From day one of the Trump administration, two main “enemies” of his administration were made clear: undocumented immigrants and trans people. Together, these groups account for less than 5% of the US population, and yet, the Trump administration is scapegoating trans people and immigrants for the chaos and hardships felt by workers across the country.
Trump has no shortage of virulent lies to spread about these groups—from blaming the catastrophic fires in LA on trans people to characterizing all undocumented immigrants as violent criminals. In his first months as president, Trump has put his outrageous words into action, signing off on a slew of executive orders attacking everything from anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, to birthright citizenship, to the right of trans youth to participate in sports and activities in school.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which is awaiting Senate approval, would remove coverage for gender-affirming care from Medicaid—opening the door for private insurers to do the same. The bill would also add billions of dollars to US spending on border security. Trump’s regime has carried out a brutal crackdown on immigration, including illegally deporting Maryland resident Abrego Garcia to a high-security prison in El Salvador, and attempting to disappear international students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, despite their legal status.
Stop the Scapegoating!
Blaming a small minority of the population to divide the working class is a tried-and-true tactic of the right wing and, in fact, of the billionaire class, who are actually to blame for our suffering under capitalism. Housing and job shortage? Blame undocumented immigrants for taking them. Healthcare costs are up? Blame too much funding being put into gender-affirming care.
Elon Musk’s $400 billion fortune alone could fund an eradication of world hunger for 10 years. Unwilling to provide for the needs of working people, the super-rich distract from their greed and power by fear mongering around the most vulnerable people in society. As a result, trans youth face the threat of being kicked out of their dorms, immigrant children aren’t showing up to school out of fear of deportation, and teachers are facing the pressure to out their trans students, to name just a few examples.
Inventing an “enemy within” is one strategy Trump is using to try to redirect unrest away from his administration as crises escalate. This assault on the marginalized is connected to the imperialist standoff with China: the Trump administration invokes an “immigrant invasion” and “gender ideology extremists” to paint a picture of the US under attack from all sides. The goal is to discipline the working class in preparation for war, as well as to consolidate support for Trump’s nationalist policies, such as the redirecting of public funds from social spending to the bloated military industrial complex.
This approach is key for the far right around the world as they seek to chart a way out of capitalism’s crises. Georgia Meloni, the far-right Prime Minister of Italy, and Javier Milei, the far-right president of Argentina, have relentlessly attacked the oppressed. Since attending Trump’s inauguration, Milei followed Trump’s lead in banning gender-affirming care for minors, and Meloni has vowed to follow through with her plans to deport migrants to camps in Albania. These attacks can be pushed back with the power of a mass movement, but without the weight of the working class organizing to shake the system, they will continue.
An Injury to One is an Injury to All
Already, these threats from the Trump administration have been met by working and young people protesting in the streets from coast to coast. In February, over a thousand people in NYC protested for trans rights at Stonewall, the site of the landmark 1969 protest where queer people demonstrated against police raids. Thousands of people in LA blocked a major freeway to protest deportations and over ten thousand marched in Houston, Texas. These are an important start, but not enough—while the Democrats sit back and do nothing to stop these attacks, working people have no time to lose.
We need these struggles to link up in schools, workplaces, and in the streets, in order to build a united mass movement against all of Trump’s attacks. We need a fighting labor movement independent of both political parties that seriously picks up the slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” and puts it into practice with mass strike action. We need a new working-class party that takes up a movement-building approach to winning gains. Ultimately, attacks on immigrants and trans people serve to pit working-class people against each other instead of uniting against the true enemy—the bosses, the billionaires, and their political servants. By building a united struggle around common demands that defend the oppressed and aim at the bosses, we can gain what they fear most—a serious threat to their power.