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A federal appeals court has overturned President Obama’s controversial recess appointments from last year, arguing he abused his powers and acted when the Senate was not actually in a recess. The three-judge panel’s ruling is a major blow to Mr. Obama. The judges ruled that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board are illegal, and the board no longer has a quorum to operate. But the ruling has even broader constitutional significance, with the judges arguing that the president’s recess appointment powers don’t apply to “intrasession” appointments — those made when Congress has left town for...

Mark Gaston Pearce, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, issued the following statement in reaction to today’s DC Appeals Court decision that President Obama use of recess appointments to install three people on the NLRB last year was unconstitutional. The action renders the board without a quorum to act and potentially invalidates a year’s worth of actions and rulings by it. Pearce indicated that the NLRB will attempt to continue on regardless:

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday blasted a court decision that nixed three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board as “novel and unprecedented,” but said that he did not expect any broader application of the ruling. “It’s one court, one case, one company,” Carney said. Carney said there has been “enormous frustration” at the White House with the Senate’s refusal to approve nominees. But the ruling Friday “contradicts 150 year of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations. … So we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney declined to say if the administration planned to...

Major Garrett tweets this response from AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka on the defeat of Craig Becker: "A Republican-led filibuster has put political interests over the needs of America’s working families," Trumka said. "We support President Obama’s expressed willingness to make recess appointments of critical posts in the federal government if that’s what it takes to get around minority delay and obstruction."

WASHINGTON (AP) — California Rep. Hilda Solis won confirmation Tuesday as President Barack Obama's labor secretary, giving the agency a decidedly pro-worker tilt after years of business-friendly leadership under the Bush administration. The 80-17 vote ended more than a month of delays prompted by GOP concerns over Solis' work for a pro-union organization, and later, revelations about her husband's unpaid taxes. But Democrats said Solis had put to rest any questions and called her a powerful advocate for working families.

A Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business -- liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years. The report, by USA Today, came just before the Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee was slated to meet to consider Solis's nomination, which had been delayed by questions over her role on the board of the pro-labor organization American Rights at Work. A source...

WASHINGTON---- President Barack Obama intends to overturn four Bush-era executive orders that unions opposed, officials said Thursday. Obama planned to reverse one order Friday that allowed unionized companies to post signs informing workers that they were allowed to decertify their union, an order some claim is unfair because nonunion businesses are not required to post signs letting workers know they were legally allowed to vote for a union.