you're watching the legal breakdown Glenn we have watched as Donald Trump has waged this massive assault on federal government workers we've now seen that backfire in a big way as of right now can you explain what just happened yeah Brian recall not just one but two federal judges ruled that these massive terminations of probationary employees was illegal and they have been ordered the judges have ordered the federal government to rehire them reinstate these people to their old jobs and now we have some new reporting from the BBC that the federal government is in the process
of restoring 25,000 unlawfully fired government employees public servants to their old job so you know what Brian I'm no Economist I'm not an accountant I'm not a numbers cruncher but you know let's see whether Elon Musk and his fake government agency the Doge the department of government efficiency is saving the American taxpayers money or squandering wasting the the taxpayers dollars because here's the thing these people were unlawfully fired a month or so ago what happens they go home they sit there they don't draw their government pay they also lose their health insurance um and now
a month later they're going to be rehired reinstated into their old jobs and guess what because they were unlawfully fired they are almost certainly going to receive back pay what does that mean our tax dollars will now go to pay millions and millions of dollars in federal employee salaries for a period of time that these people were sitting home doing exactly zero work for the American people is that Elon Musk saving us money or is that Elon Musk squandering americ Americans taxpayers dollars you know you want to really dig down and and get into governmental
efficiency probably the best thing to do at this point is fire Elon Musk Glenn at this point we now have these rulings that say about 7,600 employees have to be reinstated at the treasury Department 5,700 in a 3200 in HHS Health and Human Services and hundreds more in other departments and so what are next steps here is there rehiring um an absolute guarantee or is it still subject to appeals by the Trump Administration Brian it's an absolute guarantee provided the federal government complies with court orders why do I say that because these federal court judges
ordered the Trump Administration to provide plans for rehiring these people so that the courts can be confident that they they can and they will and they are complying with these orders to rehire folks who were unlawfully fired so yes it is subject to appeal but in the inim the federal government has been ordered and is reportedly complying with those orders and they are beginning the rehiring process to restore these people back to their old jobs Glenn what kind of an impact is this going to have on future firings obviously uh Doge and the Trump Administration
are hellbent on continuing to gut the federal government especially as it relates to these career civil servants because they want to replace them with uh political appointees and so does this pour cold water on all of their plans to really dig into dig into the details of enacting project 2025 where again they just gut the entire uh civil servant sector all to to make sure that they have people in office who are loyal not to the Constitution not to uh their oath of office not to federal law or these statutes but rather just to Donald
Trump himself yeah Brian it should certainly have a deterrent effect in the event the administration Donald Trump musk or others are intending to fire other folk from the federal government to try to downsize because look if you follow the rules and the law with respect to employees rights you can certainly downsize the federal government so let's hope that this will chill Trump and Elon Musk and anybody else in the executive branch that is thinking about firing folk if they're going to do it they have to honor the employees rights along the way you know Brian
when I saw that these probationary employees were just fired in massive numbers in the course of about 24 hours and they were told these were performance-based terminations you know so many of these probationary employees who had been with the government for 6 months a year a year and a half reportedly had glowing evaluations from their supervisors and their agencies so when I saw saw them try to falsely claim that these were performance-based firings my you know first thought was Boy the courts are going to reverse this so fast it will make Doge's head spin and
you know a month or six weeks may feel like a long time but in you know justice system years that's like a split second so you know if the the federal government wants to go about trying to terminate um other employees they damn well better follow the r rules the procedures and the law because if they don't it looks like this will be the Fate they suffer Glenn there are still outstanding lawsuits as it relates to Trump's efforts to fire government employees I know that we've been talking about the class action lawsuit with regard to
these Federal prosecutors who were fired um does this have any either precedent or atmospheric precedent when it comes to those remaining ongoing lawsuits yeah I love the term atmospheric precedent and you and I have talked about this before so when we when we hear the word precedent we you know receive that as oh well then this thing has to be followed moving forward the reality is precedent is not set by trial court judges and these rulings we're talking about these two federal court judges who determined that these were unlawful firings and ordered that these people
be returned to government employment these are trial court judges they don't set precedent it is only when rulings or criminal convictions are appealed and the appeals court then takes up what happened in the trial court they are the ones when they hand down a ruling that set precedent that must be followed by all of the judges in the jurisdiction where the appeals court is sitting so but you use the term atmospheric precedent and it's really important when trial court judges rule a particular kind of firing is unlawful that may not be legal preced because an
appeals court didn't hand down that ruling but it will become important atmospheric precedent other judges will look at it and indeed federal government agencies will look at it and say okay this gives us some guidance now even if it's not strictly speaking precedent and we better comply with whatever those courts have said about you know when we try to terminate somebody how we can do it and how we can't do it Glenn is there any risk for the Trump Administration appealing this decision knowing full well that okay while this specific narrow instance might not carry
any precedent for their ongoing cases as it relates to other fired federal employees but if they do bring this case up to the appeals court and the appeals court agrees with the trial court well then you do have precedent and then that makes it a much a much steeper uh Hill to be able to scale for for the Trump administration because now you've got precedent that could apply in their other cases Brian you have not only earned your law degree it looks like you're working on your llm which is like a masters of law because
would make that would make that would make my mother happy for among among everybody else so it's such a good question because part of the decision we always had to make as prosecutors and this translates to the practice of civil law as well these lawsuits we're discussing are civil cases not criminal cases but the principle is the same if a judge rules against a particular party you know we would have to decide well do we have more to gain or more to lose if we decide to take an appeal and we lose that appeal that
means not only in this particular case given this set of facts we've lost but that may set out a broader principle that could cover and sweep in other facts in other cases that aren't identical but you know in the long run if a bad precedent is set for one side or another it can do some real longlasting damage or harm to the way law is practiced so you're exactly right you know Donald Trump probably wants to look before he leaps or at least his doj does because if they start setting really bad precedent in the
appeals courts on issues like how can we go about firing federal government employees that may have some much broader implications for what they get to do and more importantly what they don't get to do moving forward you know Glenn a lot of these cases are taking place in in Washington DC and obviously that's a more liberal um court system than for example the the 11 circuit court or or the ninth circuit is is there any worry that when you have these Federal cases with folks that are that are really found in the Washington DC area
in the Virginia area the Maryland area where they're in that a more liberal courts jurisdiction that that that poses a risk to the Trump to the Trump administration because when you do want to appeal these cases uh and you have judges who are not these far-right judges like you see you know um down in Florida down in Texas does that pose a risk for the Trump Administration in terms of in terms of actually seeking these appeals yeah let me push back a little bit on the notion that the federal bench in Washington DC is a
quote more liberal court or more liberal set of Judges you know federal judges are appointed by the president so you're going to have the same president during his four-year term appoint judges in Florida in you know DC in Massachusetts California New York Oklahoma you name it and yes depending on which judges end up in which federal courts in which states you know this that bench that Federal bench in that state or that Federal jurisdiction might lean a little bit one way or another let let me just hasten to add when we talk about you know
the the DC federal courts being on the liberal side what we would ordinarily be referring to is the jury pool because you know DC votes 90 or 93% democrat whereas red States obviously vote heavily Republican so it is the jury pool that we are referring to when we talk about how courts in one state or another one jurisdiction or another are kind of more liberal or more traditionally conservative so I don't think that necessarily plays in you're going to have Trump appointed judges in DC you're going to have Trump appointed judges you know in virtually
every Federal jurisdiction in Most states across the country and it really comes down to kind of a judge specific question is that judge an honest broker of the law and the Constitution or is that judge or Justice if we're talking about the Supreme Court not an honest broker of the law and the Constitution and we have seen lots of trump appointed judges rule against Trump legal positions most notably in 2020 during the challenge to the results of the 2020 election every Trump appointed judge who received one of those 60 plus cases ruled against Trump that
should give us all a little bit of comfort in the quality and Independence of the federal Judiciary overall and finally Glenn let's finish off with this are we certain here uh that the Trump Administration won't be appealing this and that this ruling as it stands right now uh bring in roughly 25,000 uh federal employees who had been fired back into the federal government is that going to stand you know it feels like that ruling is going to stand and here's why I say that because the reporting the new reporting is coming out of basically what
reporters are learning about the federal government and the federal employees who were first wrongfully terminated and who have now been told they're coming back to work and those plans are in place and those plans are in progress so it feels like the federal government the Trump Administration is choosing to comply with this order to rehire 25,000 you know wrongfully terminated public servants and they are now implementing the plan to return them to government service okay well obviously uh a lot happening on this front so we'll continue to stay on top of it for those who
are watching if you want to follow along and if you want to support our channels and Independent Media more broadly the best way to do that is to subscribe the links to both of our channels are right here on the screen I'm Brian teller Co and I'm Glenn kersner you're watching the legal breakdown [Music]
