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Supreme court lifts order blocking Trump’s mass federal layoffs
The supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies, key elements of his campaign to downsize and reshape the federal government.
The justices lifted San Francisco-based US district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May order that had blocked large-scale federal layoffs called “reductions in force” affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs, while litigation in the case proceeds.
Workforce reductions were planned at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
Illston wrote in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration.
“As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” Illston wrote.
The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. She also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.
Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and Doge.
The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May denied the administration’s request to halt the judge’s ruling.
It said the administration had not shown that it would suffer an irreparable injury if the judge’s order remained in place and that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail in their lawsuit.
The ruling prompted the justice department’s 2 June emergency request to the supreme court to halt Illston’s order.
Controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority, the justice department said in its filing to the supreme court.
“The constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers,” the filing said, referring to the constitution’s section delineating presidential authority.
The plaintiffs urged the supreme court to deny the request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.
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Updated at 16.41 EDT
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Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
Donald Trump met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again today in a closed-door meeting regarding Gaza. Earlier in the day, Netanyahu met JD Vance at Blair House, and Qatari officials visited the White House. A temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza could be finalized by the end of the week, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said at a cabinet meeting.
The supreme court cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the court to dissent. The decision will allow planned workforce reductions to resume at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
Despite receiving permission from the Trump administration to hire more employees, the National Weather Service never posted 126 vacancies to the federal government’s hiring website, Politico reports. The news follows Democrats asking a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the forecasting agency affected its performance.
At a cabinet meeting today, Donald Trump said that he is “not happy” with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The news follows the president’s announcement that the US will resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, after the Pentagon ordered certain shipments paused. Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell today reported that the United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months.
An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at least five senior officials.
Rightwing influencers in the US who are often aligned with Trump are angry that a joint justice department and FBI memo has dismissed the existence of a “client list” in the case against late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The US government will ban sales of US farmland to Chinese buyers and other foreign adversaries, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, announced today.
New York City mayor Eric Adams faces lawsuits filed today by four former high-ranking police officers accusing the embattled Democrat of promoting corruption in the police department, the New York Times reports.
Eight men have been deported to South Sudan from the United States, following a supreme court ruling last month allowing the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries not their own. Only one is from South Sudan.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump said his administration will release “a minimum of 7” announcements regarding trade with other countries tomorrow.
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State department to resume layoffs following supreme court ruling
The state department will resume layoffs following the supreme court’s ruling today on the Trump administration’s plan to downsize the federal government.
In a social media post, the agency, which has proposed firing nearly 2,000 employees, wrote: “We will continue to move forward with our historic reorganization plan.”
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields called the court’s ruling a “definitive victory for the president and his administration”, Reuters reports. However, the outlet also cited two anonymous White House sources that said the ruling did not mean agencies could resume layoffs immediately, noting the possibility of additional legal battles.
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Updated at 21.33 EDT
The city of Los Angeles has joined a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s immigration raids, the Associated Press reports. The suit, which was filed by immigrant rights groups last week, seeks a temporary restraining order to prevent the immigration agents from targeting people based on their race and denying detainees due process.
The news comes just one day after Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass confronted immigration agents during a raid on the city’s MacArthur park.
“What we have experienced over these last few weeks has just been shocking,” Bass said at a news conference earlier today.
“This cannot become routine, to send militarized troops into our streets without reasonable suspicion, without probable cause, to round people up and take them away,” city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto added.
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Updated at 21.32 EDT
Trump to announce “minimum of 7” new tariffs tomorrow
In a post on his social media platform, Donald Trump said his administration will release “a minimum of 7” announcements regarding trade with other countries tomorrow.
The president said seven countries would be named in the morning, with others coming in the afternoon.
The news comes after the president published tariff letters directed to 14 other countries on his social media account yesterday.
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Updated at 21.22 EDT
Though overall inflation has not hit the predicted heights, the prices of used cars are ticking up across the US amid tariff-driven market volatility, Reuters reports.
According to the news outlet:
The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index rose 1.6% in June from May on a seasonally adjusted basis and surged 6.3% from a year earlier, the largest year-over-year increase since August 2022, according to data released on Tuesday. At 208.5, the index has been trending upward for a year and is now at its highest since October 2023.
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Updated at 21.32 EDT
A federal judge in Colorado has dismissed a case filed by survivors and family members of people killed during a November 2022 mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs.
The 12 plaintiffs claimed that El Paso county and its former sheriff’s failure to enforce the state red flag law allowed the shooter, who’d had run-ins with the law and talked about aspiring to be a mass shooter, to carry out the attack that killed five people and injured another 19.
The judge said that though the sheriff and county commissioner are not being found legally liable: “Their collective role in refusing to at least try to thwart what most likely was a horrific but preventable tragedy should weigh heavily on their individual consciences, and most certainly will not be forgotten by the people of Colorado.”
Read more background on the shooting here.
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Updated at 21.30 EDT
Trump administration officials met with their Qatari counterparts at the White House ahead of Donald Trump’s meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Associated Press reports, citing an anonymous White House official.
The teams discussed ceasefire and hostage negotiations in the war on Gaza.
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Updated at 20.02 EDT
Despite receiving permission from the Trump administration to hire more employees, the National Weather Service never posted 126 vacancies to the federal government’s hiring website, Politico reports.
The news comes in the wake of catastrophic flooding of the Guadalupe River in Texas. Although the National Weather Service accurately forecast the flood, staffing shortages may impact the agency’s ability to respond to future disasters, officials told Politico.
“Considering that there are critical staff shortages at NWS weather forecast offices across the country and the president of the United States has given NWS leadership permission to hire 126 replacements, it begs the question why the Department of Commerce has not implemented a presidential directive,” Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service employees organization, the union that represents many NWS staffers, told Politico.
Almost 600 employees have left the agency in recent months, following Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government.
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Updated at 20.00 EDT
Despite trying to pay his bond, Atlanta-based Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara remains in federal custody.
Guevara was arrested while covering a protest in mid-June, and detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Last week, an immigration judge granted him bond, which would have allowed him to leave the George immigration detention facility where he was being held.
Despite trying to pay the $7,500 bond, Guevara’s lawyer says Ice did not accept Guevara’s payment.
Here’s the full story:
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The Trump administration will continue phasing out the last type of asbestos legally allowed in US manufacturing, the Associated Press reports, citing an Environmental Protection Agency court filing today.
The administration had previously planned to allow manufacturers to continue using chrysotile asbestos, despite a Biden-era ban on the chemical. In a court filing last month, it had said parts of the ban went “beyond what is necessary to eliminate the unreasonable risk”. Following outcry from asbestos opponents, however, the administration has shifted course.
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Updated at 19.53 EDT
