Guess who is coming for your holidays. If your first answer is Trump and his Republican minions, congratulations, you are paying attention. They just don’t think you are working hard enough. CNN reports that Trump said last Thursday, “”Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Juneteenth, a newly designated federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged during a Thursday briefing with reporters that it was a federal holiday and thanked reporters for showing up, but declined to answer whether Trump was doing anything to mark it.” For those who like insult to  intelligence added to their injuries, Trump added, “The workers don’t want it either!” Trump said of federal holidays in his post. “Soon we’ll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Never mind that workers in other industrialized economies have more paid holidays.  Trump and the Republicans want you to have less time to be with your families and to work more for less money. It will be good for you. It’s a MAGA thing.

From the Executive Summary of the annual study,  “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect, 2025” at the AFL-CIO webpage: “…too many workers remain at serious risk of injury, illness or death as chemical plant explosions, major fires, construction collapses, infectious disease outbreaks, workplace assaults, toxic chemical exposures and other preventable tragedies continue to permeate the workplace. Workplace hazards kill approximately 140,000 workers each year—including 5,283 from traumatic injuries and an estimated 135,000 from occupational diseases in 2023. That is 385 workers each day—and many worker protections are under threat. Job injury and illness numbers continue to be severe undercounts of the real problem.” Further, “Big corporations, many conservatives and billionaires have launched an aggressive assault on workers’ lives and their livelihoods by repealing job safety and health regulations, promoting deregulatory initiatives, blocking funding and pulling back resources for job safety agencies, firing federal staff doing critical work to protect worker health and safety, and requiring additional burdens in order to issue protections at all. They aim to dissolve the protection structures and shift the responsibility for providing safe jobs from employers to individual workers, and to undermine the core duties and capacity of workplace safety agencies, and more recently disregard and discard the government’s responsibility to protect workers altogether…President Trump’s first 100 days of his second administration have not only attacked Biden administration progress, but confirmed his anti-worker, pro-business philosophy. 1 Since taking office at the end of January 2025, he has issued dozens of executive orders to roll back or review existing regulations, including an order that requires that for any new regulatory protection issued, an agency must remove 10 safeguards from the books.”

In “Democrats Must Become the Party of the Working Class—Or Else: It’s true that the party isn’t dead… yet. But if it does not seriously reflect on its disastrous 2024 performance—and all that led up to it—the future is beyond bleak,” James Zogby writes at Common Dreams: “The lesson that Democrats need to learn is that “the left” is not primarily defined by where you stand on social issues. Instead, unlike Republicans, Democrats must define themselves as the party that understands the government’s positive role in creating an economy and programs that create jobs and opportunities for working and middle class families—Black, Asian, Latino, and White ethnics. When they don’t embrace these concerns, they cede this ground to Republicans, who despite their horribly regressive policies now claim to represent the working class while charging that Democrats only represent elites…This doesn’t mean that Democrats should ever abandon their commitment to the range of social and cultural issues party leaders have long embraced as critical for our diverse democratic society…they are the party that believes that government has a role to play in lifting up those who need a helping hand, and providing for the working classes and middle classes of all ethnic and racial communities.”

At Talking Points Memo, editor Josh Marshall strikes a cautionary note for evaluating Administration reports on military actions and their consequences. Sure, responsible reporters should quote the President’s view. But they should also look at analysis by independent experts on national defense…”A few points on the effect rather than the wisdom or possible fall-out of these attacks…The President has repeatedly said the Fordow nuclear facility was “obliterated”. Clearly that is a party slogan rather than any kind of factual analysis. We’re now getting the first after-action reports out of the Pentagon and Israel which speak of the Fordow facility appearing to have sustained “severe damage” but not being destroyed. One thing that struck me last night was the US assessment that helped prompt this attack which, reportedly, was that the entirety of the Israeli assault had pushed Iran’s program back roughly six months. That’s pretty paltry in terms of any great change in the strategic outlook. I note that because we should wait a significant period of time before we conclude – if the evidence ever merits it – that the US has somehow put the Iranians back to square one in their ability to build nuclear warheads…The President has repeatedly said the Fordow nuclear facility was “obliterated”. Clearly that is a party slogan rather than any kind of factual analysis. We’re now getting the first after-action reports out of the Pentagon and Israel which speak of the Fordow facility appearing to have sustained “severe damage” but not being destroyed. One thing that struck me last night was the US assessment that helped prompt this attack which, reportedly, was that the entirety of the Israeli assault had pushed Iran’s program back roughly six months. That’s pretty paltry in terms of any great change in the strategic outlook. I note that because we should wait a significant period of time before we conclude – if the evidence ever merits it – that the US has somehow put the Iranians back to square one in their ability to build nuclear warheads.” Read more here.