February 26, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

On the eve of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, at least 11 federal agencies were investigating Elon Musk’s six firms for everything from labor law violations and rocket safety failures to securities fraud. No coincidence then, I'd venture, that the Trump-Musk dyad has been busy hollowing out all 11 of these agencies. 

Musk’s “DOGE” antics have never been about cutting costs. In fact, according to the Trump administration's own data, nearly 40 percent of the federal contracts cut so far are going to produce no savings whatsoever for the government.

So why all this cutting? To weaken oversight over our ultra-rich and concentrate even more power in their hands. The “savings” from firing hundreds of IRS employees? Those pale next to the assets the wealthy will now have an easier time of hiding. Illegally hamstringing the National Labor Relations Board gives employers carte-blanche to squeeze every last dollar out of their workers. 

We have more on the Trump-Musk onslaught in this week’s issue. But first a quick announcement that points to a brighter future: Applications for the 2025 Henry Wallace Fellowship at the Institute for Policy Studies have just opened! If you’re a college student or young adult interested in honing your progressive movement skills, please do apply at the link right here.

Chris Mills Rodrigo
for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Inequality.org team

Defending Our Public Postal Service Against a Hostile Takeover 

This week’s frontline face: Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union.

What he’s doing to help create a more equal world: Fighting to protect postal workers — and the American people they serve — from President Trump’s efforts to sell our public Postal Service to for-profit corporations. 

Trump is reportedly preparing to fire the independent agency’s governing board and place USPS under the control of his billionaire commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, an active promoter of postal privatization.

“Here we are on the cusp of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States Postal Service,” Dimondstein noted at a rally earlier this week. “And this administration is saying, ‘Happy Anniversary Postal Service. Our anniversary present is to kill you.’” 

What makes this fight so important: “If USPS is broken up, dismantled, and privatized,” Dimondstein warns, “rather than a service to the people of the country, it will become a way for the fat cats to make a quick buck. This national treasure doesn’t belong to the billionaires. It doesn’t belong to one person who wants to be king. It belongs to the people.” 

What you can do to help defend the Postal Service? Check the link below. 

A New Challenge for U.S. Trade Unions: Organize to Survive

Union density — the share of workers in unions as a percentage of the overall workforce — dipped below 10 percent this year for the first time since the 20th century began. That dip came despite a pro-labor administration in office over the last four years and sky-high popularity for unions in public opinion polls. 

In a new piece for Inequality.org, Institute for Policy Studies analyst Omar Ocampo argues that unions now ought to be devoting more resources into organizing than into lobbying or supporting political campaigns. Unions face an enormous challenge: Just increasing the share of American workers in unions by a mere 1 percent would require organizing 1.6 million new workers.

Amid the continuing Trump war on immigrants, foreign-born workers continue to make up a disproportionately large share of those who perform the vital tasks of helping elderly and disabled Americans cope with the strains they face daily.

Immigrants make up 42 percent of our nation’s home health aides. And undocumented workers — the targets of Trump’s mass deportation plan — make up nearly 7 percent of these home health aides. For an interactive version of this chart and more on the care economy, click the Inequality.org Facts link below.

The Guilty Pleasures of Watching Our Super Richest Squirm

Researchers the world over are doing their best these days to carefully track the historic and ongoing concentration of America’s wealth. But Hollywood may actually be tracking this concentration even closer. The wealth, privileges, and formidable clout of our richest, Hollywood understands, are outraging average Americans. We’ve become a nation hungry for entertainment that expresses that outrage, and Hollywood has been all too happy to offer up that entertaining.

“The popularity of ‘eat the rich’ media,” as one culture critic puts it, “has reached a fever pitch.”

The impact of that media? Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more.

A Dizzying Trek from Crypto Chief Executive to Top Trump Crony

This week’s dour deep pocket: Kelly Loeffler, the newly installed top administrator of the federal Small Business Administration, an appointment that caps her big-business career as the CEO of Bakkt, a cryptocurrency subsidiary of a global stock exchange giant run by her billionaire husband.

What has Loeffler sour: Any hint that she would ever deviate from Donald Trump and his MAGA base. Loeffler first grabbed national attention late in 2019 when Georgia governor Brian Kemp, a relative moderate, appointed her to a vacant U.S. Senate seat. But Loeffler would quickly embrace Trump and declare herself as “more conservative than Attila the Hun.”

Loeffler would quickly exit the Senate after losing a special-election race against the Rev. Raphael Warnock the day before Trump-inspired mobs ransacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Three years later, she became one of the top donors to Trump’s comeback campaign and then co-chaired his lavishly bankrolled second inaugural committee.

The last word: Trump’s Loeffler-backed campaign “to stop wasteful spending” is already already creating chaos within the Small Business Administration.

“You just don’t know what they’re going to do next,” one mistakenly fired, then reinstated, then re-fired employee told the Washington Post last week. “There’s no rhyme or reason.”

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