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-- USDC, District of Columbia. SUSAN TSUI GRUNDMANN, Plaintiff, v. DONALD J. TRUMP, et al., Defendants. Civil Action No. 25-425 (SLS). Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan. ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFF'S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT. 3/12/25.

https://ia904503.us.archive.org/16/item ... 4.22.0.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

SUSAN TSUI GRUNDMANN,

Plaintiff,

v.

DONALD J. TRUMP, et al.,

Defendants.

Civil Action No. 25 - 425 (SLS)

Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan

MEMORANDUM OPINION

The Constitution vests Congress with broad authority to organize the Executive Branch. U.S. Const. art. I, §§ 1, 8. From its earliest days, Congress exercised this power by creating institutions to structure the government. And for almost a century and a half, Congress has created independent federal agencies with specific expertise and limited the President’s power to remove principal officers leading those agencies. The Supreme Court first blessed that approach in 1935 when it rejected the President’s claim of “illimitable power of removal” over all federal officers, Humphrey’s Ex’r v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 629 (1935), instead holding that our Constitution gives Congress the power to “create expert agencies led by a group of principal officers removable by the President only for good cause.” Seila Law LLC v. CFPB, 591 U.S. 197, 204 (2020) (emphasis omitted) (citing Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. 602). And the Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed statutory removal protections for multimember and bipartisan expert agencies since then.

Congress created the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to impartially manage and resolve disputes surrounding labor organization in the federal workforce. The independence of the FLRA was central to its creation, as Congress wanted to ensure a fair, consistent, and unbiased process for managing federal labor relations that would not shift with political whims. To achieve this goal, Congress decided to give the three Members of the FLRA a limited statutory protection from removal by the President. They could be removed only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office during their staggered five-year terms, and only after notice and a hearing.

In the nearly fifty years since the FLRA’s creation, no President has ever removed a Member. Until now. On February 10, 2025, the Plaintiff, Susan Tsui Grundmann, received a two-sentence email on behalf of President Donald J. Trump informing her that her position on the FLRA had been terminated. Ms. Grundmann received no explanation whatsoever for her termination. And she did not receive notice or a hearing. Ms. Grundmann is not alone. This is one of a series of cases filed in this District challenging the President’s unprecedented removal of officers across the federal government without cause, including Members of the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board, as well as the Special Counsel.

The Government vigorously defends Ms. Grundmann’s hasty termination on the basis that the Constitution vests the entirety of the “executive Power” in the President. U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1. It argues that the President may remove federal officials on a whim, and in doing so, override Congress’s considered judgment. The Government’s arguments paint with a broad brush and threaten to upend fundamental protections in our Constitution. But ours is not an autocracy; it is a system of checks and balances. Our Founders recognized that the concentration of power in one branch of government would spell disaster. “The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.” Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 293 (1926) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

The removal in this case was unlawful. The Government concedes that Ms. Grundmann’s removal violated the FLRA’s founding statute—a statute that Congress enacted and the President signed into law to revamp federal labor relations in the federal government. The Government’s argument that the statutory removal provision is unconstitutional cannot be reconciled with longstanding Supreme Court precedent that is binding on this Court. And it would encroach on Congress’s authority under Article I of the Constitution.1

As for remedies, the Government takes the position that this Court lacks the authority to provide meaningful relief in these circumstances. It argues that where a President removes a Senate-confirmed federal officer in violation of a duly enacted and constitutional statute, the only recourse is an award of backpay to that officer. Why? According to the Government, any order from this Court that results in the officer continuing her role against the President’s will would raise grave separation-of-powers concerns. In other words, where a President exceeds his power under Article II of the Constitution and intrudes on Congress’s Article I authority, the Government’s position is that an Article III court may not interpret the law and redress the resulting injury. It is the Government’s own argument that raises grave separation-of-powers concerns. There can be no doubt that “the President is bound to abide by the requirements of duly enacted and otherwise constitutional statutes.” Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d. 973, 977 (D.C. Cir. 1996). And it is precisely the role of an Article III court to step in when that does not happen. Ms. Grundmann is entitled to relief that would redress her injury and allow her to continue her work on the FLRA.

For those reasons and the reasons that follow, the Court grants Ms. Grundmann’s Motion for Summary Judgment and denies the Defendants’ Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment.

BACKGROUND

A. Statutory Background

Nearly fifty years ago, Congress enacted the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS), 5 U.S.C. §§ 7101–7135, as part of the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA), Pub. L. No. 95-454, 92 Stat. 1111 (1978). These statutes “comprehensively reorganized the structure of labor-management relations in the federal government.” Library of Cong. v. FLRA, 699 F.2d 1280, 1283 (D.C. Cir. 1983). “Congress intended the new statutory system to serve the twin goals of protecting the right of public employees to organize and bargain collectively, while simultaneously strengthening the authority of federal management to hire and fire employees in the interest of a more effective public service.” Id. (citing 5 U.S.C. § 7101).

Congress created the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to “carry[] out the purpose” of the FSLMRS. 5 U.S.C. § 7105(a)(1). It tasked the FLRA with “conduct[ing] hearings and resolv[ing] complaints of unfair labor practices,” “resolv[ing] issues relating to the duty to bargain in good faith,” and “resolv[ing] exceptions to arbitrator’s awards.” Id. § 7105(a)(2). Congress also empowered the FLRA to supervise elections for the selection of labor organizations by employees and to prescribe certain criteria related to labor bargaining in the federal workforce. Id.

The FLRA is composed of three Members, all appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. Id. § 7104. No more than two of the three Members are permitted to “be adherents of the same political party.” Id. § 7104(a). And each Member is to serve a staggered five-year term. See 5 U.S.C. § 7104(c) (establishing five-year terms); CSRA, Pub. L. No. 95-454, § 7104(c)(1), 92 Stat. 1196 (1978) (staggering terms). The Members can be removed by the President “only upon notice and hearing and only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” 5 U.S.C. § 7104(b). But the President has the authority to designate one of the Members as the “Chairman of the Authority.” Id.

The structure of the FLRA was meant to ensure “the resolution of disputes by the intervention of neutral, independent, third parties[.]” 124 Cong. Rec. 25,720 (1978). Congress sought to “eliminate what [was] perceived by Federal employee unions and others as conflict of interest in the existing council,” H.R. Rep. No. 95-1717, at 159 (1978), and to create a body that was “impartial by independence from any direct responsibility to the incumbent administration,” S Rep. No. 95-969, at 7 (1978). As one sponsor stated:

One of the central elements of a fair labor relations program is effective, impartial administration. Title VII provides for the creation of an independent and neutral Federal labor relations authority to administer the Federal labor management program . . . . Currently the Federal labor-management program is administered by the Federal Labor Relations Council which is composed of three administration officials, . . . none of whom can be considered neutral.

124 Cong. Rec. 25,721 (1978). The belief was that “[i]mpartiality [was] guaranteed by protecting authority members from unwarranted ‘Saturday night’ removals.” Id. at 25,721–25,722.

B. Factual Background

The facts are drawn from the Plaintiff’s Complaint and Statement of Material Facts, which the Defendants do not dispute. Joint Status Report at 3, ECF No. 8.

The Plaintiff, Susan Tsui Grundmann, became a Member of the FLRA on May 12, 2022. Compl. ¶ 3, ECF No. 1. She was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden and confirmed by the Senate to a term set to expire on July 1, 2025. Id. But that expiration date was not set in stone. Under the FSLMRS, she was permitted to continue serving until either her successor took office or the last day of the Congress beginning after the original expiration date, 5 U.S.C. § 7104(c), which in her case would fall in January 2029, Compl. ¶ 3. On January 3, 2023, President Biden designated her as Chairman of the Authority. Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. & Prelim. Inj. (“Pl.’s Mot.”) at 1, ECF No. 4; Defs.’ Opp’n to Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. (“Defs.’ Opp’n”) at 5, ECF No. 12.

The Government does not allege that Ms. Grundmann has been an ineffective Member of the FLRA. Yet on February 10, 2025, at 10:46 PM, Ms. Grundmann received a two-sentence email from Trent Morse, the Deputy Director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel: “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position on the Federal Labor Relations Authority is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” Pl.’s Decl. in Supp. of Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. & Prelim. Inj. (“Pl.’s Decl.”) ¶ 3, ECF No. 4-2. She did not receive notice or a hearing, nor was any “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office” identified. Compl. ¶ 17. And she has since been unable to perform her duties as a Member of the FLRA. Id. ¶ 20. To the best of Ms. Grundmann’s knowledge, this is the first time a President has ever removed a Member of the FLRA without cause. Pl.’s Decl. ¶ 12.

On February 11, 2025, President Trump named Colleen Duffy Kiko as Chairman, Compl. ¶ 19, leaving the FLRA with only two Members, see id. ¶ 20. Although the FLRA maintains a quorum, without Ms. Grundmann’s tiebreaking vote, certain cases may deadlock and go into abeyance. See Pl.’s Decl. ¶ 7. This is exactly what happened when Ms. Grundmann served as one of only two Members of the FLRA for eighteen months, resulting in about one-third of the cases being deadlocked. Id.

C. Procedural Background

On February 13, 2025, Ms. Grundmann filed a Complaint alleging that her removal without cause violated the FSLMRS. See Compl. ¶¶ 22–25. She named President Trump and Ms. Kiko as Defendants, id. ¶¶ 4–5, and she requested both declaratory and injunctive relief, Compl., Prayer for Relief, ¶¶ 1–3. The next day, on February 14, 2025, she filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction and Summary Judgment. See Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. & Prelim. Inj. (“Pl.’s Mot.”). On February 25, 2025, the Defendants filed their Opposition to the Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment, see Defs.’ Opp’n, and a Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment, see Defs.’ Cross-Mot. for Summ. J. (“Defs.’ Cross-Mot.”), ECF No. 11. The Plaintiff responded to both on February 28, 2025. See Pl.’s Mem. in Opp’n to Defs.’ Cross-Mot. for Summ. J. (“Pl.’s Opp’n”), ECF No. 15; Pl.’s Reply in Supp. of Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. (“Pl.’s Reply”), ECF No. 16. And the Defendants filed their Reply in support of their Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment on March 5, 2025. See Defs. Reply in Supp. of Defs.’ Cross-Mot. for Summ. J. (“Defs.’ Reply), ECF No. 18. The Court held a hearing on March 7, 2025. Both motions are now ripe for decision.

LEGAL STANDARD

A court “shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). “The burden is on the movant to make the initial showing of the absence of any genuine issues of material fact.” Ehrman v. United States, 429 F. Supp. 2d 61, 66 (D.D.C. 2006). “The evidence of the non-movant is to be believed, and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in [its] favor.” Estate of Parsons v. Palestinian Auth., 651 F.3d 118, 123 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986)). When “both parties file cross-motions for summary judgment, each must carry its own burden under the applicable legal standard.” Ehrman, 429 F. Supp. 2d. at 67.

DISCUSSION

The President violated the law when he removed Ms. Grundmann. The removal was in clear contravention of the FSLMRS. And under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, that statute was a valid exercise of Congress’s authority under Article I of the Constitution.

A. Statutory Violation

The Government concedes that Ms. Grundmann’s removal violated the FSLMRS. Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 24:10–14. The statute provides that “Members of the Authority . . . may be removed by the President only upon notice and hearing and only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” 5 U.S.C. § 7104(b). But Ms. Grundmann received no notice or hearing. See Compl. ¶ 17. And the two-sentence email on behalf of the President informing her of the removal did not allege any inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. See id. The Government instead argues that the removal protection in the FSLMRS is unconstitutional. See Defs.’ Opp’n at 6–12.

B. Constitutionality of the Statute

“[T]he Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress broad authority to enact federal legislation.” United States v. Comstock, 560 U.S. 126, 133 (2010). This includes the power to provide removal protections to “multimember bodies with ‘quasi-judicial’ or ‘quasi-legislative’ functions.” Seila Law LLC, 591 U.S. at 217. This power to “create a traditional independent agency headed by a multimember board or commission,” id. at 207, “cannot well be doubted,” Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 629. The Court has repeatedly endorsed such removal protections throughout the last century. See, e.g., id.; Wiener v. United States, 357 U.S. 349 (1958).

But this power is not without limits. “Article II provides that ‘[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President,’ who must ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 213 (quoting U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1; id., § 3). This establishes a “general rule that the President possesses ‘the authority to remove those who assist him in carrying out his duties.’” Id. at 215 (quoting Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Acct. Oversight Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 513–14 (2010)). The scope of Congress’s power therefore turns on whether this general rule applies. See id. at 218.

The Supreme Court has identified “two exceptions” that “represent what up to now have been the outermost constitutional limits of permissible congressional restrictions on the President’s removal power.” Id. (quoting PHH Corp. v. CFPB, 881 F.3d 75, 196 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting)). The first comes from Humphrey’s Executor, and it extends to “multimember expert agencies that do not wield substantial executive power.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218. The second comes from Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988), and it applies to “inferior officers with limited duties and no policymaking or administrative authority.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218. Congress may provide removal restrictions to an executive officer who fits within either of these two exceptions. See id.

1. The Humphrey’s Executor Exception

Seila Law is best read as teaching that the Humphrey’s Executor exception applies in two steps. Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218–19. First, courts must ask whether an agency’s structure resembles that of the “New Deal-era FTC” described in Humphrey’s Executor. Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218. Second, courts must ensure that the agency does not exercise substantial executive power. Id. at 218–19. If both conditions are met, then Congress has the authority to provide removal restrictions. Id. at 218.

The Government quibbles with step two. Even though Seila Law squarely states that the exception extends to “multimember expert agencies that do not wield substantial executive power,” id. (emphasis added), it argues that the exception is limited to agencies “that exercise no executive power,” Defs.’ Opp’n at 8 (emphasis added). Although some language in Seila Law could be read that way, a careful reading of each passage reveals that the opinion is more restrained.

First, Seila Law outlines its general rule in very broad terms. The Supreme Court says that “the ‘executive Power’—all of it—is ‘vested in a President.’” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 203 (quoting U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 1; id., § 3). Then it says that the President has the “power to remove . . . those who wield executive power on his behalf.” Id. at 204. The combination of these two statements initially suggests that all executive power is wielded on behalf of the President, so anyone exercising any executive power must be removable at will. See Defs.’ Opp’n at 7. But the Court immediately acknowledges that there are “two exceptions” to this removal power. Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 204. And it would make little sense to call them “exceptions” if they did not involve the exercise of any executive power at all. Id.

Second, Seila Law highlights that in Humphrey’s Executor, “[r]ightly or wrongly, the Court viewed the FTC (as it existed in 1935) as exercising ‘no part of the executive power.’” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 215 (quoting Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 628)). This makes it into the summary of the holding: “In short, Humphrey’s Executor permitted Congress to give for-cause removal protections to a multimember body of experts, balanced along partisan lines, that performed legislative and judicial functions and was said not to exercise any executive power.” Id. at 216 (emphasis added). But we should not read into this because Seila Law cites Wiener as falling within the Humphrey’s Executor exception. See Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 216. This could not be the case if the exception applied only to agencies that were “said not to exercise any executive power.” Id. (emphasis added). Neither Wiener nor Seila Law ever said such a thing about the War Claims Commission. See generally Wiener, 357 U.S. 349; Seila Law, 591 U.S. 197. The Court’s summary of the Humphrey’s Executor holding should therefore not be conflated with its description of the bounds of the Humphrey’s Executor exception.

Collins v. Yellen, 594 U.S. 220 (2021), does not change this reading of Seila Law. The Government points to broad language from the opinion: “Courts are not well-suited to weigh the relative importance of the regulatory and enforcement authority of disparate agencies, and we do not think that the constitutionality of removal restrictions hinges on such an inquiry.” Collins, 594 U.S. at 253. But Collins was a case about single agency heads, not multimember agencies, so the Humphrey’s Executor exception was not at issue. See id. at 251. The Court in Collins merely declined to create a new exception—beyond the two recognized in Seila Law—for single agency heads that exercise minimal executive power. Id. at 250. Collins even included a footnote right after the broad language that limited its reach to single agency heads. See id. at 253 n.19. That footnote distinguished two historical examples of removal restrictions by saying that “those agencies are materially different because neither of them operated beyond the President’s control, and one of them was led by a multi-member Commission.” Id. (emphasis added). So the language the Government identifies was not meant to apply to multimember agencies. And the Court expressly warned against reading Collins to apply to agencies not before the Court. See id. at 256 n.21. This would make little sense if Collins were meant to change Seila Law.2

2. The Structure of the FLRA

The first question is whether the FLRA’s structure resembles how Humphrey’s Executor described the “New Deal-era FTC.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218. Humphrey’s Executor “identified several organizational features that helped explain its characterization of the FTC as non-executive.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 216. First, the Board was “[c]omposed of five members” with “no more than three from the same political party,” signaling that it was “designed to be ‘non-partisan’ and to ‘act with entire impartiality.’” Id. at 216 (quoting Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 624). Second, “[t]he FTC’s duties were ‘neither political nor executive,’ but instead called for ‘the trained judgment of a body of experts’ ‘informed by experience.’” Id. (quoting Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 624). And third, “the Commissioners’ staggered, seven-year terms enabled the agency to accumulate technical expertise and avoid a ‘complete change’ in leadership ‘at any one time.’” Id. (quoting Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 624).

All three features are present in the FLRA. First, the Authority has three Members, and no more than two of them may be “adherents of the same political party,” which ensures bipartisanship. 5 U.S.C. § 7104(a). Second, “the FLRA was intended to develop specialized expertise in its field of labor relations and to use that expertise to give content to the principles and goals set forth in the [Civil Service Reform Act].” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms v. FLRA, 464 U.S. 89, 97 (1983). And third, each Member serves a staggered five-year term, allowing the agency to gain technical expertise. See 5 U.S.C. § 7104(c) (establishing five-year terms); CSRA, Pub. L. No. 95-454, § 7104(c)(1), 92 Stat. 1196 (1978) (staggering terms). The FLRA’s structure therefore triggers the Humphrey’s Executor exception.

3. The Powers of the FLRA

The next step is to ensure that the FLRA does not exercise substantial executive power. Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218–19. Whether an agency exercises substantial executive power is a fact-bound inquiry. Humphrey’s Executor “acknowledged that between purely executive officers on the one hand, and officers that closely resembled the FTC Commissioners on the other, there existed ‘a field of doubt’ that the Court left ‘for future consideration.’” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 217 (quoting Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 632). This is because “[t]he versatility of circumstances often mocks a natural desire for definitiveness.” Wiener, 357 U.S. at 252. In other words, bright-line rules are not always possible. But by all indications, none of the FRLA’s powers identified by the Government qualifies as a substantial executive power.

First, the Government points to the fact that the FLRA “conduct[s] hearings and resolve[s] complaints of unfair labor practices.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 9 (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 7105(a)(2)(G)). They argue that this puts the FLRA in the same camp as the CFPB in Seila Law, which could “unilaterally issue final decisions awarding legal and equitable relief in administrative adjudications.” Id. (quoting 591 U.S. at 219). And it is true that the FLRA’s power to conduct hearings and resolve complaints is greater than was described in Humphrey’s Executor, where the FTC merely “submit[ed] recommended dispositions to an Article III court.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218–19. But the ability to issue final judgments is not a death knell for removal protections. Just look at Wiener. There, the War Claims Commission “was established as an adjudicating body with all the paraphernalia by which legal claims are put to the test of proof, with finality of determination not subject to review by any other official of the United States or by any court by mandamus or otherwise.” 357 U.S. at 354–55 (cleaned up). Yet the Commission still counts as an example of an agency that fits within the Humphrey’s Executor exception. See Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 216.

Second, the Government points out that the FLRA “has the authority to litigate and enforce its orders in federal court.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 9. It highlights three facts. See id.

1. The FLRA can “require an agency or a labor organization to cease and desist” from statutory violations and “require [the agency or labor organization] to take any remedial action it considers appropriate to carry out the policies” of the FSLMRS. Defs.’ Opp’n at 9 (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 7105(g)(3)). But Humphrey’s Executor was unbothered by the FTC’s ability to “issue and cause to be served a cease and desist order.” 295 U.S. at 620. And the FLRA’s other tools do not resemble the wide range of remedies available to the CFPB in Seila Law, which included restitution, disgorgement, and “civil penalties of up to $1,000,000 (inflation adjusted) for each day that a violation occurs.” 591 U.S. at 206.

2. The FLRA “may petition to enforce such an order in federal court[.]” Defs.’ Opp’n at 9 (citing 5 U.S.C. § 7123(b)). It is true that Seila Law said that “the power to seek daunting monetary penalties against private parties in federal court” is “a quintessentially executive power[.]” 591 U.S. at 199. But it is not clear that the object of an FLRA order—an agency or labor union—should be considered a private party for this analysis. And either way, this is not a substantial exercise of executive power. In Humphrey’s Executor, if an FTC “order [was] disobeyed, the commission [could] apply to the appropriate Circuit Court of Appeals for its enforcement.” 295 U.S. at 620–21. This posed no problem. Id. at 629.

3. The FLRA “has independent litigation authority to send its own attorneys (not Department of Justice attorneys) to litigate civil actions outside the Supreme Court in connection with any of its functions.” Opp’n at 9 (citing 5 U.S.C. § 7105(h)). But again, it is not clear why this would make the power more substantial. When Seila Law described the CFPB’s enforcement powers, it did not even mention whether the attorneys belonged to the CFPB. See 591 U.S. at 206. It was much more concerned about the scale of relief. See id. (“Since its inception, the CFPB has obtained over $11 billion in relief for over 25 million consumers, including a $1 billion penalty against a single bank in 2018.”).

Third, the Government notes that the FLRA has the power to “prescribe rules and regulations to carry out the provisions of the [FSLMRS] applicable to [it].” Defs.’ Opp’n at 9 (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 7134). This includes (1) specifying the criteria for determining when a labor organization represents “a substantial number of the employees of the agency,” which allows the labor organization to be granted consultation rights by the agency, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7105(a)(2)(C), 7113(a); (2) determining whether an agency has a “compelling need” for an agency-wide regulation, which would allow the agency to avoid having to bargain in good faith with a proposal by a labor organization, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7105(a)(2)(D), 7117(b); see also Fed. Lab. Rels. Auth., The Negotiability Guide (June 17, 2013); and (3) determining “who is eligible to vote” for labor organization recognition and establishing the “rules governing such an election,” subject to certain statutory limitations, 5 U.S.C. §§ 7105(a)(2)(B), 7111(d).

These narrow, largely administrative regulatory assignments pale in comparison to what was feared in Seila Law, where “the [CFPB] Director possess[ed] the authority to promulgate binding rules fleshing out 19 federal statutes, including a broad prohibition on unfair and deceptive practices in a major segment of the U.S. economy.” 591 U.S. at 218. The FLRA promulgates regulations under fewer statutes, Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 31: 16–17; those statutes provide more guidance than the broad prohibition of “unfair and deceptive practices,” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218; and the federal workforce is a smaller segment of the economy than was covered by the CFPB statutes, which included “everything from credit cards and car payments to mortgages and student loans,” id. at 219.

4. Other Seila Law Factors

Seila Law mentions other factors as well, although it is unclear how they should fit into the Humphrey’s Executor exception. See Consumers’ Rsch. v. CPSC, 91 F.4th 342, 355– 56 (5th Cir. 2024). The Court need not solve this puzzle, however, because none of these factors apply.

First, the FLRA’s structure is not “almost wholly unprecedented.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 220. To the contrary, agencies like the FLRA are part of the fabric of our federal government. Congress has created independent multimember agencies for nearly a century and a half. See Marshall J. Berger & Gary J. Edles, Established by Practice: The Theory and Operation of Independent Federal Agencies, 52 Admin. L. Rev. 1111, 1116 (2000). The “structure, role, and functions of the [FLRA] were closely patterned after those of the NLRB.” Library of Congress v. FLRA, 699 F.2d 1280, 1287 (D.C. Cir. 1983). And the powers of the NLRB were modeled after those of the FTC, Dish Network Corp. v. NLRB, 953 F.3d 370, 375 n.2 (5th Cir. 2020), only one month after Humphrey’s Executor approved of the FTC’s removal protections, Free Enterprise Fund, 561 U.S. at 547 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The FLRA is “a traditional independent agency, run by a multimember board with a diverse set of viewpoints and experiences.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 205–06 (cleaned up).

Second, the FLRA has levers of Presidential accountability. The CFPB Director served a five-year term, leaving some Presidents without “any opportunity to shape its leadership and thereby influence its activities.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 225. But the FLRA Members serve staggered five-year terms, allowing every President to wield influence over the agency. See 5 U.S.C. § 7104(c) (establishing five-year terms); CSRA, Pub. L. No. 95-454, § 7104(c)(1), 92 Stat. 1196 (1978) (staggering terms). If the President follows the ordinary course and nominates someone to replace Ms. Grundmann, her term would end on July 1, 2025. Defs.’ Statement of Undisputed Material Facts (Defs.’ SUMF) ¶ 1, ECF No. 11-2. The CFPB also received funds “outside the appropriations process,” which “further aggravate[ed] the agency’s threat to Presidential control.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 226. But the FLRA receives its funding through the appropriations process, Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, Pub. L. No. 118–47, 138 Stat. 461 (2023), allowing the President “to recommend or veto spending bills that affect the operation of [the agency],” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 226.

And that is not all. The General Counsel of the FLRA, who may investigate labor practices and prosecute complaints, “may be removed at any time by the President.” 5 U.S.C. § 7104(f). With the selection of the General Counsel, the President can immediately influence the FLRA’s investigative and prosecutorial power. The President may also “designate one member [of the FLRA] to serve as Chairman of the Authority,” who serves as “the chief executive and administrative officer. Id. § 7104(b). And this title that may be revoked at will. Pl.’s Reply at 10; see, e.g., Fed. Lab. Rels. Auth., Press Release, Patrick Pizzella Designated Acting FLRA Chairman (Sept. 10, 2019), https://perma.cc/ED2R-HVKG. There are therefore no additional features of the FLRA that render its Members’ removal protections “even more problematic.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 225.

***

A straightforward reading of Supreme Court precedent thus resolves the merits of this case. The FLRA triggers and satisfies the Humphrey’s Executor exception, making the FSLMRS removal provision a valid exercise of Congress’s constitutional authority. Although the Government claims fidelity to Humphrey’s Executor and the cases that follow, its arguments seem to contemplate absolute presidential authority over the removal of federal officers and would leave Humphrey’s Executor toothless. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a federal agency that would fit within the Humphrey’s Executor exception as the Government reads it. But it has been clear for almost a century that Article II does not give the President an “illimitable power of removal” over all federal officers. Humphrey’s Executor, 295 U.S. at 629.

When pressed at oral argument to identify existing federal agencies that would satisfy the Humphrey’s Executor exception, the Government identified only a single agency: the Federal Reserve. Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 36:19–20. But the Government declined to explain why the Federal Reserve would fit within the exception under the broad arguments it advances in this case. Id. at 36:21–37:5. The Federal Reserve sets the federal funds rate, 12 U.S.C. §§ 225, 263, which permeates every corner of the American economy. If control over that does not rise to an exercise of substantial executive power, then neither does laying down the administrative rules for labor organizing within the federal workforce.

REMEDIES

The Court now turns to the question of remedies. Ms. Grundmann requests both declaratory and injunctive relief. See Compl., Prayer for Relief, ¶¶ 1–2. The Government broadly argues that the Court lacks the authority to award either and is instead limited to an award of backpay to Ms. Grundmann. Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 45:1–19. According to the Government, because prior removed officials chose to seek backpay only, the Court may not award more than that. The Government held this line at oral argument, insisting that an Article III court is without authority to award relief to redress the injury caused by a President exceeding his Article II authority and intruding on Congress’s Article I authority. Id. at 46:11. The Court disagrees. Ms. Grundmann is entitled to a declaratory judgment saying that her removal was unlawful. And she has also met her burden to receive the permanent injunction that she seeks.

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Part 2 of 2

A. Declaratory Relief

The Plaintiff requests that the Court “[d]eclare that Ms. Grundmann was unlawfully removed as a member of the [FLRA].” Compl., Prayer for Relief, ¶ 1. The Court has the authority to issue such a declaratory judgment, and it exercises its discretion to do so.

The Declaratory Judgment Act (DJA) provides that, “in a case of actual controversy within its jurisdiction, . . . any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought.” 28 U.S.C. § 2201(a) (emphasis added). The DJA “alone does not provide a court with jurisdiction,” California v. Texas, 593 U.S. 659, 672 (2021), but it does “enlarge[] the range of remedies available in the federal courts” that have established jurisdiction, Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 339 U.S. 667, 671 (1950). This Court has jurisdiction over this federal-question case because, at minimum, it could provide backpay to establish redressability. See Compl., Prayer for Relief, ¶ 3 (asking for “all other appropriate relief”); Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 45:1–46:12 (conceding backpay is available). So the DJA allows for declaratory relief.

In its reply brief, the Government appears to take the position that the Court may not award “declaratory relief stating that the President’s removal of Plaintiff was unlawful.” See Defs.’ Reply at 15. In support, they cite a single quote from a concurring opinion that is inapposite and not binding on this Court. See Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, 827 (1992) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring the judgment) (“I think we cannot issue a declaratory judgment against the President.”). When pressed at oral argument, the Government walked this back and agreed that the Court could issue a declaratory judgment saying that Ms. Grundmann’s removal was unlawful. Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 42:19-20 (“A declaratory judgment saying that the removal was unlawful I think would be an acceptable outcome.”). To be sure, “[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 177 (1803). That applies even when the person violating the law is the President. See, e.g., Clinton v. New York, 524 U.S. 417, 421 (1998) (affirming a declaratory judgment invalidating the President’s power to wield a line-item veto pen as unconstitutional).

The Government also makes a more modest argument that declaratory relief is generally unavailable whenever injunctive relief is unavailable. See Defs.’ Reply at 15. They cite Samuels v. Mackell for support. 401 U.S. 66, 73 (1971) (“[W]here an injunction would be impermissible under these principles, declaratory relief should ordinarily be denied as well.”). But Samuels merely extended Younger abstention to relief under the Declaratory Judgment Act from ongoing state criminal prosecutions, explaining that a declaratory judgment could have a res judicata effect on the state court proceedings that is not meaningfully different from an injunction. See id. at 68, 73 (“[T]he basic policy against federal interference with pending state criminal prosecutions will be frustrated as much by a declaratory judgment as it would be by an injunction.”). The Court “express[ed] no views on the propriety of declaratory relief when no state proceedings is pending at the time the federal suit is begun.” Id. at 73. So Samuels does not apply.

“[ I]t is well settled that a declaratory judgment always rests within the sound discretion of the court.” President v. Vance, 627 F.2d 353, 364 n.76 (D.C. Cir. 1980). A declaratory judgment will “ordinarily be granted only when it will either ‘serve a useful purpose in clarifying the legal relations in issue’ or ‘terminate and afford relief from the uncertainty, insecurity, and controversy giving rise to the proceeding.’” Id. (quoting E. Borchard, Declaratory Judgments 299 (2d ed. 1941)). The case before the Court involves legal relations that clearly need to be clarified. Ms. Grundmann has challenged her removal by the President as unlawful and needs to know if she can resume her work on the Authority. On the other side, the Government argues that Congress overstepped when it enacted a provision limiting the President’s ability to remove Members of the FLRA without cause. The Court therefore exercises its discretion and provides the requested declaratory relief.

B. Injunctive Relief

The question of injunctive relief is more difficult. An injunction ordering the President to reinstate Ms. Grundmann would raise complicated questions about the separation of powers. And the availability of such an order may turn on technical differences between equitable remedies and legal remedies. These questions can largely be avoided, however, because Ms. Grundmann has never sought reinstatement from the President and ultimately requests a type of injunction that has been blessed by the D.C. Circuit. The Court therefore has the authority to issue the requested injunctive relief, and it finds that such relief is warranted.

1. Availability of Injunctive Relief

Ms. Grundmann has requested various types of injunctive relief throughout these proceedings. She originally asked the Court to enter an injunction ordering Ms. Kiko to reinstate her as a Member of the Authority. But Ms. Kiko lacks the authority to formally reinstate Ms. Grundmann, and it is not clear how such an injunction could be squared with Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 U.S. 308 (1999), given the plausible evidence that wrongfully removed executive officers were historically reinstated by courts of law instead of courts of equity. Fortunately for Ms. Grundmann, the D.C. Circuit has twice recognized a more modest equitable remedy when an officer has been removed by the President. See Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d 973 (D.C. Cir. 1996), and Severino v. Biden, 71 F.4th 1038 (D.C. 2023). These cases teach that courts may order the members of an agency—or even just the Chair—to recognize the unlawfully removed member as a member and to halt any efforts to hinder her work in that capacity. While this relief may be less complete than formal reinstatement, the D.C. Circuit has said that it strikes the right balance between respecting the rule of law and avoiding conflicts between the branches of government. The Plaintiff now requests this more modest relief, and the Court has the authority to grant it.

a. Formal Reinstatement

In her Complaint, Ms. Grundmann asked the Court to “[e]nter an injunction against Defendant Kiko, ordering her to reinstate Ms. Grundmann as a member of the Board and to refrain from taking any further action to obstruct Ms. Grundmann’s ability to carry out her duties.” Compl., Prayer for Relief, ¶ 2. There are two problems with this request.

First, Ms. Kiko lacks the authority to reinstate Ms. Grundmann. “Members of the Authority shall be appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” 5 U.S.C. § 7104(b). The Plaintiff conceded this at oral argument. See Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 18:12–16.

Second, it is not clear how such an injunction can be squared with Grupo. The Supreme Court in Grupo taught that “the general availability of injunctive relief . . . depend[s] on traditional principles of equity jurisdiction.” 527 U.S. at 318–19 (internal citations omitted). This means that “unless Congress expressly provides otherwise, equitable remedies must track remedies traditionally afforded by the equity courts.” Goodluck v. Biden, 104 F.4th 920, 924 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (citing Grupo, 527 U.S. at 318–19). But a preliminary review of the historical record suggests that, at least by the late nineteenth century, wrongfully removed executive officers sought relief in courts of law, not courts of equity. See White v. Berry, 171 U.S. 366 (1898); In re Sawyer, 124 U.S. 200 (1888). Whether this was already true at the Founding is less clear.

It is easy to find evidence from the turn of the last century. In 1888, the Supreme Court said it was “well settled that a court of equity has no jurisdiction over the appointment and removal of public officers.” In re Sawyer, 124 U.S. at 212. And it repeated that statement ten years later. White, 171 U.S. at 377; see also Harkrader v. Wadley, 172 U.S. 148, 165 (1898). According to the Court, “[t]he jurisdiction to determine the title to a public office belong[ed] exclusively to the courts of law, and [was] exercised either by certiorari, error, or appeal, or by mandamus, prohibition, quo warranto, or information in the nature of the writ of quo warranto.” In re Sawyer, 124 U.S. at 212; see also White, 171 U.S. at 377. This is consistent with treatises from the time. See, e.g., 2 James L. High, A Treatise on the Law of Injunctions § 1312 (2d ed., Chicago, Callaghan & Co., 1880) (“No principle of the law of injunctions, and perhaps no doctrine of equity jurisprudence, is more definitely fixed or more clearly established than that courts of equity will not interfere by injunction to determine questions concerning the appointment of public officers or their title to office.”); Floyd R. Mechem, A Treatise on the Law of Public Offices and Officers § 496 (Chicago, Callaghan & Co., 1890) (saying quo warranto allows courts “not only to oust the respondent [officer] but also to install the relator [officer]”). And the Supreme Court reiterated this view shortly before the merger of law and equity. See Walton v. House of Representatives of Okla., 265 U.S. 487, 490 (1924) (“A court of equity has no jurisdiction over the appointment and removal of public officers”). So it was not a stretch for the Court to say that these cases “reflect . . . a traditional limit upon equity jurisdiction.” Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 231 (1962).

But evidence from the 1880s might not settle the Grupo debate. See Grupo, 527 U.S. at 318 (discussing equitable principles “at the time of the separation of the two countries” (quoting Atlas Life Ins. Co. v. W.I. Southern, Inc., 306 U.S. 563, 568 (1939))); id. at 335 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (discussing equitable principles “at the time of the founding”); Bessent v. Dellinger, 145 S. Ct. 515, 517 (2025) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting) (discussing equitable remedies “at the time of the Nation’s founding”). And the earlier evidence is sparse.

The Court looks in vain to In re Sawyer for help. 124 U.S. 200. The Court there said that “[n]o English case has been found of a bill for an injunction to restrain the appointment or removal of a municipal officer.” Id. at 212. But this argument from silence is far from determinative. And the only English cases cited dealt with corporate officers. See Att’y Gen. v. Earl of Clarendon, 17 Ves. Jr. 490, 498, 34 Eng. Rep. 190, 193 (Ch. 1810); Queen v. Saddlers’ Co., 10 H.L. Cas. 404 (1863); Osgood v. Nelson, L. R. 5 H. L. 636 (1872). The Court also cited many “well-considered” state court cases denying “the power of a court of equity to restrain by injunction the removal of a municipal officer.” In re Sawyer, 124 U.S. at 212. But all of those cases were decided at least a half century after the Founding. See Tappan v. Gray, 7 Hill 259 (N.Y. 1843); Hagner v. Heyberger, 3 Pa. L.J. 370 (1844); Updegraff v. Crans, 47 Pa. 103 (1864); Cochran v. McCleary, 22 Iowa 75 (1867); Delahanty v. Warner, 75 Ill. 185 (1874); Sheridan v. Colvin, 78 Ill. 237 (1875); Dickey v. Reed, 78 Ill. 261 (1875); Harris v. Schryock, 82 Ill. 119 (1876); Beebe v. Robinson, 52 Ala. 66 (1875); Moulton v. Reid, 54 Ala. 320 (1875); cf. State v. Sheldon, 6 N.W. 757 (Neb. 1880); State v. Oleson, 18 N.W. 45 (Neb. 1883); State v. Meeker, 27 N.W. 427 (Neb. 1886).

The vintage of these cases matters. In re Sawyer itself recognized that the Supreme Court of Alabama had only recently decided that reinstatement was not available in equity, “overruling its own prior decisions to the contrary.” 124 U.S. at 214 (citing Beebe, 52 Ala. 66; Moulton, 54 Ala. 320). Those prior decisions had allowed courts of equity to enjoin an unlawfully appointed sheriff where the incumbent sheriff could not proceed by quo warranto, Bruner v. Bryan, 50 Ala. 522, 529 (1874), and to exercise jurisdiction over a dispute about the identity of the true mayor because a quo warranto “would not be a complete remedy,” Reid v. Moulton, 51 Ala. 255, 266 (1874). This flip-flopping could be read as evidence that the consensus view recognized in In re Sawyer was not as well-established at the Founding. But the Court need not come to a firm conclusion on this point since the Plaintiff now seeks different relief.

b. De Facto Reinstatement

This brings us to the relief that is really at issue. In her later briefing and at oral argument, Ms. Grundmann clarified that she seeks only the relief discussed in Swan v. Clinton, 100 F.3d 973 (D.C. Cir. 1996), and Severino v. Biden, 71 F.4th 1038 (D.C. 2023). That is, she “seeks injunctive relief from Defendant Kiko, a subordinate official, to treat her as a de facto member of the FLRA.” Pl.’s Reply at 14. While resuming her work on the Authority “in this de facto fashion might not be as complete a remedy for [the Plaintiff] as an official reinstatement by the President,” Swan, 100 F.3d at 980, the D.C. Circuit has twice recognized that this relief is available and advisable. See id. at 979–81; Severino, 71 F.4th at 1042–43.

The D.C. Circuit is no stranger to removal challenges. In Swan, a Senate-confirmed Board member of an independent agency was removed by President Clinton after being appointed by President Bush. See 100 F.3d at 975–76. He sued President Clinton and some staff who had implemented the firing, “seeking to have his removal . . . declared unlawful and to obtain injunctive relief ordering his reinstatement as a member of the Board.” Id. at 975. The district court granted summary judgment for the government, and the plaintiff appealed. Id. at 976. On appeal, the D.C. Circuit assessed the plaintiff’s standing, focusing on the redressability prong. See id. at 976. It questioned “whether a federal court has the power to grant injunctive relief against the President of the United States in the exercise of his official duties.” Id. at 976.

Resolving this question required balancing two important values. On the one hand, the Court recognized the “bedrock principle that our system of government is founded on the rule of law, and it is sometimes a necessary function of the judiciary to determine if the executive branch is abiding by the terms of legislative enactments.” Id. at 978. On the other hand, ordering the President “to perform particular executive [acts] . . . at best creates an unseemly appearance of constitutional tension and at worst risks a violation of the constitutional separation of powers.” Id. (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). The Court struggled to resolve this tension the usual way, by enjoining a subordinate official, “because only the President has the power to remove or reinstate [the] Board members.” Id. at 979.

The Court then concluded that certain subordinate officials had enough authority to “substantially redress” the injury without formal reinstatement. See id. at 979. The Executive Director of the agency “could direct the staff to treat [the plaintiff] as a Board member.” Id. at 979. And although they were not initially named in the complaint, the “Chairman, other NCUA Board members[, and] the Board Secretary” could accomplish reinstatement “de facto by treating Swan as a member of the NCUA Board and allowing him to exercise the privileges of that office.” Id. at 979–80. The Court decided that such “partial relief [was] sufficient for standing purposes when determining whether [it could] order more complete relief would require [it] to delve into the complicated and exceptionally difficult questions regarding the constitutional relationship between the judiciary and the executive branch.” Id. at 981.

The D.C. Circuit recited this same analysis just two years ago. In Severino, a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States Council was removed by President Biden after being appointed by President Trump. See 71 F.4th at 1041. He sued President Biden and others, “request[ing] that the court issue an injunction requiring that the President restore him to his position on the Council.” Id. at 1041 (cleaned up). The Court again assessed redressability, looking to Swan for guidance. Severino, 71 F.4th at 1042–43. It declined to answer whether such an injunction could run against the President because it could “enjoin ‘subordinate executive officials’ to reinstate a wrongly terminated official ‘de facto,’ even without a formal presidential reappointment.” Id. at 1042–43 (quoting Swan, 100 F.3d at 980). It explained that the Conference’s Chairperson could include the plaintiff in Board meetings and give him access to his former office, among other things, thereby providing partial relief. Id. at 1043.

The Government argues that Swan and Severino are inapposite because they are standing cases. See Defs.’ Reply at 11–12. The Court disagrees. The redressability analysis asks whether it is “likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” Swan, 100 F.3d at 976 (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992)). So a remedy cannot establish redressability if it is beyond the authority of the court. See, e.g., Ege v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 784 F.3d 791, 793 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (“And because we have no jurisdiction under 49 U.S.C. § 46110 to issue an order binding the TSC, we ipso facto cannot redress Ege’s injury even if we were inclined to agree with him.”); Newdow v. Roberts, 603 F.3d 1002, 1010 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (identifying a redressability problem because “[i]t is impossible for this court to grant such relief”); Love v. Vilsack, 908 F. Supp. 2d 139, 144– 45 (D.D.C. 2012) (“To satisfy [redressability], a plaintiff must show in the first instance that the court is capable of granting the relief sought.”). Swan itself assessed redressability only because “[a] question exists . . . as to whether a federal court has the power to grant injunctive relief against the President.” 100 F.3d at 976. It therefore makes little sense to hermetically seal the question of redressability from that of remedial availability.

And this Court is in good company reading Swan and Severino as standing for the proposition that such de facto reinstatement is an available remedy. See, e.g., Harris v. Bessent, -- F. Supp. 3d --, No. 25-cv-412, 2025 WL 521027 (D.D.C. Feb. 18, 2025) (Contreras, J.); Dellinger v. Bessent, -- F. Supp. 3d --, No. 25-cv-385, 2025 WL 665041 (D.D.C. Mar. 1, 2025) (Berman Jackson, J.); Wilcox v. Trump, -- F. Supp. 3d --, No. 25-cv-334, 2025 WL 720914 (D.D.C. Mar. 6, 2025) (Howell, J.); Spicer v. Biden, 575 F. Supp. 3d 93, 97 (D.D.C. 2021) (Friedrich, J.) (“Following Swan, the Court could grant effective relief in this case by ordering Ruppersberger and Thalakottur, in their capacities as the Board’s Chairman and DFO, to treat the plaintiffs are full members of the Board.”).

The Government’s other arguments seem to ignore the existence of Swan and Severino altogether. First, it argues that “[w]hen executive officers have challenged their removal by the President, they have traditionally sought back pay, not reinstatement.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 12 (citing Parsons v. United States, 167 U.S. 324, 326 (1897); Shurtleff v. United States, 189 U.S. 311, 318 (1903); Myers, 272 U.S. at 106; Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 612; Wiener, 357 U.S. at 350). But reinstatement was not an issue in Humphrey’s Executor or Myers because those plaintiffs were both deceased. See Humphrey’s Ex’r, 295 U.S. at 618–19; Myers, 272 U.S. at 106. Nor did it make sense in Wiener since the Commission had been abolished. See 357 U.S. at 350–51. And any argument from past practice should account for the cases where the plaintiffs did seek reinstatement. See Swan, 100 F.3d at 361; Severino, 71 F.4th at 1041.

Second, the Government argues that “members of the First Congress argued against requiring the Senate’s advice and consent for removals precisely because of the risk that such a procedure would require the President to retain someone he had sought to remove.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 13. It points to three Representatives in particular. See id. (citing Myers, 272 U.S. at 124 (saying that Rep. Benson worried that “the President would then have a man forced on him whom he considered as unfaithful”); id. at 131–32 (saying that Rep. Boudinot bemoaned a situation where the President would be “surrounded by officers . . . in whom he can have no confidence”); id. at 132 (saying that Rep. Sedwick asked whether such “a man under these circumstances” should “be saddled upon the President”)). But this paints with too broad a brush. Those very same Representatives highlighted the special danger of removal protections for the office at issue—the Secretary of Foreign Affairs—on the ground that “the direction of our foreign relations” was an “unquestioned field of executive prerogative.” Edward S. Corwin, Tenure of Office and the Removal Power Under the Constitution, 27 Colum. L. Rev. 353, 364–66 (1927) (collecting quotations). So their concerns may well have been limited to the character of the office. See id. at 366 And in any case, three individuals cannot speak for the entire First Congress, especially considering the wide spectrum of opinion it expressed on removal protections. See id. at 361–62. The “implications of the debate, properly understood, were highly ambiguous and prone to overreading.” John F. Manning, Separation of Powers as Ordinary Interpretation, 124 Harv. L. Rev. 1939, 1965 n.135 (2011). The Court declines to enter this historical fray.

Third, the Government argues that Grupo forecloses reinstatement, “[w]hether the order is expressly directed at the President or not.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 15. But this argument fails to appreciate the nuance of the remedy recognized in Swan and Severino. The Court has already acknowledged the strong—albeit imperfect—evidence that reinstatement was not traditionally available in a court of equity. See supra at 23–25. But that evidence does not clearly extend to de facto reinstatement; nor does the Government offer a theory for how it could. The Court is particularly hesitant to second-guess its authority to order de facto reinstatement now that the D.C. Circuit has reaffirmed the remedy’s availability even after Grupo. See Severino, 71 F.4th at 1042–43.

Finally, the Government invites the Court to consider afresh the values already weighed by the D.C. Circuit in Swan and Severino. It argues that the “Plaintiff’s injunction necessarily targets the President.” Defs.’ Reply at 11 (cleaned up). But issuing no relief at all would undermine “the bedrock principle that our system of government is founded on the rule of law.” Swan, 100 F.3d at 978. The Court therefore defers to the careful balance struck by the D.C. Circuit in Swan and Severino, which are binding on this Court.

For all of these reasons, the Court concludes that it has the authority to order injunctive relief as to Ms. Kiko.3

2. Permanent Injunction

Having established its authority to grant injunctive relief, the Court now addresses whether an injunction is appropriate in this case. “[A] plaintiff seeking a permanent injunction must satisfy a four-factor test before a court may grant such relief.” eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, LLC, 547 U.S. 388, 391 (2006). “A plaintiff must demonstrate: (1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (3) that, considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction.” Id. Ms. Grundmann has satisfied all four factors. The Court therefore grants a permanent injunction.4

a. Irreparable Harm and Inadequate Remedy at Law

The first two factors “are often considered together.” Wilcox, 2025 WL 720914, at *15 n.20 (citing Ridgley v. Lew, 55 F. Supp. 3d 89, 98 (D.D.C. 2014)). And Ms. Grundmann has satisfied both. Her “unlawful removal from office by the President” was an irreparable harm. Berry v. Reagan, No. 83-cv-3182, 1983 WL 538, at *5 (D.D.C. Nov. 14, 1983), vacated as moot, 732 F.2d 949 (Mem.) (D.C. Cir. 1983). And as the Government conceded at oral argument, there is no available remedy at law that would effectuate her reinstatement. See Motions H’rg (Mar. 7, 2025), Draft Tr. at 45:18–46:12.

Ms. Grundmann claims that “[h]er removal has deprived her of her statutory right to function in her office.” Pl.’s Reply at 16. And courts in this District have recognized that this harm can be irreparable. See, e.g., Berry, 1983 WL 538, at *5 (recognizing as irreparable the plaintiffs’ “deprivation of their statutory right to function as Commissioners”); Wilcox, 2025 WL 720914, at *15 (recognizing as irreparable the plaintiff’s deprivation “of a presidentially appointed and congressionally confirmed position of high importance”). The Government argues that loss of employment does not amount to an irreparable harm because backpay is available. See Defs.’ Opp’n at 17–18 (citing Sampson v. Murray, 415 U.S. 61, 92 n.68 (1974)). But Sampson expressly contemplates “that cases may arise in which the circumstances surrounding an employee’s discharge . . . may so far depart from the normal situation that irreparable injury might be found.” 415 U.S. at 92 n.68. This is such a “genuinely extraordinary situation.” Id. Far from a mere claim of lost employment, this is a case of constitutional significance. Backpay does not get Ms. Grundmann back into her role as a Member of the FLRA—a role that the President appointed her to, that the Senate confirmed her for, in an agency that both Congress and the President in their considered judgment created to be independent and free from political meddling. See Harris, 2025 WL 679303, at *13. A check in the mail does not address the gravamen of this lawsuit. Perhaps that is why Ms. Grundmann has not even asked for one.

According to the Government, several cases “reject[] the notion that the deprivation of a unique, singular, or high-level position is any more of an irreparable injury.” Defs.’ Opp’n at 17– 18. But the Government’s cases cannot support such a broad rule. See id. (cases involving corporate managers, subordinate local and state officials, lower-level federal employees, and a credit union board member). Ms. Grundmann is a Senate-confirmed principal officer of a congressionally-created independent agency. She accepted the President’s nomination and earned Senate confirmation in order to serve her country at the highest possible level in her field. This represented the capstone of her long career in public service, see Pl.’s Decl. ¶ 7, and her unlawful termination deprived her of the opportunity to make her mark in this statutorily protected role.

b. Balance of the Equities and Public Interest

The final two injunction factors merge when the Government is a party. Wilcox, 2025 WL 720914, at *17 (citing Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 435 (2009)). And Ms. Grundmann has satisfied both. The Authority needs all three voters to avoid deadlock, especially at a time when there have been mass firings across the federal government. And the Government’s arguments about the separation of powers actually weigh in favor of an injunction.

Without this relief, the Authority has only two of its three Members. This runs the risk of letting cases deadlock with no tiebreaker, which would cause those cases to go into abeyance. Pl.’s Mot. at 14; see also Pl.’s Decl. ¶ 7. This is not mere speculation either. “[D]uring the eighteen-month period that Plaintiff Grundmann served as part of a two-member Authority, approximately one-third of the Authority’s cases deadlocked, leading to duplicative disputes and resource waste.” Pl.’s Mot. at 14. Abeyance “results in increased costs and confusion to the parties” and adds “to the bottom line of the agencies, the cost of which is ultimately borne by taxpayers.” Pl.’s Decl. ¶ 10. “It also creates legal uncertainty and likely inconsistency in labor practices the longer key labor issues remain unsolved.” Pl.’s Reply at 20. And this would be a particularly bad time for deadlock considering the widespread firings across the federal workforce in recent months. See Pl.’s Mot. at 15; Pl.’s Reply at 20. In fact, only weeks ago, a court in this District told fired federal workers to pursue their claims before the FLRA before seeking judicial relief. See Nat’l Treasury Emps.’ Union v. Trump, No. 25-cv-420, 2025 WL 561080, at *8 (D.D.C. Feb. 20, 2025). Leaving the Authority with only two voters would make that instruction hollow.

The Government argues that providing this relief raises grave separation-of-powers concerns. See Defs.’ Opp’n at 19. They say that “[s]uch a remedy would undermine the accountability of the Executive Branch enshrined in the Constitution” and that “[t]he Government has traditionally been granted the widest latitude in the ‘dispatch of its own internal affairs.’” Id. at 20 (citing Sampson v. Murray, 415 U.S. 61, 83 (1974)). But the Government ignores the separation-of-powers risks posed by non-intervention. If the Government had its way, it would place unchecked power in the hands of the President, which is antithetical to our system of government. Again, nearly fifty years ago, Congress and the President worked together to create the FLRA as an independent agency. The President appointed Ms. Grundmann to her position, and the Senate confirmed her. The two political branches decided to give her removal protections—protections that have now been ruled constitutional by a federal court. Providing no injunctive relief would allow the President to flout not only Congress’s Article I power to create independent multimember agencies, but also the Court’s Article III power to maintain the rule of law, see Swan, 100 F.3d at 978.5

Congress has already balanced the equities at stake in this case. The FLRA “safeguards the public interest” and “contributes to the effective conduct of public business.” 5 U.S.C. § 7101(a)(1). “[L]abor organizations and collective bargaining in the civil service are in the public interest,” and “the public interest demands . . . the efficient accomplishment of the operations of the Government.” Id. § 7101(a)(2). The public interest therefore favors Ms. Grundmann, and a permanent injunction is warranted.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the Court grants the Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment and denies the Defendants’ Cross-Motion for Summary Judgment.

The Court has issued a separate order consistent with this Memorandum Opinion.

SPARKLE L. SOOKNANAN
United States District Judge

Date: March 12, 2025

_______________

1 The Government has hinted that it intends to ask the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent, invalidating statutory provisions that have been in place for nearly a century and a half and leaving the President free to fire whomever he wants in the Executive Branch. See Letter from Sarah Harris, Acting Solicitor General, to Sen. Richard Durbin on Restrictions on the Removal of Certain Principal Officers of the United States (Feb. 12, 2025), https://perma.cc/D67G-FKK4.

2 A Fifth Circuit panel recently offered its own distillation of the Humphrey’s Executor exception. See Consumers’ Rsch. v. CPSC, 91 F.4th 342 (5th Cir. 2024). And it did not deal with this broad language from Collins at all, see id., suggesting that it did not read the language as bearing on the exception.

There is also a more ambitious way to square Collins. As the Fifth Circuit noted, id. at 352 n.53, in Seila Law, the Chief Justice and two other Justices said that there “may be means of remedying the defect in the CFPB’s structure,” including, “for example, converting the CFPB into a multimember agency,” 591 U.S. at 237 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.). This matters because the CFPB exercises “significant executive power,” id. at 220 (majority opinion), suggesting the Court might be open to recognizing an exception for “traditional independent agenc[ies], run by a multimember board with a diverse set of viewpoints and experiences,” id. at 205–06, regardless of the amount of executive power exercised. Cf. Consumers’ Rsch., 91 F.4th at 353–54 (arguing that a multimember agency is not removed from the Humphrey’s Executor exception just because it exercises substantial executive power). After all, the Court said that the two definite exceptions “represent what up to now have been the outermost constitutional limits.” Seila Law, 591 U.S. at 218 (emphasis added). If the Court were to take this step, then it would be true that “the constitutionality of removal restrictions” would not “hinge[]” on “the relative importance of the regulatory and enforcement authority of disparate agencies.” Collins, 594 U.S. at 253.

3 In a Notice of Supplemental Authority and at oral argument, the Plaintiff asks the Court to consider a writ of mandamus as an alternative remedy. See ECF No. 17 at 1. Given the lack of briefing on mandamus as a remedy, the Court leaves it for another day. But as other courts in this District have found, a writ of mandamus may well be an available remedy were injunctive relief unavailable in this case. See, e.g., Harris v. Bessent, No. 25-cv-412, 2025 WL 679303, at *11 (D.D.C. Mar. 4 2025); Wilcox v. Trump, No. 25-cv-334, 2025 WL 720914, at *16 n.22 (D.D.C. Mar. 6, 2025).

4 The Plaintiff filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction and Summary Judgment. See Pl.’s Mot. In her Reply, she sought only a permanent injunction. See Pl.’s Reply at 11–21. The Government has argued that the Plaintiff is not entitled to a preliminary injunction or permanent injunction. See Defs.’ Opp’n at 16 n.5. Because this Court grants the Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment, it awards a permanent injunction.

5 The Government also argues that the President “cannot be compelled to retain the services of a principal officer whom the President no longer believes should be entrusted with the exercise of executive power.” See Defs.’ Opp’n at 20. But Congress set forth permissible limits on the President’s ability to remove Ms. Grundmann. And the Government has made no attempt to establish inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office on Ms. Grundmann’s part. Absent cause to remove Ms. Grundmann, the President may of course nominate someone to replace her when her term expires in less than four months. Curiously, although the FLRA’s General Counsel may be removed at will, the President has taken no steps to remove that officer.

[admin]

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addresses Trump: "You want a wall, you get a wall."
The Indian Investor
9:59 AM · Feb 9, 2025
https://x.com/Anvith_/status/1888633802706293035

Well, dear Americans, even if you don’t understand much about geography, since for you America is your country and not a continent, it is important for you to know, before the first brick is laid, that there are 7 billion people beyond that wall.

But since you don’t really know the term “people,” we will call them “consumers.” There are 7 billion consumers ready to replace their iPhones with Samsung or Huawei devices in less than 42 hours.

They can also replace Levi’s with Zara or Massimo Duti.

In less than six months, we can easily stop buying Ford or Chevrolet cars and replace them with Toyota, KIA, Mazda, Honda, Hyundai, Volvo, Subaru, Renault or BMW, which are technically better than the cars they produce. These 7 billion people can also stop subscribing to Direct TV, and we don't want to do that, but we can stop watching Hollywood movies and start watching more Latin American or European productions that have better quality, message, cinematic techniques and content.

Although it may sound incredible, we can skip Disney and go to the Xcaret resort in Cancun, Mexico, Canada or Europe: there are other great destinations in South America, East America and Europe.

And even if you don't believe it, even in Mexico there are better hamburgers than McDonald's and they have better nutritional content.

Has anyone seen pyramids in the United States? In Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Sudan and other countries there are pyramids with incredible civilizations.

Find out where to find the wonders of the ancient and modern world. None of them in the US. Shame on Trump, he would have bought them and sold them!

We know that Adidas exists, not just Nike, and we can start wearing Mexican sneakers like Panam. We know more than you think.

We know, for example, that if these 7 billion consumers don't buy their products, there will be unemployment and their economy will collapse (within the racist wall) to such an extent that they will beg us to tear down this ugly wall.

We didn't want to, but....

You want a wall, you get a wall. Sincerely yours."

-- Claudia Sheinbaum

[admin]

“Never Again for Anyone”: 100 Jewish Activists Arrested at Trump Tower Protesting Mahmoud Khalil Arrest
by Amy Goodman & Jewish Voice for Peace
March 14, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/14/ ... transcript



Over 300 protesters with the group Jewish Voice for Peace flooded the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on Thursday wearing red shirts saying “Not in Our Name.” They demanded the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil and held banners reading “opposing fascism is a Jewish tradition.” About 100 protesters were arrested and face charges of trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest. Democracy Now! was at the protest. “I refuse to allow this administration to speak in my name, to use our names as Jews, to carry out a fascist agenda,” protester Josh Dubnau said. “The Trump administration is a government that has far-right white supremacists, people that do the Nazi salute, and [Trump’s] fine with that.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and protest leader being held in ICE detention, felt like he was being kidnapped when he was arrested last week and flown to Louisiana, shackled and in handcuffs by agents who never identified themselves. That’s according to an updated lawsuit filed by Khalil’s legal team late Thursday. They say his treatment by federal authorities reminded Khalil, who’s Palestinian and grew up in Syria, of the time he left Syria in 2013 when his friends were being forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime.

Less than a week after immigration authorities detained Khalil, Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, agents were back on Columbia University’s campus late Thursday to serve two search warrants. Columbia’s interim president said no one was arrested or detained and that the university was obligated to comply with the warrants.

Earlier on Thursday, the Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia with a list of required policy changes it must meet by March 20th in order to begin negotiations to reinstate the $400 million in federal funding the federal government canceled last week over alleged inaction in addressing what they called antisemitism. The letter outlines nine preconditions the university must comply with. These include disciplining students involved in Gaza solidarity protests last spring with expulsion or more severe suspension, turning campus safety officers into police, adopting a definition of “antisemitism” that could limit criticism of Israel, and taking over the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies. In a post on social media, the retired Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke described the letter as a “ransom note.”

Before news of the letter was revealed, Columbia’s administration announced a range of punishments affecting at least 22 students involved in the occupation of a campus building last spring. The students were expelled, suspended for several years or had their degrees temporarily revoked.

Meanwhile, opposition to the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil is only growing. Here in New York, Jewish Voice for Peace organized a nonviolent civil disobedience Thursday in the lobby of the Trump Tower right by the golden escalator where Donald Trump famously descended as he first announced his decision to run for president back in 2015. Some 300 protesters flooded the Trump Tower lobby, demanding the immediate release of Mahmoud Khalil. Nearly a hundred protesters were arrested and face charges of trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest. Democracy Now! was at the protest.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re here at Trump Tower, where hundreds of protesters have gathered, unfurling banners that say “Jews say do not comply,” “You can’t deported a movement,” calling for Mahmoud Khalil to be freed, banners that say “Never again for anyone,” “No Muslim ban ever.” People are protesting, saying, “We’ve got your back, students. We’ve got your back, Mahmoud. We’ve got your back, Gaza. We’ve got your back, trans people,” and more. The police are beginning to move in. Those who don’t want to be arrested have gone up the escalator. We’ll see what happens. We’re in the middle of Trump Tower, here in Midtown Manhattan.

ELENA STEIN: My name’s Elena Stein. I’m with Jewish Voice for Peace. We’re here today with 300 Jewish people and friends, all of whom are taking the day off work to occupy, to take over Trump Tower, because we know that Mahmoud’s case is a pressure test. The Trump administration wants to know if they can crush dissent altogether. So, it’s Mahmoud’s case. He’s been abducted. But they’re coming for so many more people. They’re starting with noncitizen students. They’ll move to the whole movement for Palestinian liberation. And they’ll do that as a gateway to get to the whole — all of our movements. And so, the time is now. We need everybody to stand up as loudly as possible and ensure that this case cannot go through for all of our movements.

PROTESTERS: No more deportations! End the occupation!

JAY SAPER: I’m Jay Saper with Jewish Voice for Peace, and I’m here to raise my voice to free Mahmoud Khalil. We see that the president is taking action in our name, and we refuse. We see this is a chilling of dissent. And we understand, when you come for one, you must face us all. As Jews, we have an experience with fascism, and our tradition teaches us that we must fight against fascism. So that is why we are rising up right now at Trump Tower to challenge the president’s disappearing, kidnapping, abduction of Mahmoud Khalil.

I have members of my family who were killed at Auschwitz in the Holocaust, and so I am deeply compelled by my family’s story to do everything I can to take action for all of our communities that are under attack right now. This has absolutely nothing to do about Jewish safety, and we will continue to raise our voices. When they are talking about taking action against antisemitism, that is not the case. What they are doing is stifling the movement for Palestinian liberation. And as Jews, we are calling for the U.S. to stop arming Israel, because we believe we can — our liberation is intertwined with one another, and none of us can be safe until all of us are safe.

PROTESTERS: “Never again” for anyone! “Never again” is now!

JANE HIRSCHMANN: I’m Jane Hirschmann with Jewish Voice for Peace. And we’re here to say to President Trump: He’s got to
stop this authoritarianism, this fascism. I personally know about it. My parents were Holocaust survivors. My grandfather and uncle were abducted late at night, just like Mahmoud, just the same, and they were taken to jail. And my mother had to find them and take them out. Once they come for one of us, they’re going to come for all of us. And we are here to say to Trump, “No!” And we are Jewish. We’re here strong. There are over 216 of us. And this is a message we want to send to the president.

PROTESTERS: From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!

JOSH DUBNAU: My name is Josh Dubnau. I’m here — I’m here as a Jew, because I refuse to allow this administration to speak in my name, to use our names as Jews to carry out a fascist agenda. There is a long history of Jews fighting fascism. And we are here today, as Jews and allies, to say no to fascism. The Trump administration is a government that has far-right white supremacists, people that do the Nazi salute, and he’s fine with that. He’s fine with supporting the AfD in Germany and other neo-Nazi and far-right groups. He’s not a friend to Jewish people.

POLICE LIAISON: The NYPD would like me to communicate that this has been your final warning, and they will begin arrests now.

PROTESTERS: When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back! When Palestine is under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!

PROTESTER: I’m a militant anti-Zionist Jew. I’m ashamed —

POLICE OFFICER: You guys press?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

POLICE OFFICER: You guys have to leave here. They have the press downstairs.

PROTESTER: — of what — I’m ashamed of what my country is doing.

POLICE OFFICER: You guys have to leave. Come on. Let’s go.

JAMAAL BOWMAN: Jamaal Bowman, former congressman from New York’s 16th District, I love showing up here to support people who are putting their bodies on the line to save our democracy. Honestly, I didn’t even know this was happening. I happened to be in the neighborhood, and someone told me there’s a protest happening at Trump Tower. So I walked over here to just offer my support.

I’m here fighting for democracy, fighting for justice, fighting for humanity, fighting for brother Mahmoud Khalil, who was unlawfully detained in our country that’s supposed to be a country that exercises First Amendment rights. Brother Khalil was a peaceful protester fighting against a genocide in Gaza, like millions across the country and millions around the world. We have to stand up and fight for him, and we have to stand up and fight for everything this democracy is supposed to stand for. We have a fascist, right-wing dictator in the White House. His henchman, Elon Musk, is a Nazi. And we need the people of our country to push back and fight back and stand up against all of the injustices and the inhumanity that’s taking place in our country.

PROTESTERS: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

AMY GOODMAN: Former New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman standing outside the protest, where, inside, Jewish Voice for Peace, hundreds of people gathered at the Trump Tower, where it all began in 2015 when Donald Trump came down the same escalators and first announced he was running for president. About a hundred people were arrested.

[admin]

Speech: [Department of Education] Secretary McMahon: Our Department's Final Mission
by Secretary Linda McMahon
March 3, 2025
https://perma.cc/F7BT-MQ3D

When I took the oath of office as Secretary of Education, I accepted responsibility for overseeing the U.S. Department of Education and those who work here. But more importantly, I took responsibility for supporting over 100 million American children and college students who are counting on their education to create opportunity and prepare them for a rewarding career.

I want to do right by both.

As you are all aware, President Trump nominated me to take the lead on one of his most momentous campaign promises to families. My vision is aligned with the President’s: to send education back to the states and empower all parents to choose an excellent education for their children. As a mother and grandmother, I know there is nobody more qualified than a parent to make educational decisions for their children. I also started my career studying to be a teacher, and as a Connecticut Board of Education member and college trustee, I have long held that teaching is the most noble of professions. As a businesswoman, I know the power of education to prepare workers for fulfilling careers.

American education can be the greatest in the world. It ought not to be corrupted by political ideologies, special interests, and unjust discrimination. [!] Parents, teachers, and students alike deserve better.

After President Trump’s inauguration last month, he steadily signed a slate of executive orders to keep his promises: combatting critical race theory, DEI, gender ideology, discrimination in admissions, promoting school choice for every child, and restoring patriotic education and civics. He has also been focused on eliminating waste, red tape, and harmful programs in the federal government. The Department of Education’s role in this new era of accountability is to restore the rightful role of state oversight in education and to end the overreach from Washington. [!]

This restoration will profoundly impact staff, budgets, and agency operations here at the Department. In coming months, we will partner with Congress and other federal agencies to determine the best path forward to fulfill the expectations of the President and the American people. We will eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy so that our colleges, K-12 schools, students, and teachers can innovate and thrive.

This review of our programs is long overdue. The Department of Education is not working as intended. Since its establishment in 1980, taxpayers have entrusted the department with over $1 trillion, yet student outcomes have consistently languished. Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology, or saddled with college debt for a degree that has not provided a meaningful return on their investment. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves after just a few years—and citing red tape as one of their primary reasons.

The reality of our education system is stark, and the American people have elected President Trump to make significant changes in Washington. Our job is to respect the will of the American people and the President they elected, who has tasked us with accomplishing the elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education—a momentous final mission—quickly and responsibly.

While the public no doubt has an interest in the Executive carrying out his important role in foreign affairs, it also has an interest in ensuring those duties are carried out in accordance with law, including the APA, and with the role prescribed to Congress, also a democratically elected branch, under the Constitution.... the Executive is equal to, not above, Congress and its laws.

-- Court grants in part and denies in part Plaintiffs’ motions for a preliminary injunction: Memorandum Opinion and Order by Judge Amir H. Ali, USDC Judge, March 10, 2025. USDC, District of Columbia, AIDS VACCINE ADVOCACY COALITION, et al. v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, et al., Civil Action No. 25-00400 (AHA) GLOBAL HEALTH COUNCIL, et al. v. DONALD J. TRUMP, et al., Civil Action No. 25-00402 (AHA) [Judge Amir H. Ali, United States District Judge], March 10, 2025

As I’ve learned many times throughout my career, disruption leads to innovation and gets results. We must start thinking about our final mission at the department as an overhaul—a last chance to restore the culture of liberty and excellence that made American education great. Changing the status quo can be daunting. But every staff member of this Department should be enthusiastic about any change that will benefit students.

True change does not happen overnight—especially the historic overhaul of a federal agency. Over the coming months, as we work hard to carry out the President’s directives, we will focus on a positive vision for what American education can be.

These are our convictions:

1. Parents are the primary decision makers in their children’s education.
2. Taxpayer-funded education should refocus on meaningful learning in math, reading, science, and history—not divisive DEI programs and gender ideology.
3. Postsecondary education should be a path to a well-paying career aligned with workforce needs.

Removing red tape and bureaucratic barriers will empower parents to make the best educational choices for their children. An effective transfer of educational oversight to the states will mean more autonomy for local communities. Teachers, too, will benefit from less micromanagement in the classroom—enabling them to get back to basics.

I hope each of you will embrace this vision going forward and use these convictions as a guide for conscientious and pragmatic action. The elimination of bureaucracy should free us, not limit us, in our pursuit of these goals. I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students, with the same dedication and excellence that you have brought to your careers as public servants.

This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students. I hope you will join me in ensuring that when our final mission is complete, we will all be able to say that we left American education freer, stronger, and with more hope for the future.

Sincerely,

Linda McMahon
Secretary of Education

[admin]

If Successful, I Would Call It a Coup: A Retired Judge’s Warning About Elon Musk’s Abuse of Power
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 14, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/14/ ... transcript



A pair of federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of fired federal workers at the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury. The White House vowed to fight what it called an “absurd and unconstitutional order.” This comes as the White House and its allies have increasingly targeted judges who rule against the administration. Elon Musk has posted dozens of messages on his social platform X calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against the administration. We speak with retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner, who served as a federal district judge in Massachusetts for 17 years, from 1994 to 2011. “The distance between what they are trying to do and what is lawful is so enormous that anyone would rule as these judges are doing,” says Gertner.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Two federal judges — one in Maryland, one in California — have ordered the Trump administration to reinstate tens of thousands of fired federal workers. In one of the rulings, District Judge William Alsup said, “It is 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,” unquote. The White House responded by saying, quote, “The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order,” unquote.

This comes as the White House and its allies have increasingly targeted judges who rule against the administration. Reuters recently reported U.S. marshals have warned federal judges of unusually high threat levels due to a series of comments from Elon Musk, Donald Trump and others targeting judges. Musk has posted dozens of messages on his social platform X calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against the administration. He has also called judges “corrupt,” “radical” and “evil.” Vice President JD Vance has questioned whether judges even have the authority to rule on Trump’s order. Vance went to Yale Law School. Vance wrote last month on X, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” unquote. President Trump has indicated he believes he’s above the law, recently writing, quote, “He who saves his Country does not violate any law,” unquote.

Trump has also gone after law firms. Last week, he levied unprecedented penalties against the firm Perkins Coie, that has ties to the Democratic Party. On Wednesday, a federal judge partially blocked the order, saying the order, quote, “casts a chilling harm of blizzard proportions across the legal profession,” unquote. The American Bar Association has also criticized efforts to undermine the courts. In a statement, the ABA said, quote, “We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not.”

We’re joined right now by retired federal Judge Nancy Gertner. She served as a federal district judge in Massachusetts for 17 years, from 1994 to 2011, now a professor at Harvard Law School. She’s also the author of the book, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate.

Judge, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. If you can respond, overall, to the attack on judges, and judges pushing back around the country?

NANCY GERTNER: You have to put it in context here. What the judges are doing in cases across the country are dealing with executive orders that are so, so far from lawful, constitutional, consistent with the statute, that, frankly, if they didn’t respond, there would be something wrong. In other words, there have been, what, over 111 lawsuits filed, and, for the most part, every time someone asks for a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order, that has been allowed. It does not matter who appointed the judge. It doesn’t matter where this is happening in the country. As I said, the distance between what they are trying to do and what is lawful is so enormous that anyone would rule as these judges are doing.

The case in California, for example, is a classic example. The judge there yesterday said, you know, “Give me an explanation as to why the probationary employees have been resoundingly fired.” And the Trump administration refused to provide anyone from the Office of Personnel Management. It was as if they were saying, “We don’t have to explain. We don’t have to give an explanation.” And the judge was absolutely furious, because, of course, there has to be an explanation. These people were fired, completely not following any of the rules. And worse, in order to sort of come up with a lame justification, people who had great performance reviews only, you know, a few months ago were suddenly described as inadequate employees. I mean, it was a contrivance. It was a lie. And it violated numbers and numbers of laws and statutes. So, judges are doing what they are put on the bench to do, which is to call it as they see it.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you your thoughts on Vice President Vance, who notoriously stated, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

NANCY GERTNER: Well, I think the word “legitimate” carries weight in that sentence. The question is: What’s legitimate? And courts are supposed to say what the law is. That was settled, you know, in the last century. Courts are supposed to say what is constitutional and what the law is, and the executive is to follow. So, they are doing what is completely within their legitimate scope of authority. And he knows that. He knows that. I’m a Yale Law graduate, as well, and his statements, frankly, are chilling, really extraordinary.

AMY GOODMAN: Judge Gertner —

NANCY GERTNER: So, yeah, he knows that. But the — yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to move on quickly, because we don’t have much time, and there’s a lot to talk about. I wanted to get your response to efforts by some House Republicans who have introduced a bill aimed at limiting the power of judges, in response to the mounting challenges against Trump’s measures, and the role of the Supreme Court.

NANCY GERTNER: Well, that was to be expected, which is to try to restrict the authority of judges. But the authority of judges to announce what the law is is in the Constitution, or it’s an interpretation of the Constitution, which they cannot undo without undoing much more than just the issue of this judge or that judge. Judges are supposed to interpret the law, and particularly interpret constitutional law. And this is power, it seems to me, that is baked into the Constitution and cannot be taken away. So, this is an empty gesture. But even worse, it is a troubling, outrageous gesture.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you respond to lawyers for Trump asking the Supreme Court this week to lift a nationwide pause imposed on the president’s order ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, marking the first time the legal wrangling over the president’s order to end birthright citizenship has reached the Supreme Court?

NANCY GERTNER: Well, this is — again, this was a move that, in my view, is so far from constitutional that no judge worthy of their name would ever rule in a different direction. Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. Birthright citizenship was affirmed — what is it? — a hundred years ago. So, this is just pushing back on the judiciary, and then, when the judiciary does what they don’t want them to do, and the judiciary says this is wrong, trying to delegitimize that decision. I can’t tell you how fundamentally dangerous all of this is, because the judiciary is one of the institutions that deal with checks and balances. And if you take them out of the picture, you’re going the way of Hungary, you’re going the way of Russia. And it’s extraordinarily troubling.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about President Trump simply not obeying the courts? I mean, U.S. marshals are the kind of army for the courts, but they’re under the Justice Department, Trump’s Justice Department, the heads of that calling themselves Trump’s lawyers.

NANCY GERTNER: The marshals are supposed to be the enforcer of judgments. And as you say, they are under the supervision of the Department of Justice. Their authorizing legislation, however, says that the marshals shall enforce the law. And so there’s a division here. On the one hand, the authorizing statute says they shall enforce the law. And even if Pam Bondi says, you know, “I’m sorry, that law doesn’t matter. We’re going to skip over that law,” they still have an obligation to enforce the law. If they did not, then we would have a constitutional crisis.

Saying that doesn’t describe what that would mean. A constitutional crisis, what does that mean for all of us? I mean, then, it would mean, really, a marching on Washington, deluging all of our congressmen and representatives. It could mean mass demonstrations. I mean, it’s almost the end of law. And at that point, people have to make it clear, as the population in Israel did, as populations in Poland did, that this is beyond the pale. This is not what our Constitution was meant to accomplish.

AMY GOODMAN: Judge, would you call DOGE’s taking over of federal agencies, you know, run by, as President Trump keeps saying, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who gave the most money to the president to be reelected — would you call what’s happened, as judges push back across the country and say tens of thousands of workers have to be reinstated — would you call what has happened a coup?

NANCY GERTNER: What has happened with Elon Musk, well, I have called it a coup. If it succeeds, it will have been a coup. In other words, if the definition of a “coup” is a small group of people who are not elected — and there was Musk — who are taking over the power of the government, yes, I would call it a coup. I mean, he — there are challenges around the country to his authority, to Musk’s authority — Musk, who is not confirmed by Congress, who was selected by means that no one exactly knows, who was given powers that no one knows about, who is getting access to information that only government officials who have been appropriately selected can get. And if he’s successful in that — there are challenges to that. If he is successful, yes, I would call that a coup.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you so much for being with us, retired Judge Nancy Gertner, professor at Harvard Law School, served as a federal judge in the District Court of Massachusetts for 17 years, speaking to us from Massachusetts.

[admin]

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/ ... 031025.pdf

-- Mahmoud Khalil v. William P. Joyce (1:25-cv-01935), District Court, S.D. New York. Assigned To: Jesse Matthew Furman

29. Mar 12, 2025. ORDER As stated on the record during the conference held earlier today: With the consent of both parties, the Court orders that the limitations on remote access to electronic files otherwise applicable in this case, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2(c), are lifted. Accordingly, the Clerk of Court is directed to lift all viewing restrictions on the docket - i.e., to make all prior filings electronically available to the public - and to update the docket to conform with the caption of this Order. All future filings shall be publicly available unless the Court grants leave to file something under seal or in redacted form. Any application to file a document in such a manner shall be made in accordance with the Court's Individual Rules and Practices for Civil Cases, available at https://nysd.uscourts.gov/hon-jesse-m-furman. The Government shall file its Motion to Transfer or Dismiss for Improper Venue by 11:59 p.m. tonight. Briefing on that motion and Petitioner's Motion to Compel Respondents to Return Petitioner to this District, see ECF No. 11, shall then proceed as follows: The parties shall file their oppositions by March 14, 2025, at 11:59 p.m.; and the parties shall file their replies by March 17, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. Petitioner shall file an Amended Petition no later than March 13, 2025, at 9:00 p.m. After the Amended Petition is filed, the parties shall confer and then file a joint letter, no later than March 14, 2025, at 12:00 p.m., proposing next steps, including an expedited schedule for any additional motion practice. With the consent of the Government, Petitioner shall be granted at least one privileged attorney-client call (of at least one hour) today and at least one such call (also of at least one hour) tomorrow. The Government raised no objection to the temporary relief that the Court granted in its Notice of Conference entered on March 10, 2025. See ECF No. 9, at 1 ("To preserve the Courts jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition, Petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise." (citing cases)). Accordingly, that order remains in effect. SO ORDERED. (Amended Pleadings due by 3/13/2025., Motions due by 3/12/2025., Replies due by 3/17/2025., Responses due by 3/14/2025) (Signed by Judge Jesse M. Furman on 3/12/2025) (jca) (Entered: 03/12/2025)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

M.K. [Mahmoud Khalil],

Petitioner,

-v-

WILLIAM P. JOYCE et al.,

Respondents.

CASE NO.: 25-CV-1935 (JMF)

NOTICE OF CONFERENCE

JESSE M. FURMAN, United States District Judge:

It is hereby ORDERED that counsel for all parties appear for a conference with the Court on March 12, 2025 at 11:30 a.m. in Courtroom 1105 of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, 40 Centre Street, New York, New York. Counsel must confer in advance of the conference and submit a joint letter, no later than March 11, 2025, at 5:00 p.m., indicating whether the conference is necessary and addressing how the Court should handle the present Petition. If counsel do not believe a conference is required, and that briefing is appropriate, counsel should propose a briefing schedule (expedited or otherwise) in the joint letter.

To preserve the Court’s jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition, Petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the Court orders otherwise. See, e.g., Local 1814, Intern. Longshoremen’s Ass’n, AFL-CIO v. New York Shipping Ass’n, Inc., 965 F.2d 1224, 1237 (2d Cir. 1992) (“Once the district court acquires jurisdiction over the subject matter of, and the parties to, the litigation, the All Writs Act [28 U.S.C. § 1651] authorizes a federal court to protect that jurisdiction” (cleaned up)); Garcia-Izquierdo v. Gartner, No. 04-CV-7377 (RCC), 2004 WL 2093515, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 17, 2004) (observing that, under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651, a district court “may order that a petitioner’s deportation be stayed . . . when a stay is necessary to preserve the Court’s jurisdiction of the case”); cf. Michael v. I.N.S., 48 F.3d 657, 661-62 (2d Cir. 1995) (holding that the All Writs Act provides a federal court of appeals reviewing a final removal order with a basis to stay removal).

All counsel are required to register promptly as filing users on ECF. All counsel must familiarize themselves with the Court’s Individual Rules, which are available at http://nysd.uscourts.gov/judge/Furman. Absent leave of Court obtained by letter-motion filed before the conference, all pretrial conferences must be attended by the attorney who will serve as principal trial counsel.

If this case has been settled or otherwise terminated, counsel are not required to appear, provided that a stipulation of discontinuance, voluntary dismissal, or other proof of termination is filed on the docket prior to the date of the conference, using the appropriate ECF Filing Event. See SDNY ECF Rules & Instructions §§ 13.17-13.19 & App’x A, available at http://nysd.uscourts.gov/ecf_filing.php.

In accordance with the Court’s Individual Rules and Practices, requests for an extension or adjournment may be made only by letter-motion filed on ECF and must be received at least 48 hours before the deadline or conference. The written submission must state (1) the original date(s); (2) the number of previous requests for adjournment or extension; (3) whether these previous requests were granted or denied; (4) whether the adversary consents and, if not, the reasons given by the adversary for refusing to consent; and (5) the date of the parties’ next scheduled appearance before the Court. Unless counsel are notified that the conference has been adjourned, it will be held as scheduled.

No later than today, March 10, 2025, Petitioner’s counsel is directed (1) to serve Respondents with a copy of the petition and accompanying papers, along with a copy of this Order, by e-mail to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and by overnight mail, and (2) to promptly file proof of such service on the docket. Counsel for Respondents shall promptly enter notices of appearance.

SO ORDERED.

Dated: March 10, 2025
New York, New York

JESSE M. FURMAN
United States District Judge

**********************

“This Is All Retaliatory”: Judge Blocks Mahmoud Khalil’s Deportation as Trump Vows More Arrests
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 11, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/11/ ... _palestine



A federal judge has blocked the deportation of recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S. who was arrested by immigration authorities for helping organize campus solidarity protests with Gaza. He had been receiving daily threats stemming from an online smear campaign launched by pro-Israel activists before his arrest and repeatedly appealed to university administrators for protection. Khalil, who is a Palestinian green card holder, is married to a U.S. citizen. Upon his arrest, he was separated from his pregnant wife and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana, where legal experts say he is more likely to appear before Trump-friendly judges if his case moves forward. “Her husband was abducted before her very eyes [and] disappeared,” says Ramzi Kassem.

Kassem is the founder of the legal clinic CLEAR, which is contesting Khalil’s “baseless” detention and Louisiana transfer in New York court. Khalil’s unprecedented arrest makes good on President Trump’s promise to punish antiwar student activists, bringing together his administration’s attacks on free speech, education and immigrant rights. It is “part and parcel” of “Trump’s racist and fascist agenda,” says immigrant rights activist Murad Awawdeh, who adds that the Columbia University administration’s lack of response to Khalil’s high-profile case has been “incredibly shameful.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: A federal judge has blocked the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate who was arrested over the weekend by immigration agents for helping organize campus solidarity protests with Gaza last year. Khalil is a permanent legal resident; he has a green card. His wife is a U.S. citizen who’s eight months pregnant. Khalil was arrested Saturday at his university-owned apartment. He’s now being held in a federal jail for immigrants in Louisiana.

President Trump boasted of Khalil’s arrest, posting on social media, quote, “This is the first arrest of many to come,” unquote.

On Monday, faculty at Columbia University and Barnard College held an emergency press conference, where they were joined by rabbis and immigrant rights advocates. This is Nadia Abu El-Haj, co-director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia.

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: Mahmoud Khalil has been a public face of the student movement at Columbia-Barnard since last spring. During the encampment, he served as the lead negotiator with the Columbia administration. A mature and gentle human being and a politically sophisticated thinker, Mahmoud tried his best to bring a peaceful end to that encampment. In the same spirit, Mahmoud tried to negotiate a resolution between students and the Barnard administration last week during a sit-in at Milstein Hall.

AMY GOODMAN: Yinon Cohen is a professor of Israel and Jewish studies at Columbia University.

YINON COHEN: Rescinding visas, canceling green card and intimidating students and staff have become the tool of choice for stifling free speech and undermining the First Amendment. Columbia University includes Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and atheists, and none of us will be safe unless we’re all safe.

AMY GOODMAN: Over a thousand protesters also gathered at Federal Plaza in New York Monday to demand Mahmoud Khalil’s release. These are some of the voices from the protest.

PROTESTERS: Hands off Mahmoud Khalil! Hands off Mahmoud Khalil! ICE off our campus now! ICE off our campus now!

LAYAN FULEIHAN: My name is Layan Fuleihan. I’m with the People’s Forum. The larger context from even before this weekend, I think, is important. The DOJ has been threatening to deport students who have stood up for the Palestinian people over the past 18 months. They have been calling them pro-Hamas. They have been saying they are antisemitic. They have been trying to demonize the students in the face of the American public. They said to Israeli media that they intend on putting these students in jail, not for 24 hours, but for years.

The Columbia administration has been cracking down on the students without even provocation from the federal government. I mean, they only lasted one day before they brought the NYPD onto campus to suppress the encampment. Columbia has absolutely been part and parcel of this crackdown on the students.

PROTESTERS: No fascist U.S.A.! No ICE!

MURAD AWAWDEH: My name is Murad Awawdeh. I am the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. It is incredibly shameful that our communities have to continue to endure under this fascist regime simply to deliver on a publicity stunt of a campaign called mass deportation. The message that they are trying to send, which is a deplorable one, is that no one is protected under free speech in this country anymore.

PROTESTERS: Hands off our students now! Hands off our students now!

ANNOUNCER: I’m going to call up now an experienced leader in the immigrant rights movement, Ravi from the New Sanctuary Coalition.

RAVI RAGBIR: They want to terrorize us. They want to intimidate us. This is my home. I was born in Trinidad, but this is my home. This is Khalil’s home. This is Mahmoud’s home. Right? We have been here. We are making this our community. You all are part of our community. We are going to stand up. We are going to fight. We are not going to allow this agency, this administration to instill fear. So we are not fearful. We are strong. We are unafraid. And we are going to stand up and fight. Free Mahmoud!

PROTESTERS: Release Mahmoud Khalil now! Release Mahmoud Khalil now!

ALEXA AVILÉS: My name is Alexa Avilés. I am a councilmember representing District 38 in South Brooklyn. We are standing here in support of a free Palestine. We are standing demanding the freedom of Khalil. If they cannot hear us, we must be louder. We must organize. They are coming for all of us, and it is us who will protect each other. ICE — ICE and the Trump band of bigots have no place here in New York City.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the news outlet Zeteo reported Mahmoud Khalil had emailed Columbia’s interim President Katrina Armstrong one day before ICE detained him, to ask her to protect him after he was targeted in a doxxing and smear campaign. Khalil wrote, quote, “I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm,” he said.

Emails Show Mahmoud Khalil Asked Columbia for Protection a Day Before He Was Detained: "I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm."
by Prem Thakker
zeteo
Mar 10, 2025
https://zeteo.com/p/scoop-emails-show-m ... ection-ice


Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of the media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University on June 1, 2024. Photo by Jeenah Moon/Reuters

Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian who helped lead negotiations between Columbia University and student protesters, had appealed to the school for protection from harassment and possibly Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents one day before the Trump administration detained him on Saturday, emails obtained by Zeteo show.

The most recent among the leaked messages was an email Khalil, a green card holder, sent to Columbia interim president Katrina Armstrong on March 7. “Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation,” he began.

“Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat,” he added.

“I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.”

The message was especially notable given several reports of ICE being spotted on campus throughout the week and Columbia’s own guidance published this weekend about “potential visits to campus” by ICE. In the memo, the school said faculty and staff “should not interfere” in “exigent circumstances” where ICE agents seek access to university buildings or people without a warrant.

Columbia University and Lederer did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s requests for comment.

Davidai [Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor banned from campus for harassing pro-Palestinian students], who had been suspended from campus last year over allegations he had harassed university staff, denied collaborating with the Trump administration to get Khalil deported. “Let me be absolutely clear: I have never had a direct line to the administration. Even if I did, I would never use such influence to target an individual. This is not who I am or what I stand for,” Davidai told Zeteo. “Like many, I’ve called out Khalil’s repeated legal violations and demanded accountability. But as I always remind my students, just because one event follows another doesn’t mean it caused it.”

In online posts, Davidai had called Khalil a “terrorist supporter” and suggested he should be deported, tagging Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

They're negotiating with them AGAIN.
What did you think will happen when you negotiated with them last time?
By the way - the terrorist supporter holding the megaphone is Mahmoud Khalil - a @Columbia (not @BarnardCollege) student.
Time for arrests and expulsions.

Israel War Room
@IsraelWarRoom
Mar 5, 2025
Why is @BarnardCollege’s administration negotiating with the pro-Hamas mob AGAIN?!

Dear @SecRubio,
Thank you for your strong statements.
Now we want to see strong action.
Illegally taking over a college in which you are not even enrolled and distributing terrorist propaganda should be a deportable offense, no?
Because that’s what Mahmoud Khalil from @ColumbiaSJP did yesterday at @BarnardCollege

[x]
David lederer @Davidlederer6
Mar 6, 2025
Meet Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student known to have been on a foreign visa last year. He recently helped illegally take over a library building and distribute Hamas propaganda.
https://x.com/canarymission/status/1897 ... 62/video/1
4:39 PM · Mar 6, 2025

Khalil’s March 7 email came after an earlier Jan. 31 email he sent, in which he urged the school “to take immediate action to protect international students at Columbia facing severe and pervasive doxing, discriminatory harassment, and very possibly deportation in retaliation for the lawful exercising of their rights to freedom of speech, expression, and association…”

Khalil cited a threatening post by the pro-Israel organization Betar in January. In the post, the group wrote that he said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live” – a statement Khalil “unequivocally” denied making in his email to university officials. Betar also wrote that ICE⁩ “is aware of his home address and whereabouts” and that they “have provided all his information to multiple contacts.”

[x]
Mohammad khalil says Zionists don’t deserve to live while he’s on a visa ⁦@Columbia⁩. It’s 10 pm and ⁦@ICEgov⁩ is aware of his home address and whereabouts. We have provided all his information to multiple contacts. He’s on our deport list!
7:52 PM · Jan 29, 2025

“He’s on our deport list!“ Betar added.

Citing the Betar post, Khalil asked Armstrong in his email: “With the stakes being so high, I ask you, as representatives of Columbia University’s administration – how will you protect international students from doxing and from deportation? How will you protect these students’ rights to free speech, expression, and association – rights provided for in the U.S. Constitution and Columbia’s Code of Conduct – and stop the suppression and now potential criminalization of that speech and expression? Students’ futures, their livelihoods, and now, without exaggerating, their lives are at risk.”

Targeted Removal Before Arrest

On Thursday, March 6, Khalil emailed Gerald Lewis, the vice president of Columbia Public Safety, and cc’d Armstrong regarding the deactivation of his university ID. Khalil wrote that during a campus protest, he was approached by public safety staff who informed him his ID had been deactivated due to not being registered for classes this semester.

“I am a recent alumnus, having graduated in December 2024, with my degree set to be conferred in May. By now, I believe you’ve confirmed that I entered the campus like any other Columbia affiliate, swiping my ID and showing it to security,” Khalil wrote.

“I questioned why I was being singled out, as I am aware of other Columbia affiliates who were in similar situations and were not approached, despite being in close proximity to me at the time,” noting that the staff who approached were “well aware that I am a Palestinian national, as we have previously communicated and worked together to ensure safe campus protests.”

“However, when I asked for clarification on how I was identified and why I was the only individual approached, they refused to provide any explanation,” Khalil wrote, questioning why he was the only individual targeted and who issued the instructions for the staff to approach and remove him from campus. Khalil wrote that the lack of a clear justification raised concerns for targeted discrimination.

“For over a year, I have been collaborative with your office and other university offices to ensure all students are safe and that the university operates smoothly so I was really shocked to be treated this way. If I’m unwelcome on Columbia campus, please let me know through the right channels.”

Trump: More Arrests to Come

For more than 24 hours after his detainment, Khalil’s whereabouts were unclear. Per the ICE detainee tracker, he is now held in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana (just months ago, rights groups published a report on facilities in Louisiana entitled "Inside the Black Hole: Systemic Human Rights Abuses Against Immigrants Detained & Disappeared in Louisiana”).

On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of Khalil until at least Wednesday while he reviewed a petition that challenges the legality of Khalil's detention.

The Trump administration has scrambled to justify Khalil’s detention – but has yet to say explicitly what, if anything, Khalil has been charged with. First, the Department of Homeland Security referred Zeteo to the White House, which did not respond to a request for comment. Later, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed in a statement that ICE detained Khalil “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism.” Without providing evidence, McLaughlin claimed Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas.”[/i]

A State Department spokesperson initially told Zeteo they cannot comment on individual visa cases, but "in general, the department has broad authority to revoke visas … under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” and that the department “exercise[s] that authority when information comes to light at any time indicating that a visa holder may be inadmissible to the United States or otherwise ineligible for a visa.”

But then, Rubio issued a curt statement that appeared to be trying to reconcile the confusion of how the State Department could even go after someone’s green card – especially after the arresting agents didn’t even know Khalil had one. “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Rubio wrote.

Finally, on Monday, President Donald Trump celebrated the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, calling him, without providing evidence, "a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student.”

"This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump added.

Prem Thakker is Zeteo’s political reporter. Send tips via email or Signal (premthakker.35).

Meanwhile, Drop Site News reports the ICE agent who detained Khalil was Elvin Hernandez, who was honored by Trump during his State of the Union address in 2019, when Trump was first president.

We’re joined now by two guests. Murad Awawdeh is president of the New York Immigration Coalition, longtime Palestinian American activist. We just saw him in that clip speaking to the crowd yesterday. And Ramzi Kassem is a professor of law at CUNY, the City University of New York, where he founded the legal clinic CLEAR — the acronym stands for Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility. Its mandate is to support Muslims and all other communities “targeted by local, state, or federal government agencies under the guise of national security and counterterrorism,” unquote. On Monday, CLEAR and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal habeas petition in the Southern District of New York challenging Mahmoud Khalil’s detention.

Ramzi Kassem, let’s begin with you. If you can explain what has taken place in the last days, from Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest in Columbia housing after directly appealing to Columbia’s president to protect him, right through to the judge yesterday enjoining his deportation and your emergency submission?

RAMZI KASSEM: Thank you, Amy.

I can start with what happened to Mahmoud and his wife. On Saturday night, they were walking home. As you mentioned earlier, Mahmoud is a U.S. permanent resident. His wife is a U.S. citizen who is eight months pregnant. This is a family. They were expecting their first child next month. They had every reason to look forward to that momentous event.

And they’re coming home on Saturday night around 8 p.m. As they’re about to enter their building is when they’re approached by men in plainclothes who subsequently identify themselves as DHS agents. And what they say is that they’re going to take Mahmoud away because his student visa has been revoked. His wife protested and said that he doesn’t have a student visa. He’s a permanent resident. He has a green card. She goes upstairs to their apartment, gets the green card, shows it to the agent. The agent seems confused, calls his superiors, who apparently ordered him to take Mahmoud anyway.

And so, from her perspective, understandably, her husband was abducted before her very eyes, disappeared to a location in downtown Manhattan. And later that evening, our colleagues and co-counsel Amy Greer and Kyle Barron filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court in Manhattan on his behalf, asking for him to be released. And what the government did, within hours of that, is to move him a thousand miles away from that courthouse down to Louisiana to complicate, interfere with his access to the court, with his access to his legal team, with his access to his wife and to his family and to his support network.

So, what we ended up having to do yesterday, unfortunately, is filing a motion with that same court, asking, basically, for the court to order the government to return Mahmoud to New York so that he can have access to his legal team, so that he can have access to the court, and so that the court can vindicate his constitutional rights. The court has already issued an order yesterday scheduling a hearing for Wednesday and also barring the government from deporting Mahmoud until the court orders otherwise.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Ramzi, if he is a permanent resident, and he’s not — hasn’t been accused of any lawful violation, what basis do they have, if any, to actually try to revoke his green card?

RAMZI KASSEM: That is the key question, Juan. Our contention is that this is all retaliatory. The reason he was arrested and detained and targeted for arrest and detention was his constitutionally protected, First Amendment-protected speech and activism in support of Palestinian lives and rights in Gaza and beyond, and the fact that he played, as your segment highlighted, a key mediation role between the university administration and student protesters — which, if anything, is laudable. It’s commendable. It’s what you would want any student to do.

So, none of that is criminal. The government hasn’t even contended, really, seriously, that there is any kind of criminal activity. There’s never been an arrest or a conviction that they could point to. As far as we could tell, the government is invoking — and this is a somewhat novel approach — they’re invoking the foreign policy grounds, where the secretary of state is basically saying that this person, who is a noncitizen, who is a permanent resident, by his mere presence or activities in the United States, poses a threat to U.S. foreign policy interests. Now, none of that has been detailed or specified. And frankly, we don’t believe it will fly in court, because that provision of law may exist, but it does not exist to punish constitutionally protected speech. In other words, it doesn’t trump Mr. Khalil’s First Amendment rights.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you hear, for instance, that President Trump on Truth Social said, quote, “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it,” what does this tell you about where we’re heading?

RAMZI KASSEM: Well, look, I mean, we’ve all, sadly, become accustomed to the sort of inflammatory and, frankly, racist rhetoric that emanates from the Trump administration. This is no different. When it comes to Mahmoud, it’s all entirely baseless. And both Mahmoud and we on his legal team and all of his supporters, including the thousand-plus people who showed up yesterday, intend to fight to bring him back to New York and to vindicate not just his right to free speech, but everyone’s rights to free speech. You know, it can’t be the case that saying something that the government disagrees with becomes cause for a night arrest. No one should accept that. And so, you know, we’ll fight that tooth and nail.

And we don’t believe that this case will set the precedent that the government believes it’s going to set. It’s already backfired. You know, if the intent was to silent speech and to dissuade people from coming out in support of Palestinian human rights, well, we all saw what happened yesterday in Manhattan. Over a thousand people came out, not just in solidarity with Mahmoud, but also in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and beyond. And we don’t believe that people are going to be deterred, nor is the movement that is critical of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and U.S. foreign policy and its support for Israel. Nor is that movement carried mainly by noncitizens. I mean, that’s also a falsehood. Americans are the ones who are driving the movement. And, of course, there are many noncitizen activists among them, but it’s primarily Americans. And so, they’re not going to be able to deport their way out of this movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what’s going to happen in court tomorrow, Ramzi Kassem? And also, sending him to Louisiana, was that just outright punitive?

RAMZI KASSEM: Absolutely, Amy. I mean, our view is that his detention itself was punitive and retaliatory for his First Amendment-protected speech in support of Palestinian lives and rights. And then, subsequently, moving him to Louisiana was retaliatory and punitive, because he filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court contesting the legality and constitutionality of his detention. And so, the government’s response was to try to interfere with the court’s jurisdiction, to try to interfere with his access to counsel and to his family and to his support network by moving him a thousand miles away to Louisiana, where it believes it will have access to, you know, friendlier immigration courts and whatnot.

So, you know, we hope, even though we don’t expect the government to do the reasonable thing and voluntarily bring him back to New York — and if they don’t tell us today that they’re going to do that, then we’ll be in court tomorrow asking the court to order them to do that. And we will litigate the rest of the issues, including the free speech issues, from there.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the Columbia University —Mahmoud lives in Columbia University housing. This direct appeal to the president of Columbia saying he was living in fear, that he couldn’t sleep. How could Columbia have protected him? Did ICE enter private Columbia housing illegally?

RAMZI KASSEM: There have been numerous reports of ICE in various Columbia housing facilities in the last couple of weeks, some substantiated, some not. That certainly raises a question about Columbia’s role.

Bigger picture, though, Columbia’s silence — well, I should say the Columbia administration’s silence has been noteworthy and shameful. For a university that has so often professed its concern for students, it is remarkably silent now that students are literally being abducted off of the streets surrounding Columbia’s campus. And I stress that this is the administration that I’m pointing a finger towards, because, you know, as your segment showed, other segments, other parts of the Columbia community, whether it’s the faculty or the students, have come out. And that’s commendable. They’ve come out in support of Mahmoud and of his family, and that’s great to see. But the university itself and its role in all of this has been, sadly, shameful to date.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring in Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, into the conversation. Murad, your response to what has been happening now with Mahmoud Khalil?

MURAD AWAWDEH: You know, this is, unfortunately, part and parcel to the Trump immigration agenda that we’re seeing play out, from his family separation agenda to his mass deportation plans. Mahmoud Khalil also falls under the category of this Trump administration trying to do everything it can to stymie people’s rights. You know, we’ve seen Tom Homan go out across Fox News, CNN and other networks talking about how individuals who are immigrants don’t have any rights. And this is sort of the rhetoric that they continue to hammer down on.

But fortunately, for everyone who calls his country home, they have constitutional rights, and Mahmoud Khalil is entitled to those rights, as well. And what we’re seeing right now with the Department of Homeland Security, and thankful for the CUNY CLEAR, as well as Center on Constitutional Rights, for stepping in and supporting Mahmoud in this moment, is that he has a right to due process, and that in this moment, he has done nothing wrong. He’s not been charged nor convicted with any crimes.

And it’s incredibly shameful that we continue to see Columbia spiral downward. This university used to be something that was considered the cream of the crop of universities, one of the top Ivy Leagues. There was a report from The Forward yesterday indicating that it may have been some board members of the university who actually called authorities on Mahmoud, which is incredibly disingenuous for an institution that continues to parade itself as an institution that wants to champion its students and build new leaders that we need for this world. What message is this sending to not just to their immigrant students, but all their students and families, that this is something that they would be participating in?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned the possibility of a connection directly to the university about his arrest. What about — has the university issued any statement, given the fact that they’ve been talking so much in recent months about free speech and protection of free speech?

MURAD AWAWDEH: It does not seem that they have yet. They did send out an email to students shortly after the incident, indicating that they were, you know, aware of situations occurring — which only begs the question: If, you know, Mahmoud is living in university-owned property, and Columbia has policies on the books that says that they will not cooperate or allow ICE onto their properties without a judicial warrant, why was ICE allowed onto that property? This only even more so begs the question: What is Columbia’s role in this moment?

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a New York Times piece that came out right before Mahmoud was taken by ICE, saying, “The Trump administration is finalizing a new ban on travel to the United States for citizens of certain countries that would be broader than the versions President Trump issued in [his] first term. … A draft recommendation circulating inside the executive branch proposes a 'red' list of countries whose citizens Mr. Trump could bar from entering the United States,” referring essentially to a new Muslim ban.

MURAD AWAWDEH: Yeah, and this is part and parcel to, again, Trump’s racist and fascist agenda that he campaigned on and, now that he is in office, is trying to deliver on. We saw this happen in part one of Trump when he was in office, and he’s looking to revive that policy and actually put another ban in place. We believe that it’s imminent, any day now. So, folks who are intending to travel outside of the country should reconsider their travels. And people who are outside of the country who have visas or are LPRs, green card holders, should be considering to travel back as soon as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us. We’ve been speaking with Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, and with, as well, one of the attorneys for Mahmoud. He is Ramzi Kassem, professor of law at CUNY, the City University of New York, where he founded the legal clinic CLEAR. CLEAR and Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a federal habeas petition in the Southern District of New York challenging Mahmoud Khalil’s detention.

****************************

Mahmoud Khalil Was Detained by ICE Agent Honored by Trump at State of the Union. A federal judge has since blocked his potential deportation—for now
by Jason Paladino
Drop Site News
Mar 10, 2025
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/mahmoud- ... ored-trump

The Trump administration's attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident who hasn't been charged with any crime, represents a frightening erosion of First Amendment protections that threatens all Americans. This extraordinary action—detaining and attempting to remove someone for protected political speech—establishes a dangerous precedent where government can bypass due process and criminalize dissent. On Monday evening, a federal judge temporarily blocked the attempted deportation. Sign and share our petition to stand with millions of Americans who believe in protecting constitutional rights. Scroll to the bottom to participate in a letter-writing campaign.

Demand the Release of Mahmoud Khalil

—Ryan Grim


Homeland Security agent Elvin Hernandez during the State of the Union address on February 5, 2019. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images.

In 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent Elvin Hernandez sat in the gallery watching the State of the Union address with First Lady Melania Trump. President Donald Trump celebrated Hernandez as a hero, praising the story of a boy from the Dominican Republic who went on to become an ICE agent and work on human trafficking cases. Hernandez stood and saluted as the president sang his praises.

“We are joined tonight by one of those law enforcement heroes: ICE Special Agent Elvin Hernandez. When Elvin was a boy, he and his family legally immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic. At the age of eight, Elvin told his dad he wanted to become a Special Agent. Today, he leads investigations into the scourge of international sex trafficking.”

The White House45 Archived @WhiteHouse45
February 9, 2019
Legal immigration gave a young Elvin Hernandez the chance to become an American hero.
Today, he fights international sex trafficking as an ICE Special Agent -- part of a team that secured justice for more than 1,500 perpetrators just last year.

That same special agent was present when plainclothes officers raided a Columbia University-owned residential building and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and a lead negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment in April 2024.

Hernandez’s involvement was made public in a declaration filed in a habeas corpus case filed by Khalil’s attorney, Amy Greer. In response, Judge Jesse E. Furman of the Southern District of New York ordered the government to halt Khalil’s potential deportation until a Wednesday hearing in Manhattan, which his lawyer told Drop Site is “the right decision.” "We are grateful the Court has taken immediate action to protect Mahmoud's rights," she said.

At 8:26 p.m. on Saturday, Khalil called Greer to make her aware of the unfolding situation. ICE’s Hernandez then took the phone and spoke to Greer directly, before eventually hanging up on her.

When Greer asked Hernandez why they were making the arrest and if they had a warrant, he replied that they had an administrative warrant and that the basis of the arrest was the Department of State revoking Khalil’s student visa. Greer then told the agent that Khalil does not have a student visa—he is a legal permanent resident with a green card. Hernandez responded that DHS had “revoked that too.”

No charges have been filed against Mahmoud Khalil. DHS Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin released a statement claiming that Khalil’s activism was “aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”

On Monday, the president released a statement directly taking credit for the raid and promising more to come. “Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” the post begins. A DHS official initially told Drop Site to contact the White House for information about the arrest.

According to the filing, Greer explained to Hernandez that they can’t simply revoke his green card without due process. Hernandez replied that he would have a chance to go before an immigration judge. When Greer then pushed back and asked what grounds the agents had to start immigration proceedings, Hernandez did not seem thrilled.

“When I began to ask more questions about what grounds they would have to put Mahmoud in immigration proceedings, Agent Hernandez started to grumble at me. I asked him to show me, Mahmoud, or his wife the warrant and he hung up on me,” Greer wrote in the legal filing.

His legal team and wife were unable to locate him for over 24 hours after his detention. According to the ICE database, Khalil was sent from New Jersey to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center. His legal team is attempting to petition the court to return him to New York.

According to LinkedIn, Hernandez works for Homeland Security Investigations, a directorate of the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE. Created in 2010, HSI describes its role as to “shield our nation from global threats to ensure Americans are safe and secure.” It has offices in 235 U.S. cities and 90 offices in over 50 countries and boasts a budget of just under $2.5 billion for Fiscal Year 2025. According to its budget documents, HSI “combats transnational criminal enterprises that seek to exploit America’s legitimate trade, travel, and financial systems.”

A 2022 Department of Justice press release thanks supervisory special agent Elvin Hernandez for his work on the R. Kelly case.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment. An online letter-sending campaign calling for the immediate release of Khalil now has over 1.8 million letters sent.

Meghnad Bose contributed reporting. If you have information about Khalil’s ICE detention, contact Jason Paladino securely on Signal at jpal.01.

[admin]

Why Democrats Must Vote NO on the CR [Continuing Resolution]
by Senator Bernie Sanders
March 13, 2025

This CR would literally take food out of the mouths of hungry children, take healthcare away from seniors, and give a huge tax break to the wealthiest people on the planet. It cannot pass.



Transcript

people all over this country
understand we are a nation today that
faces enormous
crisis
sadly the continuing resolution passed
tuesday in the us house and will which
will come to this body very
shortly not only does nothing to address
these crises but in fact it makes a bad
situation much worse
today at a time when we have more income
and wealth
inequality than we have ever had in the
history of this
country
60% of our people are living paycheck to
paycheck and what that means mr
president i grew up in a family living
paycheck to
paycheck it means that people are
worried about how they're going to
afford housing what happens if their
landlord raises the
rent people go to the grocery store and
they see the high price of food and
wonder how they're going to feed their
kids people are looking at the
outrageous cost of child care but you
need child care if you're going to go to
work how can you afford child
care our health care system is
dysfunctional people worry about how
they can afford healthcare if they are
lucky enough to be able to find a
doctor that is the reality of what's
going on in our country today rich are
getting richer working people are
struggling and 800,000 americans are
sleeping out in the
streets so given that reality what does
this bill do the bill written by the
right-wing extremists in the house of
representatives without any bipartisan
discussion at
all what does this bill do well let me
count the
ways that it makes the financial
struggles of working people even more
difficult than they are today
and it does all of that mr president to
lay the
groundwork for massive tax breaks for
elon elon musk and the billionaire
class for a
start some 22% of our seniors in this
country are trying to survive on
$15,000 a year or less which to me is
really quite incredible i don't know how
anybody let alone a senior survives on
15,000 a year or less half of our
seniors are trying to survive on 30,000
a year or
less so what does the trump musk
administration do to address the
terrible economic pressures on seniors
all over america well they got a
brilliant
idea they illegally fire thousands of
workers at the social security
administration with plans to cut that
staff in
half mr president in america
today 30,000 people die each year
waiting to receive their social security
disability benefits because of a grossly
underststaffed and
underresourced social security
administration
my office and i expect your office and i
expect every other office gets calls
every day from seniors saying "i'm
having a problem with social security i
can't make contact with the social
security people they're not getting back
to me." and that is because today they
are understaffed
if musk and trump get their way and the
social security administration staff is
cut in half nobody can deny that that is
a death sentence for many thousands of
seniors who desperately need their
benefits now mr musk who's worth a few
hundred billion may not
understand that there are millions of
seniors in this country who have nothing
in the bank worry every day how they're
going to heat their homes or buy the
food that they need and if they can't
get the benefits that they need some of
them will in fact
die and let me be
clear when you have mr musk calling
social security a ponzi
scheme despite the fact that it has paid
out every benefit owed to every eligible
american for the last 80 plus years that
ain't no ponzi scheme
when you have the president of the
united states coming before congress and
lying outrageously lying about millions
of people who are 150 or 200 years of
age receiving social security benefits a
total
lie everybody should understand what's
going on trump and musk are laying the
groundwork for
dismantling the most successful federal
program in history social security a
program that keeps over 27 million
americans out of poverty and by the way
just to set the record
straight over
95% over
99% of the more than 70 million social
security checks that go out each month
are going to people who earned those
benefits over
99% people 150 or 500 years of age are
not getting social security checks
but this continuing resolution passed in
the house is not just a vicious attack
on social security it is attack on the
veterans of our nation the men and women
who put their lives on the line to
defend our country
while we made some progress under the
biden administration in improving
veterans healthcare the truth is that
the va has remained significantly
understaffed in the fourth quarter of
2024 there were
36,000 vacancies at the va
we needed
2400 more
doctors 6,300 more registered
nurses 3,400 more schedulers 1,800 more
social workers and 1,200 more
custodians so what does the trump
administration and mr must do to address
this very serious work force workforce
shortage their answer is that they are
threatening to dismantle the va by
firing
83,000 employees in other words you got
a shortage today and their solution to
the shortage is to fire
83,000 workers
not only does this cr do nothing to stop
that but it cuts more than 20 billion in
funding needed to provide care for
veterans exposed to burn pits agent
orange and other toxic substances next
year mr
president pathetically our nation the
richest country on earth has the highest
rate of childhood poverty of almost any
major country on the planet and that is
often reflected in the crisis facing
many public schools
today throughout america children are
coming into school hungry kids are
coming into school with serious mental
issues kids are coming into school from
dysfunctional families families often
dealing with drug abuse and what is the
trump musk administration doing about
that crisis well their response was
interesting just the other day they
fired half of the staff at the
department of education
that means that it will be far harder to
administer the title one program that
helps 26 million low-income kids get the
education they need and pays the
salaries of some 180,000 public school
teachers throughout the country so how
does a school in a workingclass
community survive if you don't get the
funds to pay good
teachers further it means that it will
be far harder to administer the
individuals with disabilities education
act the ida that provides vital
resources for 7 and a2 million kids with
disabilities we have made progress in a
bipartisan way over the last number of
years to say to families that if your
kid has a disability that kid can still
go to a public school there will be
services available for that kid
but when you cut the department of
education staff here in washington in
half that is going to be extremely
difficult to
do and it means that it will be far
harder for some 7 million lowincome and
workingclass students to get the pel gr
pel grants they need to get a higher
education
in fact just hours after the department
of education laid off half of its staff
the website for the free application for
federal student aid that working
families used to apply for pel grants
and other financial institutions
crashed fired workers the website
crashed people who are applying for pel
grants this
cr that we will be looking at perhaps
tomorrow gives the trump administration
the green light to make these horrific
cuts to education and it's not just
education mr president we have a major
health care crisis in our country
despite spending twice as much per
capita on healthcare as the people of
any other major country 85 million
americans are uninsured or
underinsured over 500,000 of our people
go bankrupt because of medically related
debt over 60,000 people die each year
because they can't afford to get to a
doctor on time and our life expectancy
is not only lower than almost any other
major country it is a system in which
working class and low-income americans
die 7 years younger than wealthier
americans so you got a crisis people
can't find a doctor people are going
bankrupt because of health care bills
and what does this cr do well at a time
when in particular our primary health
care system is completely broken when we
don't have enough doctors or nurses or
dentists or mental health
counselors this proposal cuts cuts
community health center funding by 3.2%
2% cuts the national health service
corps by over 5% and cuts funding for
teaching health centers a program which
helps train doctors in rural and
underserved areas by almost 13% so in
the midst of a horrific primary health
care crisis in vermont and all over
rural america this proposal will make it
that much harder for people to get the
health care that they desperately need
but it's not just
healthcare everybody in this country
from vermont to los angeles understands
we have a major housing
crisis and it's not just all of the
homelessness we are seeing over 20
million of our people incredibly spend
more than 50% of their limited income on
housing how in god's name do you pay for
anything else how do you buy food how do
you take care of health care if you're
spending 50% or more for your housing so
how does this cr address the housing
crisis well it does it by cutting rental
assistance for lowincome families in
america by 700 million which could lead
to more than 32,000 families in our
country being evicted from their homes
well that is a heck of a solution to the
housing crisis you make it much worse
but it's not just
housing i know that the president might
disagree he thinks that climate change
is a hoax whole scientific community
understands that it is an existential
threat they understand that the last 10
years have been the warmest ever
recorded and extreme weather
disturbances and natural disasters have
been taking place all over the world
from california to india across europe
to north
carolina so what does the cr do about
the existential threat of climate change
it does not even specify funding levels
within the environmental protection
agency in other words the administration
could simply eliminate funding for
climate change and environmental justice
and that would be consistent with this
cr and on top of all of this the
administration is already indicating
that they will simply ignore the
provisions of the spending bill they
don't like this week it was reported the
vice president jd vance said to the
senate republican caucus quote "i want
everyone to vote yes the president under
section two will ensure allocations from
congress are not spent on things that
harm the taxpayer there's so much grift
in washington let's move the cr get to
reconciliation and for congress to pass
appropriations." end of quote in other
words what vance is saying is don't
worry about what's actually in the bill
the trump administration doesn't like it
they won't do it and let's be
clear the house cr that was passed in an
extremely partisan vote i think they won
by three or four votes one democrat out
of 20 whatever 15 voted for it
the house
cr and the trump
administration are doing everything they
can to lay the groundwork for more tax
breaks for
billionaires paid for by massive cuts to
medicaid nutrition assistance housing
and education so you're looking at a
onetwo punch a very bad cr and then a
supple a reconciliation bill coming down
which will be the final kick in the
teeth for the american people
this legislation that the republicans
are working on the reconciliation bill
would cut taxes for billionaires in the
top
1% by over 1.1 trillion
dollars over the next decade
according to a recent study if all of
trump's so-called america first policies
are enacted the bottom 95% of americans
will see their taxes go up while the
richest 5% will see their taxes go down
way
down i should also mention that that
reconciliation bill which republicans
are working on right now would also cut
medicaid by
$880 billion
tax breaks for
billionaires throwing low-income kids
off of health
care decimating nursing homes all over
america because nursing homes receive
twothirds of their funding from
medicaid making it harder for community
health centers to survive who provide
healthcare to 32 america 32 million
americans because 43% of their revenue
comes comes from medicaid cut medicaid
by
$880
billion you will
significantly
deteriorate the quality of health care
all over america at a time when the
system is already
broken further the reconciliation bill
proposes to cut at least 230 billion
from nutrition
today nearly one out of five kids in
america rely on federal nutrition
programs to keep them going keep them
from going hungry
and i find it rather remarkable that the
richest person on earth somebody worth
hundreds of billions of dollars that he
and his other oligarch friends are
working night and day to cut programs
for the working people of this country
and to actually deny food to hungry kids
in america
there is no world no universe no
religion that would not believe that
that is grossly
immoral and unacceptable you don't give
tax breaks to the rich and take food
away from hungry
children mr
president the house cr bill that we will
be soon voting on here is a piece of
legislation i cannot support
instead what the senate must do is pass
a 30-day cr so that all members of
congress not just the house republican
leadership can come together and produce
a good piece of legislation that works
for all americans and not just the
few we have an opportunity now to serve
the american people we have an
opportunity to write something that
reflects what people in the congress
feel what the people in america feel now
i go around the
country and just a couple of weeks ago i
held a telephone town hall in vermont we
are a small state mr president we only
have about 650,000 people and yet on
that telephone town hall there was some
34,000 people listening in that is a
significant percentage of a small state
i have been in many parts of the country
recently i've been in uh i have been in
iowa i have been in
wisconsin i have been in nebraska i've
been in michigan and what i can tell you
with absolute certainty is whether
people are conservative whether they're
republican whether they're progressives
whether they're moderate independent
whatever they may be there are very few
people in this country who think we
should give a trillion dollars in tax
breaks to the rich and cut back on
medicaid education and nutritional
programs for hungry children so mr
president what i strongly propose is
that we pass a 30-day cr that we do what
has always been the case here in the
senate have both bodies both parties
work together to come up with a good
piece of
legislation and with that mr president i
yield the floor

[admin]

Elon Musk shared, then removed a post absolving dictators for genocide
by Kate Conger
The New York Times
March 14, 2025 at 4:45 pm
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/tech ... n-mao.html

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Elon Musk reposted
Rothmus@Rothmus
@TheAliceSmith
Stalin, Mao and Hitler didn't murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did.

Early on Friday, Elon Musk shared a post written by an X user about the actions of three 20th-century dictators — then quickly deleted it after it sparked a backlash.

The post falsely claimed that Josef Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union until 1953; Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party in Germany; and Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, didn’t cause the deaths of millions of people under their watch. Instead, the post said, their public sector workers did.

Musk shared the post without any other comment. He removed it soon after users on X criticized the post, saying it was antisemitic and dismissive of genocide. Historians have widely chronicled that millions of people died under Stalin, that millions of Jews were massacred under Hitler during the Holocaust, and that millions of Chinese were displaced or killed during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

It was the latest post by Musk to devolve into controversy. In 2023, Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X as “the actual truth” of what Jewish people were doing, prompting advertisers to flee. And after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump last year, Musk wrote — then deleted — a post suggesting it was odd that nobody had tried to kill President Joe Biden Jr. or Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk has long appeared to favor strongmen and has promoted right-wing modern-day leaders. He has repeatedly used X to support politicians like Javier Milei of Argentina, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Narendra Modi of India, leaders in countries where he also has business interests. Most recently, he threw his support behind the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, hosting an online town hall for its candidate for chancellor.

“It is deeply disturbing and irresponsible for someone with a large public platform to elevate the kind of rhetoric that serves to undermine the seriousness of these issues,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement about Musk’s sharing of the post.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Musk frequently uses X as a megaphone to share everything from juvenile memes to major U.S. policy proposals, blasting his opinions to his more than 219 million followers. But his viewpoints are drawing more scrutiny since he has become a close adviser to Trump helping overhaul government spending.

Musk has transformed X, removing many rules around hate speech and disinformation and allowing thousands of accounts banned by the company’s prior leadership for problematic posts to return to the platform — including Trump’s.

Around 2:30 a.m. Friday, Musk shared the post written by an X user that said, “Stalin, Hitler and Mao didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector workers did.”

Musk in recent weeks has battled with public sector workers in Washington as part of his work with his cost-cutting initiative, known as the Department of Government Efficiency. He has accused federal workers of trying to conceal fraud and encouraged them to quit their jobs.

The post sparked backlash from federal employee unions, among others.

“America’s public service workers — our nurses, teachers, firefighters, librarians — chose making our communities safe, healthy and strong over getting rich. They are not, as the world’s richest man implies, genocidal murderers,” Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said in a statement.

Musk on Friday shared several comments on X defending himself from accusations of antisemitism and claiming his critics were the ones aligned with Nazism. Musk also recently came under fire for a making a gesture that resembled the Roman salute, which is also known as the “fascist salute” and was later adopted by the Nazis.

“Look at what they did to President @realDonaldTrump,” Musk wrote in one post. “He was loved by democrats until he ran for president. Now they call him Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, etc. and try to kill him,” referring to another dictator, Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

**************************

President Trump is taking a hard-line stance in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson
Mar 14, 2025

Trump wants peace in Russia/Ukraine and he wants both leaders to join in the ceasefire. Here’s how to watch Sunday: https://tinyurl.com/3ueu8awr

[Sharyl Atkisson, Full Measure] But as a candidate, you said you would have this war settled in 24 hours?

[Donald Trump] Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that. What I really mean is I'd like to get it settled.

[admin]

Lori Wallach, Trade Expert, on Tariffs
by Ralph Nader and Lori Wallach
The Ralph Nader Radio Hour
March 15, 2025
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/b ... estruction

Transcript

[Steve Skrovan] Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio. I'm Steve Skrovan, along with David Feldman, and Ralph. We're hearing a lot about tariffs. Our next guest knows more about this than anyone we know. David?

[David] Laurie Wallach is a 30-year veteran of international U.S. congressional trade battles, starting with the 1990s fights over NAFTA and WTO, where she founded the Global Trade Watch Group at Public Citizen. She is now the director of the Rethink Trade Program at American Economic Liberties Project, and is also senior advisor to the Citizens Trade Campaign, the U.S. National Trade Justice Coalition of Unions in Environmental, Consumer, Faith, Family, Farm, and other groups. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Lori Wallach.

[Lori Wallach] Thank you very much.

[Ralph Nader] Welcome back, Laurie. Well, tell us what the situation is now with Trump tariffs, the zigzag Trumpsters on tariffs, and what's likely to be happening in terms of a trade war?

[Lori Wallach] We now have such an enormous trade imbalance. We have lost so many million manufacturing jobs, and frankly, the national resilience and security that goes with being able to make key things. We have hollowed out so many communities, in so many states, that we literally have our life expectancy going down from depths of despair, where there is a gap of eight years in life expectancy based on whether or not you have a college degree. Because the majority of our country, who does not have a college degree, has had such a terrible path of lower wages, of the tax bases in their communities also collapsing, both with their taxes, but the companies, those 90 million factories that were offshored or killed by unfair imports, they're not paying taxes. That means that the local hospitals closed, and the schools closed, and the fire department doesn't have a full staff, and your whole quality of life is falling apart.

And you know what those deaths of despair, that difference in life expectancy is based on? It's things like drug overdoses. It's cirrhosis, and other alcohol related disease. It is untreated diabetes, and related side effects, because people can't afford the medical care. Literally a huge swath of our country has gotten viciously hurt by this model.

And they are honking mad, and not wrongly so. And so what we've seen is both a swing towards whatever politician is talking their tune about how they got screwed by this trade agenda and that they're going to do something about it. We have seen the word tariff now take on its own positive emotive value, in the way NAFTA is a dirty word. You could be a working class person who was not even born when NAFTA was destroying American manufacturing. Yet, NAFTA is a dirty word. You may not even know the details of what it is. It just means bad trade. Tariff has started to mean, and there's a bunch of social science research and opinion research showing this, "Standing up for me and my community; fighting for me; standing up against unfair trade." And so the deployment of tariffs has a political value separate from whether it's useful, which gets us to Trump. He talked a lot about tariffs. He won because of tariffs.

He won the first time because we had the Democrats, the Democratic president, Obama, pushing for passage of that Pacific Rim NAFTA, the TPP, right through the fall of the election. And he basically, in picking up and getting a majority of working-class voters, the first-time Republicans have had a clean majority of working-class, non-college-educated voters, basically taking what would have been the FDR coalition and moving that to Republican voting. That happened because he deployed, as a genius marketer, the idea of tariffs as the symbolic value of "You've been screwed; I'm standing up for you; I'm going to fight back." And what did we get from the Democrats? We got the tone-deaf answer of "Tariffs are attacks on all of us," where most of the country was begging for someone to pull out a big honking tariff and hit some multinational corporation over the head and try and build back their community. So now we've got Trump in office with a lot of expectations for working class Americans, the Democrats in total disarray, no path forward for Democrat Party without winning back the working class. And the real question is, what's Trump actually going to do with his lack of discipline, lack of diagnosis? Is he even, were he so inclined, going to deploy the tariff tool in a way that actually delivers the necessary change?

Footnote: to date, it does not look so good. Or are we actually going to see some real change? I mean, the first Trump term was super helpful on the trade front because there was a guy, who was the top trade guy, named Robert Lighthizer, super smart guy, who actually does care about working people -- probably the only good person in the entire Trump administration -- and the man was perfectly suited to break all the damn furniture in the neoliberal living room. And so he busted up a whole bunch of stuff. He actually showed that you can deploy tariffs, and actually, the earth won't hurl into the sun, which is what we were basically told by all the economists. "Oh, if you use that tool, that's the end of us all."

So all of this was set up. Biden sort of built on it. He raised tariffs relative to what Trump had in place. He added the missing stuff.

The other industrial policy tools you need to actually get, the tariffs translate into investment in new manufacturing jobs. And now, here we are with Trump, and it's looking like a tariff roller coaster as compared to tariff strategy, where the investors need to like invest in making a new factory. This roller coaster is such that they're looking for the barf bags, not their checkbooks. I mean, this is not looking good.

[Ralph Nader] Well, it's not looking good. And I want to just clarify something for our listeners here. These corporate managed trade agreements have done two things that are very bad for our country. First of all, they've managed to surrender our sovereignty to a rather secretive World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, which can actually enforce sanctions if we violate these corporate trade agreements. So one example that Lori and I would tell members of Congress, Senator Harkin knew that child labor is illegal in this country, but we were importing products from South Asian nations that were using child labor. So he wanted to prohibit that. And he was told by the Office of Trade Representative, "Don't do that, Tom, because it violates the World Trade Organization Agreement, and they can take you to the World Trade Organization tribunals in Geneva, and you'd lose." So we lost sovereignty over importing child labor exploited products into our own country.

The second example is this. These corporations couldn't go to a state, say, like Mississippi. What if Mississippi wanted to pay its workers $4 an hour? And these companies in New York, and Illinois, and California say, "Hey, we want to go there."

Well, they couldn't because you had a federal safety net of a minimum wage, and other minimum safety nets under the Fair Labor Trade Standards Act. So what did these companies do? They just went into a foreign Mississippi called China, starting out at $2 a day, or $3 a day, and using this exploited labor with their Chinese corporate partners like Apple computers, where they have nets on various levels of the factory because these famished and exploited workers would try to commit suicide by jumping out of the factory window. And they basically made a ton of money, and then exported the products back to the United States. Textiles, furniture, pharmaceuticals, auto parts, you name it, iPhones. You see, Lori, how pernicious this is from any standard of loyalty to our country, to our community, to our workers, which built these industries, and to the taxpayers who subsidize these American companies, and to the military that went overseas and defended these corporations from left-type governments that wanted to stand up. I just want to interject those to show how pernicious these U.S. corporations have been over the years, and what they've gotten away with. What's the prognosis in the next few weeks or months with the Trumpsters?

[Lori Wallach] So the next big moment is April 2nd, where they're going to announce something they're calling, "The reciprocal tariff plan." And we're going to see if they really are doing reciprocal tariffs, which would be a really bad idea. That is more free trade agreements. That is the myth you can export your way out of our trade deficit. It's the same story workers and farmers in this country have been told with each bad trade agreement, which is, "We have to get the other countries to cut their tariffs. That's what we have to do." Versus, "Are we going to see reciprocal trade?" Because just as a footnote, reciprocal tariff is just an ignorant idea.

And so it's the idea of like, "We have to have the same tariff levels as everyone else. So, that would work out real well." So, hello, we export $2 billion in cars, vehicles, trucks to Japan every year. They send us $54 billion in cars. Guess what? We are the people with the 25% tariff on trucks and the 2.5% tariff on cars. Japan is duty-free in all vehicles. Clearly, having reciprocal tariffs in that circumstance means we're going to be even more deeply screwed, because now we're going to be flooded with tariffs, not just cars. So the idea of, "The one for one," nah, not the way to go. But will they try and do reciprocal trade? Reciprocal trade is a different thing. And it is not wrong.

So I'm going to step back and say something that will probably blow the mind of the listener who loves Ralph Nader and is listening to his show, which is, there are three totally legitimate, totally kosher uses of tariffs. Number one, you use tariffs as incentive. So friends, if you are for the climate crisis being dealt with, you are probably for border carbon adjustments, CBAMs. That is a tariff. That is a tariff against products to equalize the cost of internalizing carbon emissions. So that basically you create an incentive to internalize those costs, to have low carbon production, and you don't ruin the companies that are doing the right thing. Are you for enforceable labor standards? You're for tariffs. Stand by. Because how you sanction countries that are cheating on stuff like suppressing wages by busting independent unions, you put up a tariff.

Similarly, and there are all kinds of forms of cheating that you basically use this as a punishment for. So if you are producing with huge subsidies and/or you are devaluing your currency, so that no matter how good your domestic competition is they can never win because you've got a thumb on the scale, then you have what is called a "Countervailing duty." It's just another word. Duty is a tariff. A tariff is a duty. And you countervail the cheating value. So those are uses of tariffs against unfair trade practices and disciplining that.

The second use is incentives to invest. Tariffs can be used to create or shape a market. And so a lot of people know developing countries use this. We did vis-a-vis Europe when we were a developing country. You figure out a couple sectors that you think are really important for your country to have capacity in. Now, after COVID, we learned some very bad lessons of things we can't make here anymore, that we cannot be so reliant on just one source.

I mean, and I'm not just talking about China sends us way too much stuff, which is true. We were over-reliant on Italy for antibiotics. And when they were hit by that horrible wave of COVID, we had a huge crisis in supplying antibiotics, because this hyperglobalization model has led to such concentration in production. We have these single source, super brittle, super thin supply chains. And so we need to pick some things.

[Ralph Nader] Just to interject there, Lori, our listeners should know that we don't produce antibiotics in this country. 99% of all antibiotics are produced in countries like China and India, where the labs are not adequately inspected by visiting Food and Drug Administration inspectors. So there's an example of what you're pointing out to.

[Lori Wallach] So if we want to incentivize some production back here, we need to set aside some portion of our market for domestic demand. So we're generating a demand, we're generating a market, to actually buy the domestic stuff. And so, for instance, at least to get the company started out, and to get incentives to invest, you create a market, you create demand. So you would raise tariffs on, name the product. When you use tariffs this way, you pick the sector, and you apply it across the board, typically you phase them in, because you just can't go cold turkey from, "We don't make it" to, "Oh, we're going to tariff the other stuff." You, over time, so that you have the ability to get the investment you're incentivizing to meet that demand, you basically phase in tariffs over time to a higher rate so that by the time, four years later, you've invested also with the other industrial policy tools to get people to make the capacity, you basically can make some of it here. And you also do that to diversify the import source, so that China doesn't become the sole source. There are other tools you can use. But that's an example of using incentives as tariffs in a package of policy tools.

The third use is to rebalance trade. And to do that, you basically have to differentiate the countries that are global surplus countries. Those are the countries like China, like Vietnam, where we have countries that have big honking trade surpluses. They sell way more to the whole world than they buy from the world. This is not the bilateral deficit problem. That's a US-Mexico problem. That goes in bucket one. That is unfair, specific things that we can change the rules. We can adjust. That's a bucket one thing. Tariffs can come later. We can try and fix the rules, use the penalty later if we don't get it right.

Bucket three over here is macroeconomic rebalance. We would need to do this most effectively with a lot of the other countries that are in deficit. So right now, there's a handful of countries that have global surpluses. Interestingly, Germany and the Netherlands are in there. That's because they effectively have a devalued currency. If they were trading in Deutschmark, or Guilder, instead of the bucket that is the euro, which includes the weaker economies, they would be having a balanced trade. But because they have effectively a devalued currency relative to their economic strength they're trading in, they have huge global surpluses with the world, and deficits with most of the world.

So with that kind of a rebalancing, you basically need with your allies and partners, to first try and talk the countries into changing those policies. And then if you don't, you put up barriers to keep out the surplus goods, which, you know, is actually good for the workers in those countries, because it forces consumption of their overproduction by their domestic citizens, which is to say, you know, a big part of how you do this is you devalue currencies, you do honking huge subsidies, and you suppress wages. And so in the Chinas, in the Vietnams, part of the wage suppression isn't just mean; it's they don't want consumption in the country. They're exporting it. That is actually their economic model is to dump it, to beggar thy neighbors, and produce it there, dump it elsewhere.

So those are three totally legit uses of tariffs. There are some other tools that can do those things, but politically, tariffs may be the most accessible.

Now, there are downsides, but one of those downsides, and I hope you asked me this question, it's not that tariffs always raise prices for consumers. Tariffs raise wholesale prices, not consumer prices. If you want to know what the difference is, go ahead and ask.

[Steve Skrovan] What's the difference, Laurie?

[Lori Wallach] So the difference between whether tariffs raise the consumer price has a lot to do with the same corporate price gouging that we've been seeing over the last couple of years, and we can see right now, for instance, on eggs. The actual supply of egg-laying chickens, and the actual supply of eggs, is not greatly reduced. Rather, that sector is now so concentrated at every level, that the handful of companies can basically control the markup between what the farmers paid and what the consumer pays.

And so what we see, for instance, is just take the example of the Nike shoe that you pay $120 for. And it's based on market research. They know they're going to make the biggest total profit with that margin because they'll get the biggest value. They make it $130, people will buy less units. So even though they make more for each one, they'll make less overall. But that shoe comes into the US as a wholesale cost to the retailer, at maybe $20, $25. And so in that $100 markup, let's just say you put on a 25% tariff. And let's just, to make the math easier, let's make it a $24 shoe. So $6, $30 now is the cost at wholesale. But you know if you raise the price at retail, you're going to sell less shoes. So you just absorb it into the profit margin, which the most sort of careful study of the first round of Trump tariffs showed is mainly what happened, with the potential increase in costs, the wholesale cost went up, but it didn't get what's called, "Passed on into the retail price because it was absorbed out of profits."

So particularly in markets, where there is concentration, and there's control in a gap like that, the companies both have the ability to absorb it, but also can price gouge you. So we need accompanying policies, like very strong competition policy laws, or for instance, we want protection, and therefore more manufacturing capacity to translate into higher wages, we need to make it easier to organize unions. We need to ban stock buybacks in the sectors that get protection, so that the gains from protection don't just go into bigger dividends or stock buybacks, but rather turn into higher wages for the workers who will now be having new industrial jobs.

So when you use tariffs, you can control for what happens in prices. You can control what happens for wages if you use these accompanying policies. The big problem in this, Ralph, gets to your question, "What is Trump going to do?" I'm not holding my breath that Trump, or this Republican Congress, is strengthening union rights, or dealing with price gouging, or dealing with basically competition policy for the big corporations that fund them. So I think, though the tools could be highly auspicious, it is going to be pretty risky, that that translates into the outcomes that actually I think a lot of Democrats would support because, you know, Ralph, when you and I were up on the hill back then, it was Democrats advocating for balanced trade, balanced trade to help workers, balanced trade to distribute production, balanced trade for peace. And whether or not this crew can do the right use of the tariffs, I am highly skeptical of.

[Ralph Nader] Well, one thing, is it fair to say, Lori Wallach, that the World Trade Organization system of governance and tribunal sanctions has collapsed? All the countries now are just doing what they want to do. They're violating the World Trade Organization standards and getting away with it. So what's left of the World Trade Organization in Geneva?

[Lori Wallach] So on that parallel track, separate from the balance of trade and tariffs, on the sort of rules of the global economy, what exists is still those rules are in place. And to some degree, because the enforcement system is not operational anymore, you have the big and powerful countries mainly able to break those rules. But you have the less powerful countries who still are in the stranglehold. And one of the things that we see the Trump administration doing is threatening countries with tariffs. This is a fourth use of tariffs, one that I don't think is actually legit, which is just the bullying use of tariffs for non-trade things. Or for things that shouldn't be in a trade agreement, as we argued about WTO, but got slipped in there, like monopoly intellectual property protections.

So those kinds of rules, the U.S. goes around and basically says, Trump does, "We're going to tariff you if you don't do X, Y, and Z intellectual property rules for our big pharma companies." Or, "We're going to get you if you don't allow in our banks, or now increasingly our big tech companies." So that, unfortunately, for a lot of smaller countries, still is hanging over them. And that is why one very big thing that's going to happen this year is the renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada agreement. That's Trump's NAFTA 2.0. And that is our chance, sort of the appetizer for the main course being replacing WTO. This is the appetizer. This is our trial run, is to use this USMCA renegotiation. It's a required review. We need to make it a renegotiation with a national push, to actually rewrite these rules, chuck out some of the bad corporate rules.

And particularly with Trump and these threats, a lot of it is just like horrifically cynical. So the Mexico and Canada tariffs are ostensibly about Canada and Mexico being sources of fentanyl, the deadly illegal drug, and undocumented migration. They are using a particular statute for these tariffs because Congress has constitutional authority.

So if you're going to put in a tariff, you need some authority. It's not something like in the part of the Constitution for the president. So they're using a delegation of authority through a thing called "The International Economic Emergency Powers Act, IEPA," and they had to declare an emergency. So fentanyl and migration was the emergency.

But here's the thing. When Trump originally did that executive order about that on February 1st, he also closed a thing called "The de minimis loophole." That is this lunatic trade loophole that allows in uninspected a $800 value of imports to every American every day. And this has been exploited by the huge digital platforms like the Xi'an's, the Temu's, Amazon, to basically skirt paying any of the penalty tariffs, any inspection, any normal customs information. So we don't even know where half the stuff is. This has become a super-highway for fentanyl, and tons, but in small packages under the $800 value, of chemicals, the precursor chemicals to make fentanyl, are being drop shipped direct to consumer from China, which makes the stuff that is the precursor chemicals, and there is being driven across the border to Mexico to the cartels. And that loophole, they closed in the February 1st original order with the China tariff. And then four days later, Trump met with the Federal Express CEO, who apparently was not happy, because they deliver a bunch of those de minimis packages, because Ralph, now four million de minimis packages come in every day, 80% from China, uninspected, untariffed. So the FedEx guy talks to him in the Oval Office, boom, the next day they reopen that loophole.

So now we have the lunacy of tariffs on China that can be circumvented through a loophole that Trump initially closed and then reopened. The prospect that even the bullying uses of the tariffs, because, you know, a tariff is not going to stop fentanyl. Can I just make the obvious point as a recovering trade attorney? You do not send your fentanyl in through a customs declaration that goes in and says, "Hi, I am bringing in fentanyl." Let me explain to you what it is. This is illicit! So it's not as if literally we're sanctioning that particular shipment with a high tariff. What we need to do is close the uninspected package loophole. And instead of doing that, they just basically use tariff as a stick to sort of try and get press on beating up on Mexico and Canada.

[Ralph Nader] There was an effort in Congress a short time ago to do that. What's the likelihood? It seems to be ripe for both Democrat and Republican collaboration here to close that huge gap.

[Lori Wallach] Unfortunately, the express delivery guys, Federal Express, UPS, DHL, and the Xi'ans, Temus, Amazons, have so far been able to get key members of Congress to block the good legislation on this. There have been a couple of bills that really would fix it. That said, I just want to make clear to everyone, this is something that Trump can fix unilaterally without Congress.

[Ralph Nader] So basically, the bully that he is, when he's confronted by corporate bullies, his size or bigger, he backs down.

[Lori Wallach] He basically reversed the ability to stop fentanyl coming from China and to enforce his own China tariffs at the behest of the CEO of Federal Express.

[Ralph Nader] Well, on that point, we're out of time. Before we conclude, Lori Wallach, tell us once more about the website for the American Equiliberties Project, and what one or two articles you've written recently that can clarify this whole trade situation under the Trump regime?

[Lori Wallach] So the website I would recommend folks go to is rethinktrade.org. That's rethinktrade.org. It's a subset of the American Economic Liberty Project's website. And then the articles I would recommend, I had a piece in Compact magazine, the conservative magazine, that laid out, and they were very willing to print it, why Trump's tariffs with Mexico and Canada didn't make sense, and why closing the de minimis loophole really was going to be the thing that could actually fix the fentanyl problem.

And then another thing I would recommend is for folks to follow me on Blue Sky and on Twitter, because what I end up doing, as well as these Instagram videos, I also do sort of rapid response stuff on Twitter and on Blue Sky. And so if you want to sort of know what's happening in real time, that might be one of the best ways to do it. And I am at WallachLori, so at W-A-L-L-A-C-H-L-O-R-I.

[Ralph Nader] And take this information, listeners, and send it to your senators and representatives, or when they come to get your votes and do the handshaking, give them a piece of your mind. Thank you very much, Laurie Wallach.

[Lori Wallach] Thank you, gentlemen. Always a pleasure.