WASHINGTON—In a blistering speech, report and letter to Congress, the Poor People’s Campaign warned the nation and the world that we face a real moral threat based on “racism, slavery, apartheid and Nazism,” says campaign co-chair the Rev. William Barber II.
And it’s all being masked, intentionally, by the blizzard of President Donald Trump’s executive orders overturning government, killing programs, firing workers and killing the federal Education Department, Barber warned in March 5 remarks. Politico reports that an illegal and unconstitutional executive order dissolving the department could come as early as today.
Barber’s warning and the coverup via the blizzard of orders “are meant to distract people from the real agenda” which threatens the nation and the globe, given U.S. prominence and influence. Barber’s source for that conclusion is a statement by notorious Trump white nationalist aide Steve Bannon.
“We are not only in a crisis of democracy but a crisis of civilization,” Barber declared at an open-air press conference at the Supreme Court before he and other faith leaders delivered their letter and report to Congress, especially its leadership.
Barber faulted political leaders, and he didn’t differentiate by party or name names, except for Trump. And he denounced “the deliberate use of executive orders to violate the Constitution, thereby creating enough confusion to distract the people” from the real right-wing agenda.
The right-wingers’ “goal is control of 4,000” top federal workers “who control ten million federal workers”—a figure that includes contractors and the military-industrial-complex. Those millions in turn control $5.5 trillion in the U.S. budget and $76 trillion in assets, Barber said.
The numbers and the control represent moral choices, and the choices both the government and corporations make are dire for real people, both the report, The High Moral Stakes of the Policy Battles Raging in Washington, and Barber warn.
Indeed, they’re so dire that Barber quoted multibillionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s controller, as predicting and welcoming “ the dehumanization of people” and their replacement of all human jobs by artificial intelligence by 2035.
That’s where Barber compared that future to racism, slavery, apartheid and Naziism. There is “a denial of equality on every front,” he added.
Federal courts complicit
The federal courts have been complicit in the destruction, Barber warned. They have ruled “corporations should be treated like people, while everyday people should be treated like things.”
That denial includes “constant violation of freedom of speech, due process of law, equal protection under the law” and all provisions of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. He noted that, historically, its provisions opened the way for succeeding expansions of freedom—including worker rights—that the racist and white nationalist agenda now endangers.
It’s “an outright betrayal of liberty,” Barber declared, replaced by “the idolatry and the certainty of white supremacy—about who’s good and who’s not, who’s human and who’s not, who’s up and who’s down.”
“Poverty has become epidemic,” he added. Both poverty and destruction of liberty is “what we’re really battling.”
The report, posted on the Poor People’s Campaign’s website, goes into detail about the threats in a wide range of fields. They include, but are not limited to, worker rights, labor and taxes. Some excerpts:
- Congressional Republicans’ planned $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade would kill six million people. Another 36 million would lose health care coverage.
- All 40 million people who now use the federal SNAP benefits, i.e. food stamps, would see lower benefits—and buy less food as a result—due to a GOP $230 billion budget cut over the decade.
“It would be virtually impossible to achieve Musk’s goal of $2 trillion in federal spending cuts without cutting into these backbones of our country’s retirement system,” the report warns. “Absent cuts to defense spending or defaulting on interest payments, every other federal program would have to be eliminated entirely to spare these three vital programs” of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
- Worker rights are under strong Trump attack, with lack of a quorum at the National Labor Relations Board—after Trump illegally fired its first Black woman member and former chair Gwynne Wilcox—a key pivot point.
That left the NLRB without a quorum and workers without its ultimate protections, however weak. Trump “wasted zero time” in firing Wilcox “for unduly disfavoring the interests of employers,” the report notes. Wilcox is suing to get her job back. The federal court in D.C. heard her case March 5.
The report points out that Musk’s campaign spending for Trump last year–$280-$290 million—almost equaled the NLRB’s entire $299 million budget. It noted Musk and other moguls are challenging the very constitutionality of the NLRB and labor law in general. The cases are in federal courts in deep-red Texas and Louisiana.
- Labor law needs massive reform to restore workers’ true rights to unionize and bargain. That’s the top aim of the AFL-CIO, and it and congressional Democratic allies reintroduced the measure to achieve it, the PRO (Protect The Right To Organize) Act, hours later.
NLRB was able to defend workers
“By nominating strong workers’ rights advocates to fill vacancies that were purposely left to hollow out the agency, and by securing the largest increase in funding for the NLRB in nearly a decade, the Biden” administration’s NLRB “was able to reverse a lot of the priorities that corporate lobby groups persuaded the first Trump board to enact.”
- The overall “decline in unionization suggests even a strong NLRB can’t make up for the need to pass legislation that would strengthen the National Labor Relations Acts by ensuring workers can reach a first contract and that establishes civil monetary penalties for employers who violate labor rights.
“Unions help improve earnings, working conditions, and equity. Unionized workers earn on average 13.5% more in wages than their non-unionized peers. The relatively higher union wage premium for workers of color also means unions help narrow racial and ethnic pay gaps.”
But Trump “essentially made the [labor] board nonoperational and made it clear board members, tasked by statute with serving as neutral arbiters of law, should favor employers if they want to keep their job.”
- The Republican extension of the 2017 Trump/GOP-passed tax cut for corporations and the rich would again be a disaster for everyone else. It would cost $4 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade. Its benefits “amount to less than $1 per day for the bottom half of U.S. families, while the richest 0.1% would pocket an estimated $314,266 per year in tax savings, according to Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Treasury data.
Including Trump’s tariffs, which he announced the same day as the Poor People’s Campaign report—and which caused the stock market to tank—”his overall tax agenda would increase taxes for all income groups except those in the top 5%. The richest 1% would get an average tax cut of about $36,300 and the next richest 4% would receive about $7,200.
“The middle 20% would see a tax hike of about $1,500 and the poorest 20% would owe $800 more. The tax hikes would hit working-class families hardest. The middle 20% of Americans would face a tax increase equal to 2.1% of their income, while the poorest 20% would face an increase equal to 4.8% of their income–all while the richest 5% get a tax cut.”
- “Gains in employment and wages” in the past four years “are under threat as the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress push an economic agenda based on mass deportations, severe cuts to federal spending and staffing at federal agencies, and tax cuts for wealthy households.
“Plans to slash the federal workforce pose a particular threat to Black workers,” the report adds. “The federal government has long been a valued source of decent jobs for Black workers, who currently make up 18.6% of federal employees, compared to their 12.8% share of the total workforce.”
- Through executive orders, Trump “removed long-standing job protections for federal career employees, making it easier to fire these workers for any reason. These efforts included overturning previous executive orders” protecting collective bargaining rights.
“The proposed budget cuts threaten the lives of millions of people, including attacks on healthcare and programs that support the poor while enriching the ultra-wealthy at our expense,” a cover letter to movement activists declares. “Our demands call on Congress to stand against extremism and enact a moral budget that responds to the urgent needs of the poor.”
“Together, we must stand against extremism and protect our communities and the most vulnerable,” that cover letter to movement members concludes.
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