Democrat Judge **JUST** Shut Down DOGE & Trump Layoffs [Restraining Order!]

Donald Trump and Doge's massive

government layoffs were just put on a

14-day pause by this following Bill

Clinton appointed judge Susan Ilson who

was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1995

based out of San Francisco, California

who initially had a career focusing on

intellectual property matters and a lot

of commercial litigation has just shut

down Donald Trump suggesting that Donald

Trump, the Office of Personnel

Management, and Doge have all exceeded

their constitutional authority. Now, all

of this has to do with the following

executive order

14210. This is Donald Trump's Department

of Governmental Efficiency Workforce

Optimization Initiative, and it's

basically designed to fire a bunch of

people in the government. That's just

the simplest way to put this. If you

scroll down a little bit, you can get

some more details of the actual

executive order. In section three, it

requires various different agencies to

submit plans to reduce size of the

federal government workforce. By the

way, these would be plans drafted up by

the Office of Personnel Management and

Budget. This actually ends up being an

important part of the case, so keep this

in the back of your mind. And the plan

requires that each agency hire no more

than one employee for every four that

leave. And there's a federal hiring

freeze. So in other words, you can't

expand. And if you fire four people,

maybe we'll let you hire one to replace

the four you fired. Each agency head

shall also develop a plan that is a

data-driven plan in consultation with

their Doge team lead. and they should

focus hiring only on areas that are

missionritical, basically essential

government services. So this executive

order is the crux of what's being frozen

and ordered in a 42-ish page briefing

from the judge or order from the

briefing demanding a 14day injunction

that no plans for firings or agency

layoffs should be conducted. that there

is essentially going to be a temporary

restraining order eliminating the

opportunity for this to continue. Now,

what I want to do is go through some of

the juice in the actual order. And I'll

tell you, there's a lot of it. It's

going to give you a lot of perspective

into what's going on. Now, keep in mind,

I don't really have a horse at all in

this race. I think the government

definitely has some efficiency driving

it needs to do, but it is interesting

nonetheless to see the president push

the limits of what a president can do

and the judicial system try at least to

reign him in. I expect tomorrow we'll

get a lot of truth social posts about

how judges and activist judges are

trying to limit the govern, you know,

the president's ability to do what he

wants to do and do what he was, you

know, essentially voted into power to

do. At least that's what the uh

president's team argues. And so we'll

see how it evolves. Maybe it'll end up

at the Supreme Court. But for now, here

are some of the things that we'll find.

any president must enlist the help of

their co-equal branch and partner, the

Congress. I find this is actually an

interesting phrase. The judge is

basically saying Congress is your equal

and you need to use them and it is not

the responsibility of courts to

micromanage the federal workforce. But

sometimes courts need to act to preserve

the proper checks and balances between

the three branches of government. And

that unchecked presidential power is not

what the framers had in mind. the

framers of the constitution. And so

there is a twoe pause being started now

unless of course they can get the

legislative branch involved. And that's

what the judge is trying to do, protect

the power of the legislative branch.

They give some examples of problems

here. They say that uh agencies like

OSHA wanted to fire 221 mine safety

workers. So basically people who verify

that mines in America are safe. And

there are only 222 workers in total. So

we would basically fire all of them

except one. They give other examples uh

over social security uh or housing and

urban development or child care staffing

offices that have essentially been

shuttered because of a lack of federal

funds available to keep operating

leading to uh potentially farmers

missing their planting windows for

emergency relief claims or the Social

Security Administration having reduced

its workforce or trying to reduce its

workforce by 7,000 people leading to

long waits and people very frustrated or

unable to make appointments with social

security. Those are just some of the

examples that they give in terms of why

they think a temporary restraining order

would be necessary to preserve the

function of government. Of course, there

are many other I mean they mention at

least that the court received over a

thousand different submissions of

complaints about how the government

basically wasn't able to function

anymore because of the lack of staffing.

Now, the judge outlines that the

executive order from the president

commences a critical transformation of

the federal bureaucracy uh and quotes

the president in saying that tax dollars

are being siphoned off to fund

unproductive, unnecessary programs that

benefit radical interest groups while

hurting hardworking Americans. And

that's why these layoffs need to happen.

But the judge finds that Doge, known uh

as the Department of Governmental

Efficiency, derives no authority from

law at all. So this is actually a really

big dig at Doge from a judge here

saying, "You have no legal authority to

do anything." Now, what's also

interesting is the judge references how

many workers are supposed to be fired

from some various different departments

and gives some examples. The Department

of Health and Human Services uh issu is

issuing reduction in force notices of 8

to 10,000 employees. 8,500 positions

might be cut from the Department of

Energy, which is nearly half of the

workforce. Noah, the no National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration, which

deals obviously with weather, hurricane

forecasting, and otherwise, is

reportedly preparing a reduction in work

to reduce its workforce by more than

half. Reports also suggest that Housing

and Urban Development is prepared to cut

half of its staff and close many field

offices. The Department of Labor

Management said internally that they

have intended to cut the AY's

headquarter staff by 70% and the IRS

plans to cut 40% keeping in mind that

about 31% of auditors have already been

cut for tax auditing purposes and the VA

is planning to cut

83,000 positions. All of these just

being referenced here by the judge. And

when we get into sort of this history of

precedent, the judge says that what

Donald Trump's executive order 14210 is

doing is usurping the power of

congressional authority in violation of

the constitution separation of powers

clause and that the office of personnel

management, doge and other agencies are

operating beyond their

authority and are violating

administrative procedure procedures acts

in the process of doing what they're

doing. In other words, they're violating

the law and they don't have any leg to

stand on anyway. And that those are some

of the reasons why at least the judge is

providing this temporary restraining

order. We then get into standing, but we

also get into some historical precedent

where we actually find not only that the

judge suggests the court finds that at

least some of the plaintiff's arguments

will be substantial enough to

potentially succeed and therefore

they're providing this preliminary

injunction. But it's also worth noting

that the judge looks at history and

says, "Hey, in the past, other

presidents, Herbert Hoover or other

presidents have asked Congress for the

right to go back and reduce the expanded

administrative state. So basically, you

ask Congress for permission and you

explicitly get permission to broadly

restructure federal agencies." And this

was done by Herbert Hoover who first

requested and received such authority.

Congress granted his authority 16 times

under both Republican and Democratic

administrations or granted this

authority not just to Herbert Hoover but

to others uh to include nine different

presidents. So in other words, nine

different presidents have had the right

by Congress to provide for an ex, you

know, some form of administrative

reorganization.

However, George Bush and Obama, I

believe it was off the top of my head,

asked and were denied of their

opportunity. Yeah. Here, Presidents

George W. Bush and Barack Obama and

Donald Trump in his first term all

sought but did not end up getting

congressional approval to reorganize the

executive branch and those

administrative uh facilities. And so,

the judge is essentially saying, "Hey,

like you guys tried and failed. It used

to work in the past, but now you're all

failing and your legislation to try to

get Congress to help you failed. And so

this is very simple. You can't do this

alone. In fact, they say the following.

The simple proposition that the

president may not without Congress

fundamentally reorganize federal

agencies is not controversial.

constitutional commenters and

politicians across party lines agree

that sweeping reorganization of the

federal bureaucracy requires the active

participation of Congress. So the judge

here is not mincing words. This is

actually a pretty scathing report and or

order rather and it it goes all the way

back to when Bill Clinton lost his line

item veto powers which basically say hey

Congress has the power to spend and the

president does not without the power of

Congress and so if you want to

reorganize the federal government that's

fine but you need to do it with the work

of Congress. This is obviously going to

be very difficult for Donald Trump given

that they have just enough of a majority

to via budget reconciliation squeeze a

tax bill through Congress, which they

likely will do this year. But that'll be

done along party lines. It'll have a lot

of negotiating components to it. But

something like this or really any kind

of other legislation that would require

a normal 60 votes to get through his

filibuster probably not going to happen

without significant Democratic support.

In other words, some form of

bipartisanship. And I think that's why

Donald Trump, since he failed in term

one, is trying in term two to just do it

via Doge and executive order. But this

judge is shutting down some of these

layoffs, at least temporarily. Now, in

the near term, this is probably not

going to help much with reducing

uncertainty, but what you actually might

get is fewer government layoffs, which

would lead to fewer potential

unemployment concerns uh for the broader

economy, which I think is actually

important for a soft landing to make

sure we don't go into some kind of hard

landing, you know, uh layoff induced

recession. Not saying we don't want

governmental efficiency, but I am simply

arguing that there could actually be an

upside to this from an economic point of

view. Obviously, the downside would be

fiscal. Right now, we're spending more

money and not necessarily getting as

much efficiency as we were hoping. Doge

therefore could not have been acting

pursuant to statutory authority in

ordering large-scale workforce

reductions. Why? Because they have no

legal authority at all. This is pretty

scathing. I mean this this San Francisco

Jud judge is tearing apart Donald

Trump's executive order and Doge. So

this is borderline destruction by this

judge for the initiatives that Donald

Trump is trying to pull in terms of

reorganizing these agencies and firing

people. Now the judge also separates

what the power of Congress is and what

the power of the executive is. The judge

goes on to say that these individuals

are likely to succeed on their claims,

the claiming parties, the nonprofits,

the uh you know, state agencies and

other agencies and unions that are suing

uh on the behalf of these workers.

Additionally, the judge writes, "Holding

that the president doge, the office of

personal management and budget have

exceeded their authority naturally

raises the question of precisely where

the line should be drawn between

executive and legislative authority."

Okay, so basically where's the line? And

the interesting response is we don't

even need to tell you where the line is.

It is enough today to say that this

action is surely beyond the line. And

she basically invokes Chief Justice John

Roberts in her order to say, hey, the

tr, you know, Trump and Doge are going

way too far. We're shutting this down.

Therefore, it is hereby ordered

temporary injunction. Now obviously the

Supreme Court might eventually end up

getting uh looped into this and we might

end up finding changes to these sort of

orders. Again, this is just a temporary

injunction at the moment here. But at

least in this particular court, this and

this is a US district judge. This judge

is mincing absolutely zero words in this

northern district of California. This is

a federal court. uh and at least until

there is another court that steps in on

this. This is going to be the rule for

the next two weeks. Those layoffs are on

hold. It's going to be really

interesting to see how this plays out.

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much for watching and we'll see you in

the next one. Goodbye and good luck. Why

not advertise these things that you told

us here? I feel like nobody else knows

about this. We'll we'll try a little

advertising and see how it goes.

Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you. Kevin Praath there, financial

analyst and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always

great to get your take.