Judge Orders Trump Admin To Quit Breaking Shit. Again.

Don't swing a sledgehammer while telling the court you're doing surgery.

On Friday, another federal judge called out the Trump administration for breaking the law in its desperate quest to burn down the federal government. After all but accusing Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management Charles Ezell of lying to the court, Judge William Alsup held that OPM’s “efforts to direct the termination of employees” at six federal agencies is “illegal, invalid and must be stopped and rescinded.”

The court ordered the Trump administration to reinstate recently fired employees at the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Veterans Administration, Department of Defense, Small Business Administration, and Fish and Wildlife Service.

It’s unclear whether the government has taken steps to comply.

Third Verse, Same as the First

The government’s conduct here followed a now-familiar playbook.

1. Issue a facially illegal order;

2. Retract or disavow that order;

3. Get sued;

4. Carry out the original order anyway;

5. Insist that the executive branch agencies acted independently, based on totally legal criteria, and it’s pure coincidence that their conduct mirrors the illegal order down to the letter;

6. Hope that by the time the court catches up, the damage will already be done.

We’ve seen this play out multiple times already in the weeks since Trump and Musk took power. On his first day in office, Trump issued executive orders demanding a freeze on all government spending and foreign aid. After multiple courts blocked them, the government continued right on, arguing that it was simply making individualized grant terminations — thousands at a time! — rather than enacting the forbidden freeze on USAID funds and federal contracts.

Here, Grand Vizier Musk and his henchmen at OPM demanded massive reductions in staff across the entire executive branch. Those cuts took place in the exact manner prescribed by OPM. But according to the government, it’s simply a weird coincidence that multiple federal agencies decided to fired tens of thousands of probationary employees the same week.

Okay, yes, there was that memo from OPM telling the agencies to do exactly that.

But! The agencies have control of their own staffing, and thus there was no facially illegal move by OPM to fire employees at other government agencies. Okay?

(No.)

The Illegal Order

On January 20, just hours after President Trump was sworn in, Ezell put out a memo to all heads of federal departments and agencies “RE: Guidance on Probationary Periods, Administrative Leave and Details.”