A U.S. District Court judge just ordered Donald Trump to bring back thousands of federal workers he let go. The court says they were fired based on a ‘lie’.
Judge rules Trump must rehire thousands of fired employees
California federal judge William H. Alsup ruled that around 30,000 probationary employees from several government departments — like Veterans Affairs, Energy, Defense, Agriculture, Treasury, and Interior — were unfairly dismissed.
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They were told it was because of ‘poor performance’, but the judge says otherwise.
The controversial role of DOGE in mass terminations
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was behind the mass layoffs. It’s a newly formed group led by Tesla’s Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump and Musk say job cuts will make the government more efficient
The whole point of DOGE is to cut down on government jobs and shrink the federal payroll. Trump and Musk want to slash bureaucracy, get rid of unnecessary rules, and restructure agencies. Once they’re done, they say they’ll shut the department down — no later than July 4, 2026. Fitting, since that’s Independence Day.
As Trump put it, their goal is to ‘dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies’.
Judge Alsup calls out the ‘lie’ behind the firings
In court on March 13, Alsup didn’t hold back. “It is sad, 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,” he said.
Employees fired despite good performance records
A lot of the workers who got laid off had no idea why, until they saw ‘poor performance’ as the reason. But the thing is, many of them had solid performance reviews before they were cut.
Alsup previously ruled that the firings were illegal
This isn’t even the first time Alsup ruled on this. Back on February 27, he said the firings were illegal because the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) didn’t actually have the power to order them. After the layoffs, OPM quietly tweaked a memo about probationary employees from January 20.
Government employees’ union accuses OPM of unlawful actions
The American Federation of Government Employees says that memo change was basically OPM admitting they overstepped.
The union put out a statement, saying: “OPM’s revision of its Jan 20 memo is a clear admission that it unlawfully directed federal agencies to carry out mass terminations of probationary employees – which aligns with Judge Alsup’s recent decision in our lawsuit challenging these illegal firings.”
“Every agency should immediately rescind these unlawful terminations and reinstate everyone who was illegally fired.”
Judge demands DOGE to reveal its plan and name its employees
Meanwhile, a federal judge just told DOGE they need to come clean about their full government plan — and they better identify all their employees too.
