International Workers Day on May 1 commemorates the great labor struggles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when workers fought and died for decent wages and working conditions.

The militant energy of the early labor movement, long dormant in the United States, has been making a comeback recently as Americans chafe at economic instability, the destruction of health care and other basic rights and protections, and recoil from a government dedicated to further enriching billionaires at the expense of working people. Add to that the campaign of terror the Trump administration has launched against immigrants who do much of the manual labor in this country and the violent repression of the neighbors who try to protect them, and it’s starting to feel like 1886.

On Friday, May 1, labor unions and immigrants rights groups are coming together to organize mass walkouts in more than 3,000 cities across the U.S. “No work. No school. No shopping” is the tag line for the national campaign, joined in Wisconsin by Madison Teachers Inc., the Southcentral Federation of Labor, and myriad civic groups. 

This week’s protests grow out of “A Day Without Immigrants,” the May Day general strikes that began 20 years ago to oppose Wisconsin U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s federal bill that proposed making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime punishable by mandatory prison sentences. For the first time, in those May Day protests, “you saw largely Latino immigrant, working-class families … with grandparents and baby strollers, coming out in this peaceful wave of mass marches,” recalls Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, the Milwaukee-based immigrant workers’ rights group. “It really was like an earthquake, and it shelved that terrible bill and put the conversation of immigration reform back on the table.”

This year, national labor unions are showing up for the May Day actions in a big way. That’s inspiring, because it’s clear that massive resistance from a broad, working-class movement is what it’s going to take to stop the brutal repression and outright theft of public resources by the current regime.

“Workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights are the same,” Andy King, managing director of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) said on a May Day press call this week. His group’s May Day demands include no more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, and stopping the construction of megawarehouses for the mass detention of human beings. 

The fear-mongering about immigrants coming from the Trump administration is not an accident, Neumann-Ortiz said during the same call. “It’s a strategy to divide us, to scapegoat and to distract from the real challenges working families face, and in particular, the growing control of our economy by billionaires.” She talked about the heartbreaking case of Elvira Benitez, a mother of three from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, who was arrested by ICE during a routine check-in after she was approved for a green card. Now she’s sitting in detention in Kentucky, and her youngest daughter is under medical supervision for suicidal thoughts related to the traumatic experience of being separated from her mom, Neumann-Ortiz said.

She also highlighted the case of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a legal permanent resident, who was detained by ICE in what appears to be a retaliatory arrest for his political speech defending Palestinian rights. 

A secretive police agency that whisks people away in order to silence dissent should worry all of us. “And these are not isolated cases, as we know,” Neumann Ortiz said. “It’s a system.”

Deaths in ICE custody have hit a new record since the beginning of Trump’s second administration. Yet the federal government plans to expand warehouse detention to house more than 92,000 people. Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition told reporters on FIRM’s May Day press call, “our state has become ground zero for a system that warehouses human beings for top dollar, makes jokes and merch at their expense, where suffering is hidden and accountability is absent.”

“Shut down these disgusting warehouses and choose a path rooted in care,” she demanded.

What is happening to our country? What will it take to wake people up?

During the same week I listened to activists planning the May Day walkout, my phone rang and an automated voice informed me that Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was holding an impromptu “telephone town hall” in the middle of a weekday afternoon. I stayed on and listened to Johnson tell his constituents that he favors eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security without the guardrails Democrats are seeking for ICE and Border Patrol. We’re living in too “dangerous” a time not to act immediately, Johnson said, and Congress is “too broken” to make these decisions in a deliberative fashion. That’s why, he explained, now that President Trump is in office and Republicans hold a majority, he has switched his position on ending the minority party’s power to filibuster legislation. Johnson wants to get Democrats out of the way to pass the SAVE America Act, which will severely curtail voting rights on the thoroughly disproven theory that undocumented immigrants are voting in large numbers and swaying U.S. elections. 

Johnson listened approvingly to voters on the call who recycled Trump’s Big Lie that Democrats are stealing elections. He expressed his enthusiasm for RFK Jr. and “progress” on his pet issue — getting rid of supposedly harmful vaccines. Some callers expressed anxiety about the Iran war, with Johnson reassuring them that it was going “perfectly.” One woman swore at him and was disconnected. But the most revealing part of the call came when a caller mentioned that a lot of people are worried about health care — a brewing crisis in Wisconsin where 63,000 people are losing Medicaid coverage because of Trump’s cuts and another 20,000 have dropped their Affordable Care Act coverage because of rising premium costs after Republicans refused to renew ACA enhanced tax credits.

The root cause of the problem with health care, Johnson said, is the government’s involvement. 

“Take a look at Amazon, what that private sector competitor has done to deliver products in hours, sometimes at a really low cost. So private sector consumerism works, but we’ve driven consumerism out of healthcare by having somebody else pay for it,”  he said. His solution? “Move to a rational system of catastrophic care plans, and then most of healthcare paid out of pocket with real consumerism.”

Never mind Johnson’s choice to hold up Amazon as a paragon of business, a company that was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for illegally blocking competition, inflating prices using its monopoly power, and stifling innovation. Never mind the multiple lawsuits brought by its drivers for high-pressure, inhumane working conditions and that unfortunate incident in which a warehouse worker died on the floor while his coworkers were allegedly told by management to ignore him and keep production rolling.

Setting all that aside, how many regular voters in Wisconsin agree that the best way to handle crushing healthcare costs is to make them pay out of pocket for every medication, office visit and procedure?

As Trump’s approval ratings reach a new low and gas prices spike, Johnson’s position that you should cover the full cost of your healthcare out of pocket is unlikely to give Republicans a bump.

The problem in our country is that we seem to have lost the class consciousness that animated the labor movement of the Progressive Era.

Instead, today, we have a right-wing populism that purports to defend the interests of blue collar workers but is, in fact, investing in the immiseration of the vast majority of Americans, the theft of their healthcare, their education, their wages and workplace protections, for the benefit of oligarchs like Johnson, who couldn’t care less if people suffer, sicken and die, so long as he remains rich. 

I don’t think people can put up with this for much longer. The inhumane treatment of regular, hardworking people, the pain and waste of the greed-driven regime we are living with should turn the stomach of every American. 

May Day is a sign of hope. 

WASHINGTON — Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s legal team is urging a federal appeals court to uphold a ruling that allows the former Navy captain to keep his retirement rank and pay while his First Amendment case against the Pentagon moves forward. 

Benjamin C. Mizer, partner at Arnold & Porter, wrote in a brief filed April 15 that the Defense Department violated Kelly’s constitutional rights when it tried to punish him for appearing alongside other Democrats in the “Don’t Give Up The Ship” video. 

The Trump administration’s appeal of the district court’s ruling, he wrote, doesn’t cite “a single case” that has expanded the limited speech rights of active-duty military members to “retirees like Senator Kelly.”

The legal precedent the Trump administration did reference, Parker v. Levy, “involved an active-duty officer directly urging soldiers at his wartime military post to refuse specific orders to deploy and fight,” Mizer wrote. 

“Senator Kelly, by contrast, is a retired officer and legislator who publicly called, alongside other Members of Congress, for adherence to settled law, not defiance of it,” Mizer wrote. 

‘Illegal orders’ video posted in November

Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander, and Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, all Democrats with backgrounds in the military or national security, posted the video at the center of the case on Nov. 18.

They said that Americans in those institutions “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Mizer wrote in his legal brief that “Kelly never told members of the armed forces to refuse any particular military orders. The video did not even identify any specific military orders or operations.”

Mizer added the obligation to refuse clearly illegal orders “is a bedrock of the law of armed conflict.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in January that he would attempt to downgrade Kelly’s retirement rank and pay for his participation in the video, leading the senator to file a lawsuit. 

Senior Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia District Court issued a preliminary injunction in February, blocking that from taking effect while the case progresses through the legal system. 

The Trump administration appealed the preliminary injunction to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which has scheduled oral arguments for May 7.

Karen LeCraft Henderson, nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990; Cornelia T.L. Pillard, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013; and Florence Y. Pan, nominated by President Joe Biden in 2022, make up the three-judge panel that will decide whether to uphold the district court’s preliminary injunction or overturn it. 

DOJ argues discipline at risk

Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate wrote in a 71-page brief filed March 20 the district court judge’s ruling “was gravely wrong and sweeps far beyond Kelly’s suit, calling into question the military’s ability to maintain discipline among servicemembers.”

Shumate added later in the filing that “while retired officers may well have greater speech rights than active-duty servicemembers in some respects, the district court erred in holding that they are indistinguishable from civilians for purposes of First Amendment analysis. 

“The court reasoned that retired officers cannot undermine discipline as significantly as active-duty servicemembers, but that conclusion is unsupportable.”

Shumate contended that the “district court also erred insofar as it suggested that Kelly is entitled to heightened First Amendment protection because he is a Member of Congress. Whatever enhanced speech rights Kelly has in that capacity, they come from other constitutional provisions, not the First Amendment.”

“If anything, Kelly’s role in Congress provides more, not less, reason to hold him as accountable as other servicemembers for counseling disobedience to lawful orders, given that his ‘leadership position’ as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee gives him ‘unique sway over the military,’” Shumate wrote.