US judges challenge Trump cuts as legal battles mount

WASHINGTON, FEB 11 (AFP/APP/DNA):The Trump administration was on a collision course with the US courts Monday, with federal judges questioning the legality of the White House’s cost-cutting onslaught of government and Vice President J.D Vance warning the judiciary to back off.

In his first three weeks in office, President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders aimed at slashing federal spending, appointing SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead efforts that critics widely denounce as unconstitutional.

Trump’s sweeping plans, which have effectively shuttered some federal agencies and sent staff home, have sparked legal battles across the country. Multiple lawsuits seek to halt what opponents characterize as an illegal power grab.

Musk’s team has moved aggressively through federal agencies, freezing aid programs and pushing workforce reductions through controversial buyout offers and termination threats.

Democrats, unions and activists, after initially struggling to respond, are now pursuing legal action and their numerous cases challenging Trump’s plans have drawn sharp criticism from the White House.

In a social media post Sunday, Vance argued that judges lack authority to “control the executive’s legitimate power,” comparing judicial intervention to a judge dictating military strategy to a general.

“Judicial tyranny is grossly improper!” Musk said, echoing the White House pushback.

Their comments followed a judge’s emergency order early Saturday blocking Musk’s government reform team from accessing millions of Americans’ personal and financial data stored at the Treasury Department.

Democratic attorneys general from 19 states filed that case Friday against the Republican president, the Treasury Department and the man who leads it, Scott Bessent.

Separately, a federal judge in Rhode Island on Monday said the Trump administration had violated a previous order lifting a sweeping federal funding freeze.

“The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country,” the order stated.

It was the first time since Trump took office and unfurled his “shock and awe” reform campaign that a federal judge accused his administration of defying a court order.

– ‘Unprecedented’ –

In Boston, another federal judge ruled Monday that the government must extend the deadline for a controversial federal worker buyout offer that legal experts consider vague and potentially illegal.

The plan, announced January 28 in an email to federal employees titled “Fork in the road” — echoing Musk’s 2022 message to Twitter employees when he acquired and renamed the platform X — offered workers eight months’ pay in exchange for resigning, or risk future termination.

While the US Office of Personnel Management, now run by Musk associates, extended the original Thursday deadline to Monday at 11:59 pm (Tuesday at 0459 GMT), Judge George O’Toole ordered a further delay pending his decision.

Civil service unions had filed for a preliminary injunction to pause the offer until courts could resolve the matter.

“This is an unprecedented action taken on an unprecedented timeline that is causing irreparable harm,” attorney Elena Goldstein told the federal judge, according to WHDH-TV news.

US media reported that at least 65,000 federal workers had accepted the so-called deferred resignation program as of last week.

“If people don’t show up to work, we have a right to fire them,” Trump told journalists at the White House Monday, emphasizing his belief that federal employees who were allowed to work from home after the pandemic will not heed his order to return to the office.

Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration continued its cost-cutting campaign Monday, effectively closing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency long criticized by Republicans as engaging in overreach.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the agency after acting CFPB director Russell Vought informed staff that its Washington office would close this week and directed employees not to report to work.

The Trump administration additionally removed the government’s top ethics official, David Huitema, who served as the director of the Office of Government Ethics, the agency announced Monday.