Court allows Trump to lay off nearly 1,400 Education Department employees

The Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump to put his plan to dismantle the Education Department back on track — and to go through with laying off nearly 1,400 employees. With the three liberal justices in dissent, the court on Monday paused an order from U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston, who issued a preliminary injunction reversing the layoffs and calling into question the broader plan. The layoffs “will likely cripple the department,” Joun wrote. A federal appeals court refused to put the order on hold while the administration appealed. The high court action enables the administration to resume work on winding down the department, one of Trump’s biggest campaign promises. In a post Monday night on his social media platform, Trump said the high court “has handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country.” He said the decision will allow his administration to begin the “very important process” of returning many of the department’s functions “BACK TO THE STATES.” The court did not explain its decision in favor of Trump, as is customary in emergency appeals. But in dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor complained that her colleagues were enabling legally questionable action on the part of the administration. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Sotomayor wrote for herself and Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. The secretary of education lauds the decision Education Secretary Linda McMahon said it’s a “shame” it took the Supreme Court’s intervention to let Trump’s plan move ahead. “Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement. A lawyer for the Massachusetts cities and education groups that sued over the plan said the lawsuit will continue, adding no court has yet ruled that what the administration wants to do is legal. “Without explaining to the American people its reasoning, a majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have dealt a devastating blow to this nation’s promise of public education for all children. On its shadow docket, the Court has yet again ruled to overturn the decision of two lower courts without argument,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. The Supreme Court has handed Trump one victory after another in his effort to remake the federal government, after lower courts have found the administration’s actions probably violate federal law. Last week, the justices cleared the way for Trump’s plan to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce. On the education front, the high court has previously allowed cuts in teacher-training grants to go forward. Separately on Monday, more than 20 states sued the administration over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs and more. Education Department employees are on leave Education Department employees who were targeted by the layoffs have been on paid leave since March, according to a union that represents some of the agency’s staff. Joun’s order had prevented the department from fully terminating them, though none had been allowed to return to work, according to the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. Without Joun’s order, the workers would have been terminated in early June. The Education Department had said earlier in June that it was “actively assessing how to reintegrate” the employees. A department email asked them to share whether they had gained other employment, saying the request was meant to “support a smooth and informed return to duty.” The current case involves two consolidated lawsuits that said Trump’s plan amounted to an illegal closure of the Education Department. One suit was filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers and other education groups. The other legal action was filed by a coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general. The suits argued that layoffs left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.

Court clears the way for Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs. The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency. The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenting vote, accusing her colleagues of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.” Jackson warned of enormous real-world consequences. “This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it,” she wrote. The high court action continued a remarkable winning streak for Trump, who the justices have allowed to move forward with significant parts of his plan to remake the federal government. The Supreme Court’s intervention so far has been on the frequent emergency appeals the Justice Department has filed objecting to lower-court rulings as improperly intruding on presidential authority. The Republican president has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate for the work, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk recently left his role. “Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling is another definitive victory for the President and his administration. It clearly rebukes the continued assaults on the President’s constitutionally authorized executive powers by leftist judges who are trying to prevent the President from achieving government efficiency across the federal government,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go. In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Illston’s order, finding that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans. Illston directed numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies. Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco were among cities that also sued. “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy. This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution,” the parties that sued said in a joint statement. Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

Supreme Court win for girl with epilepsy expected to make disability lawsuits

A teenage girl with a rare form of epilepsy won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that’s expected to make it easier for families of children with disabilities to sue schools over access to education. The girl’s family says that her Minnesota school district didn’t do enough to make sure she has the disability accommodations she needs to learn, including failing to provide adequate instruction in the evening when her seizures are less frequent. But lower courts ruled against the family’s claim for damages, despite finding the school had fallen short. That’s because courts in that part of the country required plaintiffs to show schools used “bad faith or gross misjudgment,” a higher legal standard than most disability discrimination claims. The district, Osseo Area Schools, said that lowering the legal standard could expose the country’s understaffed public schools to more lawsuits if their efforts fall short, even if officials are working in good faith. The family appealed to the Supreme Court, which found that lawsuits against schools should have the same requirements as other disability discrimination claims. Children with disabilities and their parents “face daunting challenges on a daily basis. We hold today that those challenges do not include having to satisfy a more stringent standard of proof than other plaintiffs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. The court rebuffed the district’s argument, made late in the appeals process, that all claims over accommodations for people with disabilities should be held to the same higher standard — a potentially major switch that would have been a “five-alarm fire” for the disability rights community, the girl’s lawyers said. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote separately to say he would be willing to consider those arguments at some point in the future, though he didn’t say whether they would win. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, saw it differently. Sotomayor wrote in another concurrence that adopting those higher standards more broadly would “eviscerate the core” of disability discrimination laws. The girl’s attorney Roman Martinez, of Latham & Watkins, called Thursday’s ruling a win for the family and “children with disabilities facing discrimination in schools across the country.” He added that “it will help protect the reasonable accommodations needed to ensure equal opportunity for all.” Judge blocks plan to allow immigration agents in New York City jail A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case. New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him. Rosado temporarily blocked the executive order in April. In granting a preliminary injunction, she said city council members have “shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (”ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges.” Rosado cited a number of factors, including U.S. border czar Tom Homan’s televised comments in February that if Adams did not come through, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ” Adams has repeatedly denied making a deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said he deputized his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island to make sure there was no appearance of any conflict of interest. Rosado said that Mastro reports to Adams and “cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts.” Mastro said in a prepared statement Friday the administration was confident they will prevail in the case. “Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city. Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well,” Mastro said. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, called the decision a victory for public safety. “New Yorkers are counting on our city to protect their civil rights, and yet, Mayor Adams has attempted to betray this obligation by handing power over our city to Trump’s ICE because he is compromised,” she said in a prepared statement.

Arizona prosecutors ordered to send fake elector case back to grand jury

Arizona prosecutors pressing the case against Republicans who are accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election results in President Donald Trump’s favor were dealt a setback when a judge ordered the case be sent back to a grand jury. Arizona’s fake elector case remains alive after Friday’s ruling by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Myers, but it’s being sent back to the grand jurors to determine whether there’s probable cause that the defendants committed the crimes. The decision, first reported by the Washington Post, centered on the Electoral Count Act, a law that governs the certification of a presidential contest and was part of the defendants’ claims they were acting lawfully. While the law was discussed when the case was presented to the grand jury and the panel asked a witness about the law’s requirements, prosecutors didn’t show the statute’s language to the grand jury, Myers wrote. The judge said a prosecutor has a duty to tell grand jurors all the applicable law and concluded the defendants were denied “a substantial procedural right as guaranteed by Arizona law.” Richie Taylor, a spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat whose office is pressing the case in court, said in a statement that prosecutors will appeal the decision. “We vehemently disagree with the court,” Taylor said. Mel McDonald, a former county judge in metro Phoenix and former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, said courts send cases back to grand juries when prosecutors present misleading or incomplete evidence or didn’t properly instruct panel members on the law. “They get granted at times. It’s not often,” said McDonald, who isn’t involved in the case. In all, 18 Republicans were charged with forgery, fraud and conspiracy. The defendants consist of 11 Republicans who submitted a document falsely claiming Trump won Arizona, two former Trump aides and five lawyers connected to the former president, including Rudy Giuliani. Two defendants have already resolved their cases, while the others have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trump wasn’t charged in Arizona, but the indictment refers to him as an unindicted coconspirator. Most of the defendants in the case also are trying to get a court to dismiss their charges under an Arizona law that bars using baseless legal actions in a bid to silence critics. They argued Mayes tried to use the charges to silence them for their constitutionally protected speech about the 2020 election and actions taken in response to the race’s outcome. Prosecutors said the defendants didn’t have evidence to back up their retaliation claim and that they crossed the line from protected speech to fraud. Eleven people who had been nominated to be Arizona’s Republican electors met in Phoenix on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign a certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” electors and claimed Trump had carried the state in the 2020 election. President Joe Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes. A one-minute video of the signing ceremony was posted on social media by the Arizona Republican Party at the time. The document later was sent to Congress and the National Archives, where it was ignored. Prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin have also filed criminal charges related to the fake electors scheme.

Court allows Trump ban on transgender military members to take effect

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed. The court acted in the dispute over a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service and could lead to the expulsion of experienced, decorated officers. The court’s three liberal justices said they would have kept the policy on hold. Neither the justices in the majority or dissent explained their votes, which is not uncommon in emergency appeals. Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president’s actions was an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy in February that gave the military services 30 days to figure out how they would seek out and identify transgender service members to remove them from the force. Those actions had been stalled by the lawsuits. “No More Trans @ DoD,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X following Tuesday’s Supreme Court order. Earlier in the day, before the court acted, Hegseth said that his department is leaving wokeness and weakness behind. “No more pronouns,” he told a special operations forces conference in Tampa. “No more dudes in dresses. We’re done with that s—-.” The Defense Department said Tuesday that officials are currently determining the next steps, but officials were not aware of any actions being taken right away. Three federal judges had ruled against the ban. In the case the justices acted on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, had ruled for seven long-serving transgender military members who say that the ban is insulting and discriminatory and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations. A prospective service member also sued. The individual service members who challenged the ban together have amassed more than 70 medals in 115 years of service, their lawyers wrote. The lead plaintiff is Emily Shilling, a Navy commander with nearly 20 years of service, including as a combat pilot who flew 60 missions in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned, Settle wrote. The judge is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and is a former captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps. Settle imposed a nationwide hold on the policy and a federal appeals court rejected the administration’s emergency plea. The Justice Department then turned to the Supreme Court. The policy also has been blocked by a federal judge in the nation’s capital, but that ruling has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court, which heard arguments last month. The three-judge panel, which includes two judges appointed by Trump during his first term, appeared to be in favor of the administration’s position. In a more limited ruling, a judge in New Jersey also has barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair. The LGBTQ rights groups Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation called the high court order a devastating blow to dedicated and highly qualified service members.

Korea’s truth commission says government responsible for fraud in foreign adoptions

South Korea’s truth commission concluded the government bears responsibility for facilitating a foreign adoption program rife with fraud and abuse, driven by efforts to reduce welfare costs and enabled by private agencies that often manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins. The landmark report released Wednesday followed a nearly three-year investigation into complaints from 367 adoptees in Europe, the United States, and Australia, representing the most comprehensive examination yet of South Korea’s foreign adoptions, which peaked under a succession of military governments in the 1970s and ’80s. The government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission said it confirmed human rights violations in 56 of the complaints and aims to review the remaining cases before its mandate expires in late May. However, some adoptees and even a commission investigator criticized the cautiously written report, acknowledging that investigative limitations prevented the commission from more strongly establishing the government’s complicity. That investigator, Sang Hoon Lee, also lamented that the panel on Tuesday deferred assessments of 42 other adoptees’ cases, citing a lack of documentation to sufficiently prove their adoptions were problematic. Lee and the commission chairperson, Sun Young Park, did not specify which types of documents were central to the discussions. However, Lee implied that some members of the commission’s decision-making committee were reluctant to recognize cases in which adoptees had yet to prove beyond doubt that the biological details in their adoption papers had been falsified — either by meeting their birth parents or confirming information about them. Most Korean adoptees were registered by agencies as abandoned orphans, although they frequently had relatives who could be easily identified or found, a practice that often makes their roots difficult or impossible to trace. Government data obtained by The Associated Press shows less than a fifth of 15,000 adoptees who have asked South Korea for help with family searches since 2012 have managed to reunite with relatives. Lee said the committee’s stance reflects a lack of understanding of the systemic problems in adoptions and risks excluding many remaining cases. “Personally, I find yesterday’s decision very regrettable and consider it a half-baked decision,” Lee said. After reviewing government and adoption records and interviewing adoptees, birth families, public officials and adoption workers, the commission assessed that South Korean officials saw foreign adoptions as a cheaper alternative to building a social welfare system for needy children. Through policies and laws that promoted adoption, South Korea’s military governments permitted private adoption agencies to exercise extensive guardianship rights over children in their custody and swiftly transfer custody to foreign adopters, resulting in “large-scale overseas placements of children in need of protection,” the commission said. Authorities provided no meaningful oversight as adoption agencies engaged in dubious or illicit practices while competing to send more children abroad. These practices included bypassing proper consent from biological parents, falsely documenting children with known parents as abandoned orphans, and switching children’s identities, according to the commission’s report. It cited that the government failed to ensure that agencies properly screened adoptive parents or prevent them from excessively charging foreign adopters, who were often asked to make additional donations beyond the standard fees.

Trump signs order imposing sanctions on International Criminal Court

President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court over investigations of Israel, a close U.S. ally. Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a member of or recognizes the court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes over his military response in Gaza after the Hamas attack against Israel in October 2023. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children, have been killed during the Israeli military’s response. The order Trump signed Thursday accuses the ICC of engaging in “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and of abusing its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants” against Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. “The ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel,” the order states, adding that the court had set a “dangerous precedent” with its actions against both countries. Trump’s action came as Netanyahu was visiting Washington. He and Trump held talks Tuesday at the White House, and Netanyahu spent some of Thursday meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The order says the U.S. will impose “tangible and significant consequences” on those responsible for the ICC’s “transgressions.” Actions may include blocking property and assets and not allowing ICC officials, employees and relatives to enter the United States. Human rights activists said sanctioning court officials would have a chilling effect and run counter to U.S. interests in other conflict zones where the court is investigating. “Victims of human rights abuses around the world turn to the International Criminal Court when they have nowhere else to go, and President Trump’s executive order will make it harder for them to find justice,” said Charlie Hogle, staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The order also raises serious First Amendment concerns because it puts people in the United States at risk of harsh penalties for helping the court identify and investigate atrocities committed anywhere, by anyone.” Hogle said the order “is an attack on both accountability and free speech.” “You can disagree with the court and the way it operates, but this is beyond the pale,” Sarah Yager, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said in an interview prior to the announcement. Like Israel, the U.S. is not among the court’s 124 members and has long harbored suspicions that a global court could arbitrarily prosecute U.S. officials. A 2002 law authorizes the Pentagon to liberate any American or U.S. ally held by the court. In 2020, Trump sanctioned chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, over her decision to open an inquiry into war crimes committed by all sides, including the U.S., in Afghanistan. However, those sanctions were lifted under President Joe Biden, and the U.S. began to tepidly cooperate with the tribunal ? especially after Khan in 2023 charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes in Ukraine. Driving that turnaround was Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who organized meetings in Washington, New York and Europe between Khan and GOP lawmakers who have been among the court’s fiercest critics.