Politics
Contributor: The National Labor Relations Act worked for 90 years. Suddenly, it's in the crosshairs
Joe Biden was the first president to join a union picket line and support labor’s side in a number of major disputes. His appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, the principal administrative agency handling labor-management conflict, interpreted the 90-year old National Labor Relations Act so as to enhance the rights of workers to organize. The Biden board promoted workplace democracy more effectively than any of its predecessors.
As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.
President Trump’s second term presages the most anti-labor labor board appointees ever (his first-term NLRB had that same distinction). And equally or more troublesome, Trump, through his arbitrary dismissal of Biden-appointed board member Gwynne Wilcox has joined a position advanced by management labor lawyers at Starbucks, Trader Joe’s and Elon Musk’s Space X, among others. Together they wish to take a wrecking ball to labor law, asserting that the 90-year-old National Labor Relations Act and the independent agency it established are unconstitutional.
On March 6, in a sweeping opinion both eloquent and scholarly, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell pushed back against the president’s unlawful firing of Wilcox. Now, as was surely the plan all along, the question of control of the NLRB can and will go to the Supreme Court. If the conservative, Trump-appointed majority agrees with the president — instead of upholding nearly a century of precedent — independent due process for labor and management will be wiped away.
Of course, politics and labor law have always had an uneasy coexistence. By virtue of the National Labor Relations Act’s system of five-year staggered appointments to the NLRB, presidents are able to influence the board’s direction during their four-year terms, but they cannot dominate it or dictate the outcome of a particular case that is before the labor board.
If, however, board members can be dismissed by a president any time he or she disagrees with their votes on the reinstatement of a dismissed worker, say, or a conclusion that labor or management has not bargained in good faith, the rule of law can easily be denied, along with well-accepted principles of independent conflict resolution.
Such a prospect is an ominous cloud over a labor movement that even during the friendly Biden era lost ground. Today unions represent only 11.1% of employees in the workforce. Does all of this mean that organized labor law is a doomed dinosaur, irrevocably headed toward irrelevance? Not necessarily.
First, as important as legal protections have been to organizing, law has proved to be a subordinate factor in union growth or decline. In the 1930s, union militancy was in place at least four years before the National Labor Relations Act became effective. The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the act placed restrictions on unions and workers, yet unions continued to grow for nearly a decade after its enactment. Labor won considerably more of its workplace elections in the George W. Bush era than under a more pro-labor board during the Obama administration.
As important, according to U.S. Labor Department data, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets. They can use these monies to finance costly and protracted campaigns in many different businesses, hiring dedicated workers who will give their wholehearted attention to the difficult, time-consuming work of organizing. And these positions could be made more attractive by the promise of advancement to union leadership positions, now too often the province of those who process membership grievances rather than working to widen unions’ reach.
The stage has been set for just such organizing, with recent effective uses of the strike weapon. In 2023, the United Auto Workers new rolling strike strategy against the Big 3 auto companies produced substantial wage and benefit increases. In January, the International Longshoremen’s Assn. obtained more than a 60% pay increase over six years, plus an apparent ban on automation, on the basis of a short stoppage last fall at ports on the East and Gulf coasts.
Further, if Trump is even partially successful in his attempt to rid the country of immigrants, a result will be a shortage of workers, which will slant the labor market toward the sellers. The impact in construction, for instance, a sector that is already short hundreds of thousands of hires, will only improve the prospects for unions.
And lastly, if the Supreme Court uses Wilcox’s case to deem the National Labor Relations Act and an independent NLRB unconstitutional, or contrives to consign them to irrelevance, states such as New York, California, Michigan, Illinois and others can work to occupy the vacuum with more robust labor legislation.
The fight is not over.
William B. Gould IV , a professor of law emeritus at Stanford Law and chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, is the author of “Those Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden: Memoir of a Labor Lawyer.”
The Justice Department has closed about half of its open investigations into bribery by U.S. businesses overseas, but plans to initiate prosecutions to more narrowly focus on misconduct that hurts the country’s capacity to compete with foreign companies, officials said on Tuesday.
President Trump signed an executive order in February pausing all of the department’s investigations under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, pending a review of enforcement policies by Todd Blanche, the department’s No. 2 official.
Good government groups criticized the freeze as the elimination of guardrails needed to prevent corporate abuses. The move coincided with the closing of investigations into the aircraft manufacturer Bombardier and the medical device maker Stryker, among others.
But Mr. Blanche, in a statement, said the decision was made to align enforcement of the act with the administration’s broader goal of increasing U.S. leverage against foreign businesses and governments, by “shifting prosecutorial resources to cases that clearly implicate U.S. national security and competitiveness.”
Mr. Blanche, a former criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump, accused the Biden administration under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland of opening too many cases, “burdening companies” and damaging national interests.
Critics said the new guidelines were a dangerous reversal that abandoned major investigations, including a deal the Justice Department struck in May with Boeing that spared the company from taking criminal responsibility for deadly 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019. Many families of the victims vigorously opposed the agreement.
“This retreat from enforcing laws against corporate crime is a perversion of justice that further concentrates the administration’s power to corruptly reward insiders and punish perceived enemies,” said Rick Claypool, a research director at the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen.
“American corporations that engage in criminal bribery schemes abroad will no longer be prosecuted,” he added. “That’s the bottom line.”
The department plans to offload responsibility for investigating bribery by U.S. businesses and people overseas to local law enforcement and regulatory bodies, officials said.
Matthew R. Galeotti, the head of the department’s criminal division, deflected criticism that the department planned to sharply scale back its prosecutions of all corporate offenders, in the wake of the Trump administration rightward policy shift and the firings, forced transfers and mass retirements of experienced career prosecutors at the department.
The criminal division “has not and will not close meritorious investigations or dismiss meritorious cases” involving foreign bribery and other white-collar crimes, Mr. Galeotti told attendees of a conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, according to his prepared remarks.
“We will vigorously pursue these investigations and open new ones,” added Mr. Galeotti, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.
In a previous memo, Mr. Galeotti outlined other changes, including a new policy of declining to prosecute some offenses reported to the department by companies in a good-faith effort to self-police. Critics believe the move undermines the deterrence of a potential prosecution.
Mr. Galeotti defended the protocols, saying they had already yielded whistle-blower tips and self-reporting related to “drug trafficking, procurement fraud, health care fraud and more.”
He concluded with a warning to lawyers representing corporations, suggesting they should not assume that they will get a sweetheart deal if they seek “premature” plea agreements or make false claims of prosecutorial misconduct in an effort to gain leverage.
“Be an honest broker,” he said.
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Here’s what’s happening…
‘Can’t Handle the Ratio’
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was brutally mocked by critics over a “delusional” X post describing the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles as “peaceful demonstrations” while pinning blame on President Donald Trump for sowing “chaos” in southern California.
“Comments off lol. She can’t handle the ratio. This is what Hillary Clinton calls ‘peaceful demonstrations,’” popular conservative X account Libs of TikTok posted, referring to how comments on Clinton’s post were restricted to only permit ones from accounts Clinton follows on the social media platform and accompanied by footage of the destruction in LA.
The message was in response to Clinton posting her first and only comment as of Tuesday morning regarding the Los Angeles riots, describing them as “peaceful demonstrations” before Trump mobilized the National Guard over the weekend…READ MORE.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and LA riots. (Getty Images)
White House
‘DEPRESSION CRISIS’: Report gives new details on Trump assassination attempt suspect’s ‘descent into madness’
BIG MUSIC: Trump order to stop ‘exploitative ticket scalping’ clears way for $1B Live Nation investment in new music venues
ROADBLOCK: Federal judge rules Trump admin cannot block grants to LGBT groups
A split photo of President Donald Trump and protesters demonstrating against Trump’s immigration policies. Photos by Getty Images (Getty)
ABORT DEPORT: ‘Proof is in the pudding’: Trump DOJ tells court it will seek dismissal of Abrego Garcia case
COURT PUSHBACK: Trump admin may not deport migrant to Congo during immigration proceedings, federal judge rules
Anti-ICE Riots
‘ORCHESTRATED’: Trump takes action against ‘orchestrated attack’ on law enforcement by deploying Marines to LA: Assemblyman
RIOT CRACKDOWN: Tom Cotton pushes new crackdown on pro-immigration rioters in Los Angeles, citing ICE assaults
TROOPS ON HOME SOIL: Trump mobilizes Marines: Look back at when US presidents have used active duty troops to quell domestic unrest
A rioter waves a Mexican national flag next to a car on fire during a protest following federal immigration operations, in the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles, California on June 7, 2025. (Getty Images)
BORDER BATTLE BOIL: Congress steps in amid ‘out-of-control’ Los Angeles riots as Democrats resist federal help
COMMON SENSE: Fetterman calls out ‘anarchy’ in LA, declaring Dems forfeit ‘moral high ground’ by failing to decry violence
SUPERCUT: WATCH: Democrats, media outlets insist L.A. anti-ICE riots are ‘peaceful’ despite violence, injured officers
FUELING THE FIRE: California sheriff says Newsom ‘encouraged’ LA riots as ICE arrests violent illegal aliens
Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies stand guard, during a standoff by protesters and law enforcement following multiple detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in the Los Angeles County city of Paramount, California, U.S., June 7, 2025. (REUTERS/Barbara Davidson)
World Stage
‘DISAPPOINTING’: Iran becoming ‘much more aggressive’ in nuclear talks, Trump tells Fox News
‘OUTRAGEOUS’: Five countries hit controversial Israeli politicians with sanctions and travel bans
Protesters hold weapons, during a demonstration of predominantly Houthi supporters to show solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and to condemn U.S. strikes in Yemen, in Sanaa, Yemen May 30, 2025. (REUTERS/Adel Al Khader)
TERROR TAKEDOWN: Israel’s navy hits Houthis in Yemen in ‘unique’ strike after Trump promises end to US ops
KICKED OUT: Greta Thunberg deported from Israel after Gaza-bound ‘selfie yacht’ was seized
Capitol Hill
BUDGET BATTLE: Republicans challenge ‘irrelevant’ budget office as it critiques Trump’s ‘beautiful bill’
LAW AND ORDER: Hegseth defends National Guard LA deployments, says ICE agents must be protected
Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testifies before the House Committee on Appropriations subcommittee oversight hearing on the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: ‘Enough is enough’: GOP rep calls for official probe into time it took for LAPD to help assaulted ICE officers
‘DO THE RIGHT THING’: GOP unveils new weapon to help slash billions in government waste as Republicans rally behind Trump’s plan
‘THERE IS A GAP’: House Dem grills Hegseth on submarine spending plans: ‘Give us the details’
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: How the House is technically done with the ‘big, beautiful bill’
Across America
MEMORIAL MISSTEP: NY lawmaker lambastes failed commemoration of Oct 7 attack, as Dem leadership accused of ‘antisemitism’
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan leaves the federal courthouse after a hearing Thursday, May 15, 2025, in Milwaukee. (Andy Manis, File)
‘NOT ABOVE THE LAW’: Milwaukee judge not immune from charges after allegedly helping illegal immigrant evade ICE, prosecutors say
RED LINE: Blue city mayor vows ‘no tolerance’ for anti-ICE violence as LA riots unfold
Get the latest updates on the Trump administration and Congress, exclusive interviews and more on FoxNews.com.
California on Tuesday asked a federal court for a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s deployment of both state National Guard forces and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles amid mass protests over sweeping federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The request was filed in the same federal lawsuit the state and California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed Monday, in which they alleged Trump had exceeded his authority and violated the U.S. Constitution by sending military forces into an American city without the request or approval of the state governor or local officials.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office is handling the litigation on behalf of both Newsom and the state, said the restraining order was necessary to bring an immediate stop to the deployments, which local officials have contended are not needed and only adding to tensions sparked by sweeping immigration detentions and arrests in communities with large immigrant communities.
“The President is looking for any pretense to place military forces on American streets to intimidate and quiet those who disagree with him,” Bonta said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s not just immoral — it’s illegal and dangerous.”
Newsom, in his own statement, echoed Bonta, saying the federal government “is now turning the military against American citizens.”
“Sending trained warfighters onto the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy,” Newsom said. “Donald Trump is behaving like a tyrant, not a President.”
The state’s request Tuesday asked for the restraining order to be granted by 1 p.m. Tuesday “to prevent immediate and irreparable harm” to the state.
Absent such relief, the Trump administration’s “use of the military and the federalized National Guard to patrol communities or otherwise engage in general law enforcement activities creates imminent harm to State Sovereignty, deprives the State of vital resources, escalates tensions and promotes (rather than quells) civil unrest,” the state contended.
The request specifically notes that the use of military forces such as Marines to conduct domestic policing tasks is unlawful, and that Trump administration officials have stated that is how the Marines being deployed to Los Angeles may be used.
“The Marine Corps’ deployment for law enforcement purposes is likewise unlawful. For more than a century, the Posse Comitatus Act has expressly prohibited the use of the active duty armed forces and federalized national guard for civilian law enforcement,” the state’s request states. “And the President and Secretary Hegseth have made clear — publicly and privately — that the Marines are not in Los Angeles to stand outside a federal building.”
At Trump’s direction, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mobilized nearly 2,000 members of the state’s National Guard on Saturday after Trump said L.A. was descending into chaos and federal agents were in danger, then mobilized another 2,000 members on Monday. The Pentagon approved the deployment of 700 U.S. Marines from the base in Twentynine Palms to the city Monday, with the stated mission of protecting federal buildings and agents.
Hegseth said the deployments would last 60 days, and the acting Pentagon budget chief said the cost would be at least $134 million. He told members of the House appropriations defense subcommittee that the length of the deployments was intended to “ensure that those rioters, looters and thugs on the other side assaulting our police officers know that we’re not going anywhere.”
Local officials have decried acts of violence, property damage and burglaries that have occurred in tandem with the protests, but have also said that Trump administration officials have blown the problems out of proportion and that there is no need for federal forces in the city.
Constitutional scholars and some members of Congress have also questioned the domestic deployment of military forces, especially without the buy-in of local and state officials — calling it a tactic of dictators and authoritarian regimes.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass questioned what Marines would do on the ground, while Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the arrival of military forces in the city without “clear coordination” with local law enforcement “presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us tasked with safeguarding this city.”
Bonta had said Monday that the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits federal power around such deployments, that the deployment of National Guard forces to quell protests without Newsom’s consent was “unlawful” and “unprecedented,” and that the deployment of Marines would be “similarly unlawful.”
On Tuesday, he said the state was asking the court to “immediately block the Trump Administration from ordering the military or federalized national guard from patrolling our communities or otherwise engaging in general law enforcement activities beyond federal property.”
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