©️ Associated Press | Jacquelyn Martin
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to immediately intercede to allow the government to lay off thousands of federal workers in a sweeping plan that was blocked by a district court judge.
The administration’s race to the high court with an emergency appeal was another example of its eagerness to test the reach of President Trump’s authority and prove what it called “ongoing and severe harm” to the executive branch, based on its view of a “flawed” lower court ruling.
The idea that the government requires congressional authorization to carry out personnel decisions in agencies and departments is an “indefensible premise,” argued U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer. It was the administration’s 18th Supreme Court emergency appeal since January and the second time the federal layoffs dispute reached the justices.
A district court previously barred the president from implementing reductions in force across 21 federal agencies and prevented the administration from placing employees in those agencies on leave.
COURTING JUSTICES: Part of Trump’s plan at the outset of his second term was to lean on the conservative Supreme Court majority while he asserted his executive power across two branches of government, each controlled by Republicans. He has publicly lobbied justices to help “save America” by backing his policies amid dozens of legal challenges taken up by federal judges questioning the constitutionality or statutory interpretations of Trump’s actions. The president and conservative supporters have railed against nationwide injunctions issued by lower court judges, even temporary ones.
Trump has urged impeachment of federal judges who challenge his policies, a development publicly assailed by Chief Justice John Roberts.
The Supreme Court this term has been center stage in an unusually brisk and high-stakes legal and political drama in which its rulings test the limits of Americans’ trust in the courts and willingness to abide by verdicts perceived through the lens of politics.
June usually means the approaching conclusion of the Supreme Court’s term amid a crush of consequential rulings in cases argued since the first Monday in October. But the justices are increasingly juggling emergency challenges related to administration policies, NBC News reports.