GREENBELT, Md.—in a big win for senior citizens, federal workers, and anyone else Social Security covers or who pays payroll taxes, a federal judge in Greenbelt, Md., tossed Elon Musk—Donald Trump’s puppeteer—and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency out of Social Security’s offices and its files. Thousands also marched in 150 cities across the country yesterday demanding an end to Trump efforts to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
While that was happening the nation’s teachers announced they are taking Trump to court over his illegal dismantling of the Department of Education and Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez barnstormed red and swing states with calls for a real alternative to Trump policies: Raise the minimum wage, expand rather than cut Social Security and institute Medicare-for-All.
Trump defiantly doubled down in his support of his puppet master, Elon Musk, however, by granting the world’s richest man access to the Pentagon where he will examine secret military plans to make war on China. Besides the obvious outrage in granting security clearance to the unstable and erratic Musk lawmakers and others note that the conflict of interest there is glaring because Musk has billions of dollars in investments in China.
The victory for the people was welcome, nevertheless, in the March 20 temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in response to a suit from the Alliance for Retired Americans, AFSCME and others against Musk and DOGE. Her order is good for 14 days and the judge set a March 27 hearing on making it permanent.
The same day as the order, tens of thousands of people nationwide marched in 150 cities against potential privatization of the Postal Service. And Republican President Trump formally ordered destruction of the Department of Education, a longtime goal of the radical right and white nationalists.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez delivered a scathing rebuke of the president and his billionaire ally at a huge rally in Arizona on Thursday, accusing them of “screwing over” working- and middle-class Americans as they turn the country into an oligarchy.
Speaking to an overflowing arena as part of their Stop Oligarchy tour – a series of events with the progressive New York congresswoman that has attracted huge attention among Democratic supporters pushing for a strong response to Trump from their party Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, warned the president:
“We will not allow you to move this country into an oligarchy. We’re not going to allow you and your friend Mr Musk and the other billionaires to wreak havoc on this country.”
Specifically on the dismantling of the Department of Education Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher with a law degree, responded shortly and bluntly about the union’s plan: “See you in court.”
Combined, all the developments show increased popular and political resistance to the schemes of Musk, Trump and the corporate class of Wall Street bankers and right-wing executives who fueled the GOP president’s rise to power. Musk alone shoveled in $280 million into the Trump campaign. Critics say he literally bought Trump.
That class and those ideologues not only want to destroy public education, thus harming students and leaving them more exploitable, but smash Social Security while grabbing onto people’s payroll taxes.
And they want to eliminate the Postal Service so private package services lack competition and can vastly raise prices.
In the Social Security case, AFSCME President Lee Saunders called Judge Hollander’s ruling “a major win for working people and retirees across the country.”
“Elon Musk and his unqualified lackeys present a grave danger to Social Security and illegally accessed the data of millions of Americans. This will not only force them to delete any data they saved, but it will also block them from further sharing, accessing or disclosing our Social Security information,” Saunders said.
Just as blunt
As for Musk and DOGE at the Social Security Administration, Judge Hollander, a Barack Obama appointee, was just as blunt as Weingarten, but at more length.
Her key paragraph, leading the order, declared “DOGE is ENJOINED and RESTRAINED”—Judge Hollander’s emphasis and capitalization—”from granting any access to any Social Security Administration information containing personally identifiable information (PII) or any PII obtained, derived, copied or exposed from any SSA system of record.”
The judge also ordered Musk and DOGE to “disgorge and delete” any non-anonymous Social Security data. Judge Hollander banned DOGE from installing new software on Social Security devices and computers, and ordered it to remove any software it had inserted.
Before Trump arrived in the Oval Office for his second term, the Education Department had 4,000 workers. Between Musk-forced buyouts and firings the week before, it has fewer than half of that.
Other unions, including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the National Education Association and the School Administrators added their denunciations of the Education Department’s destruction, at more length.
NEA President Becky Pringle, a Philadelphia science teacher, reported tens of thousands of students, teachers and parents nationwide gathered outside schools on March 19 to protest the department’s impending doom.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk aimed their wrecking ball at public schools and the futures of the 50 million students…by dismantling public education to pay for tax handouts for billionaires,” said Pringle.
“Last week Trump and Musk fired–without cause–nearly half of the Department of Education staff, trying to get rid of the dedicated public servants who help ensure students have access to the services and resources to keep class sizes down, expand learning opportunities, and ensure programs like” federal college student aid continue.
“Now, Trump is at it again with his latest effort to gut…programs that support every student across the nation. If successful, Trump’s continued actions will hurt all students by sending class sizes soaring, cutting job training, making higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle class families, taking away special education services for students with disabilities, and gutting student civil rights protections.”
School Administrators President Leonard Pugliese noted the Education Department firings mean the agency can’t carry out programs Congress just funded—at a much higher level than Trump wanted.
“These cuts are a direct threat to the critical programs our students and schools depend on,” said Pugliese. “Congress worked to secure funding for essential programs that support all students, and now the administration is jeopardizing their viability by removing the very federal workers responsible for ensuring their efficient and lawful implementation. This is a grave mistake.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler fully supports AFT President Weingarten’s planned “challenge to that illegal DOGE order in court, which closes Trump’s Education Department closure.
A radical plan
“Shuttering the Department of Education is a radical plan, from the pages of Project 2025”—the Trump/GOP platform–that will close the doors of opportunity for America’s students,” Shuler said. “Without the Department of Education, working people will have one more hurdle to access the financial aid they need” for college or a trade,” said Shuler, an Electrical Worker. “Kids from working-class families—especially kids with disabilities—will be left behind, unable to access the education they need to succeed.
“States, cities and towns will be forced to stretch their already tight budgets to cover the loss in federal funding, jeopardizing essential programs and putting good union jobs our communities rely upon at risk. None of this makes sense for America’s working families.”
Trump’s dictate against the Education Department and Judge Hollander’s ruling against DOGE were not the sole developments in a busy day in the continuing war pitting right-wing President Trump and his Hitler-praising commander, Musk, against the nation’s federal workers, seniors, and unions.
The Postal Workers (APWU) held nationwide protests in more than 150 cities against what union President Mark Dimondstein previously said was a plan to end the Postal Service’s independence, sell its profitable sections—mostly package delivery and in urban areas—to Wall Street and saddle the Commerce Department with the remainder.
A Wells Fargo financial report, which APWU posted, calculated that sell-off would net Wall Street an $81 billion windfall just from selling 8500 USPS buildings and 20,700 acres of land. Privatizing the USPS would raise package delivery costs by 30%-140% while abandoning rural routes.
The Postal Workers protests drew thousands from coast to coast, including Alaska and Hawaii. One retiree at the D.C. protest told of a visit to New Mexico, which illustrated how national delivery would suffer. In the northern part of the state, inhabited mostly by Native Americans, roads are so narrow, and unpaved, that postal vehicles can’t drive on them. Carriers ride mules to deliver the mail. Those deliveries would end.
The president of the other big postal union, Brian Renfroe of the Letter Carriers (NALC), confirmed a report by a former USPS board member that job cuts may not be drastic. The board member had joined the APWU protest, in front of a large post office in Northwest D.C.
“Our primary concern” when Musk’s DOGE team of 22-year-old computer nerds showed up at USPS headquarters “was their unfettered access to employee information,” including confidential data, Renfroe told Press Associates Union News Service. “Now the access will be case-by-case” and USPS executives must approve each demand for personal information, he added.
Renfroe also said other than 10,000 workers who accepted Musk-crafted buyouts, “We do not anticipate any reduction in our crafts.”
Renfroe’s NALC and Dimondstein’s APWU each have just over 200,000 active members. Overall, the Postal Service employs 640,000 people, 80%-90% unionized, including with other unions. A majority are people of color, women or both.
The USPS-DOGE pact was not on their websites, but Postmaster General Louis DeJoy spelled out some details in a letter to lawmakers. He cast the DOGE pact as helping to achieve his “Delivering for America” plan. It’s widely panned as ineffective in cost-cutting, slowing down service and cruel to workers.
“When the DOGE team recently reached out to me, I decided to constructively direct their attention to areas I know we can use any and all help,” which DeJoy listed. “At the same time, I took the opportunity to reiterate that the Postal Service is an independent establishment” and “our status and our mission are unique.”
Trump recognizes that, DeJoy wrote. His top personnel agencies—but not DOGE—excluded the Postal Service from the “federal hiring freezes, and federal agencies RIFs and restructuring” Musk and DOGE are imposing on the rest of the government, the soon-to-retire Postmaster General claimed.
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