(Reuters) -Donald Trump can - for now - remove Democratic members from two federal labor boards, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday, handing the Republican president a victory in his efforts to bring independent federal agencies under his control.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit paused rulings by two judges who decided that Trump's removal of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board was unlawful, pending the outcome of the Justice Department's appeals.

Without Wilcox and Harris, the five-member NLRB and three-member Merit Systems Protection Board will not have enough members to decide cases, bringing the work of the agencies to a standstill.