Trump executive orders roll back civil rights, workers’ rights, and greenlight fraud

Trump signing one of his many executive orders that roll back civil rights, workers rights and give the green light to massive fraud. | Evan Vucci / AP

WASHINGTON—Not content with trashing federal workers’ rights, Republican President Donald Trump—who as a young New York developer violated federal fair and open housing laws—wants to roll back the civil rights revolution, too.

Not only that, but a separate Trump executive order fires at least 17 key watchdogs—independent Inspectors General at various agencies. That move opens the way to widespread fraud by the corporate class unseen since, well, the first Trump government, which began eight years ago and lasted four years.

So far, the responses to the Trump edicts have ranged from scattershot to verbal screams with promises for future action to, in the case of the IGs, inaction by then-Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

Some workers and unions are already fighting back against Trump’s orders, however.

The Government Employees (AFGE) marched into court in D.C., accompanied by the Teachers/AFT and two good-government groups, two days after the inauguration. They’re suing Trump over the schemes of his “Department of Government Efficiency,” headed by multibillionaire Elon Musk, to meet behind closed doors, with no accountability, to arbitrarily cut hundreds of thousands of workers.

“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 President Randi Weingarten tweeted.

Lawsuit or no lawsuit, Trump’s actions, contained in the more than 200 executive orders he issued during his first days in office, are already taking effect:

• Trump abolished all federal offices established to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles within the federal workforce and full accessibility to government contract opportunities by firms owned by disadvantaged groups—notably by people of color and people with disabilities.

Workers in those DEI offices were furloughed, with pay, through the end of January, prior to being RIFed—government lingo for being fired—after that. Trump Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the first Cabinet officer the Republican-run Senate confirmed, told his agency’s 60 DEI office workers to go home, and don’t bother coming back. Don’t call us, unless we call you—for another position.

“Critical and influential institutions, including the federal government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws” Trump’s executive order declared.

“The administration escalated the assault the day after by threatening federal employees with disciplinary action if they fail to report on their colleagues who defy orders,” the main union for federal workers, AFGE reported.

“People on the internet immediately suggested spamming the two email addresses, DEIATRUTH@opm.gov and DEIAREPORTS@opm.gov as a way to protest the government’s attempts to get federal employees to spy on one another.”

Trump says DEI goals “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.” A spoils system is exactly what Trump wants to create with another anti-worker order, Schedule F, AFGE says.

“Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex,” Trump declares. For “hardworking Americans,” read “white men.”

• But Trump really wants to abolish the 1960s civil rights revolution. That movement produced the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 open/fair housing law—the statute Trump and his developer father, Fred, broke. They tried to bar Blacks from the federally aided public housing project they erected in New York City.

In the same order where he banned DEI, Trump outlawed federal promotion of affirmative action and  “workforce balancing based on race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin.” He also barred federal contractors from doing that, too.

Cut numbers of workers

And he’ll cut the number of workers. A Trump order freezes the federal workforce at just over two million, but that includes vacancies and he banned agencies from filling those.

Trump also ordered his Office of Personnel Management—the government’s HR department—to collect lists of all “new” workers currently in their probationary period. News reports say he wants to can all of them, and they could number several hundred thousand. Unlike the unionized sector of private industry, federal probation lasts at least a year and sometimes two.

• Trump ordered all federal workers back to their offices full-time, unless, literally, there is no office to go back to. The only other exception is if union contracts specifically permit remote work and/or telework. And Trump wants OPM to eliminate that permission, too.

“To justify this backward action, lawmakers and members of Trump’s transition team spent months exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs,” says AFGE President Clarence Kelley. “The truth: Less than half of all federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations.”

The White House Trumpites are reportedly steaming that outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden’s Social Security Administration, led by former Gov. Martin O’Malley, D-Md., signed such a contract with the AFGE local representing Social Security staffers. Trump seeks a way override that clause.

“Whether AFGE will file a lawsuit depends on how it is implemented. If they violate our contracts, we will take appropriate action to uphold our rights,” Kelley warns.

• Trump arbitrarily fired 12 of the top 17 Inspectors General, in what was literally a midnight massacre of accountability. The other five IG offices, including the IG for the biggest agency of all, the military, are vacant.

Like the Director of the FBI, the IGs’ terms run beyond the limits of one presidential term, in an attempt to keep the IGs free from political influence and free to be giant whistleblowers. Early removals are supposed to be only “for cause” and only after notifying Congress and waiting a month for lawmakers to nullify such firings.

The limit on FBI directors didn’t prevent Trump from canning controversial agency Director James Comey almost immediately after Trump took over eight years ago, and similar term limits didn’t prevent Trump’s moves against the IGs now.

Then-Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., brushed aside a November letter from 18 organizations, led by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, demanding he get senators to OK Biden’s AG nominees before the last Congress adjourned and Schumer lost that power.

Ohers on the letter included the Professional and Technical Engineers, the small Plate Printers, Die Stampers, Plate Makers and Engravers, the National Federation of Federal Employees/Machinists, the Printing, Packaging and Production Workers/GCIU and the Workers Circle.

“In fiscal year 2023, IG offices were estimated to have generated $93.1 billion in potential savings for the American public, with a $26 return on every taxpayer dollar invested,” the groups wrote.

Provided critical oversight

“In the nearly 50 years since the first IG positions were established, IG offices continued to provide critical independent oversight that enabled Congress to conduct proper oversight and improved the integrity of our government. At a time when trust in government is low and we face rising threats of authoritarianism at home and abroad, the role of Inspectors General is more important than ever.

“Confirming these diverse and highly qualified individuals is of paramount importance at a time when the incoming administration has made clear through its words and deeds a desire to skirt the ethical guardrails designed to prevent unlawful behavior…Without their confirmation, the executive branch will lack the internal expertise it needs to detect and eliminate corruption, waste and malfeasance.

As evidence from Trump’s first term shows, the lack of a watchdog—or turning the IG into a Trumpite lapdog–isn’t just an injustice to the individual workers or the whistleblowers who trust them. During the coronavirus pandemic, it cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in cash doled out to companies or individuals, including billionaires, who didn’t need it, to political favorites, or both.

Several billionaires, both Democrats and Republicans, got government checks which Congress meant to target to low-income people, ProPublica reported. The IGs couldn’t have prevented that: The checks were based on federal income tax wage and salary records—-from the W-2 forms.

But the forms don’t disclose the honchos took most of their payouts in stock, options and the like. And even when they made over a million bucks apiece, they found ways offset it through “deductions,” often manipulating the tax code.

“Forrest Preston, the founder of Life Care Centers of America, one of the largest long-term care companies in the U.S., is worth $1.2 billion. In 2009, he got his $400 boost,” from that year’s tax break for individuals after the financier-caused crash of the year before, ProPublica reported. His W-2 income was zero.

“The next year, he posted an income of $112 million. By 2018, however, his income had gone negative again, entitling him to a $1,200 payment in 2020. The same year he received his stimulus check, Preston’s company successfully lobbied to win a tax break for the nursing home industry.”

Congressional Democrats, and, to his credit, veteran Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, have put up a ruckus about Trump’s beheading of the IGs. Grassley is their longtime defender.

“I guess it’s the case of whether he believes in congressional oversight,” Grassley said of Trump.  “I work closely with all the Inspector Generals…and I intend to defend them,” he told Politico.

Another congressional veteran, Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., was more caustic. During his first term, Trump fired five IGs over a span of six weeks in 2020.

“Trump’s Friday night coup to overthrow legally protected independent Inspectors General is an attack on transparency and accountability, essential ingredients in our democratic form of government,” said Connolly, top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, in a statement.

“Replacing independent Inspectors General with political hacks will harm every American who relies on Social Security, veterans benefits and a fair hearing at IRS on refunds and audits.”

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

---

CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.