JACOBIN

APRIL 6. 2025

Even Credit Unions Are in on Banks’ Junk Fee Racket

The credit union motto is “people helping people. ” Yet credit unions, like big banks, collect billions of dollars through excessive overdraft fees — and the Trump administration just made it easier for them to do so.

Unions Need to Mount a Militant Response to Trump’s Assault

Too many unions have responded to Donald Trump’s historic attacks on federal workers with little more than words. To beat back his anti-union assault, organized labor needs to break with decades of timidity.

Spain’s Deputy PM: Workers Have the Power

Spain’s deputy premier Yolanda Díaz has enacted landmark reforms to strengthen workers’ rights. In an interview, she tells Jacobin that “there’s no more powerful force than the workers of the world. ”

APRIL 5. 2025

The Brazilian Left Has Yet to Find a Successor to Lula

Jair Bolsonaro is now awaiting trial on charges of plotting a coup, depriving Brazil’s far-right bloc of its figurehead. Yet with a presidential election due next year, the Brazilian left hasn’t found a candidate who can match Lula’s popular appeal.

The Pentagon Wants Your High Schoolers

Using the enlistment crisis as justification, Project 2025 proposed measures for high schools that blur the lines between career guidance and military recruitment. The Trump administration seems likely to further embed the military in public education.

Elon Musk’s Goal Isn’t Efficiency — It’s a Liquidation Sale

The Department of Government Efficiency isn’t bumbling through an ill-advised reform effort. It’s deliberately sabotaging federal agencies to make way for privatization.

Assessing AMLO: The Presidential Years

Despite powerful enemies at home and in the United States, Mexico’s left-populist former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador managed to not only win power but deliver on his promises to workers and the poor.

APRIL 4. 2025

Tariffs Aren’t Enough to Protect Good Auto Jobs

Automakers have long used the threat of relocating to discipline workers, which has led the UAW to embrace Trump’s tariffs. But tariffs won't solve the problem of competition from nonunion firms nor eliminate management’s ability to exploit nonunion labor.

Florida Republicans Want to Gut the State’s Minimum Wage Law

In Florida, the GOP-dominated state legislature is rapidly advancing a suite of bills allowing employers to underpay sub-minimum-wage workers — including children.

The Scramble for the Arctic Is Just Getting Started

Donald Trump’s efforts to claim Greenland for the US is part of a wider push toward militarization of the Arctic. Conflicts thousands of miles away, like the Russian war in Ukraine, are already having an impact on the peoples of the region.

“Stop the Oligarchs” Is a Winning Message

Americans do not like billionaires throwing their endless money around to buy off whoever and whatever they want. The anti-oligarch messaging pushed by Bernie Sanders against the Trump administration has deep resonance, and we need more of it.

In Germany, Too, Pro-Palestine Protesters Get Deported

Berlin’s city government has moved to deport four pro-Palestine protesters. Even as centrist parties warn against the far-right threat, they introduce the powers beloved by authoritarian leaders.

Trump Promised Free Speech Defense and Delivered the Opposite

Donald Trump told the world that his administration would end the censoriousness of “woke” liberal culture. His time in office has seen one of the worst crackdowns on free speech in recent American history.

APRIL 3. 2025

The Communists Who Told the World About Suharto’s Crimes

After Indonesian dictator Suharto invaded Timor-Leste in 1975, Australian communists set up an illegal radio station, broadcasting reports from the resistance to the world. Their work exposed atrocities — and Australia’s role in hiding them.