Another law firm targeted by Trump sues to block punishing executive order – live | Trump administration
Another law firm targeted by Trump sues to block punishing executive order
Sam Levine
The law firm Jenner & Block sued the Trump administration on Friday, seeking to block an executive order that would halt the firm’s business with the government and revoke the security clearances of its attorneys.
Trump has issued similar orders against five firms, all in retaliation for employing or representing political enemies: Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Paul, Weiss, Covington and Burling, and Perkins Coie. Only Perkins Coie has challenged the order in court and successfully convinced a US district judge in Washington to block it.
Jenner & Block’s suit is significant because it comes at a moment when there is deep concern that the legal community isn’t doing enough to push back against Trump’s efforts to target firms. Lawyers and other experts see Trump’s executive orders targeting firms as an anti-democratic program to intimidate adversaries and make it more difficult to challenge him and his administration in court.
That concern escalated after Paul, Weiss reached an agreement with the Trump administration to withdraw the executive order against it. Another major firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is reportedly in talks with the Trump administration to avoid having an executive order issued against it, the New York Times reported (paywall) Thursday evening.
Trump targeted Jenner & Block over the firm’s employment of Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Weissmann hasn’t worked at the firm since 2021 and has been a prominent Trump critic, frequently appearing on television.
Jenner & Block’s suit, filed in the federal district court in Washington DC, details how the order cripples the firm. Over the last five years, 40% of its revenue have come from clients who are government contractors, subcontractors, or affiliated with the government. It also says it harms the firm’s pro-bono practice because it may represent clients and take positions that are at odds with the administration.
Lawyers from Cooley LLP, which is representing Jenner & Block, say that the executive order targeting the firm is blatantly unconstitutional.
“The Constitution, top to bottom, protects against such attempts by the government to target citizens and lawyers based on the opinions they voice, the people with whom they associate, and the clients they represent,” it says. Creating a list of disfavored law firms, it says, is “ is anathema to our scheme of ordered liberty.”
Key events
Global anti-Elon Musk protests planned at nearly 200 Tesla showroom locations
Dara Kerr
Hundreds of protests at Tesla showrooms are planned across the US and internationally on Saturday.
Organizers have dubbed it Tesla Takedown’s Global Day of Action, the latest and largest in a series of demonstrations that began shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated. Organizers say the rallies will take place in front of more than 200 Tesla locations worldwide, including nearly 50 in California alone.
The protesters’ goal is to send a message to the Trump administration that they’re against what the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is doing with the US federal government – laying off thousands of workers, cutting department budgets, giving fascist salutes and getting rid of entire agencies.
Vickie Mueller Olvera, who has been organizing Tesla Takedown protests in the Bay Area, said:
Nobody voted for this, and nobody voted for Elon. He’s an unelected super-billionaire and he’s a thug.
Olvera said that demonstrators were asking people to do three things: don’t buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the Tesla Takedown protest movement.
More on this story here:
Sam Levine
‘A capitalistic cowardice’: big law firms being threatened by Trump face pressure to speak out
Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms and attorneys who challenge his priorities are roiling the legal community, with some capitulating to the administration’s demands amid mounting pressure on the US’s biggest firms to speak out.
The president signed an executive order on Tuesday targeting the firm Jenner & Block over its previous employment of Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s connections to Russia. The order came after Trump issued similar executive orders targeting three other firms – Covington and Burling, Perkins Coie, and Paul Weiss – over their representation of his political rivals. As we’ve reported, Jenner & Block on Friday sued the US government seeking to block an executive order that would halt the firm’s business with the government and revoke the security clearances of its attorneys.
Indeed not only do Trump’s executive orders threaten to cripple the firms by revoking the security clearances of their lawyers and ending access to government buildings, they would force clients who do business with the government to disclose if they are represented by the firm. Trump also issued a separate executive order on Friday directing US attorney general Pam Bondi to investigate lawyers taking actions to block the administration’s priorities.
Scholars and experts say there is little doubt that Trump’s executive orders are a thinly-veiled effort to intimidate lawyers who might otherwise challenge the administration. The actions undermine a key element of the American democratic system by limiting the ability of potential adversaries to access the judicial system, one of the most powerful checks on executive power.
Trump got a huge boost last week when the firm Paul Weiss accepted demands from Trump in exchange for withdrawing the executive order targeting the firm. The White House was gleeful at that result and the administration reportedly already has a list of other firms it may subject to similar treatment.
David Perez, a partner at Perkins Coie, wrote in a post on Sunday on LinkedIn:
Paul Weiss’s deal emboldened him to ratchet up his attack on one of the strongest checks on his power: lawyers and the rule of law. Now more than ever law firms and lawyers across the political spectrum have to stand up for our timeless values.
Perkins Coie is also suing the administration over the order and won a temporary restraining order blocking it.
Read the full story here:
Earlier, we reported on Donald Trump issuing a proclamation on Thursday targeting law firm WilmerHale, the fifth time the president has taken aim at a major firm with connections to his legal or political adversaries.
The proclamation cited WilmerHale’s ties to Robert Mueller, the former US special counsel who investigated Russian contacts with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
It also accused the firm of donating free legal work to support “destructive” causes related to immigration and voting, and said it discriminated based on race.
Like three earlier executive orders issued by Trump against other firms, the proclamation suspended security clearances held by lawyers at WilmerHale, restricted their access to government officials and ordered a review meant to terminate federal contracts held by the firm’s clients.
A WilmerHale spokesperson said Trump’s proclamation resembled an earlier executive order that was suspended by a judge. “We look forward to pursuing all appropriate remedies to this unlawful order,” the firm said.
Trump has vowed to target more law firms, accusing them of “weaponizing” the legal system against him and his allies.
WilmerHale, Covington, Perkins Coie and Jenner & Block, another firm named in an executive order earlier this week, are each representing clients in lawsuits against the Trump administration over issues such as immigration, transgender rights and firings of government workers.
In WilmerHale’s case, the firm represents a group of inspectors general who allege the administration illegally ousted them. The firm also played a key role in lawsuits against the first Trump administration.
You can read the full story here:
Another law firm targeted by Trump sues to block punishing executive order
Sam Levine
The law firm Jenner & Block sued the Trump administration on Friday, seeking to block an executive order that would halt the firm’s business with the government and revoke the security clearances of its attorneys.
Trump has issued similar orders against five firms, all in retaliation for employing or representing political enemies: Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Paul, Weiss, Covington and Burling, and Perkins Coie. Only Perkins Coie has challenged the order in court and successfully convinced a US district judge in Washington to block it.
Jenner & Block’s suit is significant because it comes at a moment when there is deep concern that the legal community isn’t doing enough to push back against Trump’s efforts to target firms. Lawyers and other experts see Trump’s executive orders targeting firms as an anti-democratic program to intimidate adversaries and make it more difficult to challenge him and his administration in court.
That concern escalated after Paul, Weiss reached an agreement with the Trump administration to withdraw the executive order against it. Another major firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is reportedly in talks with the Trump administration to avoid having an executive order issued against it, the New York Times reported (paywall) Thursday evening.
Trump targeted Jenner & Block over the firm’s employment of Andrew Weissmann, a former prosecutor who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Weissmann hasn’t worked at the firm since 2021 and has been a prominent Trump critic, frequently appearing on television.
Jenner & Block’s suit, filed in the federal district court in Washington DC, details how the order cripples the firm. Over the last five years, 40% of its revenue have come from clients who are government contractors, subcontractors, or affiliated with the government. It also says it harms the firm’s pro-bono practice because it may represent clients and take positions that are at odds with the administration.
Lawyers from Cooley LLP, which is representing Jenner & Block, say that the executive order targeting the firm is blatantly unconstitutional.
“The Constitution, top to bottom, protects against such attempts by the government to target citizens and lawyers based on the opinions they voice, the people with whom they associate, and the clients they represent,” it says. Creating a list of disfavored law firms, it says, is “ is anathema to our scheme of ordered liberty.”
Democrats raise regulatory concerns over Trump family crypto venture and ask financial watchdogs how they plan to oversee the family’s cryptocurrency activities.
Five Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren, sought answers regarding World Liberty Financial, a crypto project backed by Donald Trump and his family, and its newly announced plans to issue a stablecoin, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported on Friday citing a letter.
The lawmakers warned US financial regulators of a potential “extraordinary conflict of interest” in overseeing the cryptocurrency entity.
The letter was sent early on Friday, addressed to the Federal Reserve’s vice chair of bank supervision Michelle Bowman and acting comptroller of the currency Rodney Hood.
The senators questioned how regulators would manage oversight given the company’s ties to the sitting president.
Legislation moving through Congress would set up a regulatory structure for stablecoins, digital currencies that act as dollar-like instruments for storing value or purchasing other crypto assets. The bill would designate the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) as overseers, while laying out specific standards for reserves and consumer protections, the report added.
The Federal Reserve declined to comment. The White House and OCC didn’t immediately respond to Reuters request for comments.
Founded two months before Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, World Liberty’s creation was announced by Trump, his three sons and the wealthy real estate businessman Steve Witkoff, who is now Trump’s Middle East envoy.
Trump’s aides have said he has handed over control of his business ventures, which are being reviewed by outside ethics lawyers.
On Tuesday, World Liberty Financial said it will launch a stablecoin, called USD1, adding that it will be fully backed by US Treasuries, dollars and other cash equivalents and is designed to keep a value of $1.
Related: US rise of cryptocurrency and fall of regulation pose ‘profound risks’ – report
Trump to speak to new Canadian PM in first call – reports
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and Donald Trump’s first phone call will take place this morning, a source with knowledge of the matter has told Radio-Canada.
It will be their first conversation as leaders and comes days after Trump announced plans to impose sweeping 25% tariffs on cars from overseas, a move Carney condemned as a “direct attack” on Canadian workers. Trump later threatened further tariffs if the EU worked with Canada “in order to do economic harm to the USA”. Carney said:
We will defend our workers, we will defend our companies, we will defend our country, and we will defend it together.
Earlier this week, the Canadian PM had said he was available for a call with Trump but would do so “on our terms as a sovereign country”. He said:
I’m available for a call, but you know, we’re going to talk on our terms as a sovereign country, not as what he pretends we are.
Trump has figured prominently into Canada’s political narrative, now making good on his threats to wage economic war on the US’s closest ally and one of its largest trading partners, and has repeatedly mused about annexing Canada and making it the US’s 51st state.
Since Donald Trump took office just a few months ago (yes, really), Elon Musk and his team at the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have come up against public backlash and concern over their cuts to and rapidly accumulated power across federal agencies. They have led the dismantling of USAID, the world’s largest single source of humanitarian aid, as well as fired thousands of government workers. Doge staffers and Musk allies have also gained access to sensitive government data, as well as been placed in key positions at major government agencies.
But a key question this whole time has been – who are these people? Helpfully, the team at Wired have done a deep-dive mapping out the people behind Doge and where they have come from. The short answer is, they’ve largely come from Musk’s world, through his Silicon Valley and corporate connections. Here is an extract:
The Doge world, as it stands, seems to break down into roughly three categories: former Trump officials, conservative lawyers, and imports from the Silicon Valley area (funders, founders, technologists, or people connected to them). In that first category we find people like Doge spokesperson Katie Miller, the wife of White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller. The two of them have been Musk’s guides to DC.
In that second category are people like James Burnham and Austin Raynor, both former clerks for conservative supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, respectively. Jacob Altik, another conservative lawyer on the Doge squad, has been selected to clerk for Gorsuch. Jeremy Lewin, who was part of Doge dismantling of USAID, worked with second lady Usha Vance’s former law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, a firm that has also represented Tesla.
Then, the biggest throughline of all: Of those Silicon Valley imports, one of the most clear themes across Doge’s ranks is fairly obvious: a connection to Elon Musk. Forty-nine people on our list have connections to Musk, his companies, or his greater network. This connection is most often through one of his allies or one of his companies. There are the obvious people like Steve Davis, president of Musk’s Boring Company, who have followed Musk across his various ventures. (Davis previously worked at SpaceX and assisted Musk in his overhaul of X, formerly Twitter.) Davis spearheaded the Doge recruitment efforts before inauguration day and has continued to play a pivotal role in the organization. Similarly, SpaceX employee Brian Bjelde, who is now at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), also helped Musk downsize Twitter’s staff in 2022.
There are people like the young engineers who were given the keys to different government agencies, like Marko Elez, Luke Farritor, and Edward Coristine, who were all interns or employees at one of Musk’s companies: SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, X, and Neuralink. (Musk has been involved in others, but these are the ones he controls.)
More than any other company, SpaceX has significant representation in Doge, with 16 of the 80 listed Doge operatives having worked there in some capacity.
Then there are the second-degree connections to people in Musk’s network. Connections to billionaire and PayPal Mafia member Peter Thiel and to Palantir, the defense-focused tech company he cofounded, pop up frequently. Several other Doge members have also worked for Palantir. Thiel was an early Trump supporter and helped bankroll the 2022 Senate campaign of vice-president JD Vance. He has also invested in several of Musk’s companies.
The Musk connection reaches beyond the tech industry. Doge also contains a cohort of people from the finance industry, including Michael Grimes and Anthony Armstrong, who both worked to help Musk structure the deal to buy Twitter while at Morgan Stanley (Armstrong has since left the firm). Antonio Gracias, CEO of Valor Equity Partners, was an early investor in Tesla (and a donor to Musk’s America PAC) and is also part of Doge, along with two other people who have been employed there, Jon Koval and Payton Rehling.
And then there are those with personal connections to the Musk network. Stephen Ehikian, Doge’s lead at GSA, is married to Andrea Conway, who was a designer at X. Kathryn Armstrong Loving, who has appeared as part of Doge at the Environmental Protection Agency, is the sister of Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the crypto company Coinbase. The relationship here comes through Marc Andreessen and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, which has invested in Coinbase as well as the defense startup Anduril. Before inauguration, there were reports that Andreessen was helping to interview Doge candidates, and he jokingly described himself as an “unpaid intern” for Doge. Ryan Wunderly, who is slated to be the new Doge member at the Treasury, according to lawsuits, comes from Anduril.
You can read the full Wired piece, which makes for fascinating reading, here.
The day so far
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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order limiting numerous federal workers from unionising and ordering the government to stop engaging in any collective bargaining. A memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) references an order from Trump but also provides a fact sheet, setting out the rationale for such a move, The Hill reports. It reads: “President Trump is taking action to ensure that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people.”
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The memo also says “agencies should cease participating in grievance procedures after terminating their CBA [collective bargaining agreements].” It has been condemned by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) in an email to members, which said the Trump administration was “illegally strip[ping] collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers”.
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Donald Trump revealed his intentions to reshape the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order on Thursday that targets funding to programs with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology”. The president said there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”. He signed an executive order putting JD Vance in charge of an effort to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.
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Donald Trump’s appointment of a career health researcher to head the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provoked a serious rightwing backlash for the new administration. Dozens of Maga influencers, along with many rank-and-file Trump supporters, have taken to social media to denounce Susan Monarez to spin false conspiracy theories about her connections to the CIA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). On X, Truth Social, across rightwing “alt-tech” sites and in segments of rightwing media, there was a vociferous response to the announcement this week that Monarez would continue in the position she has been acting in at the CDC, following the withdrawal of Trump’s initial nominee, David Weldon, who unlike Monarez has a history of supporting fringe theories which oppose vaccination.
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US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said the Trump administration would boost military ties with the Philippines to strengthen deterrence against “threats from the communist Chinese” and ensure freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea. Hegseth spoke on Friday during a meeting with president Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the Philippines, his first stop in his first trip to Asia, to reaffirm Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to the region under Trump. Ahead of the visit, China called the United States a “predator” and an unreliable ally, AP reported.
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The US is in the midst of an extraordinary battle between “the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires”, a top Democratic government official and attorney has warned, after his unprecedented firing by Donald Trump. Alvaro Bedoya, abruptly terminated as a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, sounded a “blinking red alarm” over backroom “quid pro quo” deal making he said appears to be taking place inside the Trump administration.
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Lawmakers sent a bipartisan letter to the Pentagon’s inspector general asking for an investigation into the Signal group chat in which the defense secretary texted attack plans on a non-secure device.
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Fearing the loss of her seat in the House, Donald Trump withdrew the nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik as US Ambassador to the UN.
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Judge James Boasberg ordered all relevant government agencies to retain the Signal group chat messages that are now the subject of litigation.
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Asked about reports that 300 student visas had been revoked, US secretary of state Marco Rubio replied: “It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”
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Attorney general Pamela Jo Bondi directed the justice department’s civil rights division to ensure that four California universities – Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and University of California, Irvine – are not using “illegal DEI policies” in admissions.
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Trump signed an executive order directing his vice-president, JD Vance, to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from Smithsonian museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.
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A Russian scientist working at Harvard has been detained by Ice and threatened with deportation back to Russia, where she faces jail for protesting the war on Ukraine.
Vance to visit US military base in Greenland
US vice-president JD Vance and his wife are due to visit an American military base in Greenland in a trip that was scaled back after an uproar by Greenlanders and Danes who were irked that the original itinerary was planned without consulting them.
The couple’s revised trip to the semi-autonomous Danish territory comes as relations between the US and the Nordic country have soured after US president Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that the United States should, in some form, control the mineral-rich territory of Denmark – a traditional US ally and Nato member.
Friday’s one-day visit to the US Space Force outpost at Pituffik, on the north-west coast of Greenland, has removed the risk of violating potential diplomatic taboos by sending a delegation to another country without an official invitation.
It will also reduce the likelihood that Vance and his wife will cross paths with residents angered by Trump’s annexation announcements.
You can follow Vance’s visit in full in our Europe blog:
Jason Wilson
Donald Trump’s appointment of a career health researcher to head the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provoked a serious rightwing backlash for the new administration.
Dozens of Maga influencers, along with many rank-and-file Trump supporters, have taken to social media to denounce Susan Monarez to spin false conspiracy theories about her connections to the CIA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
On X, Truth Social, across rightwing “alt-tech” sites and in segments of rightwing media, there was a vociferous response to the announcement this week that Monarez would continue in the position she has been acting in at the CDC, following the withdrawal of Trump’s initial nominee, David Weldon, who unlike Monarez has a history of supporting fringe theories which oppose vaccination.
The firestorm among the conspiracy theorists and science deniers of the anti-vaccine set shows the power of that constituency among Trump’s circle as it quickly forced Trump’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy, to defend the hire in a post on X.
Kennedy wrote: “X posts that erroneously attribute Biden-era tweets supporting masks, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc. to my @CDCgov Director nominee, Susan Monarez, have understandably provoked agita within the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] movement.”
He continued, “I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health and gold-standard science.”
Marina Dunbar
The US is in the midst of an extraordinary battle between “the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires”, a top Democratic government official and attorney has warned, after his unprecedented firing by Donald Trump.
Alvaro Bedoya, abruptly terminated as a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, sounded a “blinking red alarm” over backroom “quid pro quo” deal making he said appears to be taking place inside the Trump administration.
Bedoya and his colleague, commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, another Democrat, were fired from the FTC, Washington’s top antitrust watchdog. Both Bedoya and Slaughter have sued the administration over their respective dismissals, which they argue were illegal.
In an interview with the Guardian, Bedoya expressed fear that his firing is a sign of billionaires’ growing power over the federal government. “This isn’t about progressive versus conservative,” he said. “This is about the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires.”
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said the Trump administration would boost military ties with the Philippines to strengthen deterrence against “threats from the communist Chinese” and ensure freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea.
Hegseth spoke on Friday during a meeting with president Ferdinand Marcos Jr in the Philippines, his first stop in his first trip to Asia, to reaffirm Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to the region under Trump.
Ahead of the visit, China called the United States a “predator” and an unreliable ally, AP reported.
Trump’s “America First” foreign policy thrust has triggered concerns in Asia about the scale and depth of the US commitment to the region.
Hegseth’s decision to make the Philippines his first stop in Asia, followed by Japan – both US treaty allies facing territorial disputes with China – was the strongest assurance yet by the US under Trump to maintain a security presence in the region.
Chris Stein
For beleaguered and divided congressional Democrats desperate to find an effective line of attack against Donald Trump, news that the US president’s national security team discussed plans to bomb Yemen on a widely available messaging app in the presence of a journalist came at just the right time.
The leak has put the White House and the Republicans on the defensive, generated multiple days of aggressive media coverage and forced top officials to publicly twist themselves in knots as they seek to explain – or downplay – the blunder.
It has also unified the Democrats at a time when they have seemed split on how to combat the Trump administration’s radical agenda and has even allowed some Republicans to join them in criticizing the White House. On Thursday, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate armed services committee jointly asked the defense department’s acting inspector general to investigate the leak.
“If true, this reporting raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know,” the Republican Roger Wicker and the Democrat Jack Reed wrote.
Trump executive order on Smithsonian targets funding for ‘improper ideology’
Donald Trump revealed his intentions to reshape the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order on Thursday that targets funding to programs with “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology”.
The president said there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite US history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth”.
He signed an executive order putting JD Vance in charge of an effort to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.
Trump’s order specifically names the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Women’s history museum, which is in development.
“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn – not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” the order said.
Linda St Thomas, the Smithsonian Institution’s chief spokesperson, said in an email late on Thursday: “We have no comment for now.”
White House moves to end union rights for many government agency employees
Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you all the latest news lines through this morning.
We start with news that president Donald Trump has signed an executive order limiting numerous federal workers from unionising and ordering the government to stop engaging in any collective bargaining.
A memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) references an order from Trump but also provides a fact sheet, setting out the rationale for such a move, The Hill reports.
It reads: “President Trump is taking action to ensure that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people.”
The Hill reports today:
The order targets agencies it says have a national security mission but many of the departments don’t have a strict national security connection.
In addition to all agencies with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of State, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the order also covers the Treasury Department, all agencies with Health and Human Services (HHS), the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the General Services Administration, and many more.
In total the OPM memo references 18 departments while also including numerous component agencies. The OPM memo instructs agencies to terminate their collective bargaining agreement.
“Consequently, those agencies and subdivisions are no longer required to collectively bargain with Federal unions,” OPM states in its memo.
Because the statutory authority underlying the original recognition of the relevant unions no longer applies, unions lose their status as the ‘exclusive[ly] recogni[zed]’ labor organizations for employees of the agencies.
The memo also says “agencies should cease participating in grievance procedures after terminating their CBA [collective bargaining agreements].”
It has been condemned by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) in an email to members, which said the Trump administration was “illegally strip[ping] collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal workers”.
The AFGE added:
Let’s be clear. National security is not the reason for this action. This is retaliation because our union is standing up for AFGE members – and a warning to every union: fall in line, or else.
AFGE is not going anywhere. We are fighting back. We are preparing legal action.
In other news:
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Lawmakers sent a bipartisan letter to the Pentagon’s inspector general asking for an investigation into the Signal group chat in which the defense secretary texted attack plans on a non-secure device.
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Fearing the loss of her seat in the House, Donald Trump withdrew the nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik as US Ambassador to the UN.
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Judge James Boasberg ordered all relevant government agencies to retain the Signal group chat messages tat are now the subject of litigation.
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Asked about reports that 300 student visas had been revoked, US secretary of state Marco Rubio replied: “It might be more than 300 at this point. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”
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Attorney general Pamela Jo Bondi directed the justice department’s civil rights division to ensure that four California universities – Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, and University of California, Irvine – are not using “illegal DEI policies” in admissions.
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Trump signed an executive order directing his vice-president, JD Vance, to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from Smithsonian museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.
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A Russian scientist working at Harvard has been detained by Ice and threatened with deportation back to Russia, where she faces jail for protesting the war on Ukraine.
