People carry signs and banners as they gather in Trafalgar Square, central London, to demonstrate against the state visit of President Donald Trump, Tuesday, June 4, 2019. (Photo: Tim Ireland/AP)
“The protests will be about Trumpism: about confronting a resurgent global far right, defending the rights of women and minorities, fighting the climate emergency, opposing the threat of war.”
Protesting both the individual cruelty of U.S. President Donald Trump and the globally ascendant “politics of hate” he represents, tens of thousands took to the streets in London and across the U.K. Tuesday as Trump enjoys “royal treatment” from the British government on his first official state visit.
“This protest is about Trumpism–the hatred and poverty that is spreading. Our movement is about joining the dots between hate, bigotry, and inequality.” –Shaista Aziz
Trump claimed in a tweet Monday that he had not “seen any protests yet,” but the demonstrations on Tuesday will be impossible to miss, with the 20-foot-tall Trump baby blimp flying over London and crowds of Britons pouring into the streets throughout the country.
“We are here to take on misogyny, racism, fascism, and hatred,” Guardian columnist Owen Jones declared during a speech in London.
Jones emphasized this point in a column ahead of Tuesday’s mass demonstrations, noting that the protests “aren’t just about Trump, they’re about everything he stands for.”
“These protests won’t simply be about Trump and the perverse reality TV show he’s treated the world to,” Jones wrote. “The protests will be about Trumpism: about confronting a resurgent global far right, defending the rights of women and minorities, fighting the climate emergency, opposing the threat of war, and standing against an attempt to gut the NHS and trash hard-won rights and freedoms.
Journalist Shaista Aziz echoed Jones, telling the crowd gathered at a London rally Tuesday that “this protest is about Trumpism–the hatred and poverty that is spreading.”
“Our movement is about joining the dots between hate, bigotry, and inequality,” Aziz said.
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Members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) protest against firings during a rally to defend federal workers in Washington, D.C. on February 11, 2025. (Photo: Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The “mass firing spree,” said one union leader, is “about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
The Trump administration intensified its large-scale purge of the federal government on Thursday by moving to fire potentially hundreds of thousands of probationary employees, an effort that one leading union condemned as a power grab aimed at forcing agencies to capitulate to the whims of a lawless president.
The new flurry of terminations impacted workers across at least seven federal agencies, from the Department of Veterans Affairs—which said it fired 1,000 employees—to the Forest Service, Department of Education, Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees—a union that represents more than 750,000 federal workers—said no one should fall for the Trump administration’s claim that the mass firings are about federal employees’ performance or enhancing government “efficiency.”
“This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a politically driven mass firing spree, targeting employees not because of performance, but because they were hired before Trump took office,” Kelley said in a statement Thursday. “These firings are not about poor performance—there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants. They are about power. They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
Vowing to “fight these firings every step of the way,” Kelley said terminated employees were “given no notice, no due process, and no opportunity to defend themselves in a blatant violation of the principles of fairness and merit that are supposed to govern federal employment.”
“We will stand with every impacted employee, pursue every legal challenge available, and hold this administration accountable for its reckless actions,” said Kelley. “Federal employees are not disposable, and we will not allow the government to treat them as such.”
“None of this is about saving money, it is about Musk and Trump enriching themselves and their wealthy friends while making huge cuts to services Americans depend on.”
The new purge targeting more recently hired government employees marks the latest salvo in the Trump administration’s far-reaching assault on federal agencies, an effort spearheaded by unelected billionaire Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. President Donald Trump has given the advisory commission unprecedented authority over federal hiring, effectively installing Musk as the leader of a shadow government in Washington, D.C.
The Washington Post noted that “the latest data shows there were more than 220,000 federal employees within their one-year probationary period as of last March.”
“These workers typically have little protection from being fired without cause,” the Post observed.
The new administration’s sweeping attacks on the federal workforce, which have drawn union-led legal challenges, have left career civil servants confused, demoralized, and fearful of the future—music to the ears of far-right officials like Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, who has expressed his desire to leave government employees “traumatically affected.”
An anonymous OPM employee wrote for Slate last week that agency workers “are just as frustrated, confused, and traumatized as the rest of America.”
“When I started my job at OPM, I swore an oath to the Constitution, and to defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic, making it especially awful that the threat to our government is coming from inside my own office building,” the worker wrote. “The villains here aren’t the civil servants working to serve the American people.”
A purge of the federal workforce and wholesale dismantling of government departments were central goals of the far-right Project 2025 agenda authored by Vought and others in Trump’s orbit. The playbook called on the new administration to disempower career civil servants and “fill its ranks with political appointees.”
In addition to leading OMB, Vought is serving as acting director of the CFPB, an agency hit particularly hard by Thursday’s purge. Reuters reported that “a new category of employees” at the consumer agency “received termination notices on Thursday… in a sign that the Trump administration was going beyond probationary employees as it looks to fire federal staff.”
“Notices to dozens of so-called ‘term employees,’ full-time workers on contracts with end dates, began arriving Thursday evening, letting them know they were being terminated the same day,” Reuters reported. “Some staff discovered they had lost access to the agency’s IT systems before receiving their termination letters.”
The sloppy and chaotic nature of the purge underscored what critics say is a reckless evisceration of government in service of a far-right ideological project.
The Post reported that the Small Business Association (SBA) “listed a paralegal phone number for laid-off employees to appeal their terminations. The number was an automated line for an apartment building.”
According to Axios, one SBA worker “received two different firing emails with attachments… each with a different reason they were being let go.”
“The first one said they were being let go because ‘you have failed to demonstrate fitness for continued federal employment,” Axios reported. “The second one hedged on the reason: ‘[Y]ou are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge, and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs and/or your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency.”
Wired reported that workers at the CFPB “were informed that they had been fired with a frenetic email” in which “some affected employees were addressed as [EmployeeFirstName][EmployeeLastName], [Job Title], [Division].”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), who represents a large swath of federal workers, said in a statement earlier this week that “the Musk-Trump administration’s purge of the federal civil service is illegal, terrible for the country, and paves the way for increased corruption.”
“While Musk and Trump are distracting their followers with supposed ‘savings’ from these mass layoffs, which my Republican colleagues correctly note are a tiny fraction of all federal spending, they are preparing to enact tax cuts that will shower hundreds of times as much money on the rich,” said Beyer. “None of this is about saving money, it is about Musk and Trump enriching themselves and their wealthy friends while making huge cuts to services Americans depend on.”
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Families, relatives, and the legal teams of the detainees demand information from police and justice for the arrested workers. Photo: SUNTRACS/X
Organized workers have denounced the police’s brutal treatment of demonstrators before and after the protest. President Mulino has called them “terrorists”.
Over 480 people were arrested in Panama on February 12 during a national demonstration called for by trade unions and social movements. Workers and protesters took the streets to raise several issues in the country:
To protest a law intending to privatize social security (Law 163)
To honor the memory of Al Iromi Smith Rentería, a worker killed by Panamanian police on February 12, 2008
To protest Donald Trump’s expansionist statements regarding the Panama Canal
Police repression was extreme. After the police descended on the protests in Panama City, more than 100 demonstrators were injured and 15 policemen were wounded.
The Director of the Panamanian police, Jaime Fernández said, “We managed to capture 450 people,” for which reason they had to improvise “a special jail” due to the long lines of handcuffed demonstrators. Other sources report almost 480 detainees. The right-wing president, José Raúl Mulino, labeled the trade union which led the protest, the National Union of Workers of Construction and Similar Industries (SUNTRACS), a “terrorist” organization and like a “mafia” and announced that “the full weight of the law” will fall on them.
SUNTRACS denounces police brutality and demands release of detained workers
In a press conference on February 12, a representative of SUNTRACS, and a participant in the demonstrations, denounced the actions of the police. The representative stated that without trying to mediate the situation, the police “began to brutally repress” the demonstration. The workers then sought refuge in the hospital under construction. Reportedly, the police began to indiscriminately arrest workers from the construction site.
Regarding President Mulino’s statements, the SUNTRACS representative said “It’s outrageous that because we go out to protest they call us “terrorists”, as the disrespectful President [of Panama] said. [Mulino] does not respond that way to Donald Trump, despite all the threats he has made against our national territory and our country.”
Finally, he demanded the immediate release of the detained workers: “We will defend our comrades to the last consequences.”
In a press conference on February 13, a representative of SUNTRACS said that the police have not released any information about the detainees, except to certain relatives of the wounded, one of whom has undergone surgery for his injuries. He also denounced the beatings that several prisoners suffered after their apprehension.
Controversial Law 163
The law in question, which is being debated by the National Assembly, has been baptized as Law 163, which seeks to reform the current legislation on social security. SUNTRACS, along with other trade unions and social movements call the bill a clear attack on workers from the business and neoliberal groups.
Under the pretext of an economic deficit of the Social Security Fund, Law 163 seeks to:
eliminate the autonomy of the Social Security Fund
increase the retirement age by three years (60 for women and 65 for men)
increase the requirements for retirement
transfer millions in Social Security funds to private companies
and various other measures
According to SUNTRACS, one of the project’s objectives is to take money from the insured, put it in private hands, and give the elderly a very poor retirement.
“We will not allow this. We are in our legitimate right to have a promising future, and not the future they want to give us. We are going to resist.” In addition, he called for the solidarity and organization of the Panamanian people in the face of Mulino’s neoliberal onslaught.
For his part, Saúl Méndez, Secretary General of SUNTRACS, said that the bill seeks “to impose the theft of insurance money, increase the retirement age, rob pensioners and workers of their money to give it to the banks. We all want peace, but not the peace of the cemetery, the peace of misery and hunger that they want to impose on us. That is why we need unity, firmness and discipline in the face of this problem.”
A protest outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, February 13, 2025Photo: Jennie Walsh
Hundreds protest outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court as Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign activists attend court
HUNDREDS rallied outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court today to demand the government stop criminalising protest.
The large and noisy protest was held outside the court in support of Palestine marches chief steward Chris Nineham, who had his first court appearance today.
Mr Nineham, also long-standing vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, was violently arrested by police at the end of an entirely peaceful protest for Palestine in London last month.
He has been charged, together with Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal, with breaches of the Public Order Act.
Mr Jamal’s own hearing is next week. His was among 77 arrests made by police at the demonstration.
Demonstrators heard speeches linking the state attack on the right to protest with the overriding issue of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
People take part in a national march for Palestine, supported by more than 150 Irish civil society groups, in Dublin, January 25, 2025
TENS of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators are set to flood the streets of London on Saturday to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
The march and rally comes as the current ceasefire teeters on the brink of collapse, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to resume bombing and US president Donald Trump declaring “let all hell break loose” after Hamas delayed the release of more hostages, citing Israeli violations of the deal.
Protesters will gather at midday on Saturday at Whitehall before marching to the US embassy.
