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us constitution
Federal Judge Halts Trump and Musk's Illegal Overhaul of US Government
The second Trump administration "has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation," the coalition behind the lawsuit said, welcoming the temporary restraining order.
May 10, 2025
A federal judge in California on Friday temporarily blocked what at coalition of labor unions, local governments, and nonprofits argued was "the unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government by the president of the United States on a scale unprecedented in this country’s history and in clear excess of his authority."
Since returning to office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump—aided by his so-callled Department of Government Efficiency and its de facto leader, billionaire Elon Musk—has worked to quickly overhaul the bureaucracy, even though "the president does not possess authority to reorganize, downsize, or otherwise transform the agencies of the federal government, unless and until Congress authorizes such action," as the coalition's complaint notes.
District Judge Susan Illston agreed with the groups and governments, which include the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Alliance for Retired Americans, Main Street Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, the city and county of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, and more.
"The president has the authority to seek changes to executive branch agencies, but he must do so in lawful ways and, in the case of large-scale reorganizations, with the cooperation of the legislative branch," wrote Illston in a 42-page decision. "Many presidents have sought this cooperation before; many iterations of Congress have provided it. Nothing prevents the president from requesting this cooperation—as he did in his prior term of office."
"Indeed, the court holds the president likely must request congressional cooperation to order the changes he seeks, and thus issues a temporary restraining order to pause large-scale reductions in force in the meantime," said the judge, appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by former President Bill Clinton.
Illston added that "a temporary restraining order is, by definition, temporary. The court will not consider defendants' request for a stay of execution of the temporary restraining order, as doing so would render the exercise pointless. The court must promptly proceed to consideration of a preliminary injunction."
Welcoming the development in a late Friday statement, the plaintiff coalition said that "the Trump administration's unlawful attempt to reorganize the federal government has thrown agencies into chaos, disrupting critical services provided across our nation."
"Each of us represents communities deeply invested in the efficiency of the federal government—laying off federal employees and reorganizing government functions haphazardly does not achieve that," the coalition added. "We are gratified by the court's decision today to pause these harmful actions while our case proceeds."
The "largest and most significant challenge to Trump's authority to remake the government without congressional approval," as the coalition called it, was filed April 28 by the organizations' legal team: Democracy Forward, Altshuler Berzon LLP, Protect Democracy, Public Rights Project, and State Democracy Defenders Fund.
Illston's decision came just hours after an emergency hearing, during which coalition attorney Danielle Leonard "said the Trump administration's vision was to fundamentally degrade the services that Congress funds agencies to carry out, raising a profound separation of powers conflict," according toThe New York Times.
As the newspaper detailed:
"There's a presumption of regularity that used to exist with respect to the government's actions that I think they need to re-earn," she said.
Ms. Leonard said the Trump administration has never been able to point to any specific authority through which the president could seize that power from Congress. And she said that the government has consistently offered competing and contradictory explanations of why Mr. Trump can authorize the massive restructuring without Congress.
"It's an ouroboros: the snake eating its tail," she said.
Signaling a desire to keep moving through the process swiftly, Illston gave the plaintiff coalition until next Wednesday to file a motion for a preliminary injunction, and the federal defendants—Trump along with various federal agencies and their leaders—until the following Monday to respond, with a limit of 25 pages for both.
Even if the coalition's lawsuit ultimately succeeds, Republicans have a narrow majority in both chambers of Congress, meaning Trump could potentially work with lawmakers to pursue a similar gutting of the federal government before the midterm elections.
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Asked If He Must Uphold the US Constitution, Trump Says: 'I Don't Know'
"I'm not a lawyer," the president said in a newly aired interview.
May 04, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump refused in an interview released Sunday to affirm that the nation's Constitution affords due process to citizens and noncitizens alike and that he, as president, must uphold that fundamental right.
"I don't know, I'm not a lawyer," Trump told NBC's Kristen Welker, who asked if the president agrees with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statement that everyone on U.S. soil is entitled to due process.
When Welker pointed to the Fifth Amendment—which states that "no person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"—Trump again replied that he's unsure and suggested granting due process to the undocumented immigrants he wants to deport would be too burdensome.
"We'd have to have a million or 2 million or 3 million trials," Trump said, echoing a sentiment that his vice president expressed last month.
Asked whether he needs to "uphold the Constitution of the United States as president," Trump replied, "I don't know."
Watch:
WELKER: The 5th Amendment says everyone deserves due process
TRUMP: It might say that, but if you're talking about that, then we'd have to have a million or two million or three million trials pic.twitter.com/FMZQ7O9mTP
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 4, 2025
Trump, who similarly deferred to "the lawyers" when asked recently about his refusal to bring home wrongly deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has unlawfully cited the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly remove undocumented immigrants from the U.S. without due process. Federal agents have also arrested and detained students, academics, and a current and former judge in recent weeks, heightening alarm over the administration's authoritarian tactics.
CNNreported Friday that the administration has "been examining whether it can label some suspected cartel and gang members inside the U.S. as 'enemy combatants' as a possible way to detain them more easily and limit their ability to challenge their imprisonment."
"Trump has expressed extreme frustration with federal courts halting many of those migrants' deportations, amid legal challenges questioning whether they were being afforded due process," the outlet added. "By labeling the migrants as enemy combatants, they would have fewer rights, the thinking goes."
Some top administration officials have publicly expressed disdain for the constitutional right to due process. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, wrote in a social media post last month that "the judicial process is for Americans" and "immediate deportation" is for undocumented immigrants.
The New Republic's Greg Sargent wrote in a column Saturday that "Miller appears to want Trump to have the power to declare undocumented immigrants to be terrorists and gang members by fiat; to have the power to absurdly decree them members of a hostile nation's invading army, again by fiat; and then to have quasi-unlimited power to remove them, unconstrained by any court."
"The more transparency we have gained into the rot of corruption and bad faith at the core of this whole saga, the worse it has come to look," Sargent continued. "Trump himself is exposing it all for what it truly is: the stuff of Mad Kings."
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Trump-Appointed Judge Rules White House Can't Retaliate Against AP Over Gulf of Mexico Dispute
A spokesperson for the news agency said the ruling "affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation."
Apr 08, 2025
A federal judge appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term ruled Tuesday that the White House cannot cut off The Associated Press' access to the Republican leader because of the news agency's refusal to use his preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico.
"About two months ago, President Donald Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. The Associated Press did not follow suit. For that editorial choice, the White House sharply curtailed the AP's access to coveted, tightly controlled media events with the president," wrote Judge Trevor N. McFadden, who is based in Washington, D.C.
Specifically, according to the news outlet, "the AP has been blocked since February 11 from being among the small group of journalists to cover Trump in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One, with sporadic ability to cover him at events in the East Room."
The AP responded to the restrictions by suing White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, "seeking a preliminary injunction enjoining the government from excluding it because of its viewpoint," McFadden noted in his 41-page order. "Today, the court grants that relief."
The judge explained that "this injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events. It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the president or nonpublic government spaces. It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones' questions they answer. And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views."
"The court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists—be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere—it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints," he stressed. "The Constitution requires no less."
McFadden blocked his own order from taking effect before next week, giving the Trump administration time to respond or appeal. Still, AP spokesperson Lauren Easton said Tuesday that "we are gratified by the court's decision."
"Today’s ruling affirms the fundamental right of the press and public to speak freely without government retaliation," Easton added. "This is a freedom guaranteed for all Americans in the U.S. Constitution."
NPRreported that "an AP reporter and photographer were turned back from joining a reporting pool on a presidential motorcade early Tuesday evening, almost two hours after the decision came down."
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