Lisa Desjardins:
Quite a lot of news.
That first one has to do with the U.S. Department of Agriculture specifically, where we know now about 6,000 probationary workers were fired. Now, in a ruling, this decision is from a critical agency that people don’t talk about a lot called the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Now, in this ruling that came out just late last night, the chair of that organization wrote that probationary workers fired — those are those in their jobs a year or less — who were sent the same dismissal letter, the chair wrote that they — “I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the agency, USDA, terminated the aforementioned probationary employees in violation of U.S. law.”
Now, the ruling, when you get into it, finds a number of reasons that this was in violation, but overall the idea here is that mass firings are not allowed under statute, the way they have been done in a generic form.
Now, I want to talk about where we are overall with firings. So, if you look at that USDA change there from that granting, it’s in addition to GSA. That is the General Services Administration. They have had 600 new firings. At the Department of Ed, there are thousands waiting tonight to see if they will be fired.
Now, then you put in the 6,000 that have been ordered to have their jobs reinstated, as I just reported. All together, Amna, by my total, we still have about 31,000, at least, people who have been fired.
One other important development, this one in Trump’s favor. Last night, a court ruled that a key watchdog, the special counsel we have talked about on this program, Hampton Dellinger, that, in fact, he cannot be reinstated for his job. They took him out of that watchdog post, and today he announced he’s not going to appeal the case because it would just take too long.
That’s a critical watchdog function. Now he’s out of that job.
