Labor Notes recently released a guide to help organize for the much-anticipated May Day general strike in…2028. It’s useful information, but as the countdown clock on the site shows, still 937 days away. At the rate the Trump administration is moving, there might not be much left of unions by the scheduled date.

The criminally underreported National Security Presidential Memorandum recently issued by Trump looks to crackdown on a whole range of activities, including actions by workers. We’ve mentioned how the administration’s ICE machine is one of workforce engineering: people out and exploitable workers in.

The administration is also increasingly threatening to use conspiracy law to go after those in opposition to authoritarian capitalism in the US or Israel. Since the assasination of Charlie Kirk, Trump asked the Attorney General to investigate individuals who protested him at dinner, instructing her to “look into that in terms of RICO.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche backed him up, saying such protesters are “part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States,” which justifies Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) investigations.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has also vowed to “dismantle and take on the radical left” through RICO and conspiracy charges.

It might be tempting to dismiss as more of Trump’s bloviating, but the war on the home front seems like one of the few areas where the administration is moving with unified purpose and, unlike the empire’s targets abroad, a foe against which they stand a chance. For all Trump’s faults he knows weakness, and understands all our crumbling institutions can be bought or bullied. RICO is a useful tool against any holdouts, and there are recent examples of it being wielded successfully.

Perhaps the biggest was the RICO charges against Stop Cop City activists in Atlanta (this was a state case that predated Trump 2.0). The charges against the protesters were recently dismissed on jurisdictional grounds — but not before destroying many of their lives.

Trump, despite also being targeted by Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, is eager to use it against others. In Los Angeles an individual was charged with conspiracy for providing face shields to ICE protesters, and pro-Palestinian protesters, animal activists, and anti-fascist counter-protesters have also faced such charges.