Judge Rules Trump Can Go Right Ahead With Gutting Federal Government

A federal judge has just cleared the way for Trump to continue his federal employee purge.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper decided against the National Treasury Employees Union and multiple other unions who sued the Trump administration last week to stop them from terminating thousands of federal workers. This is a huge early win for Trump, as the firings had been on hold since the suit was filed.

The unions, which included the United Auto Workers, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the National Federation of Federal Employees, argued that DOGE’s slashing of the federal workforce—and offering buyouts—went against the constitutional separation of powers, which givesCongress the power to fund federal agencies. The lawsuit aimed to stop layoffs at the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Department of Veterans Affairs.

The argument didn’t seem to matter to Judge Cooper, who ruled the unions must instead file their complaints with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) rather than a federal court.

This is one of at least 70 lawsuits that has been filed against the Trump administration since he came into office. Each court decision will serve as a barometer for just how much the judiciary will fold to the president.

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has sent a threatening letter to Representative Robert Garcia after the California Democrat mocked Elon Musk last week.

Garcia joined other House Democrats at the first House Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing last Wednesday in attacking the tech mogul’s gutting of the federal government. Garcia displayed a large picture of Musk, calling it a “dick pick” and jokingly referring to the tech mogul as president.

That picture seems to have attracted the ire of the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, who has vowed to stop anyone who threatens or attacks Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Specifically, Martin took issue with an interview Garcia gave on CNN later that day, in which he said, “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.”

Martin sent Garcia a letter on Monday asking for clarification regarding that comment, telling Garcia, “This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk - an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you call a dick - and government staff who work for him.” Martin’s letter asked for a response from Garcia by February 24.

Garcia posted the letter to his X account Thursday, asserting that “members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration. I will not be silenced.”

Martin has already targeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for supposedly inciting violence against conservative Supreme Court justices five years ago. Martin has also threatened to investigate former special counsel Jack Smith, who was pursuing criminal investigations against Trump. It seems that Martin, a defender of Trump’s election fraud lies and the January 6 Capitol riots, wants to use his prosecutorial power to punish anyone who dares to oppose the president or Musk.

A prosecutor who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas, Texas. has been outed as running a racist, white supremacist X account. 

The Texas Observer reports that the “GlomarResponder” on X is run by James Rodden, an assistant chief counsel for ICE. A review of the account’s posts along with public documents, other social media accounts, and Rodden’s biographical details led to the Observer’s report. 

GlomarResponder’s profile on X is full of racist assertions. Last month, the account wrote “America is a White nation, founded by Whites.... Our country should favor us.” Last September, he wrote, “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck.” In May, he posted,  “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” later clarifying that he was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

His views of immigrants aren’t great, either: In August, the profile wrote, “‘Migrants’ are all criminals,” and posted an image in October that read, “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.” GlomarResponder also describes himself as a “fascist.” The X account has since been made private, although the Observer has archived the posts cited in its article, said its author Steven Monacelli. 

The Observer saw Rodden in court, where he often represents ICE in deportation hearings, appearing to post on X at the same time as GlomarResponder’s posts. The X account also opposes Covid-19 vaccination, which corresponds to views that Rodden has expressed on his Facebook profile under his actual name. 

Rodden was once a Marine, a litigation clinic student at the public defender’s office, and a U.S. Border Patrol agent—all jobs that would require a background check and a security clearance. His racist views and account seem to have gone undetected before now. According to the Observer, GlomarResponder claimed to be under consideration for a Trump administration job requiring Senate confirmation, although the Observer could not confirm the veracity of that post.

Rodden now is the subject of an investigation, and could not only lose his job, but be disbarred and have his prior cases be challenged in court. Will the Trump administration and ICE take action, though? Racism isn’t just tolerated by the president, but seems to make up his entire worldview.

Elon Musk went straight to the slurs after being called out yet again for saying that astronauts have been stranded on the International Space Station by the Biden administration for “political reasons”—a lie that astronauts themselves have repeatedly debunked.

“What a lie,” Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen wrote on X Thursday, in reply to Musk parroting the talking point yet again on Fox News. “And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.”

Musk exploded.

“You are fully retarded. SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused,” he replied. “Return WAS pushed back for political reasons. Idiot.”

“Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla,” Mogensen kindly replied. “You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”

Musk is trying to gain easy points with MAGA by peddling that the Biden administration sticking to its previous plan instead of accepting his offer is equal to leaving the astronauts in space to die.

“We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck,” astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams, told CNN last week. “Help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed.’”

Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore’s trip was extended due to technical difficulties.

Texas lawmakers instituted a sweeping six-week abortion ban in 2021, using the threat of criminal conviction to sway providers against offering the medical procedure. The law offered a controversial $10,000 cash incentive for citizens to report medical practitioners in defiance of the ban, and left little room for emergency scenarios in which the pregnancy threatened the life of the person carrying the fetus.

But the result of the ban has only proved to make pregnancy dramatically more dangerous in Texas, according to a report published Thursday by ProPublica, which found that the rate of sepsis—the body’s extreme response to an infection—skyrocketed by 50 percent after the law went into effect for women who were hospitalized after losing their pregnancies during the second trimester.

Sepsis is one of the leading causes of death in hospitals. For those who survive, it can lead to permanent kidney failure, brain damage, and blood clotting. In order to avoid the risk of sepsis, the standard procedure for miscarrying patients in the second trimester is to evacuate the uterus. A patient’s risk of infection and eventual sepsis climbs with every hour after their water breaks, or their cervix opens, reported ProPublica.

The risk of sepsis was even greater for patients whose fetus may have still had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital, according to the investigative nonprofit. At least two people have died from sepsis since the ban. Both had miscarried but died due to politically caused medical delays in inducing what would have been considered an abortion. Their deaths prompted a coalition of 111 Texas OB-GYN’s to plead with state lawmakers to allow them to provide lifesaving care for pregnant patients on the verge of death.

Under Texas law, medical professionals who provide abortions could face sentences of up to 99 years.

Federal agencies and state-appointed review panels have yet to analyze the consequences of abortion bans on mortality rates for pregnant people, making ProPublica’s analysis the first of its kind.

In 2021, 67 patients who lost their pregnancy in the second trimester were diagnosed with sepsis, according to Texas hospitals’ discharge data obtained by the publication. But by 2023, that number had climbed to 99.  ProPublica also noted that its analysis was on the conservative side and likely missed some sepsis cases. Patients whose fetus was still found to have a heartbeat were much more likely to develop sepsis.

“What this says to me is that once a fetal death is diagnosed, doctors can appropriately take care of someone to prevent sepsis, but if the fetus still has a heartbeat, then they aren’t able to act and the risk for maternal sepsis goes way up,” Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UW Medicine and an expert in pregnancy complications, told ProPublica. “This is needlessly putting a woman’s life in danger.”

Texas’s draconian abortion restrictions do provide an emergency abortion clause for life-threatening situations, but accessing the loophole isn’t cut and dry—even for some women who appear to overtly qualify for it.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the state’s abortion laws, overturning a lower court’s decision that would have allowed women in Texas to actually access abortions granted within the confines of the state’s ban. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the suit in 2023, argued that while the state’s laws technically left room for abortions in urgent circumstances, they were also so vague that they practically restricted all medical practitioners from actually considering the procedure as an option. Specifically, people could undergo abortions during complicated pregnancies so long as their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was medically necessary. 

Some women in the state, such as Kate Cox, have been forced to flee for care after failing to legally obtain access to abortions under the state’s emergency clause.

Still, despite the legal confusion, Governor Greg Abbott doesn’t believe the law needs clarification.

“There have been hundreds of abortions that have been provided under this law, so there are plenty of doctors and plenty of mothers that have been able to get an abortion that saved their lives and protect their health and safety,” Abbott told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday, adding that his intention when the law was signed was to protect the lives of mothers. “So I know as the law as it currently exists can work if it is properly applied.”

By and large, most Americans support abortion access. In a 2023 Gallup poll, just 12 percent of surveyed Americans said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Meanwhile, 69 percent believe that it should be legal in the first trimester of pregnancy.