Burn all the ladders. Cut all the ropes.

On May 29, the Department of Labor announced a “phased pause” of Job Corps. The 62-year-old program was launched under President Kennedy and survived attempts to kill it under Nixon, Reagan, and the first Trump administration. It has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support, but that's over now.

The motive behind its destruction is the core of what Trump wants for America.

Job Corps helps young working-class people improve their lives. A detailed, long-term analysis concluded that participants were more likely to get additional education, more likely to have higher incomes, and less likely to become involved in crime. One report concluded that "Job Corps is the only federal training program that has been shown to increase earnings for [disadvantaged youths]."

Job Corps is specifically designed to help low-income Americans find the kind of technical training politicians on both sides of the aisle have often claimed America needs so badly. It's never been a huge program, taking in around 60,000 students a year, but over time, it has provided over two million Americans with life-changing skills and experience. That training has also been turned directly into projects that benefit the public at National Parks and other federal facilities.

Which is exactly why this program was specifically targeted by Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and both administrations of Donald Trump. They want it dead.

The same motive that makes Job Corps a target is behind how the "One Big Beautiful Bill" (and yes, that's its official name) makes drastic cuts in student loans.

Various provisions in the bill would reduce Pell grants for low-income students, set lifetime caps on student loans that would make medical school vastly more expensive, end subsidized loans that don't accrue interest while students are still in college, raise monthly student loan payments by hundreds or thousands of dollars per year and eliminate deferments for borrowers who lose their jobs or face other financial hardships.

That motive also drove Trump's executive order that attempted to end collective bargaining rights for over one million federal workers. That order was described as "by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history." In a stroke, Trump's order eliminated 1 of every 15 union-represented jobs in America. He followed this up with orders that weaken collective bargaining rights for all workers and strengthen the hand of corporations.

More than anything else, the same motive is behind the obsessive drive to eliminate anything that even resembles "DEI" anywhere in either public or private space. Trump didn't just act swiftly and harshly to remove DEI programs from the federal government; he has threatened universities, local governments, and even private companies to end every program that might help working-class people, Blacks, Latinos, and women to advance.

Trump team looks to end $37B program designed to help minority business

Two Indiana-based companies, Mid-America Milling Company and Bagshaw Trucking Inc., sued the Department of Transportation in 2023 over the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program

The IndependentMike Bedigan

Yes, racism and misogyny play a huge role in these attacks on DEI. So does the right's ongoing push to use anti-gay, anti-trans fantasies to create a smokescreen around their actions.

But fundamentally, the goal of all these acts is the same: protect the oligarchy by building nearly unbreachable walls between the social classes. They are cutting every rope we might climb. They are burning every ladder. They are doing it in open ways they brag about, and in quiet ways that they shove through in the middle of a 1,018-page bill.

There has never been a greater war on the American dream than the one that Donald Trump and his supporters in corporations, Congress, and the courts are waging at this moment.

Having secured control of the government by billionaires, for billionaires, Trump has made it his biggest priority to see that the one core idea that has defined America in the mind of the world from its inception—that this is a place where anyone can succeed—gets two bullets in the head and another in the heart.

DEI programs weren't created to give women, Blacks, Latinos, and others an advantage; they were made to give them a chance. Trump is all about removing that chance.

Programs that support government use of women and minority-owned businesses aren't being shut down because they actually represent any threat or inequity to companies operated by white men. This is about restoring exactly what those programs were put in place to prevent. They are bringing back the "good old boy network." They are making it not just safe, but mandatory, to funnel government funds into the pockets of the few who already have more than they need.

He and his supporters are following a script that was laid out by Heritage and other Republican 'think tanks' over the last three decades. Make it harder for working-class Americans to get either technical training or advanced education. Shut out women and minority-owned businesses. Drive workers back to the subservient position they had in the previous "golden age" by destroying union protections and collective bargaining.

A functional oligarchy requires that the working class be dependent on the oligarchs. Public services, public land, public programs—those are all the enemies of oligarchies. So is an educated, united workforce. For the oligarchs to not just remain in power but strengthen their hold against any threat, they must build barriers of class and race that keep everyone else down. Keep us divided. Keep us going to them on our knees for the most basic services.

Everything they do comes back to this.

Job Corps isn't under assault because it doesn't work, but because they're afraid that it does. DEI programs are under attack because they know those programs provide opportunities to individuals and businesses not already members of the club. Schools and universities at all levels are being harassed because they are engines of opportunity. Unions are in the crosshairs because oligarchs know there is no greater threat to their hold on power than organized labor.

Trump and his supporters are striking the matches and swinging the knives, but those ropes, those ladders ... are not gone yet. The big, hideous bill hasn't passed, though that's in part because some Republicans believe it's not cruel enough. There is still time to make it clear to your congressmen and senators that you oppose this bill. There is time to flood the streets on July 4 to show the scale of opposition to Trump's agenda.

And there is always time to get out the tools and start building.