In a stunning 8-1 decision Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court obliterated Clinton-appointed Judge Susan Illston’s May 22 injunction that had blocked President Trump’s sweeping plan to slash federal bloat and reorganize 20 agencies. SCOTUS blocked a lower court ruling that stopped the Trump administration from reducing the size of government.
Again Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented and once again demonstrated her utter lack of understanding about Constitutional law. Her fellow liberal, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, had to coach her on the basics of the case.
Sotomayor:
I agree with JUSTICE JACKSON that the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates. See post,at 13. Here, however, the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force “consistent with applicable law,” App. to Application for Stay 2a, and the resulting joint memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management reiterates as much.
The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law. I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.
Justice Brown is an embarrassment to the court and to the country.
Judge Illston’s order froze thousands of Reduction-in-Force (RIF) notices and slammed the brakes on Trump’s Executive Order 14210, which directs agency heads to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force…consistent with applicable law”
The order is the cornerstone of Trump’s pledge to de-weaponize the bureaucracy and return power to the people.
This victory in the Supreme Court is NOT on the merits of any individual plan to reduce the federal work force. Essentially what the Court has said is that the President has the right to make plans on how the federal workforce will be constituted. Such plans may or may not be legal. Note the Trump’s executive order directs such plans to be “consistent with applicable law.”
Now that planning can move forward, what we need to see next is the DOGE cuts come to be via rescission. That is, Congress needs to act to help reduce the bloat that exists in our government.
Many of Trump’s Executive Orders achieved permanence via the BBB. I believe the number of EO’s enacted is 28. This will make it much harder for them to be overturned if the Presidency winds up in Democratic hands. This needs to continue in order to take back the government from the hands of the Deep State.