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Trump’s NLRB Purge Is About Much More Than Crushing Organized Labor BY MARK JOSEPH STERN JAN 29, 2025 • 3 :35 PM

Trump’s assault on the National Labor Relations Board took the form of two firings, one of which is far more disturbing than the other. Yuri Gripas/Pool/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

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Since returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has broken the law many, many times. Some of his illegal actions seem designed to sow chaos. Others appear aimed at establishing supremacy over the federal government. And still more seem calculated to tee up court battles that will remove all remaining limitations on his power. His unlawful purge of the National Labor Relations Board on Monday serves all three goals at once. With these firings, Trump has paralyzed the board, asserted control over its agenda, and engineered a legal showdown over the scope of his constitutional authority. The move is both a power grab in itself and a trial balloon—a preview of worse abuses to come if he gets away with it. And at this Supreme Court, he probably will.

Trump’s assault on the NLRB took the form of two firings, one of which is far more disturbing than the other. First, the president removed general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo—essentially the chief prosecutor for the NLRB, directing enforcement priorities and choosing cases to bring before the board. Abruzzo, a Joe Biden appointee, was arguably the most pro-union general counsel in the board’s history. And while her four-year term does not expire until July, she serves at the pleasure of the president. Biden fired Trump’s previous NLRB general counsel on his first day in office, so this tit-for-tat was expected (if still a painful blow to organized labor).

What wasn’t expected was Trump’s second dismissal: the firing of Gwynne Wilcox, a board member confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term ending in August 2028. Wilcox, like Abruzzo, is also a Biden holdover and staunch union ally. But unlike Abruzzo, she does not serve at will. Rather, federal law allows the president to remove NLRB board members only “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” Congress expressly barred the president from removing board members for any “other cause,” including political disagreements. Trump did not claim that Wilcox neglected her duties or engaged in malfeasance. So her termination is flatly unlawful.

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It also kneecaps much of the NLRB’s work. With Wilcox ousted, only two people remain on the five-member board, which interprets and enforces federal labor law by ruling on specific disputes. The board therefore lacks a quorum, grinding much of its work to a halt. It cannot resolve appeals, certify union representation, or issue injunctions against unfair labor practices—all work at the heart of the agency’s mission. As Matt Bruenig explains in NLRB Edge, employers can easily exploit this situation, dragging out disputes that require rulings from the board. By appealing decisions against them, abusive employers can continue to violate labor law until the board regains a quorum.

Trump’s termination of Wilcox was likely motivated, in part, by a desire to freeze the NLRB’s work, at least until he can install a new Republican majority. But he appears to have a broader objective: the dismantlement of a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey’s Executor. That 1935 decision allowed Congress to shield independent agencies like the NLRB from partisan interference by prohibiting the president from removing their members at will.

There are now more than 50 independent agencies, some of which exercise immense power over the nation. They include the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and a slew of agencies that regulate energy, housing, civil rights, and the environment. Thanks to Humphrey’s Executor, the president cannot fire the leaders of these extraordinarily influential regulators without a very good reason.

Congress granted these agencies independence to prevent the president from corrupting their work through improper political pressure. Consider the Federal Reserve, which regulates banks, sets interest rates, and helps manage the nation’s monetary policy. The Fed’s board of governors, including its chair, cannot be demoted or removed without good cause. This protection allows the board to enact policy that, in its expert opinion, promotes economic growth and stability over the long term.

If the president could fire board members at will, he would effectively wrest control of monetary policy from the experts, risking serious damage to the economy. For instance, current Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has declined to cut interest rates in January. Trump, however, has demanded that the Fed cut interest rates, insisting that he understands the situation better than Powell. Without Humphrey’s Executor, Trump could remove Powell and replace him with a MAGA loyalist. The new chair could recklessly slash interest rates at the president’s direction, triggering out-of-control inflation. Trump could then demand a rapid spike in interest rates to cool the inflation, triggering a recession. Or he could order the chair to meddle with the Fed’s research and data to create a misleadingly rosy view of the economy under his watch. Lawmakers might then enact tax cuts, or additional spending, based on faulty information, inadvertently destabilizing the dollar.

Humphrey’s guards against this mischief—but it is under serious threat from the Supreme Court. The conservative majority has recently expanded the president’s constitutional prerogative to fire “executive officers,” including agency heads. In 2020’s Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it struck down removal restrictions for agencies led by a single member. But it has not yet overturned Humphrey’s. Instead, the court has declared that the precedent now applies only to multimember commissions. In the process, though, the conservative justices have cast serious doubt on its entire constitutional foundation. Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have explicitly called for the precedent’s reversal. The rest of the court’s conservatives don’t seem far behind; any restrictions on the president’s removal power seem to conflict with the majority’s “unitary executive” theory of total presidential control over the executive branch.

By firing board member Wilcox, Trump has set the stage for a challenge to Humphrey’s. (He effectively promised to do so on the campaign trail, promising to put independent agencies “back under presidential authority, as the Constitution demands.”) Wilcox has said that she plans to challenge her removal, which is, after all, plainly unlawful. The only question remaining is whether the Supreme Court will uphold the law that protects her. Seila Law certainly hints that it won’t: The ruling’s sweeping language seems intended to give the president almost authoritarian control over the “administrative state,” laying the groundwork for the overturning of Humphrey’s. Trump is taking up the court’s implicit invitation.

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If the Supreme Court does scrap Humphrey’s, it will probably unleash a spate of firings across other independent agencies. Trump could bring every regulatory body under his thumb, terminating anyone who questioned his priorities. And he would not stop there. The president has already claimed authority to fire high-ranking members of the civil service, who have merit protections, and has begun illegally removing them. He is seeking to reclassify at least 50,000 more career employees so he can easily oust them. And he is, of course, already purging other agencies with weaker protections than the NLRB—including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, whose structure largely mirrors the labor board. Breaking with precedent, Trump fired two Democratic commissioners from the EEOC on Monday (as well as its general counsel), depriving it of a quorum. It’s unclear whether he can legally remove commissioners, and both have said they will sue. That case may represent yet another opportunity for the Supreme Court to overrule Humphrey’s.

Meanwhile, staff at the NLRB are profoundly demoralized, a deliberate consequence of his attack on the board. On Tuesday, a career attorney at the agency told Slate that staff were shocked and deeply concerned about the National Labor Relations Act’s future enforcement. “We expected Abruzzo’s removal,” he said, “but Wilcox’s unconstitutional ouster is a punch to the gut, not only because she was a fierce defender of the act’s principles, but because a quorumless board leaves many of us floundering in our jobs.” The immediate impact on unions will be severe. But the long-term ramifications for the rule of law could prove even more devastating.

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