and food assistance for children in our nation’s history, and it funds a war on immigrant communities. All the while, the bill gives tax breaks to the wealthiest among us—on the backs of our most vulnerable neighbors.
“By passing this bill, lawmakers have officially codified the deaths of thousands of people. It’s policy murder in plain sight. Many of the people who passed this bill also consistently profess to be led by religious values. There is no religion that supports the degradation of humans. Policymakers can’t just claim their religious values in one breath, and then turn around and approve legislation that’s guaranteed to kill people.”
Most of the major unions and allied groups in the country are joining with the AFL-CIO and labor’s allies like Rev. Barber in the fight against its effects, with many raising issues unique to their members specifically or to one or another section of the working class. One allied group, the Working Families Party, says it will run candidates against the backers of the budget bill.
Unions are not forgetting about the elections this November in various places, including mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns. In New York, for example, the labor Federation that is part of the AFL-CIO has endorsed Zohran Mamdani, who is running for mayor. Some of the state’s leading corporate Democrats have yet to back him.
Condemn overall thrust
Government worker unions, including the Government Employees, the Letter Carriers (NALC), the Treasury Employees and the Postal Workers, condemn the overall thrust of the bill, particularly its corporate giveaways and tax cut for the rich, even while conceding the final version of the law dropped some of the anti-federal worker provisions the GOP had sought.
“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” said Postal Workers President Mark Dimondstein. “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is beautiful if you are part of the 1%, the fossil fuel industry, or multi-national defense contractors. For the rest of us, the working folks, this is as ugly as it gets.”
National Nurses United was even blunter: “Trump’s bill will kill people. This is among the darkest days in the history of U.S. health care,” that top union for registered nurses declared. “People will suffer and die because of the cuts in this legislation to fund tax cuts for billionaires–certainly in the short term and potentially for decades to come if nothing is done.” The estimate, by non-partisan analysts, is 51,000 deaths yearly. “The policy goal here is clear: Take away everyday people’s health care coverage. Every politician who supports this legislation has blood on their hands.”
Machinists President Brian Bryant forecast not just higher health care costs for workers and their families and the loss of health care for 17 million people, but the collapse of the entire U.S. health care system. “When local hospitals and clinics shut their doors or slash services, it hurts everyone. Even union members with strong healthcare benefits lose access to timely, critical care when the surrounding healthcare infrastructure collapses,” he predicted.
Other unions promised to lay plans to defeat Trump’s Republican congressional enablers. Their fight will be tougher than it might have been in the past when you take into account that in many Republican-run states, the voting system is or will be rigged against the measure’s foes, be they workers, Democrats, people of color, women or anyone else who disagrees with the MAGA Republican line.
The National Education Association’s convention, meeting in Portland, Ore., started laying plans “to organize and fight back,” said Becky Pringle, the Philadelphia science teacher who presides over the nation’s largest union. A promise to “organize, mobilize and vote” against lawmakers who enacted Trump’s bill appears on the website of the Communications Workers of America.
Planned Parenthood was singled out by complete denial of all federal funding for its clinics, because doctors and nurses offer not just prenatal services, counseling, and medicines, but abortions too. It plans to sue.
Other unions focused on retribution at the polls next year, while citing their priorities. But protesters nationwide on July 4 warned that waiting until 2026 may be too late. That’s because deep-red states can rig their elections to ensure workers, women, people of color, and their allies lose.
Instead, foes should create a large popular front of resistance now to constantly oppose the Trump-GOP law, via street protests, strikes, and peaceful civil disobedience, many are saying.
“The 1.8 million members of the AFT, and the entire labor movement, will remember who turned their backs this week on working families, healthcare and our public schools—and who we can count on to fight for us,” said Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher.
“This cruel, callous, crippling bill will leave Americans sicker, hungrier and poorer. “Trump and the GOP “passed a big, ugly, obscene betrayal—a massive and unprecedented transfer of wealth from everyday people to billionaires.”
Will lose food aid too
Besides the health care losses, AFT said 22 million people will lose food aid, hundreds of hospitals—not counting the several hundred Planned Parenthood clinics—will close, federal K-12 funds, Pell Grants and student loans will be cut and brown communities will be targeted for even more ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrests, raids, jailing and deportation.
And $25 billion-$50 billion in taxpayer vouchers and tax credits will go to parents of private school kids, depriving public schools of needed money, while enriching families who don’t need the aid, Weingarten noted. Private schools can, and do, turn away students of color.
“And it’ll explode the national debt—and for what? To pay for tax breaks for the ultra-rich.”
Service Employees President April Verrett made many of the same points, calling the GOP law “despicable, immoral, and anti-American. But SEIU members won’t forget…Every American will feel the repercussions of this horrible bill, but we won’t forget and we will get our just due.” During the debate, the union erected a moving “living cemetery” near the Capitol
AFSCME President Lee Saunders said his union would push for electoral retribution. He also blamed more than just Trump for the bill, including as guilty the corporate class of campaign contributors supporting the GOP.
“To satisfy the greed of their mega-donors, anti-worker elected officials voted to rob working families of their health care and life-sustaining public services to hand over trillions in tax cuts to the richest people on earth,” said Saunders.
“We will not sit back while Congress sells our futures to billionaires. We will organize to hold every elected official accountable who voted to betray working families and hurt our communities.
“Because of this bill, children will go hungry. Seniors will lose access to long-term care. Seventeen million people, including veterans and their families, will lose their health care. People will die from preventable causes, and hundreds of thousands of workers will lose their jobs,” he continued.
“The price of health care for workers with employer coverage will rise by nearly $2,000 annually for families. Cuts to clean energy investments will kill good union jobs and raise energy bills. During a time of rising costs, this budget doesn’t just fail the middle class; it pushes families out of it, trapping millions in cycles of poverty.”
Some in the labor movement singled out the particular harm visited on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. The National Education Association declared: Trump’s law “disproportionately harms Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, low-income families, working-class people, immigrants, veterans, seniors, and individuals with disabilities.
“This isn’t just a policy failure—it is a moral disgrace. Trump and congressional Republicans undermined our public schools and every student in them. When politicians in D.C. slash state funding, students in rural, suburban, and urban communities bear the brunt,” added Pringle.
“They’re not just slashing budgets. They’re taking food away from hungry children by cutting SNAP. They’re stripping health care from millions by dismantling Medicaid. This isn’t just irresponsible—it’s a complete betrayal of America’s students, families, and core values.”
Will not stand by
“Educators and parents will not stand by in silence as Trump terrorizes our communities. We will speak out, organize, and fight back. Our students deserve better. Families deserve better.”
CWA President Claude Cummings said backers of the bill “should be ashamed of themselves” for genuflecting to Trump’s wishes. He called the bill “a giveaway to their billionaire backers and an insult to working people.”
Cummings also predicted the U.S. “would not be fooled by self-serving [GOP] rhetoric” for the bill. Public opinion polls, showing two-to-one margins against it, back Cummings up. So do instances of constituents, even in deep-red districts and states, booing and razzing those Republican lawmakers who held “town halls” to explain and justify it. Most ducked.
Cummings also tied the bill’s cuts in programs for workers—and resulting job losses—to the measure’s “funding the abduction of our co-workers and neighbors by masked gunmen,” the ICE raiders. The bill increases ICE funding by $135 billion, and its budget will now exceed that of all other federal police agencies combined.
Cummings added the Trump-GOP law “will send record profits to Wall Street thanks to huge tax breaks and incentives to send even more jobs overseas.”
Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades, said the law is “a massive insult to the working men and women of North America’s Building Trades and all construction workers.” Recalling many white, blue-collar male construction workers voted for Trump last year, McGarvey deadpanned, “This is not what they voted for.” Laborers President Brent Booker made the same points.
“If enacted, this stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country.” McGarvey said it threatens “an estimated 1.75 million construction jobs and over three billion work hours, which translates to $148 billion in lost annual wages and benefits. These are staggering and unfathomable job loss numbers,” said McGarvey.
“Slashing energy tax credits and layering on harmful restrictions is no way to power America’s future, economically or in terms of national energy security. Critical infrastructure projects essential to that future are sacrificed at the altar of ideology.”
Congress “voted to raise energy prices by taking low-cost clean energy off the table,” Booker added. Workers “deserve a future built by skilled, union hands, not dismantled by political maneuvering and tax giveaways for elites. Our members will not forget this vote—or leaders who turned their backs on workers they claimed to represent. Today’s vote represents American politics at its absolute worst.“
“No part of this bill is about efficiency or reining in spending, and nothing in it will provide any lasting support against the spiraling costs working families face every day,” said Steelworkers President David McCall, who leads one of the U.S.’s most politically active unions.
“Instead, congressional Republicans are adding more than $3 trillion to the national debt, just so greedy corporations and the 1% can amass even more wealth…Republicans will try to distract us from the cruelty they inflicted on our nation in service of their billionaire backers. But we won’t be fooled. And we won’t forget.”
No meaningful investment
“This legislation…fails to offer any meaningful investment in domestic manufacturing, infrastructure, or human capital. Instead, it slashes taxes for corporations and the wealthy while gutting programs critical to working-class communities,” said Machinists President Brian Bryant.
“Any real tax reform should strengthen American jobs, not encourage companies to move production overseas. This bill does the opposite, and working families will foot the bill. The bill also excludes railroaders, aviation professionals, truckers, and other transportation workers from the overtime tax deduction that President Trump promised them.”
“Research confirms that killing” clean energy “investments will put people out of work, shutter critical projects, limit American competitiveness in the global economy, and offshore our domestic manufacturing supply chain of clean technologies over the next decade,” said the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of unions and green groups the Steelworkers founded
“We’re unsurprised Donald Trump prioritized his billionaire buddies over workers. We will continue to hold this country’s leadership accountable for their decisions. We deserve better, and we will fight until the country has it,” Alliance Executive Director Jason Walsh said.
“The Culinary Union supports tax relief for working-class tip earners. In the Reconciliation bill that Congress just passed, unfortunately, tax relief for workers is temporary, while windfall tax cuts for billionaires and the rich are permanent. Millions of Americans will also lose access to health care and essential economic programs,” said Ted Pappageorge, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of 60,000-member union Local 226, Unite HERE’s largest local.
“We’re watching how you vote on this cruel, dangerous package,” Alliance for Retired Americans Executive Director Richard Fiesta warned lawmakers. It could trigger “$490 billion in Medicare cuts over 10 years, making care harder to find. “And to top it all off, the reckless tax giveaways will shorten Social Security’s solvency by an entire year.”
“This bill is an all-out assault on older Americans. Medicaid cuts will put 1.4 million nursing home residents in harm’s way. More than half of nursing homes will have to cut staff, and one in four may shut down entirely—leaving families scrambling to care for loved ones.
“Low-income seniors and people with disabilities will pay more for prescription drugs and Medicare premiums, forcing them to choose between health care and other basic needs.6.5 million older Americans could lose food assistance due to a 20% cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Drug corporations come out ahead of seniors with a new loophole that prevents Medicare from negotiating lower prices for some high-cost prescription drugs. Hundreds of hospitals—especially in small towns and rural communities—will close or slash services, forcing Americans of all ages to travel farther and wait longer for care, if they can afford it at all.”
“The Big Beautiful Bill is anything but,” said Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union/AFT Local 1. “This is a cruel and ugly piece of legislation that will devastate our families across this country.
“For some, it means the closure of their local hospital—a lifeline in already neglected neighborhoods and rural communities. For single mothers, it means losing food assistance for their children or for seniors it means critical healthcare coverage loss. At its core, this bill disappears any semblance of a safety net…. that kept Americans safe, healthy, and stable for generations. The wealthy and well-connected have more influence over Congress than the families they’re supposed to represent.”
But Gates, a social studies teacher, repeated a warning other states should heed. She said the Illinois legislature failed to deal with signals from Capitol Hill about the huge cuts in federal education money. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the legislature, which is heavily Democratic and pro-labor, will have to step up and fill in the gap in both education and mass transit funding in the upcoming veto session,” Gates added.
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