“My colleagues at the labor board are among the finest professionals I’ve ever worked with. We have attorneys from all backgrounds—Ivy League to regional commuter law school—who are at the agency because they are dedicated to the mission of upholding the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act] and protecting labor peace and private-sector workers’ rights to freely choose whether or not to be in a union,” said a program support assistant at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

“I intended to spend the rest of my career at the NLRB. I showed up to work positively obnoxiously giddy because I got to spend my days helping enforce the act. The work meant everything to me, and I was on the path to my goal. And then DOGE, Musk, Vought, Trump brought the cruelty, corruption, malice.”

The program support assistant told me that the union representing NLRB workers had managed to push back against the board’s dismantling, but it was largely a pyrrhic victory. The three-person board currently lacks a quorum to take action, having only two members after Trump fired the third member, Gwynne Wilcox, shortly after taking office. As a result, even though most of its staff are still employed, having escaped the mass reductions in force that have corroded many other branches of the federal government, in practice the NLRB has been largely neutered and investigations against malfeasant employers such as Tesla—which has been accused by numerous employees of creating a toxic workplace environment—are on hold.

Making matters worse, Trump nominated management-side attorney Crystal Carey to be the NLRB’s general counsel. Given the makeup of this Congress, with Republicans holding a majority in both chambers, it’s hard to see how she won’t be confirmed.

Taken as a whole, in keeping with the priorities detailed in Project 2025, the new administration has been refashioning the NLRB to be what the staffer termed a “hammer that employers could use against unions.” In other words, under the Trump administration, the NLRB is doing the exact opposite of what it was established to do.

The NLRB hasn’t been in the news much recently—with attention focused on immigration raids, tariffs, and foreign policy. But that doesn’t mean that what’s happening there has suddenly become less important. In fact, five months into Trump 2.0, an across-the-board assault on workers’ rights is taking shape, made possible at least in part by the neutering of key government agencies such as the NLRB.

Similar undermining of bedrock principles has happened at other agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health, that serve to protect workers and low-income consumers from predatory employers and exploitative lenders.

At the same time, Trump has also attempted to deprive more than 1 million federal workers, spread across a dozen departments and 30 agencies, of union representation and collective bargaining rights. And last month a federal appeals court in DC allowed for this process to proceed. The Center for American Progress has calculated that this is the single largest rollback of union rights in US labor history.

Unions representing these federal workers have argued forcefully in court that this is illegal political retribution against groups opposing the Trump agenda. But given the current composition of the Supreme Court and its track record on labor issues—including its issuing a ruling in May that allowed Wilcox to be fired—it’s likely that Trump will get away with this extraordinary assault.

Meanwhile, if there is a silver lining, it is that California and other blue states and municipalities are moving in the opposite direction. Last month, the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance implementing the country’s highest minimum wage for service-sector workers in industries that will be crucial during the 2028 Olympic Games. Pitched as the “Olympic Wage,” it rolls out in stages over the next three years, boosting wages and healthcare benefits for tens of thousands of hotel, restaurant, and airport concession workers.

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The ordinance is, however, facing significant pushback. A coalition of hotel and concession owners and airlines is attempting to do an end run around the wage increase by gathering signatures for a referendum this November that would overturn the ordinance. It needs more than 90,000 signatures to move forward, and unions are worried that the signature gatherers, under pressure to move fast, are using dishonest tactics—including telling potential signers that the measure protects the minimum wage and secures more affordable housing for the city—to sell it to voters.

Unite HERE Local 11 and other unions in the Los Angeles area have kicked off a Defend the Wage LA campaign in response. The campaign has cobbled together its own signature-gathering effort to put a referendum on the ballot that would not only protect the Olympic Wage but also extend minimum-wage increases to workers across the board and, in a different ballot measure, require voter approval of any taxpayer-subsidized hotel or events center development in the city. Further, the campaign formally requested that the Los Angeles city attorney and the state attorney general investigate the tactics of the coalition trying to overturn the new city ordinance. And earlier this week, two City Council members introduced a motion that would require back pay for workers in the impacted industries if legal challenges lead to the suspension of the implementation of the higher wages and benefits. It passed out of committee and will be debated by the City Council later in the summer.

These are two very distinct visions of the role of organized labor in America. Trump has pitched himself as the great defender of the American worker. In reality, however, he’s busy neutering the NLRB, making it all but impossible for its staff to fight on behalf of workers, and dismantling the collective bargaining rights of more than a million federal employees.

If workers in the Trump era are to win additional protections and higher wages, it’s clear that this is going to come out of city- and state-level fights, such as the one around the Olympic Wage in Los Angeles, rather than from federal actions.