As discussed last night, the union lawyer suing to stop the government from RIFing (firing) anybody during the shutdown submitted a proposed order to supersede the previous TRO that enjoined the government from RIFing union employees. And the judge immediately entered the order with no changes except to redline the word "proposed" from "proposed order."
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So three more unions are included, and additional language to (as far as I can tell) prevent the government from issuing any RIFs if the department ever came close to having anybody in a union in it. Oh, and the Trump admin lawyer has until 9am Pacific time on Monday to get all the departments to issue new declarations of all the RIFs, everything related to RIFs, any planned RIFs, RIFs that already started, or anybody thinking about RIFs.
If you watched the hearing last night, you'd see that the elderly female Clinton-appointed judge barely understands the issues at play and literally just agreed to "order everything she just said" (referring to the union lawyer flipping out and making demands). It's wild to see this shit happening in real time.
Following up on all that jazz I shared on Friday, re: RIFs (reductions in force, i.e. firings) of government employees during the shutdown and the lawsuit of the unions to stop any and all RIFs:
Today the defendants (the Trump admin) were required to submit new declarations from each Department of the government per the kangaroo court's bullshit revised temporary restraining order that was issued on Friday night (after it was drafted by the plaintiff union lawyer and the judge okayed it). The defense has submitted this very brief notice:
Note the highlighted portion, wherein the admin says
only three of the NUMEROUS government agencies have anything new to add to their prior declarations, and all the other departments are standing by their prior declarations re: RIFs that are affected by the TRO. I'm attaching those three for funsies; they are the Departments of Interior, Commerce, and Health and Human Services.
This is notable from Commerce's declaration:
Interior, as it turns out, really
was trying to ditch a lot of people:
But all of it was planned BEFORE the fucking shutdown:
You can see Interior's list in the appendix which is attached to their declaration here, if you're so inclined, but it's long.
All that being said, the TL;DR from the defense appears to be, "We DID comply with the terms of the TRO, then you changed the terms of the TRO, so here are a few things that are included in your new TRO, but everything else we submitted under the previous TRO was the truth and fully compliant even under the new revised TRO."
I know for an absolute fact the plaintiffs/unions are going to file another bitchfest insisting that the defense is lying, but we'll fall off that bridge when we come to it.
Meanwhile, tomorrow is the deadline for plaintiffs to submit a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case:
It is my vague understanding that a preliminary injunction will require a more in-depth review of the legal issues at play (such as "the merits" which the judge so frequently insisted upon), and if granted, would remain in place through the whole length of the suit. I don't know how (or if) ending the shutdown would affect this case, but there's still that other case by the same unions against Trump that started before the shutdown, trying to fight those firings. Stay tuned!
