If government employees strike Trump will do what Reagan did with the Air Traffic Controllers strike in 1981.
On August 3, 1981, during a press conference regarding the PATCO strike, President Reagan stated: “They are in violation of the law and if they do not report for work within 48 hours they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.” In February 1981, PATCO and the FAA began new contract negotiations.
With DOGE firing federal workers right and left there’s no doubt that striking federal workers would simply be fired.
Wendy
Probably try. The difference (which may not be much) is that air traffic controllers were a small group, maybe 10,000 people, and he had military air traffic controllers ready to step in and do the job.
Of course I’m sure Trump wouldn’t care if 100,000 workers walked off the job with no replacements, but it would throw the country into much greater chaos than it already is. You might actually get the the point where Social Secrity checks wouldn’t go out. Then what?
That’s a darn good question.
I have an acquaintance (friend of a friend) who is an armed Second Amendment fanatic. She likes to quote Jefferson, “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” (Whether Jefferson actually said this is irrelevant since she believes it.)
She happens to not be a Trump supporter but millions of people who rely on Social Security live in red states and many of them are armed.
It isn’t clear how they would rebel. It’s not even clear that many under-educated people realize that their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are paid for by the government.
History shows that militia movements can be very violent and many innocent bystanders (especially the upper middle class) become collateral casualties.
Think big. The employee rights that were just gutted by EO, were Federal law, passed by Congress in 1978. Members of unions in the private sector may realize that, if civil service employee rights can be cancelled by EO, their rights may be cancelled too. What if all union workers in the country struck, citing a “clear and present danger to their rights”. Of course, much of the base seems to be convinced labor unions are somewhere between gangsters and Communists, so not sure how the polling would come out, on support for a general strike.
I was in grad school at that time. One of my classmates had a PATCO hat in her car (from her husband) I tried to talk her into giving me that hat, but nope.
The Oklahoma City bombers had connections to the “Michigan Militia”, but none of the members here in Michigan were prosecuted. Members of the “Hutaree Militia” in south central Michigan were charged with plotting a mass murder of police officers. Whether it was the liquor talking, or the FBI jumped the gun on the arrests, I don’t know, but they were acquitted. Members of another nutter militia, the “Wolverine Watchmen” were charged with plotting to kidnap and murder the Governor of Michigan. Nine were convicted on various state or federal charges and went to prison.
If any shooting starts it’ll be people on people, which might be the bigger plan.
On a more positive note, with voting restrictions increasing, to include proof of citizenship, passports, and such, would the election skew more liberal, because… oh, nevermind. Wishful thinking.
I think having that sort of documentation in hand would skew toward traditional “nuclear” families, and higher income levels, who retain that sort of information. My RS in Grand Rapids was in a semi-sketchy neighborhood. There was a woman in my store one day that started telling me how she has three or four kids, by three different men, and thought that was great. That was 40 years ago. She would probably be in her 80s today, if still living. I wonder if those kids of hers have good paperwork in hand, or if they have a clear idea of the name of their father and their place of birth, so they know where to go for a certified birth certificate? In Michigan, birth records are kept at the county level, so you really need to know where to look. A mother that moved around a lot, and/or had a lot of partners, or used IVF a lot, is going to create record search problems for their spawn,