Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) under the Biden administration, was one of the first officials to be fired by Donald Trump once he took office in January. She wasn’t the last.

Since then, Trump has fired a slew of government officials, including the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) chair, Gwynne Wilcox, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, and most recently, he has attempted to fire the Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.

Abruzzo served at the agency for nearly 30 years before Trump fired her in January 2025, a move recommended in Project 2025. Now she is warning that the attacks on the US’s top labor watchdog threaten to return workers’ rights to levels unseen since 1935 and empower corporations to run roughshod over the agency.

“My fear is that if this continues, where corporations and corporate billionaire donors have an outsized voice and directly influence our democracy, we’re going to find ourselves living in an environment such as what we lived in before 1935 when the National Labor Relations Act was enacted,” said Abruzzo. “Working families will be dealing with lower wages, substandard working conditions, and no real channels for them to fight back.”

In May, the supreme court declined to reinstate Wilcox while she challenges Trump’s decision to terminate her without cause. A lower court will now have to rule on the issue, with the supreme court likely to follow on appeal. In the meantime, the agency’s powers have been effectively blocked and, Abruzzo worries, worse may be to come.

The move was seen by opponents as a challenge to a landmark 1935 case, Humphrey’s Executor v United States, that ruled Congress can limit the president’s power to remove officials from independent administrative agencies.

Abruzzo worries that Wilcox’s firing could pave the way for the National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935 to federally protect workers’ rights to organize and engage in collective bargaining, to be repealed entirely.

“If the supreme court majority eliminates or limits the reach of Humphrey’s Executor and allows the president to fire decision-making officials in the executive branch, including at the NLRB, at his whim, then I anticipate the next step will be figuring out whether or not, if they are found unconstitutional, those provisions should be severed, or the whole [NLRA] act could conceivably be repealed,” Abruzzo said.

In the meantime, Abruzzo argues, the NLRB has been rendered toothless.

“It’s going to take years to sort out, the agency’s going to be completely ineffective in enforcing the statute, and working families are going to continue to suffer and not be able to get any redress for the violations of their rights. It’s why I think states need to step in and protect their citizenry.”

Major corporations are already making ground against the agency after the ruling. On 19 August, the US court of appeals fifth circuit ruled preliminary injunctions halting unfair labor practice cases against Elon Musk’s SpaceX and two other employers can remain in place as the employers’ challenge the constitutionality of the NLRB.

The NLRB declined to comment. SpaceX did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“I think we’re going to see a flood of employers forum shopping and flocking into district courts in the fifth circuit area seeking to get preliminary injunctions preventing the NLRB cases that frankly are seeking to hold corporations accountable for their law breaking from moving forward, and that’s going to put an end to the NLRB being able to enforce the act in any meaningful way,” said Abruzzo. “This is all about elevating corporate interests above workers’ rights.”

The firings have also left the NLRB without a quorum throughout most of the Trump administration, rendering it unable to issue decisions on cases.

In January 2025, after Trump fired Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve as chair of the NLRB board. Trump nominated two members to the board. They are awaiting a vote in the Senate for confirmation, while the term of one of two remaining board members, Marvin Kaplan, expired on 27 August.

The agency has also proposed a 4.7% budget cut of $14m for fiscal year 2026, after noting the agency expects to lose nearly 10% of its staff to voluntary resignation and early retirements.

The acting general counsel of the NLRB argued earlier this month that the board “has largely been unaffected” by the lack of quorum. But since Trump took office, the NLRB has only issued six decisions compared with fiscal year 2024, when the board issued 259 decisions.

“Unless an employer is willing to go along with what the board says, the employer can stall a case indefinitely right now,” said Lauren McFerran, who served as chair of the NLRB during the Biden administration and as a board member from December 2014 to December 2019 and again in July 2020 to January 2021.

“So whether it’s a [union] election case, whether it’s an unfair labor practice case, the minute the employer says that they’re not willing to go along and that they want to raise an objection to the board, you’re stuck for the foreseeable future at this point,” added McFerran.

Abruzzo argues the firing of Wilcox by Trump, if allowed to stand by the courts, would eliminate the independence of the NLRB in favor of corporations. It’s up to the public to push back on these trends of stripping away protections for workers at the behest of wealthy, powerful corporations and billionaires like Musk, she said.

“There is strength in numbers, and we all need to remember we matter. We make an impact on each other’s lives each and every day, and we can’t let the voice of corporate billionaires drown out our voices or squelch our actions and our spirit,” said Abruzzo.

“We’re not powerless, and we have the power to demand changes to the way we’re governed, to the way we live our lives. That includes taking to the streets, frankly, and protesting over inadequate wages and working conditions and over economic, social and racial injustice. We need to do more in amplifying our voices, to make sure we’re heard and that actions are taken that are going to benefit us, because that’s, in my opinion, how the tactic of divide and conquer is going to be vanquished.”

As Keir Starmer returns from his summer break in Europe, and Labour MPs head back to Westminster for the new parliamentary session, the government will be hoping to get on the front foot after a tumultuous few months.

The recess has given ministers time to think, and to plan, but also the chance to study the polls. This week, YouGov put Labour on just 20% – the lowest level in more than five years – and eight points behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Already bruised by internal rows, public criticism and a failure to get a grip of big issues such as the economy and migration, Starmer’s government desperately needs to reassert itself and gain some momentum. But there are lots of difficult moments ahead.

The budget

When Labour’s former shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds told the Guardian at the start of the summer that the Treasury should consider a wealth tax to close the growing gap in the public finances, Rachel Reeves was unequivocal. “I think we’ve got the balance right in terms of how we tax those with the broadest shoulders,” she said, citing higher levies on private jets and second homes, and increased capital gains tax, as well as scrapping non-dom status.

Yet the chancellor is now in a trickier predicament, with experts suggesting the government spending gap is on course to reach more than £40bn after a slowdown in economic growth and higher-than-expected inflation. With extra borrowing likely to spook financial markets and ministers already struggling to stay within departmental spending limits – and Reeves determined to stick to her own fiscal rules – the chancellor returns to work pondering which tax rises would be the least unpalatable option.

Labour has already ruled out putting up income tax, national insurance or VAT – which could have potentially raked in billions – in order to stick to a manifesto pledge. The Treasury has spent the summer flying kites to test different options, including raising more money from inheritance tax and putting up capital gains tax on expensive homes. But wherever she lands, Reeves has a tough task explaining tax rises to the public. The chancellor is already considering delaying the budget until November to give her more time.

Party discipline

After a bruising few weeks during which angry Labour MPs fronted up to Downing Street over welfare cuts, forcing the government into a dramatic climbdown, and Starmer came under pressure from his own cabinet to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, both backbenchers and the government were in need of a break. “We’re all totally frazzled,” one No 10 adviser told the Guardian before recess. “We went straight from the election campaign into government and haven’t had a day off in months.”

While the lack of announcements and press conferences over the summer alarmed some MPs, who feared it created space that was occupied by Farage, it also gave Downing Street an opportunity to reflect and reset. Starmer has used it to shake up his top team, including bringing in a new chief economic adviser to challenge Treasury thinking, and more internal changes are expected.

The prime minister is also expected to reshuffle his junior ministers, to reward the rising stars of the 2024 intake and speed up delivery, as well as punishing those who plotted against the welfare plans and replacing his homelessness minister. Sources suggested, however, that the cabinet will remain intact for now. The political side of No 10, chastened by the welfare debacle, intends to put greater emphasis on the relationship with MPs, including making sure they get face time with Starmer himself.

With more potentially divisive issues coming up – including Send reform and the government’s child poverty strategy – they are desperate to avoid further parliamentary battles. But Labour MPs are anxious about being squeezed by the new Jeremy Corbyn-led party on the left and Farage’s Reform UK on the right, and have shown themselves willing to flex their muscles.

Trump state visit

When Keir Starmer handed over a letter to Donald Trump in the Oval Office in February, with an invitation from the king for a second state visit, there was a muted response back home.

While the US president remains unpopular in the UK, there is an understanding that it is in Britain’s interests to have a good relationship with the White House. So far, and despite the odds, Starmer has achieved that. Trump has even stated that he likes the prime minister “a lot” even though, with Starmer being a “liberal”, the two men have very different politics.

Yet as both that meeting in Washington and Trump’s subsequent talks with Starmer at his Ayrshire golf course showed, any visit with Trump is also a diplomatic nightmare. Often played out in front of the world’s media, the US president has no qualms about dipping into sensitive domestic issues such as free speech, tax rises or his friendship with Farage.

While he may well be on his best behaviour as he enjoys Charles and Camilla’s hospitality at Windsor Castle, it could easily go wrong elsewhere. If the whim takes him, Trump could unpick the economic deal already agreed with the UK or even decide to impose further tariffs. The two governments are already at odds on the Gaza crisis, with Starmer planning to formally recognise the Palestinian state at the UN, while Trump gives the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cover.

Starmer will also push for the US to (finally) offer firm security guarantees for Ukraine, after Trump’s talks with Vladimir Putin emboldened the Russian president. Starmer will be walking a diplomatic tightrope on multiple fronts. Brace, brace!

Migration

By Westminster standards, this was a quiet summer recess, yet while government ministers settled into their sun loungers, a vacuum emerged. It was quickly filled by Nigel Farage.

Against a backdrop of rising small boat crossings and protests outside hotels that house asylum seekers, getting a grip on Britain’s borders is now one of the most pressing issues facing the government. While ministers blame the irregular migration crisis on the mess they inherited from the last Tory government, it is now Labour that is getting the blame. Starmer’s incremental approach – speeding up asylum processing, reviewing article 8 of the ECHR, striking a returns deal with the French – is not, thus far, satisfying the public clamour.

To the discomfort of many on the left, polls show that immigration is now regarded as one of the most important issues facing the country. It doesn’t look likely to get any easier for the government, with further protests expected at asylum hotels after the court of appeal decision on the Bell hotel in Epping, and Reform intent on exploiting community tensions – and frustration with the government – to its political benefit. Labour will try to take the fight to Farage at its autumn conference, but it could backfire. And it only has a few months until next spring’s local elections – the party’s first big electoral test since it came to power – to show it can get on track.

It’s back to school this week for MPs and government ministers – and few can be facing a more challenging new term than Rachel Reeves.

After being moved to tears in the unforgiving glare of the cameras before the summer break, the chancellor’s allies say she is returning to the frontline with a renewed sense of purpose. She is ready, as the kids would say, to “lock in”.

But team Reeves is also well aware of the scale of the economic and political obstacles ahead. Most pressing, yet out of the chancellor’s hands, is the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) summer “supply stocktake” of its economic model.

As we reported in June, this looks likely to see the OBR move its key productivity forecast closer to the less-positive consensus. Given the crucial importance of productivity in determining economic growth, this shift could create a £20bn headache for the Treasury.

The downgrade – not anything Labour has actually done – is likely to be the biggest factor pushing Reeves off track from her fiscal rules.

That creates a formidable challenge in explaining what has gone awry – and why she needs to come back with more tax increases, after last year’s historic £40bn budget package.

Expect to hear much more of the kind of language Reeves used in her recent Guardian article, in which she argued that “if renewal is our mission and productivity is our challenge, then investment and reform are our tools”.

She does have a story to tell here: changing the fiscal rules to prioritise investment has allowed the Treasury to give the green light to scores of pro-productivity infrastructure projects (with the next expected to be Northern Powerhouse Rail).

In the same vein, expect tax rises to be badged as efficiency-enhancing, as well as revenue raising.

Officials do not yet know the scale of the fiscal gap they will need to fill – though they expect it to be large. Reeves’s decision to involve Torsten Bell, formally the pensions minister, in budget preparations, points to a willingness to think more radically.

Bell has argued in the past for changes to the taxation of unearned income, property wealth – which we know the Treasury are looking at closely – and pensions.

Reeves made moves in this direction last autumn, with changes to inheritance and capital gains taxes; but this budget must be the moment to “go big,” as Bell’s former boss Ed Miliband would put it. (Arguably, the moment was, in fact, last July, but here we are.)

Yet as she draws up her plans, Reeves must have her eye on at least three different audiences, each in their way as tough as the meanest girls in the dining hall.

The first, and most important, is the public, for whom the chancellor may be best known as the author of last year’s botched removal of the winter fuel allowance.

While she is claiming to have been “fixing the foundations” in her first year in the job, it may not feel like it for families facing resurgent inflation – which hits low earners hardest.

And unfortunately, “Labour crashed the economy”, while unfair, is a much cleaner explanation for fresh tax rises than, “the OBR has systemically overestimated productivity, which hasn’t recovered since the financial crisis”.

Reeves will need to convince cash-strapped voters she understands their struggles and has a plan to help.

Also watching Reeves closely will be those behind her, in her own party. Once seen as a potential future leader, she is blamed by some Labour MPs for a series of dire missteps, including on winter fuel and the botched spring statement welfare cuts.

Keir Starmer’s decision to bring in the former Bank of England deputy governor Minouche Shafik as his economic adviser, and the senior Treasury civil servant Dan York-Smith as principal private secretary, appear to indicate a new determination in No 10 to shape the government’s economic project, instead of subcontracting it wholesale to Reeves.

Given the prime minister’s temperamental caution, these hires seem unlikely to presage any dramatic change of course. But they do raise the prospect of cracks emerging between No 10 and No 11, which rarely ends well.

Reeves’s third audience is among what her battle-scarred Labour predecessor Denis Healey called “the faceless men” (and these days, women) managing the “atomic cloud of footloose funds” in financial markets.

Talk of an IMF bailout is well wide of the mark but with debt interest expected to cost the taxpayer more than £100bn this year, even modest moves in government bond markets can be extremely costly.

Judging by the bond sell-off in July when Reeves’s tears were read as a sign that she was on the way out, investors are minded to trust her – or at least, more than any potential alternative.

But to keep the support of this tough crowd, tax rises will have to be straightforward (and big) enough to close any fiscal gap convincingly; yet calibrated not to put the kibosh on growth or jack up inflation.

Given the 10 weeks’ formal notice the Treasury gives the OBR of the budget date, it cannot now happen until November.

Reeves will want to set some parameters in public long before that, to contain what has already become frenzied speculation; but she would be wise not to waste what may be Labour’s best crack at reforming our out-of-kilter tax system.