Donald Trump speaks at an election night watch party, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., this week took the Trump administration to task for the manner in which the president has been dismantling the bureaucracy in a case over whether the government must produce documents regarding its plans for mass firings, calling its treatment of federal employees “a slap in the face” to those who have spent entire careers serving their country.
The case centers on a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from left-leaning legal organization Democracy Forward regarding the implementation of President Donald Trump’s February executive order directing federal agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force” across the government. The legal group requested expedited processing of its request and then filed a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction requiring the government to produce certain records by April 9.
FOIA allows the public to obtain non-exempt information from executive branch agencies and departments that do not function “solely to advise and assist the President.”
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ultimately ruled in favor of the administration, finding that Democracy Forward had not sufficiently established that it was likely to succeed on the merits or be irreparably harmed by not being granted expedited processing of its request.
The judge also noted that preliminary injunctions such as the one Democracy Forward had requested were “extraordinarily rare,” as Congress had provided for expedited processing of agency records “only in narrow circumstances,” such as an “imminent event” that would make the utility of the requested information “lessened or lost.”
