WASHINGTON—Donald Trump, barely inaugurated as the president of the United States yesterday and today, trashed the Constitution by declaring an end to birthright citizenship, unleashed the ravenous fossil fuel companies to do as they pleased from coast to coast, sprung from prison his dangerous supporters who took over the Capitol in 2021, rolled back government protections for the nation’s workers and forced on leave thousands of federal government employees.
Labor and its allies in the civil rights movements, women’s movements, LGBTQ organizations and many others are mobilizing across the country to resist the wholesale attacks launched by the man who promised during the campaign that he would be a “dictator on day one.” They understand that in fighting an avalanche of right wing executive orders they have their work cut out for them, particularly since Republicans will use their slim majorities in the House and Senate and their control of the Supreme Court to make Trump’s goals easier to achieve.
Over and over again those who have hoped Trump “won’t be so bad” have, and are, being proven wrong. On ending birthright citizenship they have contented themselves that it will “only be for the children of (so-called) illegal immigrants.” Proving them wrong, the Trump order applies even to the children of perfectly legal and documented people living in the country, according to the ACLU and other lawyers and Trump has made it clear that he intends to challenge the entire meaning of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that provides for birthright citizenship for all.
Fascist dictatorships always move early on in the direction of laying the groundwork to take away passports from and nullify the citizenship rights of the people living under their control.
Trump has also issued orders that simplify the process of ending solar and wind energy progjects and replace them with fossil fuel operations. He removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords and sent a letter to the UN explaining that he was doing that.
The resistance to the initial Trump moves includes a detailed and determined legal fight on as many as 200 fronts. Major unions have already joined the legal battles. They include the Government Employees, the Treasury Employees and the Teachers. The AFL-CIO itself is also considering joining those battles.
The looming new battles against Trump’s depredations, which he’s carrying out on behalf of the capitalist oligarchs class, do not count court suits that personally involve him and predates them all.
Sanctioned by federal courts, individual U.S. Capitol Police officers, for example, severely injured by the Trumpite invaders there four years ago have spent three years in court suing Trump personally for damages.
The battle against Trump’s attacks on American families anticipates a mass zoom meeting, scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern Time on January 23 and hosted by the Working Families Party, the Women’s Campaign and other progressives, to discuss further anti-Trump strategy.
The AFL-CIO, in its comment on Trump’s inaugural address, vowed to resist his regime through mobilizing and organizing, holding the greed-driven corporate class accountable for its conduct. It is also battling to protect migrant workers and has issued instructions to affiliates on all levels on how to protect immigrant workers in individual work places. The AFL-CIO is also building on the wins and momentum workers gained during the last four years.
There’s already a suit against the deportations, filed in federal court in New Hampshire by three state ACLU affiliates. “While Trump and extremist Republican leaders propagate divisive rhetoric about immigrants to stoke fear, working people know our fellow workers aren’t the problem,” Liz Shuler said. “The real threat is billionaires like Trump and Elon Musk who seek to distract and divide us so they can seize even more power and make ever greater profits off of our labor.
“Deporting people whose labor helps our country prosper and cutting off pathways into the United States is not only a betrayal of our values. It is also a recipe for economic disaster.
“The bottom line: An immigrant doesn’t stand between you and a good job. A billionaire does.
To stop economic and social chaos, “Our unions will fight to defend and preserve fundamental rights for all working families, including access to education and health care, as well as the birthright citizenship protections enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution,” Shuler said.
“We will join community allies to counter Trump’s unfair and unconstitutional attacks, so together we can ensure everyone is safe on the job and can continue to build an economy that supports working families, not corporate billionaires.”
Trump’s deportation order aims not just at the migrants, but at those who help them. Buried deep within it is one paragraph cutting off federal funds to groups and institutions that aid migrants in any way. That could off everything from Medicaid to federal food for pantries to feed the poor to university scholarships which don’t discriminate.
And a second paragraph cuts off all federal funds to sanctuary cities—such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York—and states, notably California. Unless, that is, they flip-flop and cooperate with coming Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) roundups of migrants, with or without papers.
Several unions are already out front in suing Trump over various executive orders. So are 18 “blue state” Attorneys General, led by Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts—where the case was filed—Minnesota, Maryland, California and New York. Their target, possibly the easiest to shoot down: Trump’s ban on “birthright citizenship.” It flatly violates the U.S. Constitution.
Targets Schedule F
The Treasury Employees’s lawsuit targets Schedule F, Trump’s executive order to politicize the civil service. He’d make tens of thousands of top career workers subject to firing at will, to be replaced by Trump devotees. Two other Trump executive orders end telework and impose a federal hiring freeze. They’re not part of NTEU’s suit, but they are part of his anti-worker pattern.
“The American people deserve to have day-to-day government services in the hands of qualified professionals who are committed to public service and stay on the job regardless of which political party holds the White House,” union President Doreen Greenwald explained.
She called Trump’s order “a dangerous step backward to a political spoils system that Congress expressly rejected 142 years ago, which is why we are suing to have the order declared unlawful.”
The union may have another ace in its hand against Trump’s plan. Anticipating Schedule F could occur, NTEU won—during the preceding Democratic Biden administration–a supposedly binding ban. The ban is an actual federal rule against returning to such a spoils system. It took effect last May.
Federal rules, once on the books, can be removed only after a long and arduous trek through hearings, appeals and often the courts.
The Government Employees (AFGE) also hates Trump’s spoils system plan, along with Trump’s hiring freeze and telework ban. All would make the government less effective and responsive to everyone’s needs, it says. But there aren’t suits filed against them—yet.
“This unprecedented assertion of executive power,” Schedule F, “will create an army of sycophants beholden only to Donald Trump, not the Constitution or the American people. The integrity of the entire federal government could be irreparably harmed if this is not stopped,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley. “Every American has a stake in ensuring federal employees remain free to carry out the mission of the agencies that employ them without fear of political interference.”
AFGE, the Teachers and two good-government groups, sued to stop Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” headed by multibillionaire Elon Musk. There’s already been a shake-up at DOGE, news reports say, as Musk sidelined his co-chair, millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who quit.
DOGE, the two unions say, isn’t a full-fledged government department, complete with a Cabinet Secretary and other top administrators answerable to the president and Congress. It’s an “advisory committee,” covered by federal law and rules which mandate balanced representation of all interests and open hearings.
But when AFGE pointed that out to Trump’s transition team, in a formal reminder to follow the law, the only reply It got was a verbal brushoff: “We don’t want any Democrats.”
“We’re part of this new lawsuit because DOGE must come out of the shadows & comply with the law before the sweeping, self-serving plans of billionaires upend the federal government and cause irreparable damage in the lives of working people,” Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten tweeted.
What may be the easiest anti-Trump lawsuit to win, and the one that’s attracted the widest support so far, is the state Attorney Generals’ joint suit to uphold birthright citizenship.
Ratified after Civil War
The U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified three years after the end of the Civil War, was explicitly written to guarantee that everyone born or naturalized in the U.S., but especially the formerly enslaved Black people, are “citizens of the United States and of the states in which they reside.”
That same section also says all citizens get U.S. “privileges and immunities,” “equal protection of the laws” and “due process of law”—clauses the courts have used for decades to expand civil rights and often worker rights.
“Birthright citizenship in our country is a guarantee of equality, born out of a collective fight against oppression, slavery and its devastating harms. It is a settled right in our Constitution and recognized by the Supreme Court for more than a century,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell.
“President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights, and we will fight against his effort to overturn our Constitution and punish innocent babies born” in the U.S.
“Only hours ago, the president swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, then broke it almost as soon as he took it,” added Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s pro-worker AG. “I am using the power of my office and the law to join with other state Attorneys General from coast to coast to quickly and clearly bring suit to stop this unprecedented, blatant breach of the Constitution by a president.
“For more than 125 years, the Supreme Court has clearly interpreted the 14th Amendment to eliminate any doubt or confusion that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a U.S. citizen. Duly passed federal laws the president and his advisors are well aware of clearly spell this out as well. I look forward to the court putting a stop to this blatantly unconstitutional order as soon as possible.”
AFGE also hates the Trump order abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs government-wide.
“Undoing these programs is just another way for Trump to undermine the merit-based civil service and turn federal hiring and firing decisions into loyalty tests,” Kelley said. “Our nation’s military leaders have said eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the Defense Department risks undermining military readiness,” added Kelley, a veteran who is African-American.
“The Trump administration wasted no time dismantling the government and targeting AFGE for extinction,” the union, which is aiming for 325,000 members, adds.
One set of suits against Trump began more than three years ago and his executive order may not affect it: The pending cases U.S. Capitol Police officers brought individually, against Trump, as an individual for inciting the Trumpite invasion, rebellion and coup d’etat try on Jan. 6, 2021, where they were mauled, beaten and badly injured.
Trump pardoned all 1600 invaders convicted and sentenced for their roles in the insurrection he ordered and told officials to let out any still in prison. He also ordered his Justice Department “to pursue dismissal with prejudice [to the government] all pending indictments” in those cases.
But Trump’s order was silent about the Capitol Police officers’ cases against him, or against the invaders. Federal appeals courts have let their cases proceed.
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