update - Fed Ct judge blocks Trump downsizing federal agency workforces
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Trump administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.
Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed last week by labor unions and cities, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.
“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.
The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management.
The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.
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They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is already underway or poised to be underway, including at the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it will lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.
Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said at a hearing Friday the president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.
“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress, the Constitution is structured that way.”
Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.
In her order, Illston gave several examples to show the impact of the downsizing. One union that represents federal workers who research health hazards faced by mineworkers said it was poised to lose 221 of 222 workers in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, office; a Vermont farmer didn’t receive a timely inspection on his property to receive disaster aid after flooding and missed an important planting window; a reduction in Social Security Administration workers has led to longer wait times for recipients.
All the agencies impacted were created by Congress, she noted.
Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in exercising their own decision-making process.
“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”
But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and OPM were making decisions outside of their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.
“They are not waiting for these planning documents” to go through long processes, she said. “They’re not asking for approval, and they’re not waiting for it.”
The temporary restraining order applies to departments including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.
Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court later blocked his order.
Plaintiffs include the cities of San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore; labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
apnews.com
Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed last week by labor unions and cities, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.
“The Court holds the President likely must request Congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime,” Illston wrote in her order.
The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management.
The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.
Related Stories
Judge blocks parts of Trump’s overhaul of US elections
Judge bars Trump cuts to agencies that fund libraries, settle labor issues
Judge orders Trump administration to release billions of dollars from Biden-era initiatives
They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is already underway or poised to be underway, including at the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it will lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.
Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said at a hearing Friday the president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.
“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress, the Constitution is structured that way.”
Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.
In her order, Illston gave several examples to show the impact of the downsizing. One union that represents federal workers who research health hazards faced by mineworkers said it was poised to lose 221 of 222 workers in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, office; a Vermont farmer didn’t receive a timely inspection on his property to receive disaster aid after flooding and missed an important planting window; a reduction in Social Security Administration workers has led to longer wait times for recipients.
All the agencies impacted were created by Congress, she noted.
Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in exercising their own decision-making process.
“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”
But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and OPM were making decisions outside of their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.
“They are not waiting for these planning documents” to go through long processes, she said. “They’re not asking for approval, and they’re not waiting for it.”
The temporary restraining order applies to departments including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.
Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court later blocked his order.
Plaintiffs include the cities of San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore; labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
Judge pauses much of Trump administration's massive downsizing of federal agencies
A California judge has ordered the Trump administration to halt much of its massive downsizing of the federal workforce.
apnews.com
A Tufts University scholar who has been locked up in an immigration detention center for more than six weeks is no longer imprisoned after a federal judge ordered her immediate release.
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student studying child development at the Massachusetts school, pressed her hands over her heart and smiled as she stepped out of a remote Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana on Friday evening.
Ozturk was arrested by masked plain-clothes federal agents outside her apartment on March 25.
She is among several international students at the center of Donald Trump administration’s targeting of on-campus advocacy for Palestine during Israel’s war in Gaza. Her visa was revoked and she was moved across the country to an ICE detention center where she was placed in deportation proceedings.
Ozturk, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and taupe hijab, appeared virtually for her bail hearing on Friday from inside an all-white room at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center – roughly 1,700 miles away from the courtroom in Burlington, Vermont.
It marked the first time Ozturk was seen by the public since her arrest on March 25.
The order from District Judge William K. Sessions III granted her immediate release from custody while she continues her parallel legal battles challenging her immigration proceedings and the constitutionality of what her attorneys argue is a retaliatory arrest.
“Simply and purely,” she was detained for “the expression she made or shared in the op-ed” critical of Israel, Sessions told the court.
“I put the government on notice they should introduce any such evidence. .... That was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence,” Sessions said. “That literally is the case. There is no evidence here as to the motivation, absent consideration of the op-ed.”
Her health has “deteriorated” while in ICE custody, and her arrest “chills the speech of potentially millions of millions of people in this country who are not citizens” who now fear “being whisked away to a detention center,” Sessions added.
The government did not appear to possess any evidence backing up claims of antisemitism and support for a terrorist organization to justify her arrest, according to court filings and government memos.
The only apparent evidence against her is an op-ed she co-wrote with Tufts students in a student newspaper that criticized Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Right now, the clear message that the government is sending to everyone who is watching is that you can be detained thousands of miles from your home for more than six weeks for writing a single student newspaper article,” according to Monica Allard, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont.
In her remote testimony, Ozturk described her academic work in studying social media use among children and young people, which has been “impossible” to continue while in ICE detention.
“The work I do is very meaningful,” she said.
She hopes her work can “contribute to the well-being and development of children all around the world,” she said.
Ozturk, whose faculty adviser testified to her intimate connections within her department and the broader Tufts community, also helped organize an event to grieve for children killed in war, “from Gaza to Israel, from Russia to Ukraine, from Congo to Haiti, from Sudan to Yemen, from Cameroon to Afghanistan,” Ozturk said.
“It was a project of poetry and art and silence,” she said.
Ozturk described the event as an attempt for academics who are typically removed from the subjects of their work to “create a safe space to grieve.”
She has experienced asthma attacks more than a dozen times since her detention in Louisiana, where she faces “constant exposure to dust,” “no proper ventilation” and limited time outside while locked in a small cell she shares with 23 people.
While trying to get treatment, a nurse at the facility told her to “take the thing off my head,” said Ozturk, gesturing at her hijab.
In the middle of a doctor’s testimony about her asthma diagnosis, Ozturk said was experiencing another asthma attack and excused herself from the room.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice declined to cross examine Ozturk.
They also declined to cross examine Ozturk’s adviser.
“With every day that goes by, she’s missing opportunities for her future career,” said Sara Johnson, an associate professor at the university’s Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development.
Ozturk was on track to complete her PhD by February 2026, but she is in a “critical juncture” for her studies.
She is also scheduled to return to teaching a program for high school students this summer.
“She’s really not replaceable. It’s a course she designed herself from scratch. … They’d have to cancel it,” Johnson said.
Johnson said Ozturk’s absence has been “devastating” for both the department and students she mentors as well as her colleagues and friends at the university.
Ozturk is allergic but always asked to see pictures of Johnson’s cats and wrote down the dates of her cat’s cancer treatments to check in, Johnson said. Ozturk also befriended Johnson’s mother, whose “bucket list” trip is to visit Turkey, she said. Ozturk talked with her for hours about her home country.
Tufts scholar Rumeysa Ozturk released from ICE detention after judge raises ‘serious’ First Amendment and due process questions
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student studying child development at the Massachusetts school, pressed her hands over her heart and smiled as she stepped out of a remote Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana on Friday evening.
Ozturk was arrested by masked plain-clothes federal agents outside her apartment on March 25.
She is among several international students at the center of Donald Trump administration’s targeting of on-campus advocacy for Palestine during Israel’s war in Gaza. Her visa was revoked and she was moved across the country to an ICE detention center where she was placed in deportation proceedings.
Ozturk, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and taupe hijab, appeared virtually for her bail hearing on Friday from inside an all-white room at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center – roughly 1,700 miles away from the courtroom in Burlington, Vermont.
It marked the first time Ozturk was seen by the public since her arrest on March 25.
The order from District Judge William K. Sessions III granted her immediate release from custody while she continues her parallel legal battles challenging her immigration proceedings and the constitutionality of what her attorneys argue is a retaliatory arrest.
“Simply and purely,” she was detained for “the expression she made or shared in the op-ed” critical of Israel, Sessions told the court.
“I put the government on notice they should introduce any such evidence. .... That was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence,” Sessions said. “That literally is the case. There is no evidence here as to the motivation, absent consideration of the op-ed.”
Her health has “deteriorated” while in ICE custody, and her arrest “chills the speech of potentially millions of millions of people in this country who are not citizens” who now fear “being whisked away to a detention center,” Sessions added.
The government did not appear to possess any evidence backing up claims of antisemitism and support for a terrorist organization to justify her arrest, according to court filings and government memos.
The only apparent evidence against her is an op-ed she co-wrote with Tufts students in a student newspaper that criticized Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Right now, the clear message that the government is sending to everyone who is watching is that you can be detained thousands of miles from your home for more than six weeks for writing a single student newspaper article,” according to Monica Allard, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont.
In her remote testimony, Ozturk described her academic work in studying social media use among children and young people, which has been “impossible” to continue while in ICE detention.
“The work I do is very meaningful,” she said.
She hopes her work can “contribute to the well-being and development of children all around the world,” she said.
Ozturk, whose faculty adviser testified to her intimate connections within her department and the broader Tufts community, also helped organize an event to grieve for children killed in war, “from Gaza to Israel, from Russia to Ukraine, from Congo to Haiti, from Sudan to Yemen, from Cameroon to Afghanistan,” Ozturk said.
“It was a project of poetry and art and silence,” she said.
Ozturk described the event as an attempt for academics who are typically removed from the subjects of their work to “create a safe space to grieve.”
She has experienced asthma attacks more than a dozen times since her detention in Louisiana, where she faces “constant exposure to dust,” “no proper ventilation” and limited time outside while locked in a small cell she shares with 23 people.
While trying to get treatment, a nurse at the facility told her to “take the thing off my head,” said Ozturk, gesturing at her hijab.
In the middle of a doctor’s testimony about her asthma diagnosis, Ozturk said was experiencing another asthma attack and excused herself from the room.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice declined to cross examine Ozturk.
They also declined to cross examine Ozturk’s adviser.
“With every day that goes by, she’s missing opportunities for her future career,” said Sara Johnson, an associate professor at the university’s Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development.
Ozturk was on track to complete her PhD by February 2026, but she is in a “critical juncture” for her studies.
She is also scheduled to return to teaching a program for high school students this summer.
“She’s really not replaceable. It’s a course she designed herself from scratch. … They’d have to cancel it,” Johnson said.
Johnson said Ozturk’s absence has been “devastating” for both the department and students she mentors as well as her colleagues and friends at the university.
Ozturk is allergic but always asked to see pictures of Johnson’s cats and wrote down the dates of her cat’s cancer treatments to check in, Johnson said. Ozturk also befriended Johnson’s mother, whose “bucket list” trip is to visit Turkey, she said. Ozturk talked with her for hours about her home country.
Tufts scholar Rumeysa Ozturk released from ICE detention after judge raises ‘serious’ First Amendment and due process questions
Yes, the anti Palestinian racism that supports genocide in the US has lead to the US trying to steal the freedom of speech from anyone critical of their support of genocide.
The courts stopped this for now.
AIPAC really wants to import Israeli police state tactics to kill dissent from the US backing Israel.
