Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.
Federal worker unions have sought over the past two months to lead the resistance to President Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency, filing lawsuits, organizing protests and signing up new members by the thousands.
This week, Mr. Trump struck back with a potentially crippling blow.
In a sweeping executive order denouncing the unions as “hostile” to his agenda, the president cited national security concerns to remove some one million civil servants across more than a dozen agencies from the reach of organized labor, eliminating the unions’ power to represent those workers at the bargaining table or in court.
A lawsuit accompanying the executive order, filed by the administration in federal court in Texas, asks a judge to give the president permission to rescind collective bargaining agreements, citing national security interests and saying the agreements had “hamstrung” executive authority.
Labor leaders vowed on Friday to challenge the Trump actions in court. But, barring a legal intervention, the moves could kneecap federal unions and protections for many civil service employees just as workers brace for a new round of job cuts across the government.
