SEPTEMBER 30, 2025 (Prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n FRANCIS CHUNG\/POLITICO VIA AP IMAGES<\/p>\n\n\n\n OMB Director Russ Vought is taking a \u201clegally unsupportable position,\u201d unions say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought is illegally using the government shutdown as cover to fire federal workers en masse, abusing his position, and pushing an extremist agenda, according to a lawsuit brought Tuesday night<\/a> by multiple labor unions representing more than two million federal workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vought and OMB are taking a \u201clegally unsupportable position\u201d that a temporary government shutdown grants permission to cut federal workers at any programs for which funding has lapsed and \u201cthat are not priorities of the president,\u201d concludes the lawsuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has explained<\/a>, lapses in funding confer no new power on OMB to fire employees. And the activity of conducting firings or personnel changes is not \u201cessential\u201d work, the only work supposed to be carried out during a shutdown. These points form the backbone of the union lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Trump administration is once again breaking the law to push its extreme Project 2025 agenda, illegally targeting federal workers with threats of mass firings due to the federal government shutdown,\u201d said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which brought the lawsuit along with the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Government Employees, AFGE Local 1236 and 3172, and civil rights groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n More from Whitney Curry Wimbish<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs,\u201d Saunders continued. \u201cWe will do everything possible to defend these AFSCME members and their fellow workers from an administration hell-bent on stripping away their collective bargaining rights and jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among other relief, the claim asks the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to declare that Vought and the OMB have exceeded their statutory authority, broken the law, and acted arbitrarily and capriciously in directing federal agencies to \u201cuse this opportunity\u201d of the shutdown to conduct mass layoffs. It asks the court to throw out Vought\u2019s memo ordering agencies to do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lawsuit also names the Office of Personnel Management and its director, Scott Kupor, as defendants. Kupor \u201cissued unlawful and unprecedented instructions\u201d that federal workers may continue working during the shutdown in order to execute mass reductions, plaintiffs said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the lawsuit, Vought\u2019s illegality includes violating the decades-long practice during shutdowns of either furloughing workers but guaranteeing back pay after the shutdown ends, or requiring them to keep working until funding is restored to pay them. Vought\u2019s OMB, however, is directing federal agencies to issue mass reduction-in-force notices, while stripping them of their back-pay rights, among other violations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn doing so, the administration is misusing the shutdown process for partisan ends and violating the very laws that govern how shutdowns are supposed to function,\u201d the plaintiffs said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, the demand for mass layoffs hasn\u2019t really been carried out. According to Bloomberg<\/a>, agencies that have released shutdown plans, comprising around two-thirds of all federal workers, have opted for temporary furloughs, as is customary when funding lapses. This defies Vought\u2019s order and suggests that, as Democrats claimed, the threat is more of a bluff. But that could of course change at any time, and the lawsuit is a preemptive strike on the possibility, as outlined in Vought\u2019s memo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The plaintiffs take aim at Vought\u2019s \u201carbitrary, cruel, and punitive\u201d plan to gut the federal workforce. They include statements he made prior to officially joining the Trump administration. He said, for example, that he wanted federal employees \u201cto be traumatically affected,\u201d and that \u201cwhen they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains \u2026 We want to put them in trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vought\u2019s September 24 memo<\/a> blamed \u201ccongressional Democrats\u201d for any shutdown. More recently, he argued that Republicans have Democrats \u201cin a very good position.\u201d Plaintiffs note that the rhetoric matches the overall Trump administration\u2019s attacks on Democrats, which on Tuesday included attack ads posted on federal websites and via emails to workers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One that appeared on the Department of Housing and Urban Development website said, in part, \u201cThe Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Workers received similar messages in their in-boxes. \u201cIf Congressional Democrats maintain their current posture and refuse to pass a clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government funded before midnight on September 30, 2025, federal appropriated funding will lapse,\u201d read an email to Health and Human Services workers<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Independent journalist Marisa Kabas, founder of The Handbasket<\/a>, was the first to report that the emails workers received were \u201cmandated by the White House Office of Management and Budget via an intra-agency email to leadership and reinforced on a subsequent call \u2026 And there was one clear stipulation: Absolutely no modifications to the language,\u201d Kabas reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The attacks drew anger from workers and advocates, who described the messages as unusually partisan. The nonprofit organization Public Citizen filed a Hatch Act complaint<\/a> against HUD Secretary Scott Turner, saying he violated limits placed on him as a political appointee by idolizing the Trump administration and failing to tell the truth about who is responsible for the shutdown. \u201cThe post is in bold print, 36-inch size, and prominently displayed on the HUD web page paid for by tax dollars,\u201d says the complaint by Dr. Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A second post \u201cis equally as partisan and political in nature, reciting the same derogatory descriptions of congressional Democrats, blaming solely Democrats for causing the shut down, and heaping praise for the virtues of Donald Trump in attempting to protect the American people,\u201d Holman wrote. \u201cThis time the post is soaked in blood red color.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lawsuits also called out these messages, as well as Trump\u2019s ongoing threats of illegal action, saying things like \u201cWe can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPresident Trump is using the civil service as a bargaining chip as he marches the American people into a government shutdown. Federal workers do the work of the people and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful,\u201d said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of plaintiff Democracy Forward. \u201cThat is why we have sued today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect. She previously worked for the Financial Times newsletters division, The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Multiple labor unions sued the OMB director for abusing his position and pushing an extremist Project 2025 agenda. BY WHITNEY CURRY WIMBISH SEPTEMBER 30, 2025 (Prospect.org) Expand FRANCIS CHUNG\/POLITICO VIA AP IMAGES OMB Director Russ Vought is taking a \u201clegally unsupportable position,\u201d unions say. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director… Continue reading ![\"AP25273068108722rs.jpeg\"](\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/downloads\/23620\/download\/AP25273068108722rs.jpeg?cb=bb08475862aad4c08619eac01020ebf3\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWHITNEY CURRY WIMBISH<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n