Oaklandsocialist Labor Day poster. Make Unions Great Again. MUGA can crush MAGA.

First Los Angeles. Then Washington DC. Next up Chicago. These are  the first targets for Trump sending troops out into the streets.

Trump’s first term
To understand what this is really all about we have to look back at the last time Trump was president. On two separate occasions – once during the George Floyd protest and then after he lost the 2020 election – Trump wanted to declare martial law and send the troops out into the streets. He was only prevented at that time by the fact that “his” generals made it clear they would disobey any such order. Today, “his” generals are truly his. They belong to him and they will follow any orders he gives.

Trump preparing for 2026 elections
His sending troops out into the streets is directly connected to the

Nearly 70% of independent voters disapprove of Big Beautiful Bill

fact that he is slipping badly in the polls and recent local elections have resulted in Republican losses. He is even underwater in key swing states such as North Carolina. His signature piece of legislation – the Big Beautiful Bill – is widely unpopular, and that is before most of its consequences will be felt. In other words, he may lose control over the House and Senate. Trump is preparing to prevent this. He is preparing to establish martial law, just as he tried to do in 2020. If just 10 years ago, somebody had predicted something like that for 2024. I would’ve told them that they were being hysterical. No longer.

Labor’s response
So with that in mind, and with Labor Day coming up, a few days ago I started looking at some of the websites of some different unions. I looked at the websites of local unions in Los Angeles and in Washington DC. I looked at the websites of local labor Federation in those areas and elsewhere. I looked at the website for the unions international as well as for the AFL-CIO. I would like to say that I wanted to see what they had to say about this situation, but that wasn’t true. In fact, I suspected that they would have nothing to say about it, and I was right. Even today, when Illinois governor JB Pritzger and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson

Web site of Chicago Federation of Labor. Like the rest of the union leadership, they are silent about the unprecedented threat of possible martial law.

are publicly responding to Trump’s threat to Chicago, both the Chicago Labor Federation and the Illinois Labor Federation are silent on the issue. Can you understand this? Here we have a realistic possibility of a president in effect, establishing martial law in Chicago, and the only mass organizations of the US working class are silent as a church mouse on the issue.

Labor Day
I went to two different labor organized rallies on Labor Day, the one in San Francisco and the one in Oakland. In part, I did it to distribute the leaflet that I had printed up and to carry this poster. But I was also curious to see what would be said about it at those rallies. As usual, I did not listen to all of the speeches, which were really just a bunch of hoo ha about how labor is going to fight, denunciations of the “billionaires” how we are going to stand with our immigrant sisters and brothers, etc. so maybe I missed something, but from what I heard there was no comments about Trump sending troops into the US streets. I looked around at the different signs that had been printed up and none of them mentioned it either. I will admit that there were some very fearsome chance such as “say it once. Say it twice. We are not afraid of ICE.” I am sure that all of this will really intimidate Trump.

Let us be clear what is happening: the Democrats’ entire strategy is geared to the belief that they can defeat the Republican candidates in 2026. Trump‘s entire strategy is also geared to that possibility. That is why he is testing the waters for putting troops in the streets, which means moving towards martial law, now. In 2020 he floated the idea of doing that after he had lost the election. Now he is preparing to do that before such a loss.

Labor Day 2025 in San Francisco. The plan is for one and done. Have a nice rally and then come back next year.

I talked with quite a few union members at the two different labor rallies. Most of them were the left activists that generally populate such events, those who could be called the soft left. I made the point “they are saying where are the Democrats? But that is not the question to me. The question is ‘where are the unions?’ Sure, we have this one nice labor rally today, and what will happen next? The plan is to have another nice labor rally on Labor Day next year. By then it may well be too late.” Then I explained how I could not find a single union website that even mention the threat of martial law. All the people that I spoke with agreed this is a genuine threat. But there was no indication that they will organize to make their unions take up this fight.

Oaklandsocialist Labor Day leaflet

So we can go to these nice rallies, chant, our lungs out that “everywhere we go people want to know who we are so we tell them we are the union the mighty mighty union.” And we can come away, feeling very satisfied, feeling very righteous and holy. But if there is not a rebellion from below, including a rebellion from within the ranks of the union movement to make the unions stand up to Trump and actually fight for all workers, if that does not happen things are going to get very ugly very quickly. A lot uglier than they have already.

For more on how a real fightback can develop, see this article on The unspoken questions standing over the Mamdani Movement.