Conclusion
Since taking office in Jan. 2025, Trump and MAGA elites in power have ruthlessly pursued a coherent, systematic transfer of power from working people, consumers, minority communities, and the general public to corporations, wealthy donors, and political elites. By defunding agencies (CFPB), stripping them of quorums (NLRB), revoking foundational legal authorities (EPA), weaponizing licensing (FCC), neutralizing enforcement (FEC, OSHA, HUD), rolling back civil rights protections (EEOC), and dismantling oversight institutions (Department of Education), the Trump-MAGA agenda has not merely shifted policy preferences. As promised in Project 2025, Trump/MAGA has structurally dismantled the institutional infrastructure that balanced private power against the public interest. The overwhelming beneficiaries are the wealthy and powerful who least need government protection. The clear losers are average Americans who most depend on it.
One could reasonably call what is happening to us, trickle-up economics and government. If that seems implausible, consider the following examples of what is going on.
The Great Upward Transfer: How Trump and MAGA Policies Shift Wealth and Power from the Public to Elites and Big Corporations
The second Trump administration, guided heavily by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authoritarian blueprint, has systematically weakened, defunded, or captured federal agencies whose core missions protected workers, consumers, minority communities, and the public interest. The net effect is an unprecedented, gigantic upward transfer of power and wealth from ordinary Americans to corporations, billionaires, and political allies.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
On January 27, 2025, Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Board. He also terminated pro-union General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, leaving the agency without a quorum to decide cases. With the Board paralyzed, employers face no federal adjudicator for unfair labor practice charges. The new acting general counsel has moved to rescind Biden-era memos that had expanded protections against non-compete agreements and employer-led captive-audience meetings. A separate executive order stripped collective bargaining rights from over one million federal workers. The result: employers gain leverage, and workers lose their primary federal mechanism for organizing and resolving disputes. (link 1, link 2)
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
Acting Director Russell Vought ordered all CFPB supervision, investigation, enforcement, and rulemaking to cease. DOGE associates shuttered the agency’s Washington offices, and by late 2025 Vought refused to request any funding from the Federal Reserve, threatening to defund the agency entirely. Since its creation, the CFPB had returned more than $21 billion to consumers and served as the sole independent federal enforcer of consumer financial law. Its dismantlement signals open season for predatory lenders and financial fraud. A coalition of state attorneys general has sued to block defunding, pointing out that it amounts to a huge handout by cheating American workers. (link 3, link 4)
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
In February 2026, the MAGA EPA moved to annul the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the legal foundation for all federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. The White House called it “the most significant deregulatory measure in American history”. Throughout 2025, the agency rolled back 31 key environmental rules on clean air, clean water, and climate, revoked California’s vehicle-emissions waiver, and reconsidered wastewater regulations for oil and gas companies under the banner of “unleashing American energy”. The beneficiaries are fossil fuel producers and automakers, while the costs fall on public health and the climate. Rescinding the Endangerment Finding removes the legal basis for most federal greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act. That will lock in higher emissions and make national climate targets impossible to meet. Corporations and wealthy owners will accumulate hundreds of billions per year, while costs to consumers will be tens of billions/year. (link 5, link 6)
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Under MAGA Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC removed net neutrality rules in July 2025 without public comment, stripping the agency of Title II authority over broadband providers. Carr has also weaponized the agency’s licensing power to coerce telecom giants Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T into abandoning DEI programs as a condition of merger and spectrum approvals. This transforms the FCC from a public-interest regulator into an instrument that enforces MAGA authoritarianism and benefits dominant carriers. By giving the largest carriers greater freedom to favor their own services and penalize rivals, while extracting anti‑DEI concessions as the price of regulatory approval, these moves channel additional monopoly/oligopoly revenues and political influence to corporate executives and investors, while leaving citizens with higher prices, fewer choices, and greater vulnerability to viewpoint discrimination online. (link 7, link 8, link 9)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
In January 2026, the EEOC voted 2-1 to rescind its comprehensive 2024 workplace harassment guidance without notice or comment. That move primarily targets protections for transgender and LGBTQ+ workers. Chair Andrea Lucas has declared that “biological sex is binary and immutable,” narrowing the reach of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision. The rollback leaves employers without updated federal guidance and LGBTQ+ workers with diminished recourse against workplace harassment. In essence, MAGA policy has declared open season on LGBQT people, to the delight of anti-LGBQT bigots everywhere! (link 10, link 11)
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
OSHA workplace inspections dropped 20% over a six-month period in 2025 compared to 2024, and the agency lost nearly 300 employees. The administration froze pending regulations including the Heat Injury and Illness Prevention standard, proposed eliminating medical evaluations for respirator users, and sought to exempt “inherently risky” professions from general duty protections. Fewer inspections and weaker rules mean higher injury and fatality risks for workers, while employers enjoy reduced compliance costs. Employers are happy about this wonderful policy. (link 12, link 13)
Concluding remarks: If one does a little searching it is easy to see the same thing happening in every federal agency, just as Project 2025 promised. That includes the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (gutted worker protections), the Securities and Exchange Commission (killed corporate securities regulations and laws), the Federal Trade Commission (gutted anti-trust law enforcement), the Federal Election Commission (further legalization of corruption in elections), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (gutted workplace harassment regulations; the LGBQT community targeted for legalized discrimination and harassment), the DOJ Civil Rights Division (all lawsuits over civil rights violations stopped dead in their tracks), the Internal Revenue Service (nearly all audits of large businesses stopped dead), etc. The list goes on and on just like this.
It is painfully obvious and undeniable that laws and protections for consumers, workers and the environment are being, or have been, gutted or eliminated. Trump and MAGA policies are transferring vast amounts of wealth and power from average citizens, workers and the public interest to wealthy or powerful individuals and businesses. Across the federal government, Trump has canceled 145 enforcement actions against 153 corporations in its first year. 40% of those involved consumer protection violations. Another 18 actions involved worker protection violations. This pattern of gutting enforcement while leaving laws intact constitutes a de facto authoritarian framework where corporate misconduct and law breaking faces no significant federal consequences. Trump and MAGA have declared open season on consumers, workers and the environment.
Q: Are Trump and MAGA elites in power in the federal government working to (1) protect and expand rights and protections for average citizens and democracy, or (2) are they shafting the masses while transferring wealth and power to elite people and businesses in pursuit of a kleptocratic MAGA dictatorship, or (3) something else?
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