YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Retired Ohio public service workers held a “shred day” over the Labor Day weekend to oppose Donald Trump’s Project 2025, his plan to weaken public services and take freedoms away from working people if he wins a second presidential term.
In front of a shredding truck, the speakers — public service retirees from across Ohio’s Mahoning Valley — detailed how Trump’s plan would crush unions, eliminate overtime protections, repeal the $35 cap on insulin for seniors, end negotiations for lower prescription drug prices, and more.
“If Project 2025 is implemented, we all lose. Our communities lose peace of mind that the services they depend on will be there when they need them,” said Helen Youngblood, a member of AFSCME Retirees Chapter 1184 who worked at Mahoning County Jobs and Family Services. “Working families lose peace of mind that the good jobs and benefits they work hard at will be there the next day. We all lose the freedom to get ahead in America.”
Don Hall, a retiree member of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE)/AFSCME Local 4, took Trump to task for seeking to eliminate public service workers’ freedom to join a union.
“I worked my whole career to make sure that the kids of Springfield had a safe place to learn,” Hall said at the Saturday event. “Our union gave us the peace of mind to know that we weren’t going to be randomly fired. It gave us the peace of mind that we would have the freedom to retire after a lifetime of hard work. But Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would destroy public services like education and destroy the unions of public service workers.”
Despite his recent claims to the contrary, Trump has long embraced Project 2025, the 900-plus page blueprint for a second term that was drafted by several of his senior advisers. Trump said Project 2025 works to “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.” Russell Vought, a lead author of the anti-freedom plan, said that Trump “blessed” Project 2025.
The event featured a shredding truck to symbolize the threat to fundamental freedoms —such as the freedom to join a union, access affordable health care, and retire with dignity — that could be taken away from all of us in a second Trump term.
We have written extensively about the various ways in which Project 2025 will harm working people. Read the overview story and our pieces on Project 2025’s impact on retirement security, our health care system, on Medicare, and on public education and the economy.