The best part about these legal fights is that President Donald J. Trump is prepared. He knows he’s taking on Goliath, and he’s going to fight everything, all the time, and he doesn’t care. He also knows he’ll lose some of these battles, but that’s why we have an appeals process, and he’s ready to take on the anti-Trump legal establishment all day. It’s no shock that a little district judge is trying to tell the executive what they think it should do. We had another judgment that ruled Trump’s overhaul of the federal workforce was illegal (via WaPo):
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management to rescind directives that initiated the mass firing of probationary workers across the government, ruling that the terminations were probably illegal, as a group of labor unions argued in court.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered OPM to rescind its previous directives to more than two dozen agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Science Foundation and others identified in a lawsuit. The ruling — a temporary restraint on the government that will be revisited in the coming weeks — is one of the biggest roadblocks so far to President Donald Trump’s effort to slash the federal workforce.
“Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves. The Department of Defense, for example, has statutory authority to hire and fire,” Alsup said from the bench as he handed down the ruling Thursday evening in federal court in San Francisco. “The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees at another agency. They can hire and fire their own employees.”
It was unclear how soon and whether the ruling might result in tangible benefits for federal workers who already have been let go. An OPM spokesperson said the agency had no immediate comment. In his remarks from the bench, the judge specifically blocked the Defense Department from proceeding with an effort to fire civilian employees on Friday. But he did not say what he expected to happen in detail at other agencies. A written order is expected later, and the judge said he would hold another court hearing on March 13.
Recommended
We’re getting back to the larger question of whether district judges can muck up the works like this with injunctions that aren’t based on law but what a liberal might write for The New York Times editorial page. The catch is that the judge didn’t order that already fired workers be reinstated. So, while The Washington Post added some text about recently terminated workers hoping this ruling would pave a way to get their jobs back, it doesn’t do that. Champagne everwhere should remain in the bucket:
CAUTION: Some other reports out there suggesting Judge William Alsup (Clinton/NDCA) reversed firings or halted them, but he did not do that. At least not today. He did rebuke government for "lies"--false claims of poor performance used to axe some workers.
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) February 28, 2025
NEW: A federal judge ruled Thursday that OPM illegally ordered the mass firing of probationary employees.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 28, 2025
He did NOT reinstate fired employees or block future terminations but said decisions must be made by agencies, not OPM.
w/ @joshgerstein https://t.co/mOpNgyKogk pic.twitter.com/v5AsaaibIf
There's some erroneous reporting out there that the judge "blocked" the termination of some probationary employees, including a mass termiantion expected at the Pentagon tomorrow. This is not what the judge did -- he said he couldn't on current record. https://t.co/mOpNgyKogk
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 28, 2025
Join the conversation as a VIP Member