Let’s start with the sum and substance of the judges’ orders. Some 25,000 federal employees will be back at work Monday. One judge’s order covers the employees at the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs. The other covers those at Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the General Services Administration, the Small Business Administration, and USAID.
I’m not exactly sure which employees that leaves out. But the two injunctions leave in a hell of a lot of people, people despised and excoriated by Trump and Musk and idiots like Linda McMahon, who called her terminations at the Education Department “a humanitarian thing” and says she took care to keep “the good people.” She has no business running this department—she once lied about having a bachelor’s degree in education. (Remember when that might have mattered to a few U.S. senators? Remember when a president wouldn’t even have nominated such a person?)
The judges’ rulings leave in the people McMahon heave-ho’ed. They leave in the people at the agency (USAID) Musk called a “criminal enterprise.” They leave in everyone at the hated consumer protection bureau. They leave in everyone at the IRS (under the Treasury Department). All of them were unfairly mocked and marginalized, and all of them are back on the job.
