Latest news with #AFSCME
CBS News
6 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Two large labor union leaders leave DNC over disagreements
Two leaders of some of the largest labor unions in the country are leaving the Democratic National Committee (DNC) due to disagreements with the committee's leadership over its future. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote in a June 5 resignation letter to DNC Chair Ken Martin that she felt "out of step with the leadership you are forging." "I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent and actively trying to engage more and more of our communities," Weingarten wrote in the letter, obtained by CBS News. Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), declined his nomination as a member of the DNC weeks ago in a letter to Martin, his union confirmed. Saunders said his decision was about the future for working people and the party. "These are new times. They demand new strategies, new thinking, and a renewed way of fighting for the values we hold dear. We must evolve to meet the urgency of this moment. This is not a time to close ranks or turn inward," Saunders said in a statement. Their two unions represent a combined membership of just over 3 million. Their departures come after a different internal controversy was settled on activist David Hogg, whose election as a party vice chair was voided by a committee vote in June. Hogg decided he would exit his role rather than run in a redo of the DNC vice chair elections. The vote to hold new vice chair elections came amid internal disagreements over Hogg's plans to back primary challenges against incumbent Democrats, though the challenge that led to the new contests was technically unrelated to Hogg's controversies. Weingarten had been a DNC member since 2002, and a member of the Rules and Bylaws committee since 2009, but Martin took both her and Saunders off that committee and offered to let them remain as at-large members of the party. Both declined their nominations. Both Saunders and Weingarten supported Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler, and not Martin, in this year's election for a new DNC chair. News of Saunders' and Weingarten's departures was first reported by The New York Times. A source close to the DNC, who was granted anonymity to talk about an internal issue, said that ever since "the horse [Weingarten] bet on in the Chairs race lost, she has always been on the other side of the fence as Ken– this is no surprise." In reaction to the departure of the two labor union leaders, DNC Labor Council Chair Stuart Applebaum defended Martin and said he understands "that workers are the backbone of the Democratic party." "Martin is bringing new people into our tent, reasserting the strength of the Democratic Party, and is already winning races to make us competitive in every part of the country," he said.
Vox
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Justice Jackson warns the Supreme Court is manipulating the rules to benefit Trump
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. On Friday, the Supreme Court handed down a brief order permitting the Department of Government Efficiency, the enigmatic White House entity that billionaire Elon Musk previously ran, to access a wide range of sensitive information kept by the Social Security Administration — including many individuals' bank account numbers and medical records. All three of the Court's Democrats dissented from the Court's order in Social Security Administration v. AFSCME. Realistically, it was always likely that the Trump administration would eventually prevail in this case. As Solicitor General D. John Sauer in the brief, the plaintiffs in AFSCME 'do not contend that their information has been shared with parties outside the government.' Rather, this case boils down to whether the courts can second-guess the executive branch's decisions about which government employees may see data that is already held by the government. These sorts of internal management decisions typically are not subject to judicial review. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Yet, while the result in AFSCME isn't surprising, the case reveals a schism within the Court — and it highlights how the Trump administration has managed to successfully circumvent normal court procedures to quickly get their grievances before a largely sympathetic Supreme Court. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissenting opinion primarily focuses on her concerns over the rapidity with which the Court hears Trump cases, and she argues that her Republican colleagues appear to have abandoned an important limit on the Court's authority (or, at least, that they've done so when the Trump administration asks them to prematurely get involved with a case). The AFSCME case arises on the Court's 'shadow docket,' a mix of emergency motions and other matters that the Court decides on an unusually tight schedule, without full briefing or oral argument. Prior to the first Trump administration, the Court rarely granted requests for shadow docket relief — indeed, lawyers were so discouraged from seeking shadow docket decisions that both the Bush and Obama administrations only requested it about once every other year. That changed once President Donald Trump took office. Now, Trump's lawyers routinely approach the justices after a lower court issues a decision constraining its actions, and the justices frequently grant Trump's administration the relief it seeks — often over the dissent of the Court's Democratic minority. But there are supposed to be rules governing when the Supreme Court may allow a litigant to bypass the normal appeals process and seek an immediate decision blocking a lower court's order. Among other things, as Jackson writes in her dissent, the government is supposed to show 'that it will actually suffer concrete or irreparable harm from having to comply with the District Court's order' before it can obtain a Supreme Court decision blocking that order. Jackson is becoming increasingly vocal about her belief that the Court should return to its prior shadow docket policy. She argues, in both her AFSCME dissent and in a similar dissent she handed down a week earlier, that her Republican colleagues have abandoned this 'irreparable harm' requirement. Moreover, as she lays out in her previous dissenting opinion in Noem v. Doe, the Court took a much narrower view of its authority under the shadow docket when the Biden administration sought relief. Moreover, the evidence laid out in Jackson's opinions suggests that her Court is applying one set of shadow docket rules to Democratic administrations and another, more favorable set of rules, to Republicans. How the shadow docket is supposed to work Prior to the first Trump administration, when a lower court ruled against someone, its order would typically remain in effect while the case was being appealed. It was possible to persuade an appeals court to suspend this order while the appeals proceeded, but appeals courts were not supposed to do so except in rare circumstances. As the Supreme Court explained in Nken v. Holder (2009), it is not enough for a party that lost in a lower court to show that it is likely to prevail on appeal when it asks a higher court to temporarily block that lower court's decision. That party must also show that it 'will be irreparably injured absent a stay.' Additionally, Nken instructs higher courts to consider whether temporarily blocking the lower court order will 'substantially injure the other parties interested in the proceeding' or harm 'the public interest.' One reason for this 'irreparably injured' requirement is that appeals courts are typically far less familiar with the details of a case than the trial court that initially decided it, especially when a party seeks emergency relief on something like the Supreme Court's shadow docket. So, if appeals courts are too eager to block lower court decisions before they fully consider the case on appeal, they are likely to hand down many wrongly decided orders. That said, Nken recognized that it is unfair to make a litigant wait for a higher court to step in if they need immediate, time-sensitive relief to prevent them from being injured in a way that cannot be fixed by a later court decision. As Jackson writes in her Doe dissent, appeals courts are supposed to ask 'whether the applicant can be made to wait until the conclusion of the litigation to vindicate their purported legal rights, or whether irreparable harm will befall the applicant in the interim such that the court must act early to stave off that damage.' But the Supreme Court's shadow docket orders rarely even mention this irreparable harm requirement, and even when they do mention it, they typically don't explain how the Court analyzed this question. The Court's decision in Doe, which allowed Trump to strip half-a-million immigrants of their ability to live in the United States, does not mention Nken at all. The order in AFSCME quotes the Nken standard, but it does not explain why the Republican justices who joined that order believe that this standard was met. In both cases, Jackson argues — without any rebuttal from the majority — that the Trump administration failed to show irreparable harm. In the Doe case, she points out that the administration 'does not identify any specific national-security threat or foreign-policy problem that will result' if the immigrants targeted by Trump are allowed to remain in the country for a few months longer while appeals courts fully consider the issues in that case. In the AFSCME case, it is even clearer that there is no irreparable harm. The trial court in this case found that the government 'never made clear why … the DOGE Team requires unbridled access to the [personally identifiable information] of countless Americans in order to effectuate [its] responsibilities.' And when the judge asked the Trump administration to explain why DOGE needed this information right away, the government chose instead to 'stand on the record in its current form.' The Trump administration's brief to the justices in the AFSCME case devotes only a single paragraph to the question of irreparable harm, and that paragraph also doesn't explain what harm will result if the lower court's decision is not stayed. Instead, it complains that the lower court's order 'impinges on the President's broad authority to direct the federal workforce, to oversee government information systems, and to require agencies to identify fraud, waste, and abuse.' So the Trump administration, for whatever reason, chose not to even make an argument that there is irreparable harm when it brought the AFSCME case to the justices. Nevertheless, at least five of the Court's Republicans voted to block the lower court's order. (In shadow docket cases, the Court typically does not name which justices voted with the majority. So it is possible that one of the Court's six Republicans disagreed with the Court's order but chose not to make that disagreement public.) The Court did not behave this way when a Democrat was in the White House Some justices have implicitly argued that Nken should be overruled — or, at least, that it should be modified to permit shadow docket relief in some cases where there is no irreparable harm. Concurring in Labrador v. Poe (2024), Justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed that, in many shadow docket cases, 'this Court has little choice but to decide the emergency application by assessing likelihood of success on the merits.' Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined that opinion. So Kavanaugh and Barrett, at least, have explicitly stated that there are some cases where shadow docket relief will be granted solely based on which party is likely to prevail once the case is fully litigated. But, if you look at the Court's past behavior, it seems that the main factor determining whether Nken should be abandoned is whether the party seeking shadow docket relief is a Democrat or a Republican. In her Doe dissent, Jackson flags several cases where her Court 'denied similar stay requests from federal agencies.' The primary difference between these cases and the Doe and AFSCME cases appears to be that Joe Biden was president when the Court denied these stays. In Biden v. Texas (2022), for example, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that a Trump-appointed district judge was wrong when he ordered the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump immigration policy that required many asylum-seekers to remain on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border while awaiting a hearing. But it did so after leaving that Trump judge's order in place for more than 10 months. Similarly, in United States v. Texas (2023) the Supreme Court ultimately concluded that a Trump judge didn't even have jurisdiction to hear a case, where the judge cut off the Biden administration's authority to set enforcement priorities for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But the Court left that judge's order in place for nearly an entire year while the case was pending on appeal. Maybe there is a nonpartisan explanation for why the Court treated Biden differently than Trump. Perhaps there were legally sound, politically neutral arguments for why Nken shouldn't apply in Doe or AFSCME. Or maybe the Republican justices have a good argument for why irreparable harm does exist in those cases — even though the Trump administration didn't even bother to argue that it exists in the AFSCME case.
The Independent
07-06-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Judge says administration can dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services
A federal judge on Friday denied a request by the American Library Association to halt the Trump administration's further dismantling of an agency that funds and promotes libraries across the country, saying that recent court decisions suggested his court lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had previously agreed to temporarily block the Republican administration, saying that plaintiffs were likely to show that Trump doesn't have the legal authority to unilaterally shutter the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which was created by Congress. But in Friday's ruling, Leon wrote that as much as the 'Court laments the Executive Branch's efforts to cut off this lifeline for libraries and museums,' recent court decisions suggested that the case should be heard in a separate court dedicated to contractual claims. He cited the Supreme Court 's decision allowing the administration to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher-training money despite a lower court order barring the cuts, saying that cases seeking reinstatement of federal grants should be heard in the Court of Federal Claims. The American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a lawsuit to stop the administration from gutting the institute after President Donald Trump signed a March 14 executive order that refers to it and several other federal agencies as 'unnecessary.' The agency's appointed acting director then placed many agency staff members on administrative leave, sent termination notices to most of them, began canceling grants and contracts and fired all members of the National Museum and Library Services Board. The institute has roughly 75 employees and issued more than $266 million in grants last year. However, a Rhode Island judge's order prohibiting the government from shutting down the museum and library services institute in a separate case brought by several states remains in place. The administration is appealing that order as well.
Associated Press
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Judge says administration can dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday denied a request by the American Library Association to halt the Trump administration's further dismantling of an agency that funds and promotes libraries across the country, saying that recent court decisions suggested his court lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had previously agreed to temporarily block the Republican administration, saying that plaintiffs were likely to show that Trump doesn't have the legal authority to unilaterally shutter the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which was created by Congress. But in Friday's ruling, Leon wrote that as much as the 'Court laments the Executive Branch's efforts to cut off this lifeline for libraries and museums,' recent court decisions suggested that the case should be heard in a separate court dedicated to contractual claims. He cited the Supreme Court's decision allowing the administration to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in teacher-training money despite a lower court order barring the cuts, saying that cases seeking reinstatement of federal grants should be heard in the Court of Federal Claims. The American Library Association and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees filed a lawsuit to stop the administration from gutting the institute after President Donald Trump signed a March 14 executive order that refers to it and several other federal agencies as 'unnecessary.' The agency's appointed acting director then placed many agency staff members on administrative leave, sent termination notices to most of them, began canceling grants and contracts and fired all members of the National Museum and Library Services Board. The institute has roughly 75 employees and issued more than $266 million in grants last year. However, a Rhode Island judge's order prohibiting the government from shutting down the museum and library services institute in a separate case brought by several states remains in place. The administration is appealing that order as well.
CBS News
02-06-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Minnesota policy change takes effect as many state employees begin working in-office 50% of the time
A work policy requiring Minnesota state employees to be in the office for 50% of their workdays is now in effect, though some agencies are getting an extension to comply. The change went into effect on June 1, according to Julie Nelson, communications director with the Minnesota Department of Administration. Twelve agencies have been given extensions that range from mid-June to Sept. 2 due to space limitations or equipment needs, Nelson said. The Minnesota Department of Health's facility is undergoing "significant construction" and will adapt to the policy based on the construction schedule. There is an exemption for employees who live 75 miles or more away from their workplace. Gov. Tim Walz made the policy change in March, saying it balances the flexibility of working remotely with the "workplace advantages of being in office." There are 40,000 government employees, and Walz said in March that 60% of them were already back in-person or have continued to be since the pandemic upended workplaces and daily life five years ago. Unions representing tens of thousands of state employees said the change was made without their input. The Minnesota Association of Professional Employees and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 5 said in March that they learned of the change when the rest of the public did. Megan Dayton, president of MAPE, said at that time the unions were considering a strike if there wasn't a reversal, but it wouldn't begin until June 30 — the date the current contract with the state expires.
