Supreme court lifts order blocking Trump’s mass federal layoffs
The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.
The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.
Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.
“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.
The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.
Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.
The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.
It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.
The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.
Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.
“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.
The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.
Key events
Eight men have been deported to South Sudan from the United States, following a supreme court ruling last month allowing the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries not their own, the Associated Press reports. Only one is from South Sudan.
Apuk Ayuel, a spokesperson for the South Sudanese foreign ministry, confirmed that the men are now in Sudan and said that they are “under the care of the relevant authorities who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being”. He did not share where the men are being held.
Here’s my colleague Maanvi Singh with more on the case:
New York City mayor Eric Adams accused of corruption by four ex-officers
New York City mayor Eric Adams faces lawsuits filed today by four former high-ranking police officers accusing the embattled Democrat of promoting corruption in the police department, the New York Times reports.
In his lawsuit, one of the former officers, former chief of detectives and 40-year force veteran James Essig, claims that the former commissioner of the NYPD sold promotions to the tune of $15,000. Essig says he was forced to resign after objecting to the practice.
Essig’s suit adds that senior NYPD leadership often selected “friends and cronies” of theirs and Adams’s in hiring.
“They used the Police Department as their own little playground,” Essig told the Times.
The lawsuits come amid New York City’s mayoral race. Adams is running for re-election as an independent candidate although he ran as a Democrat in 2021. He was indicted on federal corruption charges last year – charges which were later dropped in an apparent deal with the incoming Trump administration – and has emphasized fall crime numbers under his administration in his campaign.
Adams is expected to face off against democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who saw a decisive victory over former governor Andrew Cuomo in the city’s Democratic primary last month.
A spokesperson for Adams told the Times that his administration would review the lawsuits.
My colleagues are reporting on two other court rulings today involving subscription cancellations and funding for violence prevention and substance abuse programs.
The US court of appeals for the eighth circuit vacated the Federal Trade Commission’s “click-to-cancel” rule, which would have required companies to allow consumers to cancel subscriptions using the same method they used to sign up, after finding that the commission behind it failed to follow required procedures under the FTC Act during the rule-making process.
Here’s Joseph Gedeon with the full story:
Elsewhere, a federal judge ruled against five non-profit organizations that sued the Trump administration over the rescinding of hundreds of millions of dollars meant to prevent and respond to issues such as gun violence, substance abuse and hate crimes.
Here’s Abené Clayton with more:
The supreme court’s ruling today will allow the Trump administration to proceed with its plans to layoff vast swaths of federal workers. The impacted agencies will include: the US Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, State, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, applauded the supreme court’s ruling today allowing the Trump administration’s mass federal layoffs to proceed.
Writing on social media, Bondi said: “Today, the Supreme Court stopped lawless lower courts from restricting President Trump’s authority over federal personnel.”
“Now, federal agencies can become more efficient than ever before,” she added.
The supreme court’s ruling to allow Donald Trump’s mass federal layoffs to continue “dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy”, the unions, non-profits and local governments that filed the lawsuit said in a statement today.
The plaintiffs added that the court’s ruling “does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our constitution”.
It appears that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived at the White House for his closed-door meeting with Donald Trump.
A White House pool reporter says that Netanyahu’s motorcade has arrived, though press did not see Netanyahu enter the White House as he used a different entrance.
Travelers will soon be able to keep their shoes on while traversing US airport security, the Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem announced today, in a reversal of a nearly two decades old policy.
In a press conference at Reagan airport today, Noem announced the new Transportation Security Administration policy, which she said she hoped would make travel to the United States easier ahead of the Olympics, World Cup and 250th anniversary of the country.
“The Golden Age of America is here,” she said. “We’re so excited that we can make the experience for those individuals traveling throughout our airports in the United States more hospitable.”
The TSA policy requiring travelers to remove their footwear dates back to 2006.
Donald Trump’s scheduled meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is starting later than the announced 4.30pm ET start time. We’ll bring you the top lines once it begins.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the Supreme Court to dissent in the court’s recent ruling clearing the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume mass job cuts and the restructuring of federal agencies.
In her dissent, Jackson criticized the court’s “enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture” and called the decision “hubristic and senseless”.
She warned that the administration’s actions “promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it”.
