Some victories can’t be ignored. Others take place behind the scenes. Some successes result from positive change, while sometimes winning simply means stopping bad ideas from being implemented.

In the latter category, there’s at least one change from President Trump’s first term that survived Joe Biden’s presidency and, consequently, doesn’t need to be revisited as the Trump administration continues its efforts to reform the federal workforce.

Specifically, the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) in 2020 adopted a regulation allowing federal workers greater flexibility to cancel unwanted union dues deductions from their paychecks. The Freedom Foundation strongly supported the change and filed formal comments with the FLRA making the case.

When the Biden administration proposed repealing the regulation, the Freedom Foundation — along with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation — submitted comments dismantling both the legal and policy arguments put forward by the FLRA to attempt to justify repeal.

Despite the Biden administration’s commitment to promoting unions, our arguments must have carried the day, as President Trump was re-inaugerated in January 2025 without the FLRA taking any further action and the pro-worker rule from his first term still in place.

As a result, federal employees today continue to have more control over their paychecks and there’s one less item on the new administration’s to-do list.

Read more about this win for freedom in our op-ed today in the Washington Examiner: Trump’s unacknowledged victory on public sector unions