Trump Scores Legal Wins Against DC Swamp, With One Setback

The Trump administration scored two legal victories this week in its clash with federal employees—but hit a setback when it came to removing a member of the Federal Reserve.

An appeals court on Monday dismissed a case against the administration brought by states challenging the mass termination of new-hire federal employees who were still in their initial probationary period of employment. 

That same day, the Supreme Court temporarily cleared the way for President Donald Trump to oust a Democrat on the Federal Trade Commission. This marked a potentially key win for presidential control over executive branch agencies that have frequently claimed independence from either the president or Congress. 

However, late Tuesday, a federal judge sided with Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump attempted to fire. 

District of Columbia U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb imposed a preliminary injunction on Cook’s removal, allowing her to keep her post on the Fed board. Cobb, a Joe Biden appointee, determined in her opinion that with her firing, Cook “has lost the ability to fulfill a high-ranking, public-servant role to which she is entitled.”

The ruling keeps Cook in office until a full legal hearing is held. 

The president’s capacity to remove a governor from the Federal Reserve has raised the stakes in the question of so-called independent bodies, since the Fed is the central bank controlling U.S. monetary policy. 

The FTC case involved Democrat Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, who was a former staffer for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., before Biden appointed her to the FTC in 2023. 

Trump fired Slaughter and her fellow Democrat FTC member, Alvaro Bedoya, earlier this year, calling their service “inconsistent” with “administration priorities.” The two sued, alleging Trump violated a federal law that barred their removal without cause. Bedoya eventually resigned. 

In July, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, also a Biden appointee, sided with Slaughter. On Monday, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order to stay AliKhan’s decision—in other words, to maintain the status quo of the firing.

On Monday, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a case brought by 19 states to stop the mass termination of 24,000 federal workers who were probationary employees hired less than a year ago. The 2-1 ruling by the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court determined the states lacked legal standing to sue over federal employees. 

The state attorneys general who filed the suit against the federal government said federal law requires U.S. agencies to give state and local governments 60 days’ notice before large-scale layoffs. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, led the lawsuit. 

Some consider the job cuts “harsh” while others consider the layoffs as properly addressing the “bloat of the federal bureaucracy,” wrote U.S. Circuit Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, in the majority opinion. 

“This clash of views must ultimately be resolved by the voters. For our part, we deal with a narrow constitutional question: whether a group of states has Article III standing to challenge the composition of the federal workforce,” Wilkinson wrote. “Standing doctrine requires us to ensure that the proper party is seeking the proper relief. Here, that is not the case.”

The circuit court ruling reverses an April ruling by U.S. District Judge James Bredar of the District of Maryland, who ruled the federal government did not follow proper procedures in implementing the layoffs. 

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