Judge Rules Trump Can Go Right Ahead With Gutting Federal Government

A federal judge has just cleared the way for Trump to continue his federal employee purge.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper decided against the National Treasury Employees Union and multiple other unions who sued the Trump administration last week to stop them from terminating thousands of federal workers. This is a huge early win for Trump, as the firings had been on hold since the suit was filed.

The unions, which included the United Auto Workers, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the National Federation of Federal Employees, argued that DOGE’s slashing of the federal workforce—and offering buyouts—went against the constitutional separation of powers, which givesCongress the power to fund federal agencies. The lawsuit aimed to stop layoffs at the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The argument didn’t seem to matter to Judge Cooper, who ruled the unions must instead file their complaints with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) rather than a federal court.

This is one of at least 70 lawsuits that has been filed against the Trump administration since he came into office. Each court decision will serve as a barometer for just how much the judiciary will fold to the president.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has sent a threatening letter to Representative Robert Garcia after the California Democrat mocked Elon Musk last week.

Garcia joined other House Democrats at the first House Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing last Wednesday in attacking the tech mogul’s gutting of the federal government. Garcia displayed a large picture of Musk, calling it a “dick pick” and jokingly referring to the tech mogul as president.

That picture seems to have attracted the ire of the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, who has vowed to stop anyone who threatens or attacks Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Specifically, Martin took issue with an interview Garcia gave on CNN later that day, in which he said, “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.”

Martin sent Garcia a letter on Monday asking for clarification regarding that comment, telling Garcia, “This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk - an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a dick - and government staff who work for him.” Martin’s letter asked for a response from Garcia by February 24.

Garcia posted the letter to his X account Thursday, asserting that “members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration. I will not be silenced.”

Martin has already targeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for supposedly inciting violence against conservative Supreme Court justices five years ago. Martin has also threatened to investigate former special counsel Jack Smith, who was pursuing criminal investigations against Trump. It seems that Martin, a defender of Trump’s election fraud lies and the January 6 Capitol riots, wants to use his prosecutorial power to punish anyone who dares to oppose the president or Musk.

A prosecutor who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, Texas. has been outed as running a racist, white supremacist X account. 

The Texas Observer reports that the “GlomarResponder” on X is run by James Rodden, an assistant chief counsel for ICE. A review of the account’s posts along with public documents, other social media accounts, and Rodden’s biographical details led to the Observer’s report. 

GlomarResponder’s profile on X is full of racist assertions. Last month, the account wrote “America is a White nation, founded by Whites.... Our country should favor us.” Last September, he wrote, “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck.” In May, he posted,  “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” later clarifying that he was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

His views of immigrants aren’t great, either: In August, the profile wrote, “‘Migrants’ are all criminals,” and posted an image in October that read, “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.” GlomarResponder also describes himself as a “fascist.” The X account has since been made private, although the Observer has archived the posts cited in its article, said its author Steven Monacelli. 

The Observer saw Rodden in court, where he often represents ICE in deportation hearings, appearing to post on X at the same time as GlomarResponder’s posts. The X account also opposes Covid-19 vaccination, which corresponds to views that Rodden has expressed on his Facebook profile under his actual name. 

Rodden was once a Marine, a litigation clinic student at the public defender’s office, and a U.S. Border Patrol agent—all jobs that would require a background check and a security clearance. His racist views and account seem to have gone undetected before now. According to the Observer, GlomarResponder claimed to be under consideration for a Trump administration job requiring Senate confirmation, although the Observer could not confirm the veracity of that post.

Rodden now is the subject of an investigation, and could not only lose his job, but be disbarred and have his prior cases be challenged in court. Will the Trump administration and ICE take action, though? Racism isn’t just tolerated by the president, but seems to make up his entire worldview.

Elon Musk went straight to the slurs after being called out yet again for saying that astronauts have been stranded on the International Space Station by the Biden administration for “political reasons”—a lie that astronauts themselves have repeatedly debunked.

“What a lie,” Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen wrote on X Thursday, in reply to Musk parroting the talking point yet again on Fox News. “And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.”

Musk exploded.

“You are fully retarded. SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused,” he replied. “Return WAS pushed back for political reasons. Idiot.”

“Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla,” Mogensen kindly replied. “You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”

Musk is trying to gain easy points with MAGA by peddling that the Biden administration sticking to its previous plan instead of accepting his offer is equal to leaving the astronauts in space to die.

“We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck,” astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams, told CNN last week. “Help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed.’”

Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore’s trip was extended due to technical difficulties.

Texas lawmakers instituted a sweeping six-week abortion ban in 2021, using the threat of criminal conviction to sway providers against offering the medical procedure. The law offered a controversial $10,000 cash incentive for citizens to report medical practitioners in defiance of the ban, and left little room for emergency scenarios in which the pregnancy threatened the life of the person carrying the fetus.

But the result of the ban has only proved to make pregnancy dramatically more dangerous in Texas, according to a report published Thursday by ProPublica, which found that the rate of sepsis—the body’s extreme response to an infection—skyrocketed by 50 percent after the law went into effect for women who were hospitalized after losing their pregnancies during the second trimester.

Sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in hospitals. For those who survive, it can lead to permanent kidney failure, brain damage, and blood clotting. In order to avoid the risk of sepsis, the standard procedure for miscarrying patients in the second trimester is to evacuate the uterus. A patient’s risk of infection and eventual sepsis climbs with every hour after their water breaks, or their cervix opens, reported ProPublica.

The risk of sepsis was even greater for patients whose fetus may have still had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital, according to the investigative nonprofit. At least two people have died from sepsis since the ban. Both had miscarried but died due to politically caused medical delays in inducing what would have been considered an abortion. Their deaths prompted a coalition of 111 Texas OB-GYN’s to plead with state lawmakers to allow them to provide lifesaving care for pregnant patients on the verge of death.

Under Texas law, medical professionals who provide abortions could face sentences of up to 99 years.

Federal agencies and state-appointed review panels have yet to analyze the consequences of abortion bans on mortality rates for pregnant people, making ProPublica’s analysis the first of its kind.

In 2021, 67 patients who lost their pregnancy in the second trimester were diagnosed with sepsis, according to Texas hospitals’ discharge data obtained by the publication. But by 2023, that number had climbed to 99.  ProPublica also noted that its analysis was on the conservative side and likely missed some sepsis cases. Patients whose fetus was still found to have a heartbeat were much more likely to develop sepsis.

“What this says to me is that once a fetal death is diagnosed, doctors can appropriately take care of someone to prevent sepsis, but if the fetus still has a heartbeat, then they aren’t able to act and the risk for maternal sepsis goes way up,” Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UW Medicine and an expert in pregnancy complications, told ProPublica. “This is needlessly putting a woman’s life in danger.”

Texas’s draconian abortion restrictions do provide an emergency abortion clause for life-threatening situations, but accessing the loophole isn’t cut and dry—even for some women who appear to overtly qualify for it.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the state’s abortion laws, overturning a lower court’s decision that would have allowed women in Texas to actually access abortions granted within the confines of the state’s ban. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the suit in 2023, argued that while the state’s laws technically left room for abortions in urgent circumstances, they were also so vague that they practically restricted all medical practitioners from actually considering the procedure as an option. Specifically, people could undergo abortions during complicated pregnancies so long as their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was medically necessary. 

Some women in the state, such as Kate Cox, have been forced to flee for care after failing to legally obtain access to abortions under the state’s emergency clause.

Still, despite the legal confusion, Governor Greg Abbott doesn’t believe the law needs clarification.

“There have been hundreds of abortions that have been provided under this law, so there are plenty of doctors and plenty of mothers that have been able to get an abortion that saved their lives and protect their health and safety,” Abbott told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday, adding that his intention when the law was signed was to protect the lives of mothers. “So I know as the law as it currently exists can work if it is properly applied.”

By and large, most Americans support abortion access. In a 2023 Gallup poll, just 12 percent of surveyed Americans said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Meanwhile, 69 percent believe that it should be legal in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Trump is hosting some of the most questionable guests at the White House’s Black History Month celebration, as he continues his sweeping attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of the federal government. 

The White House will be filling the room with talking heads, entertainers, politicians, and more, all of whom have either advocated for Trump, received a pardon from Trump, or both.  

The guest list will include rapper and convicted rapist Kodak Black (who was granted a pardon from Trump in 2021), known homophobe Lil Boosie, singer Rod Wave, Senator Tim Scott, failed Senate candidate and current ambassador to the Bahamas Herschel Walker, Martin Luther King’s right-wing grifting niece Alveda King, and former ESPN host turned MAGA podcaster Sage Steele. 

This pitiful list of representatives—two extremely controversial rappers and every bigoted white person’s favorite “Black friend”—is par for the course from an administration that has been hostile towards Black voters from the jump. From the “Black jobs” comment to Trump’s meltdown at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, to his outright attack on DEI (even blaming the horrific DCA plane crash on it), it’s clear that this administration does not take Black Americans seriously. 

Donald Trump is taking aim at a government agency that helps the U.S. recover from natural disasters.

The New York Times reports that the Trump administration plans to cut the Office of Community Planning and Development, part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), by 84 percent. The office helps with recovery efforts, including rebuilding homes, after disasters like Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and Hurricane Milton in Florida.

When Trump was sworn in as president last month, the office had 936 employees. The administration plans to reduce that number to 150, which would hurt recovery efforts underway across the country, including in places that voted for Trump and Republicans overall. The office helps to supplement and fill in gaps left by the primary government agency responsible for disaster recovery, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Congress often uses the office for disaster relief by using a HUD program known as the Community Development Block Grant—Disaster Recovery, which can bring in more money than even FEMA can provide. For example, the Times reports that in 2006, Congress provided nearly $17 billion from the grant program to rebuild the Gulf Coast following Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Funding for the office has grown in recent years as disasters become more frequent thanks to climate change. In the 1990s, the office received a few hundred million dollars each year, but for the past decade, has received up to tens of billions of dollars in funding every year. For people who might not know how important the office is, like Elon Musk and administration officials, the office might seem ripe for cuts.

Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to get rid of FEMA and have states instead “take care of” disaster recovery on their own. The planned cuts to this office fit into his philosophy of the federal government refraining from helping Americans struggling to recover after a hurricane, wildfire, or other serious disaster. But every state needs funding from the government to recover after one of these events, and Trump’s policies could leave Americans who have lost everything with much less relief.

JD Vance has weighed in on what he thinks masculinity is, and it’s one big joke.

During an interview to kick off the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington Thursday, Vance pontificated over what makes him a man.

“I think about like, ‘What is the essence of masculinity?’ You could answer this in so many different ways,” Vance said. “But when I think about me and my guy friends, we really like to tell jokes to one another.”

It’s entirely possible that the simple question caught him off guard. After all, Vance has been more or less shunned from the public eye since entering office, in favor of Donald Trump’s actual favorite Elon Musk. So maybe he’s just warming up to answering questions again.

Vance’s comment is particularly ironic considering that on the campaign trail, the ineffectual vice president demonstrated time and time again that he’s actually too hostile to deliver a joke, let alone a funny one.

There are those of us who still remember his weak attempt to rib cancel culture over his choice of Diet Mountain Dew. Or his sexist “childless cat lady” comment. Vance claimed it was just a joke, but in reality, it stood only to demonstrate his actual approach to manhood, what Ginny Hogan for The Nation called his “insecure, backward-looking, and grievance-driven” brand of masculinity.

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency members have wasted no time making themselves comfortable during their efforts to take an axe to federal agencies and reshape them to the liking of tech bros, The Atlantic reported Thursday. 

One month after DOGE’s raid of USAID offices at the beginning of February, the non-agency of non-employees seems to be everywhere, or at least that’s how it feels, according to one USAID contractor. “It’s like the panopticon,” the contractor told The Atlantic. “There’s a sense that Elon Musk, through DOGE, is always watching. It has created a big sense of fear.”

While a memo barred USAID officials from returning to agency headquarters after the takeover, it made no mention of its other offices, providing a window into the goings-on of Musk’s minions. 

One USAID staffer told The Atlantic that after DOGE’s descent into her agency’s offices, she returned to find ample evidence of “activity overnight.” Some of her materials had been moved from where she left them, and there were Panera cookie wrappers strewn across her desk and in the nearby waste bin. 

“Books were open, and things had been riffled through,” another USAID staffer told the magazine. 

The impression that DOGE is always watching takes on a new meaning when considering the unprecedented level of access staffers have been granted to the offices of the agencies they’re gutting. The contractor told The Atlantic that she kept her government laptop under a pile of clothes in her closet, and her colleagues considered storing their computers in the fridge, in case DOGE was using it to spy on them.

During a town hall in Leesburg, Virginia, earlier this month, a man who identified himself as a federal worker claimed that a DOGE employee had moved into the federal building where he worked, bringing with him a wife and baby, according to The Daily Beast. 

It’s not clear where the rest of Musk’s minions reside, but DOGE headquarters, located at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, recently received a shipment of sleep pods to fuel their supposed efficiency.  

“In the last week, we had Elon Musk in our building, and after he visited the building, called for a 50 percent cut of the entire agency,” the man claimed. “My colleagues are getting 15-minute one-on-one check-ins with 19-, 20-, and 21-year old-college graduates asking to justify their existence.”

According to The Atlantic, DOGE has subjected federal employees to extensive corporate-style questioning as part of its efforts to learn even more about the staff it hopes to obliterate. 

Federal employees received short-notice invitations from nongovernmental email addresses, asking them to complete a form probing them for their recent “wins” and “blockers,” and to attend 15-minute interviews. Some people received short coding quizzes, while others were pressed to speak on their beliefs about DOGE itself. While the specific questions varied, many hit the same flavor. 

In one recording obtained by The Atlantic, an employee of the General Services Administration was asked by one of Musk’s twenty-something goons, “Like, what’s your superpower?” 

As one recently departed federal technology official wrote in a draft testimony for lawmakers, this level of access is an obvious double-edged sword. 

“At present, every hacker in the world knows there are a small number of people new to federal service who hold the keys to access all US government payments, contracts, civil servant personal info, and more,” they wrote. “DOGE is one romance scam away from a national security emergency.”

The sheer extent to which these agencies have become inundated with random tech bros may seem laughable, but the purpose of their permeation is much more sinister. 

In addition to sifting through government contracts for words such as “diversity” to put them on the chopping block (and then in an increasing number of cases, hurriedly reinstalled), Musk’s young technologists attempted to gain access to the U.S. Treasury system to stop the payments coming from USAID without having to order the agency to stop spending, according to The Atlantic. 

With a few clicks on a keyboard, DOGE has snatched the purse strings for the entire federal government out of the hands of Congress, and into the hands of the executive—or more likely, the executive’s technocrat buddy.