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Department of People Who Work for a Living

We’ll be ensuring the federal government works for working people and isn’t destroyed by billionaires like Elon Musk. We’ll report on the facts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts and what you can do to fight back.

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Share your story

We are collecting stories from workers and working families who are affected by the Trump administration’s new policies.

We want to hear from you: How do these new policies impact your job? How do they impact the government funding and services that matter to you, your family and your community?

Issues

Navigate the issues below to learn how unelected billionaires and their agenda is affecting working people.

Federal Workers

Federal workers are the heart of our government, ensuring that critical services like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Veterans Affairs, disaster relief and national defense run smoothly. They run our national parks, inspect our food and medicine, and keep us safe from crime, accidents and disasters.

Cuts to the federal workforce jeopardize these services, affecting millions of Americans who rely on the government to protect and secure their well-being.

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Immigration

One in five workers in America wasn’t born here. Immigrants are America’s workers, vital to the fabric of our communities, our economy and our labor movement.

The labor movement supports comprehensive immigration reform that fully protects America’s workers, reduces the exploitation of immigrant workers and reduces employers’ incentive to hire undocumented workers rather than U.S. workers. But stoking fear about immigrants, raiding schools and hospitals, and mass deporting people whose labor makes our country prosper is not only a betrayal of our values—it’s also a recipe for economic disaster.

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Labor Law

President Trump has effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The NLRB—usually led by five board members—holds union elections, investigates allegations, and resolves cases of wrongdoing brought by workers, unions or employers.

The president illegally fired a member of the labor board, Gwynne Wilcox—the first Black woman to serve on the NLRB. There are now only two sitting members of the board, which leaves it one member short of the minimum number needed for any decision-making. And by firing Wilcox, because he didn’t like her decisions, he destroyed the board’s independence.
 

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Tax and Budget Policy

Proposed Spending Cuts Would Cut Workers’ Health Care and Jobs to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich

Budgets are about more than just dollars and cents listed on a spreadsheet—budgets are about our values. We saw Trump’s budget priorities during his last administration: billions in proposed cuts to Social Security. Billions in proposed cuts to Medicaid. Billions in proposed cuts to public schools. Billions in proposed cuts to food assistance programs.

At the same time, the last Trump administration had plenty of money for a tax bill in 2017 that delivered trillions of dollars in special tax breaks to billionaires and giant corporations. Now the Trump administration is looking to make those tax breaks for the rich and powerful permanent in 2025.

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Where in the U.S. are government workers?

Where do government workers live? The answer may surprise you. While many assume most federal workers are based in the Washington, D.C., area, 85% of federal employees live throughout the country, with large concentrations in states like California, Texas, Florida and Georgia. Cuts would be felt nationwide, hurting local economies and services.

About one-third of federal workers are military veterans who continue to serve our country in these roles. Cuts to the federal workforce would immediately put thousands of veterans out of work.
 

In our own words

Click through the carousel to read the stories of ordinary workers who make our communities run, and see how they’re being affected by DOGE and the Trump administration’s executive orders.

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