Portside

It's on

Before Elon Musk and Donald Trump can exercise authoritarian power, he must purge the federal bureaucracy. But federal workers aren’t playing ball. Federal workers see they are the targets of an authoritarian attempt to abolish democracy.

As many as 200,000 federal employees with weaker civil service protections could be let go. But they are supposed to only be fired for poor performance. FAA director Mike Whitaker resigned, effective January 20.

Project 2025 is no renamed Agenda 47. The Heritage Foundation is now pretending to shut down the project, and Trump is pretending that the issue is going to go away. It’s not. The blue print for fascism is out there.

Project 2025 is a radical blueprint for a potential second Trump administration, spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. Top members of Trump's 2024 campaign are involved in Project 2025 and training and recruitment of political appointees

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Jefferson Cowie on the deep, twisted roots of American oppression

While Republicans threaten to bring the government to a halt, Democrats are caving in to the austerity measures they demand.

The increase in poverty reversed two years of large declines.

The federal minimum hourly wage is just $7.25 and has not increased in 14 years, the longest period of congressional inaction in the history of the minimum wage. The real, cost-of-living-adjusted value of the minimum wage has fallen by 30%.