La Prensa San Diego Staff 
For those that thought the new incoming administration would take time to settle in before wreaking havoc on Washington, the recent announcements by Donald Trump of his selections for Cabinet heads has already shown the tenor he will take toward working families in America.
Trump’s selection this week of the CEO of Carl’s Jr. restaurants to head the Labor Department should concern hourly workers because Andrew Puzder opposes a higher minimum wage, is against stronger overtime rules, and wants to do away with Obamacare. During Puzder’s time as CEO, his company has paid out millions to settle three class-action lawsuits involving violations of overtime pay laws. Puzder admits his company has spent $20 million on overtime lawsuits in California, and ended
up reclassifying managers as hourly workers as result of the lawsuits. Millions of Latinos work in the restaurant and service industry jobs affected by these wage protections, and their livelihoods now seem under attack.
That puts a fast food guy – an industry that thrives on paying low wages with long hours – in charge of the federal agency that is supposed to enforce labor laws, including minimum wage violations, overtime violations, train workers displaced by globalization, and also track unemployment statistics, which during the campaign Trump dismissed as a “joke” and a “hoax”.
Puzder was also the CEO that created the TV ads featuring Paris Hilton and other models in bikinis, getting hosed down with water or seductively dripping sauces over themselves. His misogynistic approach to advertising seems
like a perfect fit for the Trump administration.
This week Trump also appointed Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Pruitt has sued the EPA on behalf of his state’s oil companies to fight back on pollution reduction efforts. Pruitt denies global warming is a result of man-made pollution from factories and burning fossil fuels. And Pruitt fits right into Trump’s assertion that global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese to make American companies uncompetitive. It now seems China, the world’s largest polluter, will be more aggressive in fighting global warming than us.
Pollution has been shown to disproportionately affect low-income and working families because more of them live and work close to or in high pollution areas. Rolling back environmental laws would adversely affect the health and well-being of millions of workers.
Another appointment Trump made is Linda McMahon to head the Small Business Administration (SBA). McMahon, and her husband Vince, are the founders of WWE pro wrestling. Yes, the fake, over-acted circus posing as competitive wrestling. Linda, Vince, and even Trump himself have been featured in the wrestling ring over the years to help hype their shows.
Linda McMahon may be a multi-millionaire and she is known to have donated millions to Trump’s campaign and charity, but the real danger with her is that her wealth was built by denying overtime to workers, classified employees as “independent contractors” to avoid paying employer taxes and health care, and by suing small businesses to secure her monopoly in the wrestling business. Linda McMahon became rich by punishing small businesses and now she will head the department that is supposed to help foster small businesses and entrepreneurship.
Trump’s choice to be the head of the Department of Education is even more troubling for working class families. Betsy DeVos, a billionaire supporter of Trump’s campaign,
who has worked for 30 years to draw federal funding away from public school in the form of vouchers for private schools. DeVos supports private, religious, and charter schools over public schools. Studies have shown that Latinos and African-Africans have not realized the expected benefits from vouchers in various states, mostly because fewer of these working families can afford the extra costs of private schools beyond the voucher value, as well as the fact that fewer minorities in those private schools creates a sense of exclusion or racism that those students didn’t experience in their home schools.
Private vouchers have performed better from poor Caucasian students then minorities, and draining funding away from public schools further impacts already struggling schools; two more factors that make government funding of private schools worse for Latinos. DeVos will only exasperate, not help, the issues Latinos face in accessing better educational opportunities.
And lastly, Trump’s selection of Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama as U.S. Attorney General sent shockwaves through immigration and civil rights activists. Sessions, whose full name is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, is named after a Confederate General of the Civil War, has made racist statements in the past about immigrants, African-Americans, and Muslims.
Sessions has admitted he called
a white civil rights attorney “a disgrace to his race”, said he thought the Ku Klux Klan “was OK until I found out they smoked pot”, and said the NAACP and ACLU were “trying to force civil rights down the throats of people”. This from the man that will soon enforce civil rights laws, defend or oppose immigration laws, and represent the United States in lawsuits from citizens claiming overreaches of the government.
Trump’s campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and deny Muslims entry into the U.S. would require the support of the Attorney General. Jeff Sessions seems like the perfect partner for Trump’s strong-arm tactics against minorities and immigrants.
We’re only four weeks from the election and, already, the tone of President-elect Trump’s new administration seems to mirror his rhetoric during the campaigns. Many thought he would throttle the divisiveness in his policy positions after the primaries, after his nomination, or, later, after the election.
But it seems Trump is, instead, doubling-down on his attacks on working families and immigrants. Trump could have, and still might, moderate his approaches to the many complex issues he has overly simplified into 140 character tweets.
If not, the next four years could see a wholesale shift in federal policies that could turn hostile toward millions in the U.S., even many that voted from him in hopes of changing the system.
Only time will tell, but the first four weeks seem discouraging so far.