Trump floating head with text "project 2025" witth purple and red background

Andrea Austria/Media Matters

Research/Study Research/Study

Fox praises “pro-worker” Trump despite his anti-overtime record

Trump proposed eliminating taxes on overtime, but his administration restricted overtime protections

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published

During his first term as president, Donald Trump worked to repeal expanded overtime protections implemented by his predecessor, and his Department of Justice chose not to contest a federal judge’s decision to strike down an Obama-era rule that would have extended overtime pay to over 4 million more Americans. 

The Trump-aligned Project 2025, which was created to serve as the blueprint for his next presidential administration, also includes numerous proposals to further restrict overtime pay and protections for American workers.

Yet now Fox News is promoting his supposedly “pro-worker” announcement that he will move to eliminate taxes on overtime pay if reelected. 

News organizations shouldn’t fall for Trump’s gimmick.

Select a section

  • Fox News hyped Trump’s announcement as “pro-worker”

    • Fox contributor and former Trump Treasury official Monica Crowley on the proposal: “Very pro-worker, as Donald Trump has been throughout his political career, certainly as president.” Crowley continued: “You know, Donald Trump deserves a lot of credit for coming up with creative, innovative, out-of-the-box new policies like no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, and now no tax on overtime. It's all of a piece of a Trump pro-growth economic agenda that he put forward in the first term of tax cuts, regulatory relief, unleashing our great energy sector, and striking fair-trade deals for the American worker. He puts the forgotten men and women first. This is America first. It's all part of an Americans first policy, and he's going to do it again.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 9/12/24]
    • Project 2025 contributor and conservative economist Stephen Moore on Fox’s Hannity: “If you work extra hours, you're going to get a little bonus from Trump.” Moore added: “I had not heard about this policy, but I think it's kind of a neat policy. I think people are going to really like it.” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/12/24; The Guardian, 2/29/24]
    • Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones said the policy will benefit “everyday people.” Co-host Ainsley Earhardt, introducing a discussion of Trump’s announcement, said: “Many of the people here at Fox work overtime. Many people in your industry work overtime.” Jones said, “He is baiting the Democrats right now. … They keep saying that he is for the billionaires class. That he is for the tax cuts for the rich. And every single time they do that he responds with policy that affects everyday people.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/13/24]
    • Fox Business host Taylor Riggs: “I think that this is … another good plan for him to really appeal to that blue collar worker.” Riggs added: “Less taxes is always good for everyone. Right? We already pay the government way too much money in wasteful spending that they use it on. … Overall I do think maybe it’s helpful for the worker.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/13/24]
    • Fox Business framed Trump’s announcement as a plan “to help ease the financial burden on working Americans.” [Twitter/X, 9/13/24]

  • As president, Trump moved to repeal and failed to defend a regulation that would have expanded overtime protections to more than 4 million workers

    • The Obama administration issued a rule extending overtime protections to an estimated 4.2 million more American workers, doubling the salary threshold from $23,660 to $47,476 per year. [Obama White House Archives, 5/17/16]
    • After a federal judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration refused to defend it. [The Hill, 9/5/17]
    • The Trump administration also took steps to undo the Obama overtime rule on its own. In July 2017, Reuters reported that the Trump administration was pushing “forward with its bid to undo an Obama administration rule to extend mandatory overtime pay to 4.2 million workers and said it was considering treating workers differently based on location and industry.” It further reported that Trump’s Labor Department had “called for public comments on the rule, which is the first step in revoking or revising it.” Reuters also reported that “the department said it was considering eliminating the salary threshold, leaving overtime eligibility to be based on workers' job duties.” [Reuters, 7/25/17]
    • The Trump administration released a new rule years later that extended overtime protections for only an estimated 1.3 million American workers, less than a third of the workers covered by the Obama rule. The Trump rule raised the salary threshold for overtime protections to $35,568 per year, 25% lower than under the Obama rule. [U.S. Department of Labor, 9/24/19]
    • The Biden-Harris administration unveiled a rule extending overtime protections to 4 million more American workers. The rule raises the salary threshold to $58,600 per year, and will automatically increase it every three years. [Reuters, 4/23/24]

  • The Trump-aligned Project 2025 has multiple proposals to reduce overtime pay for American workers

    • Project 2025 proposes to encourage workers to take vacation instead of time-and-a-half compensation, which could result in employers coercing workers into “voluntarily” selecting vacation that they’re either formally or informally prohibited from taking. At least 40% of lower- and middle-income workers already don’t use all their allotted paid time off. [Media Matters, 7/9/24]
    • Project 2025 also recommends changing how the overtime threshold is calculated, which would likely result in management eliminating overtime altogether through shift scheduling manipulation. Project 2025's authors recommended that employees and management agree to change overtime calculations from a one-week period to a two-week or one-month period, which could allow managers to move hours around in ways that avoids accumulating overtime during a work period. [Media Matters, 7/9/24] 
    • Another attack on overtime from Project 2025 comes in the form of allowing workers to negotiate away time-and-a-half pay in exchange for noncompensation benefits like “predictable scheduling.” In effect, this could incentivize predatory scheduling to coerce workers to give up overtime. [Media Matters, 7/9/24]
    • Project 2025 proposes reverting new overtime protections implemented under the Biden-Harris administration to the lower Trump-era salary thresholds for overtime pay, “which would mean stripping away overtime from millions.” [Economic Policy Institute, 9/9/24]
    • Project 2025 calls for Congress to change labor law to deny remote workers overtime pay unless they work at least 10 hours on a given day. [Economic Policy Institute, 9/9/24]