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The Supreme Court has overturned a lower court decision that paused tens of thousands of layoffs across the federal government, including at the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, and other public land management agencies.
Technically, the order simply says the Trump administration can proceed with firings while the legal challenge to its "reduction in force" plan continues. But in practice it means President Donald Trump can proceed with large scale layoff and restructuring plans, even if judges later determine they exceed presidential power.
In a public dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the president’s executive order would “lead to enormous real-world consequences,” including “the dismantling of much of the federal government as Congress has created it.”
Prior to the court order, Interior was on the verge of laying off 1,500 employees at the National Park Service, 1,000 employees at the U.S. Geological Survey, and 100 to 150 employees at the Bureau of Reclamation. The National Park Service has already lost a quarter of its permanent staff this year. At the Agriculture Department, which houses the Forest Service, Secretary Brooke Rollins has said her team is ready to deploy a major reorganization as soon as the injunction lifts, including thousands of layoffs and relocations.
First 16-day NEPA review finalized
The Bureau of Land Management approved the expansion of an oil transloading facility in Utah after an expedited review under President Donald Trump’s “national energy emergency” declaration.
The expansion of the facility will ramp up the amount of waxy crude oil that producers can transport out of the Uinta Basin by 80,000 barrels per day. The BLM gave the owner of the facility permission to expand after a 16-day review with no public input process. The facility applied for an expansion in 2023, but the company failed to provide the BLM with needed information for the environmental analysis, so the agency terminated the review process.
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This is not the first time that a President has wanted to restructure the Federal Government. Even the most cursory examination of history readily reveals that, over the past century, Presidents have worked with Congress—rather than around it—when seeking to significantly reorganize the agencies that comprise the Executive Branch.”
