Over the last few months, right-wing forces in Brazil have seized the opening created by a failing economy and corruption investigations involving all political parties to suspend a democratically elected president. The politicians leading the effort to remove the president are implicated in multimillion-dollar scandals. Ironically, there are no corruption or other criminal charges against the president, Dilma Rousseff.

Each week, we take a look at the biggest friends and foes of labor. We celebrate the workers winning big and small battles, and we shame the companies or people trying to deny working people their rights.

You’re at the bargaining table.

 The lead management negotiator slides over a piece of paper. “You're going to love what I'm proposing," the guy says.

Every week, we'll be bringing you a roundup of the important news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here's this week's Working People Weekly List.

Donald Trump has just blown a giant hole of hypocrisy in his own favorite stump speech. Not only is he an outsourcer himself, he’s also profiting off companies he trashes for doing it—notably Carrier and Oreo. Trump has proven once again that he’s guided entirely by his own interests, not the needs of working people. Investments in the parent companies for Carrier and Oreo are among the many findings by American Bridge in Donald Trump’s financial disclosure report. For 2015, Trump reported between $5,001 and $15,000 in interest from Mondelēz International, the parent company of Oreo. He also reported between $2,500 and $5,000 in interest from United Technologies, which owns Carrier.

The evidence has mounted, and is clearly accepted, that extreme income inequality has grown in the United States over the past 40 years—and by extreme income inequality, I mean a huge imbalance in income growth favoring the top 1% of the population. This is extreme because it is large enough and sufficiently imbalanced growth that it must force a rethinking of economic policies.

During national Infrastructure Week, metro riders in Washington, D.C., were the latest Americans to get an alarming reminder of how badly our infrastructure needs improvement when popular website FiveThirtyEight.com noted that trains in the nation's capitol catch fire, on average, more than four times a week. Scan the local news across the country, in places like Flint, Mich., for example, and you'll see other stories of crumbling infrastructure. These stories of collapsing bridges, trains on fire, and undrinkable water are far from just annoyances, they are a clear sign that the safety and prosperity of America's working people is in danger without massive improvements.

This week, the U.S. International Trade Commission published a damning report about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade and economic agreement between the United States and 11 other countries. The report predicts the TPP will increase the job-killing U.S. trade deficit by a whopping $21.7 billion.  

Have questions about your student loans? Want to know if you can lower your payment or even pay off your loans faster? Having a hard time getting answers from your servicer or finding reliable information on the internet?

Funny, we think candidates who support working people would agree it's becoming harder and harder to afford a middle-class life. Wages simply haven't kept up with the cost of living. 

Yet Donald Trump, who got a boost from dad with a million-dollar loan, thinks our wages are too high already. 

Twelve films, eight cities and four countries comprise the fourth annual Global Labor Film Festival. GLFF is organized by labor film festivals around the world who each screen a labor-themed film of their choice during the month of May, chosen because May 1—International Workers’ Day—is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated unofficially in many other countries.

The shrinking of the middle class in the United States is something that you hear pundits talk about frequently. A new report from the Pew Research Center shows that problem is not just a real one, but one that is widely distributed across the country and is hurting not just the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the Deep South, but also hits nearly every metropolitan area in the country. Most importantly, the study shows that the rise of inequality is one of the key effects of the shrinking middle class.

The release of a $15 minimum wage bill from New Jersey’s Senate Labor Committee is being hailed by the New Jersey State AFL-CIO and other advocates as a powerful step toward lifting an estimated one million New Jersey residents out of poverty. 

CEO pay for major U.S. companies continues to soar as income inequality and the outsourcing of good-paying American jobs increases. Outsourcing has become a hot presidential election topic with candidates calling out corporations that say they need to save money by sending jobs overseas. Meanwhile, according to the new AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch, the average CEO of an S&P 500 company received an annual income of $12.4 million in 2015—335 times more money than the average rank-and-file worker.

According to news reports, the Obama administration will unveil new rules on Wednesday that will make millions more people eligible to receive overtime pay. 

Here are seven things you need to know about the new rules (after the jump).

The ugly reality that people who work in manufacturing have witnessed for years has just been laid out for all to see in new research by the National Employment Law Project and the UC Berkeley Labor Center: Wages in the manufacturing sector have been pushed so low that 34% of all people who work in production are in households enrolled in public safety net programs.

Each week, we take a look at the biggest friends and foes of labor. We celebrate the workers winning big and small battles, and we shame the companies or people trying to deny working people their rights.

Every week, we'll be bringing you a roundup of the important news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here's this week's Working People Weekly List.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch made one of the boldest and clearest statements in support of transgender people by a government official at any level this week:

"Let me also speak directly to the transgender community itself. Some of you have lived freely for decades. Others of you are still wondering how you can possibly live the lives you were born to lead. But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward."

Today, TV reality star and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan to iron out differences between them. While we would give anything to be a fly on the wall during that meeting, we can only speculate about topics of conversation.