It wasn’t a surprise when President Trump fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo late Monday. She was a Biden appointee who had used the agency to expand workers’ rights.

But Trump went further, also firing Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox in an unprecedented move that will be met with a legal fight.

Due to existing vacancies, Wilcox’s ouster leaves the board with just two members, short of the quorum it needs to adjudicate even routine cases. (The board, when fully staffed, has five members.)

With this move, Trump has effectively shut down the NLRB’s operations, leaving the workers it defends on their own, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement.

“These moves will make it easier for bosses to violate the law and trample on workers’ legal rights on the job and fundamental freedom to organize,” she wrote.

While courts have upheld the president’s authority to remove the NLRB’s general counsel, the National Labor Relations Act states that board members can be removed “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause.”

In a statement, Wilcox called her firing illegal.

“I will be pursuing all legal avenues to challenge my removal, which violates long-standing Supreme Court precedent,” she wrote.

A 1935 Supreme Court case known as Humphrey’s Executor established limits on the president’s power to remove officials who perform quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions, as NLRB board members do.

Since their appointments in 2021, Wilcox and Abruzzo have taken broad views of the protections labor law offers workers.

Wilcox, a former union lawyer, wrote that as the first Black woman to serve on the labor board, “I brought a unique perspective that I believe will be lost.”

As the agency’s prosecutor, Abruzzo worked to remove barriers to organizing, most recently winning a board ruling outlawing “captive audience” meetings, or mandatory meetings at which employers try to dissuade workers from unionizing.

Her approach toward protecting workers’ rights and holding employers accountable has raised the ire of many in the corporate world. The NLRB faces more than two dozen lawsuits brought by companies, including SpaceX and Amazon, who say the agency’s structure gives it unchecked power to shape and enforce labor law. Space X was founded by Trump adviser and billionaire Elon Musk.

In his first term, Trump’s general counsel at the labor agency was Peter Robb, a management-side labor attorney who served as lead counsel for President Ronald Reagan during the air traffic controllers’ strike in 1981.

Last week, Trump named Marvin Kaplan, the sole Republican board member on the NLRB, as chair. It’s unclear when – or even if – Trump will fill the three vacant seats.

The ouster of Wilcox and Abruzzo came just hours after workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted 130 to 100 to join the United Food & Commercial Workers union. The grocery chain is owned by Amazon, which is already mired in legal fights over efforts to unionize workers at its warehouses.

In a statement, Abruzzo highlighted work the NLRB accomplished under Biden, empowering workers to seek better wages, benefits and working conditions.

“There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle,” Abruzzo wrote. “So, if the Agency does not fully effectuate its Congressional mandate in the future as we did during my tenure, I expect that workers with assistance from their advocates will take matters into their own hands in order to get well-deserved dignity and respect in the workplace.”

President Trump issued an executive order late on Monday night to ban transgender troops from serving openly in the military.

The move was no surprise. Trump spoke frequently on the campaign trail about his plans. “If you want to have a sex change or a social justice seminar, then you can do it somewhere else, but you’re not going to do it in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Space Force, or the United States Marines — sorry,” Trump said at an August rally in North Carolina.

The order speaks of transgender identity in sweeping and dismissive terms, labeling it “radical gender ideology.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order reads.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has 30 days to submit a plan to implement the order; until then many of the details, particularly how it will affect people currently serving, remain unclear.

This order harkens back to a policy that started with a series of tweets from Trump in 2017 during his first term of office. The tweets surprised military brass at the time. The policy that was ultimately developed took effect in 2019 and grandfathered in service members who were already receiving gender-affirming care. It was essentially a ban for anyone trying to enlist as trans or who wanted to begin to transition medically while serving. President Biden reversed the ban soon after he took office.

This order appears to go further than the policy from Trump’s first term. It may result in trans people with years of service, including combat tours of duty, being booted out of the military and losing their retirement benefits.

How many people could be affected

An estimated 15,000 military personnel are transgender. That number is based on a survey of active duty military and an estimate of those in the reserves and national guard.

The number of troops who will be affected by the ban is a portion of those overall numbers. According to the Defense Health Agency, which operates the Department of Defense’s electronic health records, nearly 2,000 military personnel had a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” as of 2021. That indicates they identify with a gender that’s different from the sex they were assigned at birth.

One argument for why a ban is needed has been that it would be expensive to provide gender-affirming care to troops. “The use of public monies for transgender surgeries […] should be ended,” wrote Trump’s former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller in Project 2025, a high-profile policy blueprint from the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The costs turn out to be very low. DHA’s data showed that the military spent $15 million over five years on surgeries, hormones, and psychotherapy for transgender personnel, or about $3 million per year. This cost was considered to be “budget dust” by military leadership, according to former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. (In contrast, the Department of Defense spent nearly $300 million on erectile dysfunction medications, including Viagra, for military beneficiaries including retirees between 2011 and 2015.)

Rationale for the policy

The new order makes a very broad argument against gender identity.

“Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order reads. “Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

“It’s dripping with animus,” says Sasha Buchert, a transgender veteran who is senior counsel with advocacy group Lambda Legal. “It sets the stage for rabid discrimination.”

Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign have announced they will sue the federal government, and they argue that the ban described in the executive order is discriminatory. One lawsuit against the executive order was filed on Tuesday.

Current trans servicemembers brace themselves

U.S. Navy Commander Emily Shilling did two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Navy pilot. She is now the president of SPARTA, an advocacy organization made up of transgender troops.

Shilling says after she transitioned several years ago, she passed a slew of medical and psychological tests to prove she was still fit to fly. She has since been promoted with merit. “I’m a better leader now — as an authentic person bringing my entire self to work without that masking — than I ever was before,” she told NPR earlier this month, speaking for herself and not on behalf of the U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense.

The cost of replacing trans service members will be substantial, Shilling argues.

“These service members are deployed around the world. We have service members deployed in combat units. We have aviators, we have doctors, we have people in every single branch of service and every subspecialty — we have Special Forces,” she explains. “When we all of a sudden have to pull these people out of those units, it’s not like we can instantly recruit new people. It’s not that we can instantly re-train people to put back into those units.”

Patricia King, a transgender Army veteran, says that in the weeks of waiting for the details of the policy to be worked out, active duty trans servicemembers will be nervous.

“There are questions about who will be allowed to serve, for how long?” she says. “If you’re a trans person who is allowed to stay, will you be allowed to be promoted? Will there be a potential for harassment? There’s a lot of questions, and those unknowns create fear.”

She says even with that fear and uncertainty, transgender servicemembers say that tomorrow they will get up for work, put on their uniforms, and do their jobs.

Federal agencies, states and other organizations that receive money from the federal government are scrambling to understand the details of a new Trump administration memo that appears to halt federal funding and grant programs. The impact of the short memo, released Monday, is causing widespread confusion.

The memo, obtained by NPR, says a temporary pause in funding takes effect at 5 p.m. EST on Tuesday, but a senior administration official told NPR that the pause could be as short as a day if an agency determines its programs are in compliance.

The senior official said the directive should not be interpreted as a full funding freeze. The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the internal memo, said that agencies are supposed to review their grants, loans and programs to ensure that they align with the new administration’s priorities.

Several states are already signaling plans to challenge the policy in court. New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office would be taking “imminent legal action” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The memo follows dozens of executive orders signed by President Trump over the past week. Those documents included calls for reviews of various programs and funding. Trump has explicitly said all DEI programs should be halted, for example, and is generally pushing for more government efficiency and less spending by the federal government.

The new administration is also seeking to make broad changes to the federal workforce.

Critics call the demand for a funding freeze unlawful because Congress has already approved the money to be spent, but the administration is arguing that this action is not full impoundment — and instead a temporary review.

Republican lawmakers face questions about separation of powers and impact of orders

House Republicans are currently gathered for an annual party retreat — a meeting that is being held at Trump’s Doral resort in Miami. Trump spoke to lawmakers on Monday and Vice President J.D. Vance is expected to address the group on Tuesday.

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon was among those who disagreed with the order.

“I hope it’s short lived because there are real people that depend on these grants,” he told reporters outside the conference.

Bacon said he’s already heard concerns from people in his district, and repeated that he hoped it was temporary, saying “there’s no reason for the disruption.”

Pressed on the legality of the order, Bacon said he is not a lawyer but noted that Congress approved the grants. “I don’t how they can just stop it,” he said.

He pointed to the example of a woman who runs a before-school and after-school program that is funded in part by a federal grant and said, “obviously it affects her ability to do that job.”

“Long term it means people will have to shut down their programs, and so this stuff has already been appropriated, so I believe it will be short term and it should be,” Bacon said.

Republican leaders have not addressed the federal order freezing federal grants during Tuesday’s program, according to multiple GOP attendees.

Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., said he hadn’t read the order.

“I think the president under his executive order has the right to look at spending by category, appropriated by Congress, makes sure he understands how it’s being implemented under Article Two.”

Asked about whether the move amounted to impounding money already approved by Congress, Hill said, “I don’t think the courts have supported that over the years. Let’s wait and see. Let’s let him do his review and see what the result is.”

Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., backed President Trump’s move to freeze grants, saying, “I think it’s a fair proposition that the taxpayers know where the money goes.”

Zinke, who served as Interior Secretary in Trump’s first term, said he reviewed grants then and as a member of the Foreign Affairs panel. He said it’s “shocking” that there is no database on foreign aid, and that grantees should agree to an audit and demonstrate there is no conflict of interest.

Asked about Trump taking away Congress’ power of the purse, Bacon said that the president “likes a little bit of disruption and we’re getting it.”

Democrats warn of a constitutional crisis

Top Senate Democrats are warning about massive impacts of a freeze — both for groups and individuals who rely on federal funding and for the relationship between Congress and the president.

“In an instant, Donald Trump has shut off billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars, that directly support states, cities, towns, schools, hospitals, small businesses and most of all American families,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York on Tuesday.

Schumer and other leaders emphasized that the move would affect American families in red and blue states who rely on federal funding.

Schumer specifically pointed to funding for disaster relief efforts, local law enforcement, rural hospitals, food assistance, aid to the elderly, infrastructure programs, cancer research and opioid addiction treatment, among other things.

“They need tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, and these cuts they think will fund them,” he said.

Senate Democrats said their offices have been deluged with calls since last night from people in a panic about what a lack of funding — even a temporary pause — would mean for their programs.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., vice chair of the Senate appropriations committee, called the administration’s action “unprecedented.”

“Last night, in a brazen and illegal move, the Trump administration is working to freeze huge amounts of federal funding passed into law by Republicans and Democrats alike,” she said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Trump’s actions would wreak havoc in red and blue communities everywhere. This is funding that communities are expecting, and this memo is creating chaos and confusion about whether these resources will be available to them.”

Murray said she is calling on the Senate Budget Chair, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to postpone a committee vote on Russ Vought, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. That vote is currently scheduled for Thursday.

“Republicans should not advance that nomination out of committee until the Trump administration follows the law,” she said.