The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second largest teacher’s labor union in America (the largest being the National Education Association), is a member of a coalition that filed three lawsuits against the new Trump administration on Inauguration Day.
The lawsuits claim that Trump’s proposed new agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is “violating laws that require federal advisory committees to be open to the public and to include a diversity of viewpoints.”
Trump named the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy as co-chairs of DOGE, which has said will work outside government and advise officials inside the new Trump administration on ways to drastically cut federal spending. Musk originally said his goal with DOGE is to cut $2 trillion dollars from the nearly $7 trillion federal budget, a goal he has since walked back as being ambitious.
We're part of this new lawsuit because DOGE must come out of the shadows & comply with the law before the sweeping, self-serving plans of billionaires upend the federal government and cause irreparable damage in the lives of working people. https://t.co/td5mRdh1pm pic.twitter.com/GJr1IZEC1R
— Randi Weingarten 🇺🇸💪🏿👩🎓🟣 (@rweingarten) January 20, 2025
AFT president Randi Weingarten wrote in a New York Times op-ed this weekend: “Slashing essential programs for Americans with the greatest needs to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires would be a monumental betrayal of the people who voted for Trump.”
She complained on X: “Yesterday the billionaires and Big Tech leaders partied for Trump while thousands of people in DC—and in cities across the country—held rallies to protect democracy and freedom. The people in the streets; the billionaires partying.”
Note: The other nonprofit organizations in the coalition suing the Trump administration include the American Federation of Government Employees, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
During the inauguration ceremonies, toward which tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos each donated $1 million and are attending, Musk shared an image of Trump’s former Twitter account (which, before Musk bought the site, was permanently suspended “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021) and his new POTUS 47 account on the renamed X. Musk wrote: “The Return of the King.”
The Return of the King pic.twitter.com/CjaRrXH7k9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 20, 2025
