Trump’s First Layoffs After Massive Supreme Court Victory Are Here

Before Tuesday, a district court had barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees en masse as his executive order calling for “large-scale reductions in force” undergoes legal challenges. Then, the Supreme Court granted Trump’s emergency request to lift the injunction.

In the Trump administration’s first batch of firings since getting the Supreme Court’s green light, Marco Rubio’s State Department axed more than 1,300 employees—1,107 civil service and 246 foreign service personnel—as part of a reduction in force affecting 3,000 employees. (The other 1,600 personnel apparently already made incentivized voluntary departures.)

This is seemingly just the beginning for the State Department, as Rubio aims to shrink the department’s domestic workforce of 18,000 by 18 percent.

The American Foreign Service Association issued a statement skewering the cuts as misguided and ill-timed.

“At a moment of great global instability—with war raging in Ukraine, conflict between Israel and Iran, and authoritarian regimes testing the boundaries of international order—the United States has chosen to gut its frontline diplomatic workforce. We oppose this decision in the strongest terms,” the statement said. “In less than six months, the U.S. has shed at least 20 percent of its diplomatic workforce through shuttering of institutions and forced resignations. Losing more diplomatic expertise at this critical global moment is a catastrophic blow to our national interests.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday filed a dissent slamming the Supreme Court decision for helping Trump unleash a “wrecking ball.” That wrecking ball has now made its first impact, but many more are on the way, as the president continues his demolition job on the federal government, imperiling hundreds of thousands of government workers’ livelihoods, not to mention the countless Americans who rely on them.

A federal judge just had to remind police that they shouldn’t shoot at journalists after several violent encounters during the protests opposing the Trump administration’s disastrous ICE raids in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera blocked the Los Angeles Police Department from wrongfully preventing journalists from accessing closed off areas, detaining or arresting journalists while they’re reporting, and using less lethal munitions (LLMs) and other crowd control weapons against them.

In a 14 page-filing, Vera said that the First Amendment claims made by the Los Angeles Press Club were likely to succeed, and granted them a temporary restraining order. “Indeed, given the fundamental nature of the speech interests involved and the almost daily protests throughout Southern California drawing media coverage, the identified harm is undoubtedly imminent and concrete,” he wrote in a filing.

Vera recounted multiple instances of journalists being cordoned away from the protests or detained and arrested by officers. Documentarian and activist Anthony Orendoff was detained for four days despite telling officers he was a member of the press.

Vera also recounted many instances of violence against members of the press. In one instance, an officer appeared to aim his gun at 9News Australia’s Lauren Tomasi while she was reporting live, and fired a rubber bullet which hit her in the leg on air. Photojournalist Michael Nigro, who stood high above the protests in a press vest and helmet, heard the sound of LLMs hitting a pole by his head, and later that day was struck in the helmet by a rubber bullet. Another unidentified photojournalist with a press pass was pushed over by a police officer, and trampled by a police horse.

Vera barred officers from “prohibiting a journalist from entering or remaining in the closed areas.” The judge also prohibited officers from “intentionally assaulting, interfering with, or obstructing any journalist” who is “gathering, “receiving, or processing information for communication to the public.”

He also barred officers from “citing, detaining, or arresting a journalist who is in a closed area for failure to disperse, curfew violation, or obstruction of a law enforcement officer for gathering, receiving, or processing information,” or using LLMs, like rubber bullets, and other crowd control measures like flash-bangs and chemical irritants like tear gas.

A hearing for a preliminary injunction was set for July 24.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is so upset with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s dismissal of the Epstein case that Bongino took the day off on Friday and may quit. Far-right commentator and Trump confidant Laura Loomer broke the story on Friday morning, and it was confirmed by Axios shortly after.  

“Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are LIVID with Pam Bondi over her DOJ memo and the lack of transparency from her office regarding the Jeffery Epstein files,” Loomer wrote on X. “Source tells me Dan Bongino is taking the day off today from his job as Deputy Director of the FBI, and there’s now speculation on whether or not he will return to his job at the @FBI over his disgust with Blondi’s lack of transparency and handling of the Epstein files.” 

“Pam Blondi has brought total embarrassment to President Trump,
Vice President JD Vance, Dan Bongino, and Kash Patel. She has also LIED to the American people,” added the conservative commentator, before offering some of her own insider analysis. “Kash Patel and Dan Bongino should call for Blondi’s public resignation today to save themselves and to also push for full transparency into the Epstein files. This is an issue the American people care deeply about. Someone needs to be fired for this. Giving Blondi courtesy to resign is more than she deserves. Trump should just FIRE her.” 

Axios confirmed that Bongino and Bondi clashed on Wednesday, and Bongino did not show up to work on Friday, though administration officials told the publication he’s not quitting just yet.

Welcome to Day 3 of the Epstein fallout. The MAGA feud has escalated since first catching fire on Sunday, when Bondi’s Justice Department and the FBI published a memo stating that there is no Epstein “client list” and that the disgraced millionaire pedophile did indeed kill himself—two points that directly contradicted the MAGA conspiracy theories that have engulfed a notable portion of the base for years now. The right was particularly incensed that the news also came from Bondi, Bongino, and FBI Director Kash Patel—three people who each previously insinuated or outright declared that there is some kind of coverup happening, and that Epstein may not have committed suicide. Now they’re trying—and failing—to move along like nothing happened. 

Bongino was apparently upset with Bondi for riling up the base too much by making the Epstein files, and the “client list” seem more consequential than they ended up being. Now Bondi is the center of MAGA’s ire. 

Only time will tell how much power Loomer’s call to fire Bondi will have on the administration. She was instrumental in getting former national security adviser Mike Waltz fired from the Trump administration for being a “neocon,” amid the Signalgate scandal.

Bongino and Patel are upset with Bondi for making promises none of them could keep. And the MAGA base is upset with all of them for failing to carry out their deep-state- busting mission by revealing Epstein’s client list and exposing the all-powerful pedophile cabal. But one person who no one on the right wants to blame for the Epstein files rollout crashing and burning so spectacularly is President Trump himself. Why are there so many calls to fire Bondi when Trump was sitting next to her in his Cabinet meeting on Tuesday defending her handling of the case and acting like anyone still interested in this infamous case was crazy? 

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump said then. “This guy has been talked about for years. You’re asking—we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And, are people still talking about this guy? This creep?”

People calling for Trump to fire Bondi seem to think that the attorney general is operating independently of the president. But who, if anyone, would be better able to deliver the unredacted list, the missing minute, or anything else related to their Epstein obsession, than their president? 

With the stroke of a pen, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe signed off on legislation repealing the paid sick leave provision of a ballot measure that roughly 58 percent of Missourian voters approved in November.

The now-struck provision, which went into effect in May but will cease at the end of August, required employers to give workers one hour of earned paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, and 56 hours (or just seven days) of paid sick time per year. Businesses with fewer than 15 employees were only required to give workers 40 hours per year.

In a statement touting how “conservative leadership” supports Missourian “families,” Kehoe called the provision, which would have helped an estimated 728,000 private sector employees in the state, “onerous.”

In November 2024, the paid sick leave mandate passed with 1.69 million votes—not far off, notes Elizabeth Crisp of The Hill, from the 1.75 million with which Kehoe took the governorship in November. Republican lawmakers sprang into action to walk back the will of their constituents after the ballot measure passed, and, within months, a bill to repeal it had passed the state House along partisan lines.

Senate Republicans passed the bill after using a rare procedural maneuver to quash a Democratic filibuster. The bill garnered the votes of all but one Republican lawmaker, Lincoln Hough, who thought his fellow Republicans should have let debate run its course.

“Our rules of that chamber are unique to foster compromise and push people to negotiate,” Hough told The Springfield Daily Citizen at the time, calling the vote a “degradation of the institution of the Missouri Senate.”

When the legislature sent the bill to Kehoe’s desk, Senate Minority Leader Dough Beck told St. Louis Public Radio: “What we saw today was the Republican supermajority, whether they did it because of corporate greed or their corporate overlords telling them what to do, they took away sick pay for millions of workers in the state of Missouri.”

Then they came for the children: even in self-designated sanctuary cities such as Manhattan, apparently no one is safe from the ire of federal immigration agents under the Trump administration.

Youman Wilder, a baseball coach for middle and high school students, was leading a group of 11 kids through batting cage practice near 72nd Street in Riverside Park last month when he caught ICE agents interrogating some of the minors.

“I go over quickly and the agents are asking the kids inappropriate things like where they are from, their country of origin, so I say, ‘Whoa, whoa,’ and I tell the officers that their questions are inappropriate, and that I’m going to tell my kids not to answer them,” Wilder told the West Side Rag.

Wilder said the officers identified themselves as ICE agents, were armed with guns and tasers, and had “ICE” printed across the front of their tactical vests.

The coach—who received his master’s degree in law—told the kids that they didn’t need to answer the agents’ questions, instructing them to instead line up on the opposite side of the batting cages. But ICE didn’t like that: Wilder said that’s when one of the agents raised their voice at him, accusing him of being a “YouTube lawyer.”

“I said no, I just know how the Constitution works,” Wilder told Eyewitness News.

But the agents continued to threaten him, per Wilder, talking about cuffing the coach and openly questioning what the kids would “have to lose by answering” if they were in the U.S. legally. “I told them that they still have their Fifth and Fourth Amendment rights, and that they don’t have to speak to you or help with any investigation,” Wilder told the Rag.

All the kids, according to Wilder, were born in the U.S. and are U.S. citizens, born to parents from Africa, South America, and Mexico.

“It’s all about civics. If you don’t know your rights, they will trample on them,” Wilder told the Rag. The coach also expressed his shock and dismay at the amount of people who watched the interaction but failed to intervene.

“There were people watching and the agents were telling them to move back, that they would be arrested for interfering, and not to take pictures,” Wilder told the Rag. “The worst thing is that the six or seven people who were watching, followed their orders!”

“I never in my life thought this was going to happen in the Upper West Side in New York City,” Wilder told Eyewitness News. “That whole thing, until it happens to you, you’re not aware? It happened to us.”

Wilder has since changed the location and practice times for his team, but some kids and their parents have been so rattled by the event that they haven’t returned to practice.

“I knew that they could arrest me, but I knew that they couldn’t keep me,” he said. “My whole thing is that I’m African American, and most of my kids are Latino and Black, so it was all about how do I get these kids home. I never raised my voice. I just talked about the law. And I was just focused on how can I get these kids to where they need to go, when they are in my care.”

Wilder was “the only thing that stood between those kids in Riverside Park and a Florida detention center buried deep in the Everglades,” Upper West Side Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal wrote in a newsletter earlier this month. Rosenthal told Eyewitness News that Wilder was right to intervene and had the legal authority to do so.

Although President Donald Trump has heaped endless praise on the federal deportation agency, ICE agents have reportedly never been so miserable, forced to primarily detain noncriminal immigrants in order to meet their quota: 3,000 arrests per day, per Homeland Security adviser Stephen Miller’s demands.