Summary
A federal judge in Boston has lifted a temporary freeze on the Trump administration’s “fork in the road” program, which offers mass buyouts to millions of federal workers.
U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. ruled that labor unions challenging the plan lacked legal standing, as they were not directly impacted.
The unions argued the program could harm their membership and reputation, but the judge found these concerns insufficient.
With the ruling, the administration’s unprecedented resignation incentive can now proceed.
labor unions, representing the labor–the workers who are impacted, labor unions which exist to represent those workers…
don’t have standing.
holy fuck.
A few weeks before the election Trump and Musk had a publicly available sit down in which they talked about how much they hated unions and how worker rights just got in their way.
And then working class Americans came out in the millions and voted for them.
THAT is how stupid Americans are.
The worker rights that took generations to acquire and that people literally died for…well, you can kiss them all goodbye.
We are a truly stupid society.
They lack standing?? They stand to not get paid when Congress never appropriates the money they never previously discussed spending for this idiocy! Gimme a break.
Standing is flimsy and pliable. They use it to not hear cases they should have and vice versa on a regular basis.
I swear, the entire judicial branch can be summed up as a clown show of fuck yous::
Judge A: Fuck you, your ruling is stupid…
Judge B: No, fuck you, YOUR ruling is stupid
The same judge established the freeze – which was intended to be temporary – and then later dissolved it.
This sort of thing is done when an action might have serious consequences and more time is needed to examine the arguments and their legal basis.
It’s not different judges fighting with each other. It’s just how the legal system normally works.
EDIT: I’d add that this is just over an offer to people to voluntarily resign. If the Trump administration does intend to do major layoffs – which would cause people who don’t want to leave to go – my guess is that there are likely to be more legal actions over it.
How the fuck do they not have standing? That makes no sense at all.
Easy: fascists have standing, non-fascists don’t. That’s now the only test going forward.
Ah, how silly of me.
You can kiss our federal government goodbye.
And we’re all about to find out exactly how important an operational federal government is.
Welcome to Russia 2.0
Fitting judge name. What a O’Toole.
Honestly, this is the one I’m least worried about. It doesn’t sound like anyone who wasn’t about to retire is taking the deal. I’m more worried about congressionally allocated funding being impounded, federal bureaucrats being illegally fired, and Doge’s massive security breaches in the Treasury and IRS.
