Trump's layoffs still in limbo as judge extends freeze
A federal judge dealt another blow to the Trump administration's plans to downsize the government workforce Thursday, issuing an order pausing layoffs and reorganizations across much of the executive branch.
Judge Susan Illston of the District Court for the Northern District of California issued a sweeping injunction doubling down on the temporary restraining order she had previously put in place to halt the administration's mass layoffs.
Illston's latest move hands a victory to the employee unions, environmentalists and others who sued the administration, contending that it was illegally slashing the government without the necessary support from Congress. The court's injunction also intensifies the high-stakes legal brawl that tests President Donald Trump's executive authority.
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The Trump administration has already asked the Supreme Court to intervene following Illston's initial temporary restraining order. That court hasn't yet weighed in on the request.
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Associated Press
28 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Vance says Musk making a 'huge mistake' in going after Trump but also tries to downplay the attacks
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — Vice President JD Vance said Elon Musk was making a 'huge mistake' going after President Donald Trump in a storm of bitter and inflammatory social media posts after a falling out between the two men. But the vice president, in an interview released Friday after the very public blow up between the world's richest man and arguably the world's most powerful, also tried to downplay Musk's blistering attacks as an 'emotional guy' who got frustrated. 'I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that's not possible now because he's gone so nuclear,' Vance said. Vance's comments come as other Republicans in recent days have urged the two men, who months ago were close allies spending significant time together, to mend fences. Musk's torrent of social media posts attacking Trump came as the president portrayed him as disgruntled and 'CRAZY' and threatened to cut the government contracts held by his businesses. Musk, who runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, internet company Starlink and rocket company SpaceX, lambasted Trump's centerpiece tax cuts and spending bill but also suggested Trump should be impeached and claimed without evidence that the government was concealing information about the president's association with infamous pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. 'Look, it happens to everybody,' Vance said in the interview. 'I've flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours.' Vance made the comments in an interview with ' manosphere' comedian Theo Von, who last month joked about snorting drugs off a mixed-race baby and the sexuality of men in the U.S. Navy when he opened for Trump at a military base in Qatar. The vice president told Von that as Musk for days was calling on social media for Congress to kill Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill,' the president was 'getting a little frustrated, feeling like some of the criticisms were unfair coming from Elon, but I think has been very restrained because the president doesn't think that he needs to be in a blood feud with Elon Musk.' 'I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine,' he added. Musk appeared by Saturday morning to have deleted his posts about Epstein. The interview was taped Thursday as Musk's posts were unfurling on X, the social media network the billionaire owns. During the interview, Von showed the vice president Musk's claim that Trump's administration hasn't released all the records related to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them. Vance responded to that, saying, 'Absolutely not. Donald Trump didn't do anything wrong with Jeffrey Epstein.' 'This stuff is just not helpful,' Vance said in response to another post shared by Musk calling for Trump to be impeached and replaced with Vance. 'It's totally insane. The president is doing a good job.' Vance called Musk an 'incredible entrepreneur,' and said that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to cut government spending and laid off or pushed out thousands of workers, was 'really good.' The vice president also defended the bill that has drawn Musk's ire, and said its central goal was not to cut spending but to extend the 2017 tax cuts approved in Trump's first term. The bill would slash spending but also leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance and spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over the decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Musk has warned that the bill will increase the federal deficit and called it a 'disgusting abomination.' 'It's a good bill,' Vance said. 'It's not a perfect bill.' He also said it was ridiculous for some House Republicans who voted for the bill but later found parts objectional to claim they hadn't had time to read it. Vance said the text had been available for weeks and said, 'the idea that people haven't had an opportunity to actually read it is ridiculous.' Elsewhere in the interview, Vance laughed as Von cracked jokes about famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass' sexuality. 'We're gonna talk to the Smithsonian about putting up an exhibit on that,' Vance joked. 'And Theo Von, you can be the narrator for this new understanding of the history of Frederick Douglass.' The podcaster also asked the vice president if he 'got high' on election night to celebrate Trump's victory. Vance laughed and joked that he wouldn't admit it if he did. 'I did not get high,' he then said. 'I did have a fair amount to drink that night.' The interview was taped in Nashville at a restaurant owned by musician Kid Rock, a Trump ally.
Washington Post
37 minutes ago
- Washington Post
#TeamTrump vs #TeamMusk: A tenuous relationship in its twilight
The breakup of a once-powerful allyship between billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump has forced even the pair's most ardent supporters to pick sides. Conservatives watched this week with a mixture of bemusement and horror as the men publicly fought on social media, sharing explosive allegations, threats and more than one ridiculing meme.
Fox News
39 minutes ago
- Fox News
Medical professionals say schools have gotten too political, citing ‘unscientific modes of thinking'
Two medical professionals argued in a new report that "medical school has gotten too political," citing "unscientific modes of thinking." "Medical students are now immersed in the notion that undertaking political advocacy is as important as learning gross anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology," the authors wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Sally Satel, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and Thomas S. Huddle, a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Heersink School of Medicine, cited several instances of political sentiments affecting the medical school industry. They noted that researchers are "promoting unscientific modes of thinking about group-based disparities in health access and status." "The University of Minnesota's Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity decrees 'structural racism as a fundamental cause of health inequities,' despite the fact that this is at best an arguable thesis, not a fact. (The center was shut down last month.) The Kaiser Family Foundation states that health differentials 'stem from broader social and economic inequities,'" the authors write. Satel and Huddle pushed further by detailing an incident that occurred at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center. The institution not only called for a ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, the authors wrote that staff chanted "intifada, intifada, long live intifada!" which "echoed into patients' rooms." The New York Times reported last summer that the protesters at the University of California, San Francisco, chanting "intifada" consisted of medical students and doctors. Such an incident lays out more deeply the consequences of medical schools prioritizing politics over instruction on professional imperatives, according to the authors. "These doctors were not putting patients first — if anything, they were offending and intimidating patients. They were putting their notion of social justice first," they wrote. The two medical professionals cite other instances where medical schools are steeped in politics, such as endorsing "racial reparations" and instituting "antiracism" training in order to qualify for a medical license in the wake of George Floyd's death. Satel and Huddle offer medical professionals "guidelines" for how to "responsibly" meet patients' needs while leveraging their "professional standing to effect change", including advocating for policies that "directly help patients and are rooted in professional expertise while ensuring that their advocacy does not interfere with their relationships with their colleagues, students, and patients." Satel, a practicing psychiatrist, told Fox News Digital that she is the medical director of a methadone clinic that represents a clinical setting. In response to Fox News Digital's request for comment, Huddle said that his "academic career has been as a clinician teaching how to care for patients while caring for them."
