In a tense hearing Thursday morning, a federal judge in California laid into lawyers representing the Trump administration for breaking the law, threatening the livelihoods of innocent workers, and lying to the court. Senior Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee who sits in the Northern District of California, is presiding over American Federation of Government Employees v. Office of Personnel Management, a lawsuit filed by several unions in response to President(s) Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s public servant firing spree. At the hearing, Alsup granted a preliminary injunction ordering six agencies to immediately rehire thousands of people who had been wrongfully fired in what he called “a sham” designed to circumvent the law.
Layoffs of federal employees are subject to regulations that determine things like how much notice they must receive, and whether they have a right to be offered a different position. But over the past few weeks, as part of Trump and Musk’s efforts to dismantle the government, federal agencies have unceremoniously fired tens of thousands of employees—and skipped the legally-required procedures by pretending the employees were bad at their jobs. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management distributed and directed agencies to use template termination letters which claimed that the “performance” of the recipients (whoever they may be) didn’t demonstrate that “further employment at the agency would be in the public interest.”
Alsup recognized this strategy as a “gimmick” to evade federal law, since firing people “for performance” would make it faster to get rid of them and deprive them of unemployment benefits. “It is sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” said Alsup.
The Trump administration also claimed in court that the firings were the result of coincidental, simultaneous decisions by the individual agencies. But this, too, was a lie. Records and witness testimony prove that the agencies were following directions they received from the Office of Personnel Management: On Inauguration Day, OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell directed agency heads to immediately identify all probationary employees—meaning new employees and employees who changed positions, like people who were just promoted—and “promptly determine whether those employees should be retained.” Alsup issued a temporary restraining order last month blocking the government from implementing OPM’s directive. “The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees within another agency,” Alsup said at the time.
By Thursday’s hearing, the government’s dishonesty and gamesmanship had pushed Alsup’s patience to its limits. Ezell had submitted a sworn declaration last month claiming that OPM did not direct the firings, and the Trump administration asked that Alsup allow the declaration to speak for itself—without cross-examination. Earlier this week, Alsup denied this request and ordered Ezell to appear at Thursday’s hearing so the unions’ lawyer could have the opportunity to question him. The administration responded with a letter saying that Ezell wasn’t coming, and that they were withdrawing his declaration instead.
Alsup, a former DOJ antitrust lawyer, was almost incredulous at the government’s conduct, and perhaps about how far DOJ had fallen. “You can’t just say, ‘Here’s a declaration, you have to accept it without question’ when there is a question,” Alsup said on Thursday. “You’re afraid to do so because you know cross-examination will reveal the truth,” he said, reprimanding the lawyers for not bringing in Ezell. For Alsup, the attorneys’ choice to withdraw the declaration rather than face any scrutiny was still more deceit. “Come on, that’s a sham,” he said. “It upsets me, I want you to know that.”
Alsup has developed a reputation in his many years on the bench for his particularly low tolerance for nonsense. And the nonstop stream of obfuscation and deception from the Trump administration pushed him to deliver a Bruce Banner-esque warning. “I’m getting mad,” he said at one point, which is generally not something you want to hear from the federal judge presiding over your case.
Alsup is also only the latest judge unwilling to put up with the Trump administration’s antics. While dismissing the indictments of January 6 defendants to whom Trump granted clemency, Judge Beryl Howell made clear her contempt for “poor losers [who] are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity.” Judge John McConnell resorted to making liberal use of bold and italics while scolding the administration for an attempted funding cut, reminding lawyers that “it is a basic proposition that all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly.” In a hearing about Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order, Judge John Coughenour, an 83-year-old Reagan appointee, told the DOJ lawyers in his courtroom that he had “difficulty understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order.”
Judges have basic expectations from the attorneys who appear before them, one of which is simple honesty. But with increasing frequency, judges are treating government lawyers defending lawbreaking with suspicion instead.
