FILE — President Donald Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during an indoor Presidential Inauguration parade event in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025 (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File).
The Trump administration on Tuesday told a federal judge that an administrative agency head intends to defy a court order in an ongoing lawsuit over the mass-firing of thousands of government workers.
In the underlying litigation, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and other labor unions accuse the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) of embarking upon an “illegal program” that ordered several federal agencies to fire employees via “standardized notices of termination, drafted by OPM, that falsely state that the terminations are for performance reasons.”
To date, U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Bill Clinton appointee, has echoed the plaintiffs by calling the firings “illegal.” In a February order, the court said OPM has no authority over other agencies’ staffing. And, in a series of later rulings, the court ordered OPM acting Director Charles Ezell to testify under oath over his attested-to claims about the layoff directive — threatening sanctions for noncompliance.
Now, the government says there is no way Ezell will be testifying. Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Justice moved to rescind Ezell’s declaration on which the order to testify was based.
