The Trump administration has wasted no time attacking worker rights and bestowing even more power to employers through a barrage of anti-worker executive orders since Trump’s second term began.

Within his first two weeks in office, Trump rapidly targeted LGBTQIA workers and undid civil rights protections. He fired two Democratic commissioners on the five-person Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). He terminated Chair Charlotte Burrows, whose term was supposed to last until July 2028, and Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels, whose term was supposed to last until July 2026. He also fired EEOC General Counsel Karla Gilbride, whose four-year term wasn’t supposed to end until 2027.

These moves leave only the commission without a quorum, which means that the organization taxed with enforcing federal laws against job discrimination is effectively powerless.

The 60-year executive order granting the Department of Labor the necessary tools to protect the civil rights of federal contract workers was rolled back and the department was ordered to stop ongoing investigations into civil rights violations. The president also fired more than a dozen inspectors at government agencies, including the Department of Labor.

The “Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order is a clear attack on trans people, including in the workplace. The move directs agencies like the Department of Labor and the EEOC to rescind its updated workplace harassment policies, which include protections for trans and gender-nonconforming people.

The administration also signed an order barring transgender people from serving in the military, a move that could eject nearly 15,000 people over their identity; rescinded a Biden administration executive order that directed employers to strengthen protections for LGBTQ people; instructed federal workers to delete their pronouns from email signatures; and removed documents connected to LGBTQ protections from the EEOC website.

The president has instituted a federal hiring freeze, mandated a return to the office for nearly every remote federal worker, and reclassified thousands of federal employees in order to make them easier to fire. He also sent out a government-wide email inviting federal workers to quit their jobs as part of a “deferred resignation program” that would pay them through September.

A group of unions (the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE); AFGE Local 3707; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); and the National Association of Government Employees) are suing Trump over that program.

“We are filing this lawsuit to stop the purge of qualified professionals from the federal government workforce. Not only are these actions illegal and a scam, but they are eroding the health and well-being of our communities,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders in a statement. “These workers do everything from making sure families receive their Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits on time to protecting our drinking water and the food we eat to overseeing our national security. If this chaos goes unchecked, it will have devastating impacts on working people.”

“A climate of fear makes our workplaces and communities........

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