Tech News
The leader of a major government union outlines their strategy to battle Trump federal cuts—And says Elon Musk has ‘no clue’ about workers

The second Trump administration has been characterized in large part by a focused effort to cut down the number of federal employees.
Through the Office of Personnel Management and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the president has used highly unusual resignation offers and layoffs to shrink the workforce across agencies including the Department of Education and the Department of Veterans Affairs. There’s no official number on how many people have been laid off, but 62,530 government positions have been cut so far this year, according to data published earlier this month from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas. There are likely more cuts to come.
Unions have played a major role in legal challenges to the mass firing of federal workers. On Thursday, two separate rulings came down ordering the Trump administration to reinstate these terminated employees. One ruling in response to 20 Democrat attorneys general calling for the reinstatement of fired workers came from a federal judge in Maryland. The other was issued by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in response to a case brought by dozens of labor unions and advocacy groups. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered that six federal agencies reinstate thousands of probationary employees that were fired under the guidance of OPM, a move he declared illegal. The Trump administration has already filed an appeal in that case.
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) was one of the plaintiffs in that second challenge. The union represents 1.4 million public service workers across the country in federal, state, and local government, as well as the nonprofit sector. AFSCME’s president, Lee Saunders, spoke with Fortune about the threat that public sector workers are under, what his members are feeling, and how the union plans to fight back.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Fortune: What are AFSCME members feeling right now?
President Saunders: They’re feeling under attack. They believe in the importance of public services, and yet you see them being attacked every single day by this current administration.
They’re frightened, but they also know that they’ve got to make their voices heard and they’ve got to fight back, and that’s exactly what they’re doing. Their union is supporting them 100% by talking about the importance of public service, and challenging some of the things that this administration is doing, and whether it’s in the courts, or whether it’s in the media, or whether it’s on the streets. We’re going to continue to do that to make our point and get our point across.
AFSCME is one of the plaintiffs in the case which was just ruled in favor of reinstating fired probationary federal workers. Many are seeing this as a win for federal workers, but that ruling does not affect this week’s deadline set by the Trump administration requiring all agencies to send the president and the OPM plans for more layoffs. What could the future look like for these workers?
This is a huge victory for these workers.
It will be challenged, but we’re going to continue to put the full force of the union behind filing these kinds of lawsuits. That’s really important, but we’ve also got to go on offense and not play defense all the time, and we’re going to continue to do that. What we’re doing right now is organizing and mobilizing and educating our members across the country by having phone calls, by going to town hall meetings.
One of the things that we’ve got to do is continue to organize. Seventy percent of Americans believe that unions are absolutely necessary in this country and 88% of young people [view them favorably]. We’re going to spend resources, and we’re going to be talking to workers, asking them to be represented by us or other unions so they have a seat at the table.
It feels like every day there is a new development related to the DOGE layoffs. How would you advise people to keep track of the whirlwind of actions?
I think it’s up to AFSCME and the labor movement and our allies and friends to continue to talk about what this administration is trying to do to hurt working people. We’ve got to enlist people within the labor movement and outside the labor movement to make their voices heard. We cannot just sit idly by and be silent when this destruction—and that’s exactly what this is—is taking place at the federal level, [which will] roll down to the state and local level, with possible huge cuts in federal programs. State governments rely on federal money to fund programs at the state level; they get about 33% of [their revenue] from the federal government. That helps provide public services at the state, city, and local level.
It’s all about continuing to educate. It’s all about asking [workers] to not be silent, but to make their voices heard and to fight back like never before.
[When asked for comment, a spokesperson for the White House told Fortune: “President Trump returned to Washington with a mandate from the American people to bring about unprecedented change in our federal government to uproot waste, fraud, and abuse.”]
Elon Musk reposted a Tweet implying that public sector workers were responsible for mass murders under people like Hitler, Mao and Stalin. What do you make of this comment, and the attacks on public sector workers generally?
I will try to control my language, but… it is a hateful comment for him to [retweet] that and compare our public sector workers and our members saying that “Hitler, Stalin and Mao didn’t murder millions, but [their] public sector service workers did.” Now just think about that. That’s where he’s coming from, and we’ve got to get that message out.
He has no clue what workers are faced with every single day. He has no clue what they do to improve the lives of our citizens in our communities across the country and to improve upon public services, yet he makes a statement like that. I mean, it is unbelievable, and we’ve got to make sure that people understand that this is what he is saying, and this is what folks in this administration believe.
[Fortune reached out to Elon Musk but did not get a response.]
How can unions protect workers if the government wants to fire them?
We’re filing these lawsuits—that’s number one. We are pushing even though we understand that the climate here in Washington, D.C. is not the best. But we’ve still got to continue to go on the offense, as I said earlier. We are supporting the PRO Act, which would give workers the right to have a seat at the table to improve labor labor law in this country. We’re doing the same thing with the Public Freedom to Negotiate Act for public service workers.
We have the ability to mobilize every single day—to mobilize union members, but also workers who aren’t in unions in our communities across the country. Because this is impacting them too. The actions that are being proposed have an impact on everyone that relies upon public services: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. All of these programs are under attack, and we’ve got to do what we do best, and that’s exactly what we are doing.
This narrative against public sector workers has come on quickly and strongly. How do you combat the sentiments coming from those with huge platforms like Trump and Musk?
It’s not only federal workers. It really is all workers. There’s an attack on all workers right now. I guess the way that I can answer that question is that reality is now hitting people in the face. I mean, they’re feeling it. People are being laid off indiscriminately. People are being fired. Their rights are being taken away from them. Services that the American people relied upon are being cut, and they’re proposing to do a lot more damage. So I mean, here’s the playbook that they talked about, and now they’re putting in an action, and we’ve got to make sure that people understand the impact that it’s going to have on them and their families. You’ve got to react to it in a way where we ask people to fight back and to make their voices heard. You cannot sit by silently and watch this happen.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
Bessent not worried about market, calls corrections healthy

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, said he’s not worried about the recent downturn that’s wiped trillions of dollars from the equities market as the US seeks to reshape its economic policies.
“I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy, they are normal,” Bessent said Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press. “I‘m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great.”
The selloff that took the S&P 500 Index into a correction last week came amid investor concerns about the economic effects of the Trump administration’s moves around tariffs, immigration and cuts to the federal government. Losses in equity markets have deepened with mounting growth concerns and souring consumer sentiment.
“We are putting the policies in place that will make the affordability crisis go down, inflation moderate and as we set the sails I am confident that the American people will come our way,” said Bessent, who ran Key Square Group before joining the administration.
As the scope of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy broadens, consumers across the political spectrum have become increasingly concerned that the extra duties will lead to higher costs. Global tariffs are now in place on steel and aluminum and there’s an April 2 deadline pending for even broader levies.
Read More: Here’s a Running Tally of Trump’s Tariff Threats and Actions
While inflation cooled last month, any sustained pickup in price pressures risks causing households to limit discretionary purchases.
In the interview, Bessent said the American Dream isn’t contingent on being able to buy cheap goods from China. Families instead want to afford a home and see their children do better than they are.
“It’s mortgages, it’s cars, it’s real wage gains,” he said.
As questions about the US economy build, Federal Reserve officials are due to meet this week. Fed Chair Jerome Powell emphasized earlier this month that the central bank doesn’t need to be in a hurry to cut rates but he will likely be pressed about the uncertainty and risks emerging.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
Trump administration deports hundreds as judge orders their removals be stopped with planes already in the air

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.
In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said the immigrants “had already been removed from U.S. territory” when the written order was issued at 7:26 pm.
Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.
“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.
“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.
The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.
The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.
A Justice Department spokesperson on Sunday referred to an earlier statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi blasting Boasberg’s ruling and didn’t immediately answer questions about whether the administration ignored the court’s order.
Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”
Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.
The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.
Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.
The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.
The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights
The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn’t announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn’t be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.
“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.
The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they’d be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.
Boasberg barred those Venezuelans’ deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.
The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.
He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.
“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg said, “there’s little I could do.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
This US-based company warns revenue could suffer from ‘anti-American sentiment’ amid trade war backlash

- Beyond Meat recently flagged the risk that “anti-American sentiment” could hurt sales if it loses customers in other countries or faces other forms of retaliation that affect its sourcing and manufacturing. That’s as US tariffs trigger a global backlash against American products.
Beyond Meat, a producer of plant-based meat substitutes, recently warned that its status as a US company could hurt sales amid an international backlash against President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
The El Segundo, Calif.-based company filed a 10-K annual report with the SEC earlier this month that included a section on risk factors.
In regulatory filings, such sections are often a laundry list of a wide universe of potential headwinds, with some more likely than others. Beyond Meat’s flagged the possible risks associated with epidemics, natural disasters, severe weather, civil strife, war, terrorist activity and other geopolitical tensions.
It also mentioned Trump’s tariffs and plans for retaliation by US trade partners like Canada, saying the company may have to raise prices, increase inventory levels, or find new sourcing for products that it imports.
“There is no assurance that we would be able to pass on any cost increases, in full or at all, to our customers, and/or we could lose customers in countries such as Canada due to anti-American sentiment, any of which could materially affect our revenue, gross margin and results of operations,” Beyond Meat warned.
Any trade wars that feature “buy national” policies or other forms of retaliation against US tariffs could hurt the company’s supply chains, prices, demand, and macroeconomic markets, the filing added.
For example, Beyond Meat sources almost all of its pea protein from Canada and manufactures some of its products there.
“We cannot predict future trade policy and regulations in the United States and other countries, the terms of any renegotiated trade agreements or treaties, or tariffs and their impact on our business. A trade war could have a significant adverse effect on world trade and the world economy,” it said, noting that uncertainty on trade policy can also impact consumer confidence and spending.
The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.
To be sure, Beyond Meat’s sales had previously been in a slump before Trump returned to the White House as demand for meat substitutes waned more broadly.
But sales had recently started to turn around. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 4% to $76.7 million, marking the second consecutive quarter of annual growth, the company said last month.
Still, the backlash against US products is real, from alcohol to cutting-edge weapons. Canadians are pulling bottles of American liquor off shelves, and sales of Tesla cars are collapsing in Europe as CEO Elon Musk interjects himself in national elections and becomes more closely associated with Trump’s policies.
Even the F-35 stealth fighter is not immune. NATO allies Canada and Portugal are now having second thoughts about buying the fighter from the US and are taking a look at European alternatives.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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