Tonight in Your Rights: Court blocks Russ Vought's 'mass firings'
A federal judge ditched the euphemisms.
The news is personal to you. It shouldn’t be deadened through abstraction.
“It’s a human cost that cannot be tolerated.”
That’s how a federal judge began a hearing that ended with her imposing a temporary restraining order blocking Donald Trump and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought from firing thousands of people “to punish the opposing political party” during a government shutdown.
In government jargon, the mass firings pushed by Trump and Vought have been described as reductions in force or shortened into another bloodless acronym: RIFs, the three-letter shorthand for the mass layoff notices.
Before issuing her ruling, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston began a federal court hearing by rejecting the euphemisms.
“We talk about RIFs, and that’s what the motion today concerns. But the RIFs are, of course, just firing people, firing people for reasons unrelated to their job performance, firing people unrelated to how well they are doing what they were hired to do, and firing them just because, in the view of the employer, it can,” Illston said in court. “So that’s what the RIFs are, is just mass firings.”
Discussing the evidence in court, Illston described how employees could not receive their notices sent to work-related email addresses that they couldn’t access.
“There have been declarations filed concerning pregnant employees who are about to give birth, and they’re worried about their health insurance lapsing, but they can’t find any information about that because [human resources] has been shut down,” Illston added.
“Far from normal”
On the second day of the shutdown, Trump openly announced his plan to use the shutdown to inflict pain on political opposition.
“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump wrote. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
Describing the mass layoffs during a shutdown as “unprecedented,” Illston added: “It is also far from normal for an administration to fire line-level civilian employees during a government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party. But this is precisely what President Trump has announced he is doing.”
“The harm is now”
During the hearing, Department of Justice attorney Elizabeth Hedges never argued that Trump’s plan was legal, only that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case.
Pressed several times to defend the government’s actions on the merits, Hedges declined, and she turned to what she called “slam dunk” threshold arguments. Hedges claimed that the unions behind the case, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, lacked standing to sue and couldn’t prove imminent harm.
The unions’ lawyer Danielle Leonard from the firm Altshuler Berzon bristled at that argument.
“The harm is now,” she said, describing one as “trauma.”
“That is the word of OMB director Russell Vought. ‘Let’s cause trauma to the federal workforce,’ and that’s exactly what they are doing, trauma,” Leonard added. “The emotional distress of being told you are being fired after an already exceptionally difficult year for federal employees.”
The judge’s ruling blocks the government from implementing any of the firings or sending notices of future layoffs.
Democracy Forward, an advocacy group behind the lawsuit, applauded their “brave clients to stop the President’s attempt to use a shutdown of his own creation to harm the American people.”
“The president seems to think his government shutdown is distracting people from the harmful and lawless actions of his administration, but the American people are holding him accountable, including in the courts. The statements today by the court make clear that the President’s targeting of federal workers - a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook - is unlawful,” Democracy Forward’s president and CEO Skye Perryman wrote in a statement. “Our civil servants do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”
Read the judge’s order here.
Other legal news this evening:
“Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People,” via The New York Times
“Federal judge in Oregon extends temporary block on National Guard deployment to Portland,” via Oregon Public Broadcasting
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