{"id":829702,"date":"2025-02-25T12:12:51","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T18:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/25\/the-federal-workforce-resistance-to-donald-trump-is-here\/"},"modified":"2025-02-25T12:12:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T18:12:51","slug":"the-federal-workforce-resistance-to-donald-trump-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/25\/the-federal-workforce-resistance-to-donald-trump-is-here\/","title":{"rendered":"The Federal Workforce Resistance to Donald Trump Is Here"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the 90 years the National Labor Relations Board has been in existence\u2014through the Great Depression, World War II, and up to the current era\u2014no president had ever fired a single Senate-confirmed board member. The reason is simple: Congress didn\u2019t make it easy. Under the National Labor Relations Act, lawmakers long ago decided<\/a> that a \u201cmember of the Board may be removed by the President, upon notice and hearing, for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.\u201d The reason for this provision was to insulate the independent agency and its workings from the whims of politics, if not a mercurial chief executive with little regard for workers and their welfare.<\/p>\n

That uninterrupted streak ended a couple of weeks ago, when, in a late-night email<\/a> purportedly sent on behalf of Donald Trump,<\/strong> Gwynne Wilcox<\/strong>\u2014the former chair of NLRB and one of two Democratic members of the board\u2014was unceremoniously fired for not \u201coperating in a manner consistent with the objectives of my administration.\u201d \u201cIn my judgment, the National Labor Relations Board is not presently fulfilling its responsibility to the American people,\u201d the email read. \u201cThe NLRB wields immense executive power over private employment relationships and relations with unions\u2014an area with vast economic consequences.\u201d (The email was sloppy, as it misidentified Jennifer Abruzzo,<\/strong> the agency\u2019s then general counsel\u2014who was also fired\u2014as a board member.)<\/p>\n

Wilcox, who chaired the labor watchdog until the first week of the new administration, didn\u2019t go quietly into the night. She sued<\/a> the president and Marvin Kaplan,<\/strong> the Republican who succeeded her as chair, and wants a judge to declare the termination illegal and reinstate her\u2014not unlike what the NLRB itself would do on behalf of workers who are victims of unfair labor practices. By law, her term ends on August 27, 2028. And by law, her removal now means there are not enough members for the board to operate as Congress designed it. If that\u2019s not faithless<\/a> execution of the law, then nothing is.<\/p>\n

Something that goes unsaid in Wilcox\u2019s lawsuit, but is evident to anyone who watched Wilcox talk about her firing<\/a> on CBS News, is that she\u2019s the first Black woman to lead the NLRB. One former employee at the agency told me they found her case and her stance inspiring. Why Trump went after her and not the other<\/a> Democratic appointee on the board, a white man, is in the eye of the beholder\u2014and part and parcel with the administration\u2019s obsession with getting rid of decades-old policies to ensure a vibrant, diverse workforce that looks like the people who are served by it.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Wilcox told me that people in and outside the NLRB are rallying behind her, but noted that the litigation was not just about her, but about the agency and the structure set up by Congress to protect working people. \u201cIt\u2019s not just solely for myself, but we need to be able to do our job,\u201d Wilcox said. \u201cAnd the agency is the vehicle by which employees can be protected under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

One wrinkle in her lawsuit, which is telegraphed in the termination notice she received, is that the Trump administration is all but certain to urge the Supreme Court to declare the removal protections Congress gave to appointees like Wilcox unconstitutional. During the first Trump administration, the Supreme Court did exactly that with the removal protections<\/a> for the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau\u2014another agency Trump-acolytes Russ Vought<\/strong> and Elon Musk<\/strong> are dead set on destroying<\/a>\u2014and doing the same to the NLRB is simply the next shoe waiting to drop.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough Ms. Wilcox has no desire to aid the President in establishing a test case, she is also cognizant of the fact that, if no challenge is made, the President will have effectively succeeded in rendering the NLRA\u2019s protections\u2014and, by extension, that of other independent agencies\u2014nugatory<\/a>,\u201d her lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

In other words, Wilcox is standing up for the world we live in today,<\/em> not the world as the Trump administration and the Supreme Court may one day wish it to be. As her lawyers put it in a separate filing urging an expedited ruling in her favor, docketed<\/a> on Monday, the endgame here is for our current rulers \u201cto adopt a new, more aggressive vision of presidential power that would effectively abolish independent agencies in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal civil servants, who in normal times simply keep their heads down and do their jobs in their respective corners of the government, take an oath<\/a> to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to \u201cwell and faithfully discharge the duties of the office\u201d on which they are about to enter.<\/p>\n

Consistent with that duty, they have begun to protest and resist the lawlessness they\u2019ve encountered during the first month of the second Trump administration\u2014both in and outside formal legal channels. Sometimes even in defiance of gag orders<\/a>. During this uncertain period, many of them were revulsed by the bizarre \u201cFork in the Road<\/a>\u201d directive offering them a so-called \u201cdeferred resignation program\u201d\u2014under which the Office of Personnel Management, essentially the human resources arm of the executive branch, has pinky-promised them seven months\u2019 worth of their taxpayer-funded salary plus benefits in exchange for no work.<\/p>\n

In response, among other urgent actions, a group of civil servants got their heads together and organized a public letter<\/a> addressed to their confused and distraught colleagues dispersed throughout the government, counseling them to not buy into what one local union leader said<\/a> \u201chas all the markings of a scam.\u201d (As has been widely reported, the offer is nearly identical to what Musk offered Twitter employees when he bought the company.) More to the point, the letter aims to make clear that accepting the offer would undermine federal workers\u2019 oaths and put them in the same law-free zone the president inhabits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United States needs a lawful, committed, and non-partisan civil service to deliver critical services and act as a bulwark against corruption,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cWe are being forced to make this decision with incomplete information and with our livelihoods at risk. It is difficult and unpleasant. But, for now, we do have a choice. Please choose with care.\u201d In a series of posts<\/a> on X last week, a national labor organization noticed how the goalposts from OPM keep moving and the legal sketchiness keeps increasing, and expressed a commitment to stay their ground. \u201cWe will not resign,\u201d the union wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the popular \/fednews subreddit<\/a>, one anonymous civil servant put it more succinctly: \u201cTake your resignation scheme and fuck right off.\u201d A judge on Monday kept the mass purge offer blocked<\/a> for now.<\/p>\n

Writing in Slate, one federal employee at OPM noted<\/a> how the directives the federal workforce has been receiving put her on a collision course with the oath she took, thus \u201cmaking it especially awful that the threat to our government is coming from inside my own office building.\u201d What\u2019s striking about her account, which is as close as you can get to the source of the psychological warfare<\/a> the Trump administration is waging against the federal workforce, is the solidarity she has encountered in the midst of it all. \u201cEvery increasingly desperate memo and email is driving us to form community, join our unions, and get to better know our co-workers,\u201d the employee wrote. \u201cI had to turn off notifications for Signal, the secure communication app, because my group texts from co-workers ping multiple times per hour.\u201d A union-led lunchtime rally took place<\/a> Tuesday at the Capitol.<\/p>\n

None of this deters litigation, which has been a key tool to help keep the assault on the civil service at bay. Federal-worker unions have been at the forefront of challenging the battering ram of moves aimed at destabilizing them, their livelihoods, and the mission of the agencies they occupy, both here and abroad. From legal challenges to stop the bleeding of thousands<\/a> of USAID workers stationed overseas to those that seek to rein in<\/a> the Musk-led cabal rummaging over sensitive government records, unions and their lawyers have been on the move. Judges have begun to respond, largely in their favor, but the rulings are temporary and on tenuous ground since they\u2019re all at a very preliminary stage. A court can only go so far in impeding a chief executive and empowered underlings hellbent on hollowing out<\/a> entire agencies set up by Congress, as happened to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the weekend. (There\u2019s a union lawsuit<\/a> trying to stop that too.)<\/p>\n

And independent of how the courts rule, if they do so in time to prevent further damage, there\u2019s the separate and far more dangerous problem of what to do with an administration that isn\u2019t just willing to break the law, but to remain in open defiance of courts that tell it to stop breaking it. Yale Law School graduate JD Vance<\/strong> fired the first shot across that bow over the weekend when he wrote<\/a> on X that \u201cjudges aren\u2019t allowed to control the executive\u2019s legitimate power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defying court orders is how constitutional chaos unfolds. But the crisis began weeks ago<\/a>, when the president ignored Congress\u2019s express directives on how federal funding should be spent, and a critical mass of lawmakers rolled over and have yet to reassert themselves. The only way to cure executive arrogance\u2014and yet more arrogation of power\u2014is for people to mobilize, stand up, and remind those they elected where true power lies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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