We as a nation awoke to the confirmation that Donald Trump will be serving a second term as president. For those of us who strive for climate justice and worker empowerment, this reality is an incredible setback. Trump’s approach to the environment, which the Republican Party as a whole has adopted, would roll back regulations, expand oil and gas production and curtail the federal government’s regulatory powers.
More than rhetorical, in his first presidential term, Trump officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back nearly 100 environmental rules, according to a NYT analysis. At an “energy round table” in April, Trump told a group of 20 oil executives and lobbyists “that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hampered their industry.”
In his speeches, Trump has promised to carry out Project 2025 – “the 920-page plan for a white Christian nationalist takeover of America that was written by at least 140 former Trump staffers in an effort to ensure that, unlike in 2017, if Trump steps back inside the White House, he will have a meticulous, thoroughly detailed plan that can be implemented on Day 1 to dismantle the country’s democracy and give him absolute power.”
Following this plan which is embraced and espoused by most within the Republican Party, Trump has made promises during his recent campaign speeches, summarizing some of Project 2025’s highlights. Plans include closing the border, launching the largest deportation operation in history, using the U.S. military against Americans, and reversing protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
And 150 of Project 2025’s 900 pages are about how to destroy our environment.
Those 150 pages detail how to hand over public lands to oil and gas companies in order to drill whenever and wherever they want – including in some of the most currently protected and pristine public lands – while leaving taxpayers to deal with the pollution and toxic waste that would be left behind. The plan also proposes to stop all government action to reach international climate goals, putting people and the economy at further risk of more extreme weather and a faster-warming planet.
Foundational environmental protection laws that this plan aims to attack include gutting the Endangered Species Act, “the most successful legal tool we have for protecting wildlife.” It specifically calls for removing protections from gray wolves and Yellowstone grizzlies. Another proposal would repeal the Antiquities Act, which would strip the president of the ability to protect priceless public lands and waters as national monuments.
The far-reaching Project 2025, embraced by a Trump presidency, would nix the part of the law that requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set health-based air quality standards. It undermines key portions of the National Environmental Policy Act, which ensures citizens have a voice in major projects built near them.
A Trump Administration would also seek to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act that has already created more than 300,000 new jobs, and eliminate tax credits and rebates that are helping electrify homes and businesses across the country. It also aims to privatize the National Weather Service and prevent it from forecasting extreme weather events and providing research on the advancing climate crisis.
In addition to wrenching away protections from the planet on which we live, a Trump presidency and Project 2025 will also attack us as workers directly in our own workplaces.
During a live conversation on X with Elon Musk on August 12, Donald Trump said striking workers should be fired. Trump has already announced his intention to reissue Schedule F, an Executive Order that will strip protections from civil servants perceived as disloyal to the president, and encourage expressions of allegiance to the president when hiring.
As with his attacks on environmental protection, Trump’s attacks on workers are far beyond rhetorical.
According to an analysis of Trump’s first term by the Communication Workers of America, Trump packed the courts with anti-labor judges who have made the entire public sector “right to work for less” in an attempt to financially weaken unions by increasing the number of freeloaders. He stacked the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union appointees who side with employers in contract disputes and support companies who delay and stall union elections, misclassify workers to take away their freedom to join a union, and silence workers. He made it easier for employers to fire or penalize workers who speak up for better pay and working conditions or exercise the right to strike.
Trump has promised to veto the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, historic legislation that will reverse decades of legislation meant to crush private sector unions and shift power away from CEOs to workers.
We can prepare for a Trump administration to attempt to roll back groundbreaking overtime rules that were put in place in 2024, resulting in loss of overtime protections for millions of newly eligible workers. By changing overtime eligibility and benefits and simply reverting to the former overtime pay rules put in place during his first administration, 4.3 million workers would have overtime taken away.
Per Project 2025, a Trump Administration would direct Congress to allow states to get waivers of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs the minimum wage among other protections. It would also allow employers in federally funded projects to pay less than the prevailing wages in the region. It would roll back federal rules that keep workers safe and healthy on the job. It specifically includes making it easier for employers to hire children for “inherently dangerous jobs.”
Under a Trump Administration enacting Project 2025, workers will find it difficult or even impossible to engage in collective action and organizing. A Trump Administration threatens to ban workers’ ability to form their union through quickly and efficiently signing an authorization card, weakening the National Relations Labor Board and its ability to protect workers’ rights, and allowing employers to get rid of a union in the middle of a contract. It would make it easier to deter workers from forming unions and would let employers retaliate against workers who try to do so. Employers would no longer be allowed to voluntarily recognize unions. Project 2025 even calls for banning public sector unions altogether – and allows states to ban unions entirely.
The project also calls for stopping the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from collecting important data related to employee race and ethnicity, making it impossible to detect and stop many patterns of discrimination. The plan seeks to utilize civil rights laws and agencies to attack efforts to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the workplace. It describes how it would prosecute private employers that support DEIA in their workplaces.
So, where do we go next?
As workers, we must never forget – despite seemingly insurmountable odds – our succession of victories throughout history.
Let us remember that during Trump’s first term, we saw a wave of sustained social protest from below that brought about real and often swift change: “#MeToo” burgeoned into an international movement that won major cultural shifts against misogynistic practices, student campaigns against tuition debt and cost-prohibitive higher education made significant gains, immediate mobilizations at airports and in communities across the country resisted and then bested Trump’s Muslim ban, and of course the wave of strikes bravely organized by previously invisible workers – who are truly essential – won protections and improved workplace conditions. These worker strikes emboldened even more workers from additional industries, so that at least half a million workers last year went on strike to improve their workplaces.
It is these workers from whom we must take courage and find our strength. No matter who is elected in our towns, states or federal offices, we must always remember that we have the power to hold those in office accountable. We are not simply voters who come out of burrows once or twice every four years. We are students and family members, citizens and workers who hold authority over any of our politicians. Together we must and we will continue to come together and organize our communities, our campuses and our workplaces to build the economically just and ecologically sustainable future that we need.
Join Us today – our solidarity is more crucial than ever.