For social class bridgers like you, our UU Class Conversations partners, 2025 has been a truly challenging year.
From the start, the optics of tech multi-billionaires standing directly behind Donald Trump during the presidential inauguration made the administration’s priorities abundantly clear. The class metrics of wealth, power and status would trump every other social class characteristic.
We then watched Elon Musk, the wealthiest person on earth, take a wrecking ball through the misnomered Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and effectively gut the six-decades-old U.S. Agency for International Development.
Despite deserved criticism for some of its early neoimperialist policies, USAID’s programs reduced poverty, provided life-saving healthcare, funded education, supported women’s and girls’ rights, and boosted economic stability – all for the world’s most class disadvantaged. Clawing back the $21.7 billion USAID budget (0.3% of total U.S. federal spending) only widened the gap between the world’s social classes, with the top 1% having more wealth, education and influence than the bottom 93%.
Workers
Shortly thereafter, President Trump began issuing Executive Orders (EO) that diminished the livelihoods of working poor, working, middle and even upper middle class workers in the U.S. federal government. More than 300,000 federal workers have been forced out of their jobs. And collective bargaining agreements were canceled for almost 85 percent of the unionized federal workforce, or more than one million workers.1[i] More cuts are planned for 2026 with a focus on open positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs. [ii]
And, according to the Center for American Progress, President Trump’s second term has seen overall employment for workers without college degrees fall by 361,000 jobs. Wage growth has slowed for the same group of workers.
Lack of Affordability
Imposing tariffs on our international competitors, including our allies has increased costs for consumers and businesses, according-to Stephen Moore, cofounder of Unleash Prosperity and a former economic advisor to President Trump. Small business owners, with some in the working and lower-middle class, have been especially hard hit.
Tariffs and other Trump economic policies have made energy, food, transportation, healthcare, etc. more expensive. During summer 2025 Conservatives in Congress passed the administration’s signature legislation, Public Law 119-21, which provides $4.5 trillion in tax breaks primarily for the most class privileged Americans and the largest (nearly $1 trillion) cuts to food assistance, health care, education programs, and student loan services in U.S. history for those with limited class advantage.
At the administration’s behest, the conservative majority in Congress refused to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidie. This is resulting in significantly higher health insurance premiums for millions of non-owning class Americans enrolled in Marketplace plans in 2026.
Other examples of a federal administration focused only on the “needs” of the most class privileged include:
- The Trump administration’s refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein* files until forced by Congress to do so made it clear that the rich and powerful felt they could abuse young women and girls with less class privilege for decades.
- The assault on the environment, environmental justice and sustainability which will hurt everyone but especially people with limited social class. For example, a new AI data power center created by Elon Musk to power the supercomputer Colossus is spewing toxins that are poisoning the air over Boxtown, a Black community with a median income of $37,000.
- Bludgeoning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that were created to begin to provide social class, gender, lgbtq+, racial, differently-abled, ethnic, neurodiverse and other areas of justice – while actively working to erase any mention of historic inequities.
- An assault on educational and nonprofit institutions that the administration believes do not uphold its America First agenda. While some larger Institutions have weathered the storm, smaller ones serving students and clients with limited class advantage have capitulated or lost millions in federal contracts. Even large institutions were forced to close programs that served students of color due to the Trump Administrations mandated funding cuts.
- Unleashing ICE on some of the most vulnerable, class disadvantaged people in the United States.
This is just a handful of the many assaults on class diversity, equity and inclusion that we class bridgers must push back against in 2026.
As Senator Bernie Sanders tell us, “As we enter the new year, our job is clear. We don’t have to accept the Oligarchs’ determination as to what is possible and what is not. We must think big, not small. We must reject status quo politics and economics. We must imagine, and fight for, a world very different than the one in which we now live. We must demand and create a world of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”
What is your congregation doing to support class bridging and class justice?
Share what your congregation is doing in the COMMENTS section below. UUCC wants to amplify your work. Contact us at info@uuclassconversations.org. Let’s discuss scheduling an interview via blog or video to share what you are doing with others in the denomination.
End Notes