“I’m a federal worker, and I feel like a canary in the coal mine right now—because what they’re doing to us is going to happen to the entire American public.” That’s how Chris Dols, who works for the US Army Corps of Engineers and is the president of a local chapter of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, began his video response to Elon Musk’s instantly infamous Oval Office press conference last week.

Dols is right: Musk’s attacks on federal employees and their unions aren’t just a threat to the specific workers in his current line of fire. They pose an unparalleled danger to every single American.

Trump’s mission is simple: to exert authoritarian control over all branches of the federal government. To do that, he can’t merely fire the people at the top of government agencies. He needs workers at all levels of government who will put his wishes ahead of everything else, including the law. And to do that, he has to break the back of the federal employee labor movement.

That’s why Trump has unleashed Musk to take a wrecking ball to piece after piece of the government under the guise of trying to increase efficiency. The organized power of federal workers is the main obstacle to MAGA’s looting of public services and consolidation of authoritarian rule. The stronger they are, the harder it is for Trump to fully impose his agenda on American society.

Just as ominously, Trump and Musk are using these attacks to wage an ideological assault on the very principle of public services. Dols’s response to Musk expressed this clearly: “Everything public is under attack. The entire public sphere is under attack by a handful of billionaires behind Donald Trump.… Are you trying to do this for the American people, or are you trying to do this for your own gain? I get the feeling you didn’t become the richest person in the world by looking out for others.”

Nobody else is as well positioned as federal workers to halt this administration’s reactionary ambitions. Democratic leaders seem mostly interested in convincing their base that there’s nothing they can do. And while it’s still possible that the courts may pause or rein in some of Trump’s most egregious legal violations, we shouldn’t expect the Supreme Court, a third of which Trump appointed, to check his conduct in any significant way. Besides, courts move slowly. While waiting for legal edicts to come down, Musk can gain de facto control of the entire governmental apparatus, while doing everything possible to decimate public services.

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But by refusing to quit, by refusing to comply with the power grab, and by making a compelling public case for the importance of their services, federal workers can throw a major wrench into Trump’s operations. And by taking their story to the American people through attention-grabbing fights like the day of action taking place across the country today, they can challenge Musk’s disgusting claims that they are “a parasite class.” Only federal workers can convince the American public that MAGA is threatening their Medicare, Social Security, health care, and education, as well as basic safety protections at work and beyond. The following point must be loudly, bluntly, and repeatedly hammered home to the American public: The new administration is threatening you and your family’s ability to get by, all for the benefit of a handful of corrupt billionaires.

Until we can show ordinary Americans that their immediate material interests are being hurt by Trump’s billionaire wrecking crew, the sad reality is that our side will continue to lose. Working-class Americans are not ready to rise up in defense of a political system that they rightly perceive has ignored them for decades.

What’s more, the federal workers’ fight has direct material stakes for all Americans—and this isn’t just because of the vital services they provide.

We’re already seeing the newly Trumpified National Labor Relations Board roll back a host of vital labor protections that workers gained during the Biden administration. If Musk is also able to illegally bust federal unions with little public outcry or broad labor fightback, already-emboldened bosses will take it as a sign that the gloves can fully come off. We saw in 1981 how President Reagan’s firing of striking federal PATCO air traffic controllers sparked an employer offensive in all industries and against all unions. The result? Union memberships plummeted, inequality skyrocketed, and ordinary people’s living standards stagnated. We’re still dealing with the damage today.

The task ahead is to convince nonunion workers that the fight of federal workers is also their fight. Trump is playing with fire, since, contrary to what he now claims, he was not elected with any mandate to decimate public services or unions. Indeed, the popularity of labor unions remains at historically high levels, even among Republicans. But workers outside of progressive echo chambers still need to be convinced that if Musk can terrorize federal employees into submission, every boss in the country will be tempted to run the same playbook: use brutal intimidation tactics and mass layoffs to dramatically cut their workforces, obliging those who remain to work more for less.

The new administration’s witch hunt against federal employees has left many scared to speak out, a hesitancy exacerbated by legal restrictions on civil service employees’ free speech. This fear can be overcome, as the administration’s attacks deepen, as a minority of federal workers begin speaking out, and once public opinioncontinues to shift against the new administration. Always attuned to his popularity, Trump is surely measuring the extent of pushback against Musk’s wrecking-ball operation. Trump’s main instinct is forself-preservation, not ideological crusading. That’s why if enough people turn against Musk, then there’s a good chance the president could throw him to the wolves.

But if there’s only mild resistance when the new administration attacks a big powerful opponent like federal unions, this will encourage deeper power grabs, further efforts to destroy public services, and even harsher attacks against those with fewer resources: immigrants, trans people, Palestine activists, and leftists.

The good news is that federal workers are surging into their unions. Over 14,000 workers have joined the American Federation of Government Employees in the past five weeks, nearlytotaling the number who joined in the previous 12 months. As the labor movement saying goes, sometimes “the boss is the best organizer.” Through worker-to-worker organizing and high profile actions like February 19, federal workers can deliver the new administration its first big setback.

It’s hard to exaggerate the stakes. By standing up in large numbers to defend federal workers and their services, we can isolate and eventually defeat Musk and Trump. If we don’t, we could be living with the consequences for a long, long time to come.