WASHINGTON—As Republican President Donald Trump again verbally trashes the U.S. Constitution, both AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and the public, in a new poll by the Pew Research Center, are calling him out for what he is – a serious threat to democracy. Shuler says he is an “autocrat” and the people are telling pollsters he is a “dangerous dictator.”
“We do not fall in line for autocrats,” declared Shuler.
And both Shuler and the people who talk to pollsters give the same reasons: Trump’s defiance of Congress and the courts, his high-handedness and hate, the arrogance of Trump’s partner Elon Musk, and multibillionaire Musk’s chainsaw aimed at federal workers and programs.
After 100 days into his second term in the Oval Office, Trump has set off a firestorm, though not among white evangelicals and congressional Republicans, when he told NBC Meet The Press interviewer Kristen Welker “I don’t know” that citizens and non-citizens enjoy equal rights under the Constitution or that he, as president, should follow the Constitution. It is the first time in history that a president has publicly refused to say he considers that document the law he must follow, despite having pledged to do so in his oath when he took office.
The context was Trump again declaring migrants to the U.S. must be rounded up and deported. For Trump, anyone with brown skin, citizen or not, is a migrant. “I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said,” Trump elaborated.
Last year, of course, the court’s Republican-named Supreme Court majority ruled Trump is virtually immune from prosecution for any official action he takes as president. For Trump, deporting immigrants is official action. Trump’s “brilliant lawyers” in the Justice Department have had their heads handed to them by lower federal court judges.
Deportations carried out by Trump are unconstitutional, U.S. District Court judges have ruled. And just last month, the Supreme Court agreed in one case.. They ruled 9-0 Trump must “facilitate” return of Kilmar Abreggo Garcia, a Smart Union member whom Trump’s ICE agents grabbed out of his car, loaded him on a plane and deported him to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Arresting Garcia was “an administrative error,” Trump’s lawyers admitted, but Trump has refused to obey the Supreme Court and return him to the U.S.
Yet 100 days ago, Trump took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That same Constitution, defining the presidency, says the president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Neither Shuler nor the majority of poll respondents believe Trump obeys those limits.
“Democracy does not defend itself,” Shuler told a conference of like-minded organizations, gathered in the last week of April to discuss Trump’s first 100 days.
“Nor can we expect politicians to save us from autocrats’ clutches. The decision to capitulate or to resist rests with each of us. The sum of all those decisions will determine if we succeed or fail.” Noone acting alone “can defeat an autocracy or an oligarchy.
“Democracy means rule by the people. Organized labor believes in that idea at our very core. Fifteen million working people,” the members of the federation’s 63 unions, “know ‘my voice matters.’
“Organized labor gives voices like these a platform. We amplify them wherever we go, especially in this town,” the Nation’s Capital, she explained. “Make sure every politician claiming to carry the banner of the working class knows: ‘What we’ve seen the past 100 days ain’t it! ‘”
The reaction against Musk and Trump is one is why the two are busy campaigning to squash dissent, from unions, universities, libraries, progressives and especially workers, Shuler noted.
“Their stated reason for stripping one million workers of their collective bargaining rights was: ‘We didn’t like it that your unions were fighting back.’ They’ve attacked our most vulnerable—our immigrant brothers and sisters” including Garcia, “and trans and queer Americans with the goal of dividing us.
“They’ve attacked the coalitions most equipped to fight back,” starting with unions, who lead the resistance.
Always start with labor
“Authoritarians always start with organized labor. They came immediately for our federal workforce: Cutting funding Congress appropriated, firing workers with no process, lying about their performance. Trying to get other workers to quit.
“When our unions fought back, with grievances and lawsuits, what we saw in response was the single biggest act of union-busting in American history. One million federal workers illegally stripped of their collective bargaining rights. Moving to cancel their union contracts with the stroke of a pen. Saying to those who haven’t filed grievances yet: We’ll give you your rights and contracts back if you keep your mouths shut and fall in line.”
Shuler also warned non-federal union members that for Trump, “You’re next.”
“We do not fall in line for autocrats.”
Majority don’t fall in line
The Pew Research Center survey shows a majority of respondents, again except for Republicans and white evangelicals, don’t fall in line for autocrats either. Specifically:
- A majority (52%), agrees “Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy” while 44% who agree “Trump is a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”
Most Democrats (87%) agree he’s a dangerous dictator while most Republicans (81%) agree he’s a strong leader who should get more power.
- That GOP figure correlates with religion, one key part of the Pew survey. Some 73% of strong “Christian” adherents and 70% of sympathizers view Trump as a strong leader. Only 15% of rejecters of Christian nationalism agree, while skeptics are about evenly split. Only a third of non-white Christians agree.
- Trump has told his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to have her department’s civil rights division end its focus on combatting racial inequality and instead concentrate on anti-Christian bias. The White Christian nationalists complain about that. The poll shows most respondents disagree with both stands.
Trump hates diversity, and says if the U.S. lets people immigrate, they should be white Western Europeans, just like his parents. Only those migrants were easily let in from the day the doors slammed, Jan. 1, 1924, under nativist and even Ku Klux Klan pressure, through 1965. A majority of those polled, again excepting Republicans, vote the opposite way.
Some 54% overall are positive “efforts to increase diversity almost always strengthen an organization’s workforce,” while 41% say those efforts “always come at the expense of white people.” Democrats (91%), independents (83%) and Republicans (73%) all say the U.S. should welcome people from all over the world. That works out to 80% overall. Only 15% agree with Trump’s restricting the country to white Western Europeans.
- Trump and congressional Republicans also want to eliminate automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S., including territories. The president and the GOP, led by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, sneeringly call it “birthright citizenship.” Two-thirds of poll respondents, including 45% of Republicans, vote the other way.
It’s also in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, enacted to ensure formerly enslaved people, born in the U.S., and anyone else born to a citizen parent, are U.S. citizens.
- Trump is rounding up migrants, throwing them into camps, placing them under armed guard and then deporting them. He says migrants “are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” By a two-to-one ratio (64%-33%) respondents disagree with him. The partisan split shows up again: Six of every ten Republicans, fewer than a third of independents and only one in eight Democrats agree. Figures are similar for Trump’s idea of jailing the migrants in camps surrounded by troops.
- Trump’s partner Elon Musk who was let loose to conduct wholesale firings of federal workers—which Shuler also denounced—and his shuttering of government programs get failing grades from Pew poll respondents, too. They believe doing so makes food less safe to eat, medicines untested transportation more dangerous, water more polluted and, to top it off, doesn’t save money.
Almost half (48%) of Republicans are skeptical of Musk’s moves to trash the government, while 95% of Democrats turn thumbs down. That skepticism (68%-28%) extends to letting Musk’s—and Trump’s—DOGE computer operators root and loot people’s personal information from the IRS, the Social Security administration and other federal agencies. And Musk’s personal poll ratings are even more underwater than Trump’s, a point made by the near-daily anti-Musk demonstrations outside the Tesla tycoon’s electric vehicle dealerships.
“Do you feel safer knowing [that] the people who inspect our food, and keep our water clean, and make sure our planes are flying in the sky, have all been fired from their jobs? Is life for you and your family easier now that the people who run our child care centers, and work at our Social Security offices, are not there anymore?” Shuler asked in her address. The answer from the poll respondents is “no.”
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