Courts tap brakes on Trump's plans for federal workers

Politico

10-02-2025

QUICK FIX
THE FRONT LINES: Hundreds of federal workers who are members of the American Federation of Government Employees will be meeting up in downtown D.C. on Monday for the union's annual confab as President Donald Trump has completely upended their lives.
The administration — with help from Elon Musk and his compatriots — has already tried to end the U.S. Agency for International Development and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau as we know it, and even the core functions of Cabinet-level agencies like the Department of Education could also be on the chopping block.
Government workers have vacillated between dejection and defiance as the Trump administration has called into question their work and value.
In some instances, the federal courts have already intervened — as our Kyle Cheney reports — granting several emergency pleas filed by unions and other groups seeking to halt the Trump administration's plans.
A Trump-appointed judge on Friday prevented the White House from placing more than 2,000 USAID workers on leave and ordered reinstatement for hundreds of others. And a judge in New York handcuffed DOGE from accessing a crucial Treasury Department payments system — drawing the disdain of Vice President JD Vance.
However a Republican-appointed judge in D.C. late Friday opted not to immediately restrict DOGE's access to DOL data, despite his misgivings about the possibility of privacy violations as your host reported.
Prior to that ruling, Judge John Bates, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, had urged the Trump administration to hash out a deal with a group of labor unions — including AFGE — who filed the lawsuit that would place guardrails on DOGE while still allowing it to proceed in some fashion. The government appeared open to such an agreement, based on testimony Friday, though talks ultimately broke down that afternoon and Bates' ruling that the unions lacked the necessary legal standing to seek a temporary restraining order suggests they may have overplayed their hand.
A number of congressional Democrats, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Reps. Gerry Connolly(D-Va.),Jamie Raskin(D-Md.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), as well as Pennsylvania GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick are scheduled to address the AFGE conference today.
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AROUND THE AGENCIES
LCD LIEUTENANT LATEST: Keith Sonderling, a former top Republican official at the OL and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, made tens of thousands of dollars after leaving outside of the government last year.
Sonderling, who Trump nominated to serve as deputy Labor secretary under Lori Chavez-DeRemer, reported just over $50,000 in consulting fees according to financial documents and an ethics disclosure released over the weekend by the Office of Government Ethics.
He left the EEOC not long after his term expired last summer (agency rules allow commissioners to stay on in so-called holdover status.)
Sonderling met with several senators last week in their Capitol Hill offices ahead of a possible springtime confirmation hearing. Chavez-DeRemer will appear before the Senate HELP Committee on Wednesday.
More agency news: 'U.S. intelligence, law enforcement candidates face Trump loyalty test,' from The Washington Post.
Even more news: 'The Trump Admin Paused a Workplace Safety Council Established Under Federal Law,' from NOTUS.
Smash cut: 'Secret Service airing recruitment ad from Hollywood director Michael Bay during Super Bowl,' from CNN.
In the Workplace
DOWNSTREAM EFFECTS: Working-age immigrants were a key bulwark for the economy under former President Joe Biden, but now economists are fretting what Trump's crackdown means for the job market, our Sam Sutton reports.
The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 143,000 jobs in January, with the jobless rate slipping to 4 percent. The growth in payrolls was lifted by new arrivals whose legal status runs the gamut. The labor force participation rate among foreign-born individuals was 66 percent in January, compared with 61.4 percent among native-born workers, according to the release.
'What happens to net immigration over 2025 is a game changer for what we should expect to see in the payroll employment numbers,' said Wendy Edelberg, a former top economist at the Congressional Budget Office who's now the director of The Hamilton Project and a Brookings Institution senior fellow. 'We should get used to much, much smaller numbers than what we've seen over the last couple of years.'
Trump says his sweeping agenda of deregulation, increased oil production and lower taxes will unlock growth and beat back inflation — an argument strongly endorsed by the American people in the election. But a broad-based crackdown on immigrants could slow the economy's expansion and choke off a supply of workers that Kansas City Fed researchers and others say have alleviated staffing shortages and eased wage pressures.
More workplace news: 'The D.C. Neighborhood Bearing the Brunt of Government Job Cuts,' from The Wall Street Journal.
On the Hill
CHASING DOGE'S TAIL: Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, on Friday asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the security of IT systems at a trio of agencies including the Labor Department, our Bianca Quillantan reports for Pro subscribers.
'This is a constitutional emergency,' Scott wrote in a letter. 'Insofar as the Inspectors General of both the Departments of Education and Labor have been fired by President Trump, there is now a void of oversight for a very young and inexperienced team and their leader, the world's richest man who operates with 'autonomy almost no one can control,' as they gain dangerously broad powers.'
NOT AS I DO: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) flouted House rules by having a surrogate cast his vote while he was out of town to appear as a guest on a comedy TV show, Punchbowl reports.
Donalds is considered a possible gubernatorial candidate in Florida, though as NOTUS reports he is far from the first member of Congress who has bent the rules against having other people cast a vote for them.
One problem: Speaker Mike Johnson has been adamantly against proxy voting — even for members of Congress who have recently given birth, as Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) did last month — in the belief that doing so violates the Constitution.
A judge in Texas last year partially invalidated protections for pregnant workers passed as part of the 2022 omnibus package on the grounds that the House vote utilized proxy voting. That case is set to go before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later this month.
IN THE STATES
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL: Trump's assault on the federal workforce could upend the Virginia gubernatorial race where many of these workers reside, The Associated Press reports.
With Virginia and New Jersey as the only states that pick their governor the year after the presidential elections, the contests are often closely watched as a harbinger of the following year's midterms and a referendum on the early days of a presidency.
'And dating to 1977, every time a new president has been elected, the following year Virginia has voted in a governor from the opposite party,' the AP reports.
EMERGENCY (UN-PREPAREDNESS): The Trump administration's federal hiring freeze is hindering efforts to bring in new seasonal firefighters just weeks after the devastation across Southern California, NBC News reports.
'Even though President Donald Trump's Jan. 20 executive order says the freeze does not apply to positions related to 'public safety,' federal firefighters are not exempt, according to a person who works in hiring at the Bureau of Land Management.'
Try transit: 'Expect Chaos Monday as Nearly 17,000 Return to Work at US Navy Yard,' from HillRag.
Immigration
BRAIN DRAIN: Trump's war on immigrants may lead to a sharp drop-off in the number of international students pursuing MBAs at universities in the U.S., Bloomberg reports.
'According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, which conducts an annual survey of business schools, the majority of applicants for the class of 2026 in the US (who enrolled this past fall), 61%, came from abroad. But 20 of the top 30 US schools as ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek reduced the number of foreign students in the enrolled class, an analysis of class profiles and figures provided directly by schools shows.'
Such students are helpful for schools seeking to bolster their reputation abroad, as well as providing an important revenue stream for universities.
WHAT WE'RE READING
— 'Veterans Affairs carves out potentially hundreds of thousands of staffers from 'buyout' offer,' from our Holly Otterbein and Ruth Reader.
— 'The government's computing experts say they are terrified,' from the Atlantic.
— 'DEI Didn't Change the Workforce All That Much. A Look at 13 Million Jobs,' from The Wall Street Journal.
— Opinion: 'I Was a Member of the the NLRB. What Trump's Doing to It Now Is Very Illegal,' from Lauren McFerran for Slate.
THAT'S YOUR SHIFT!