Today's AFL-CIO press clips
MUST READ
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler on the value of Trump: “The best organizer is a bad boss”
Fast Company
By Brendan Vaughan
June 12, 2025
Liz Shuler has a tough job. It’s not just tough to do. It’s tough even to define. As the president of the AFL-CIO, a 70-year-old federation of 63 national and international unions representing more than 15 million workers, she is the leader of the American labor movement. But “labor” is not a monolith. She represents NFL players, government workers, Hollywood writers, hotel janitors. Shuler, who became the first woman to run the AFL-CIO when she was elected in 2021, doesn’t negotiate pay rates or mediate disputes between workers and management.
POLITICS
Trump killing energy projects will kill thousands of union jobs(Opinion)
Labor Tribune
By Liz Shuler
June 12, 2025
The Labor Movement condemns the Department of Energy’s decision to cut $3.7 billion in funding for new energy projects and take away tens of thousands of good union jobs from America’s workers. President Trump promised a new era of American dominance in energy and manufacturing, but his administration is now taking away the jobs that are critical to making that happen. In states like Alabama, Ohio and Texas, workers have lost their jobs; their families have had the rug ripped out from under them; and we will all lose out on the environmental, economic and national security benefits of the cutting-edge technology they were going to build. Their work would have boosted the economies in those states, provided consumers with affordable energy, developed our fast-growing clean energy economy, and advanced America’s technological competitiveness on the world stage. The Trump administration must reverse course and bring back these energy projects, for the good of America’s working families, our communities, and our global competitiveness.
House Votes to Claw Back $9 Billion for Foreign Aid and Public Broadcasting
The New York Times
By Catie Edmondson
June 12, 2025
The House voted on Thursday to claw back $9.4 billion that lawmakers had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting, as Republicans banded together to codify spending cuts put forward by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The 214-to-212 vote came after the White House asked Congress to formally approve the rollback, which had largely been enacted by executive order and DOGE. The request was something of a pivot for President Trump and his top officials, who have aggressively challenged Congress’s power of the purse and made clear that they are willing to steer around the legislative branch to try to unilaterally control federal spending.
House Votes To Rescind PBS, NPR And Public Broadcasting Station Funding
Deadline
By Ted Johnson
June 12, 2025
The House of Representatives put the future of the public broadcasting ecosystem in doubt, as they voted to rescind $1.1 billion in federal funding for the next two fiscal years. The vote was 214-212. Four Republicans joined with all Democrats against it. The bill, which also includes cuts to foreign aid, now heads to the Senate.
The Wrap
By Sharon Knolle
June 12, 2025
The Writers Guild of America East (WGAE) condemned the House vote on Thursday to cut a previously allocated $1.1 billion for public broadcasting, blasting the move as “a radical right-wing ideology that aims to destroy a non-partisan public service despite all evidence of its wide benefits.” H.R. 4, the Rescissions Act of 2025, impacts funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), as well as thousands of public radio and television stations across the country. The vote to slash that funding passed by only three votes, 214-212.
House GOP narrowly approves $9.4 billion package of DOGE cuts
CNN
By Sarah Ferris
June 12, 2025
Speaker Mike Johnson was on the verge of an embarrassing defeat on the floor: the narrowly divided GOP-led House was on track to reject billions in DOGE cuts. Then he pulled aside Rep. Nick LaLota, a New York centrist, who had just voted no. With the vote still open, several minutes of tense conversation followed before LaLota ultimately went to change his vote. Within seconds, the package of spending cuts narrowly passed.
GOP leaders say they are pressing forward with vote on DOGE cuts
Politico
By Meredith Lee Hill
June 12, 2025
Speaker Mike Johnson expressed confidence ahead of a planned Thursday vote that the House will pass a $9.4 billion spending cuts package as planned. But privately, his whip team is scrambling to shore up enough votes among wary Republicans. “We think we have the votes. We’re going ahead with it,” Johnson said. Asked about one vocal GOP holdout — Don Bacon of Nebraska, who raised concerned about public media and AIDS funding cuts — he said, “I believe Mr. Bacon is going to be just fine.”
Rich Gain and Poor Lose in Republican Policy Bill, Budget Office Finds
The New York Times
By Andrew Duehren
June 12, 2025
The far-reaching domestic policy bill that Republicans recently pushed through the House would provide rich Americans with a financial lift while taking away government benefits from the poor, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday. The analysis is the first from the budget office that lays out how Americans at different income levels would be affected by the Republican legislation, which slashes taxes and cuts spending on safety-net programs like Medicaid and food stamps. Americans would, on average, gain from the bill, according to the analysis, but the consequences would be very different for poor Americans and for rich ones.
GOP tax bill would cost poor Americans $1,600 a year and boost highest earners by $12,000, CBO says
AP
By Fatima Hussein
June 12, 2025
The Republican tax bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives would cost the poorest Americans roughly $1,600 a year while increasing the income of the wealthiest households by an average of $12,000 annually, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Congressional Budget Office. Middle-income households would see a boost of roughly $500 to $1,000 per year under Republican President Donald Trump’s tax bill, the CBO found.
G.O.P. Senators Want Fewer Cuts to Food Aid, Teeing Up a Fight with the House
The New York Times
By Catie Edmondson
June 12, 2025
Republican senators have made no secret of their desire to moderate Medicaid cuts approved by the House in its bill to deliver President Trump’s agenda. Now they are preparing to change a provision that would cut deeply into another central pillar of the nation’s safety net: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, which provides food benefits to low-income families.
With States and Tribes Left Unattended, Fired Federal Child Welfare Workers Remain on Paid Leave
The Imprint
By Sara Tiano
June 12, 2025
“We are filing this lawsuit to challenge the hostile takeover of government by billionaires and anti-union extremists. From the mass firings of federal employees to effectively shutting down agencies formed by Congress, this White House has repeatedly broken the law and violated the Constitution to advance their extremist Project 2025 agenda,” AFSCME President Lee Saunders said in a statement.
‘Dangerous and disastrous’: Cuts to federal jobs could disproportionately impact Black workers
Louisiana Illuminator
By Katie Jane Fernelius, Verite
June 12, 2025
For Harold John, a job with the federal government meant a more stable, comfortable life than the one he knew as a child. John grew up in the Melpomene Projects with his three sisters. Neither of his parents, both of who had grown up on rural farms in Louisiana, had obtained more than an elementary school education. John was able to finish high school, join the U.S. Navy and then get a job with the U.S. Postal Service, all of which helped carry him into the middle class in the 1980s.
Sen. Padilla is forcefully removed from Noem’s news conference on immigration raids and handcuffed
AP
By Krysta Fauria, Michael R. Blood and Lisa Mascaro
June 12, 2025
Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday was forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles and handcuffed by officers as he tried to speak up about immigration raids that have led to protests in California and around the country. Video shows a Secret Service agent on Noem’s security detail grabbing the California senator by his jacket and shoving him from the room as he tried to speak up during the DHS secretary’s event. Padilla interrupted the news conference after Noem delivered a particularly pointed line, saying federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to “liberate” the city from its “socialist” leadership.
Trump Encourages Federal Agencies to Use Union Labor Pacts
Bloomberg Law
By Rebecca Rainey
June 12, 2025
The White House budget office is pushing federal agencies to use union project labor agreements, an unexpected move that will be a major win for organized labor and continue a Biden-era policy. In a memo to be sent to executive branch agencies Thursday, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said the Trump administration “supports the use of PLAs when those agreements are practicable and cost effective, and blanket deviations prohibiting the use of PLAs are precluded.” Unions have alleged that some federal agencies haven’t been enforcing the PLA requirement.