Beltway Buzz, May 2, 2025

100 Days of the Trump Administration 2.0. April 29, 2025, marked the one hundredth day of President Trump’s second term of office. Set forth below are the key labor and employment policy changes that have occurred thus far.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• Through various executive orders, the Trump administration has upended the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) landscape, both within the federal government and for private-sector employers. These directives are still subject to multiple legal challenges and expected further action from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. As noted in further detail below, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) will be focusing on this issue as well. In Congress, the Buzz is monitoring the status of the Dismantle DEI Act. Additionally, President Trump issued an executive order instructing all federal agencies to “deprioritize enforcement of all statutes and regulations to the extent they include disparate-impact liability,” which allows for a finding of discrimination if an otherwise neutral employment policy or practice results in an adverse impact on a protected class.

Other Executive Orders

• Nondisplacement of federal contractor employees. President Trump rescinded Executive Order 14055, which obligated successor federal contractors to make job offers to workers employed under predecessor contracts. As the Buzz has noted, this is a policy shift that has been ping-ponging across administrations for thirty years.
• Minimum wage. President Trump rescinded an executive order issued by President Biden in 2021 that increased the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $15 per hour (which was set at $17.75 per hour at the beginning of 2025 as a result of annual increase provisions contained in the Biden executive order).
• “Good Jobs” executive order. President Trump rescinded President Biden’s “Good Jobs” executive order, which encouraged federal agencies to require potential contractors to adhere to certain labor and employment standards, such as project labor agreements, prevailing wages, and paid leave.

Changes to Rulemaking Processes

• State Department extends “foreign affairs” rulemaking exemption governmentwide. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a notice concluding that any federal agency rulemaking addressing “the status, entry, and exit of people, and the transfer of goods, services, data, technology, and other items across the borders of the United States” is subject to the “foreign affairs” exemption of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), meaning that the rule does not have to go through the public notice and comment process.
• Directing the repeal of unlawful regulations. President Trump has instructed all federal agencies to repeal any regulation “that clearly exceeds the agency’s statutory authority or is otherwise unlawful” by proceeding under the “good cause” exemption of the APA, which also avoids the public notice and comment process.

U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)

• Personnel. The confirmations of Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling are important steps towards reversing the Biden-era DOL enforcement and regulatory agendas. Though without confirmed leaders of the Wage and Hour Division and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), it remains unclear as to how the administration will handle the overtime, independent contractor, and walkaround regulations (which are all subject to legal challenges), as well as OSHA’s heat illness prevention proposal.
• OFCCP gutted. President Trump revoked President Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 (a nearly sixty-year-old order that established affirmative action requirements for federal contractors), thus gutting OFCCP (though contractors still have ongoing obligations regarding the recruitment and hiring of veterans and individuals with disabilities). Although it is being reported that OFCCP will reduce its staff by approximately 90 percent, a new director has been appointed, and she has indicated that the agency will review data that has already been submitted by federal contractors for evidence of discrimination related to employer DEI efforts.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)

• Personnel. As expected, President Trump fired NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo shortly into his administration. What was perhaps not expected was that President Trump dismissed NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox (while allowing Wilcox’s fellow Democratic member of the Board, David Prouty, to remain). Trump’s ouster of Wilcox—which she subsequently challenged in federal court—will test his theory that the National Labor Relations Act’s restrictions on removing Board members are unconstitutional. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of the United States will rule on this issue, which will likely have ramifications, not just for the Board, but for other independent federal commissions and boards.
• The Board lacks a quorum. While we wait for the confirmation of a new general counsel and new Board members, the Board cannot operate with just Prouty and Chair Marvin Kaplan. Thus, the employer community is still operating under policies established by the Board over the last four years, which include card-check organizing, limitations on employer speech, expanded remedies, and ambush elections, among others.

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS)

• Like OFCCP, FMCS—which was reportedly involved in several spending scandals in recent years—is now down to a skeleton crew of employees. Many labor practitioners found the agency helpful in resolving labor disputes.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

• Personnel. President Trump dismissed commissioners Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrows, and he appointed Republican commissioner Andrea Lucas to serve as the EEOC’s acting chair. President Trump also fired the EEOC’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride. Andrew Rogers is currently serving as acting general counsel of the EEOC. President Trump has nominated Rogers to lead the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division.
• DEI. Acting Chair Lucas is operating the Commission in conjunction with the administration’s focus on DEI. To that end, the Commission has issued two technical assistance documents addressing what the Commission—and the administration—believe to be unlawful DEI practices.
• No quorum, no votes. With only Commissioner Andrea Lucas and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal remaining on the EEOC, the Commission lacks a functioning quorum. This means that Acting Chair Lucas will not be able to make changes to the regulations implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, as well as the Commission’s guidance on sexual harassment. Further, with Lucas at the helm, employers can feel confident that the Commission will not pursue any effort to collect salary data from employers.

Immigration

• Immigration has clearly been a top priority for the administration, with much of the focus on the southern border, deportation, and attempts to limit or terminate humanitarian parole programs (such as Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela and the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) parole program). There is also the administration’s effort to eliminate birthright citizenship and the implementation of a registration requirement for non-citizens. While these actions certainly have an impact on the workplace, at least thus far, employment-based immigration policy changes have largely been pushed to the back burner. For example, H-1B “cap season” proceeded without any significant changes, and no travel bans have been implemented.

Zachary V. Zagger and Leah J. Shepherd have a full recap of the first one hundred days of the Trump administration. Be sure to keep an eye open for the Spring Regulatory Agenda, which will provide a forecast of where the administration wants to go on the regulatory front. In his first administration, President Trump’s first Regulatory Agenda was issued on July 17, 2017.

Republican Lawmakers Introduce Joint-Employer Legislation. The legislative proposal to provide employers with a clear joint-employer standard based on direct and immediate control has been on our radar for many years now. The bill is unlikely to clear the sixty-vote legislative filibuster hurdle in the U.S. Senate.

Remaining OSHRC Commissioner Retires. Cynthia Attwood, chair and sole remaining commissioner of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC), retired upon the expiration of her term on April 27, 2025. This means that there are no confirmed commissioners at OSHRC, which hears appeals of the workplace safety citations OSHA issues to employers. As the Buzz has discussed, OSHRC has been without a quorum since April 2023. Now, two commissioners will need to be confirmed in order for OSHRC to get up and running. In March 2025, President Trump nominated DOL veteran Jonathan Snare to serve as commissioner.

RIP, Secretary of Labor Herman. Alexis M. Herman, the first African American to serve as U.S. secretary of labor, died on April 25, 2025, at the age of seventy-seven. Herman served as labor secretary from 1997 to 2001 during President Clinton’s second term of office. Prior to her service as secretary of labor, Herman served as the director of the DOL’s Women’s Bureau (at just twenty-nine years old, she was the youngest person to serve in the role) and director of the White House Office of Public Liaison during President Clinton’s first term. As secretary of labor, Herman is remembered, in part, for having played a substantial role in settling a nationwide strike of a package-delivery company.