Author: Admin

The State of Working America Under Assault From Trump and Project 2025

We begin on this Labor Day with the state of working America which is under assault from Trump and Project 2025 even as Trump’s groveling lackey, the Secretary of Labor, in a cabinet meeting praises her “Dear leader” telling him; “”Mr President, I invite you see your big beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.” Joining us to assess the losses and gains of labor in the second Trump nightmare is Steven Greenhouse, a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation who was previously a reporter for The New York Times where he covered labor and the workplace for nineteen years. He also served as a business and economics reporter and a diplomatic and foreign correspondent. He is the author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker and Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, and his latest article at The Guardian is “Trump’s presidential philosophy is government by shakedown.”

How Trump and Project 2025 Have Turbocharged the Plutocratic Takeover of American Democracy

Then we examine how inequality has been turbocharged by Trump and Project 2025 as billionaires buy our politics with the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the super-rich underway. Joining us is Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. She has co-authored several editions of The State of Working America, and her research interests include long-term unemployment, family budgets, teacher pay, public employee compensation, low-wage labor markets, inequality, and minimum wages. She has an article at The Center for Economic and Policy Research we discuss, “The Rich Are Not Rich Enough in America: How US policy fuels extreme inequality.”

The History of Labor Day As Opposed to May Day That Others Celebrate

Then finally we speak with the labor historian Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and editor emeritus of Dissent Magazine. His books include American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, The Populist Persuasion, War Against War:The American Fight for Peace 1914-1918  and A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, and his latest book is What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party. We discuss the history of Labor Day, as opposed to May Day, which is not celebrated in the U.S.