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Trump asks Supreme Court to let him resume mass purge
President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to lift lower court orders preventing him from continuing his mass firings of the civil service, reported The Associated Press on Friday.
These firings have been on hold in part due to a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco last week.
The report noted that the lawsuit in question was brought by an array of plaintiffs, including "the cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and Baltimore; the labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and the nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights, and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks."
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U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, "questioned whether Trump's Republican administration was acting lawfully in trying to pare the federal workforce," the report noted.
She "directed numerous federal agencies to stop acting on Trump's workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management," although her order will expire on its own next week.
Since taking office, Trump has sought to slash personnel at agencies across the board, much of it with the blessing of tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force.
In many cases, these firings had to be walked back simply because critical functions broke. In one of the most high-profile cases, Trump fired hundreds of vital workers at the National Nuclear Safety Administration and had to re-hire many of them.
