PEERMail | Some Good News from the Courts

As the Trump administration continues its full-scale attack on the federal government, some good news is emerging from the courts. In recent days, federal courts have:

• Reinstated the Special Counsel in the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent federal agency founded by Congress. The OSC’s primary function is to protect federal employees from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisals for whistleblowing and illegal firings. The President recently fired the Special Counsel in violation of the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA).
• Reinstated a member of the three-person Merit Systems Protection Board, which functions to protect the federal merit system from partisan political attacks and other prohibited personnel practices. The President recently fired the member, also in violation of the CSRA.
• Ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a case that challenged the federal Office of Personnel Management’s ability to fire probationary workers. In recent weeks, thousands of probationary workers across the government have been summarily fired, ostensibly for non-performance, in violation of federal law.

Let’s work together to make sure this is only the beginning of a sustained resistance against this administration’s lawlessness!

Sincerely,

Tim Whitehouse
Executive Director

P.S. Take action today! Please use our prefilled letter to write to your representatives to urge them to stop the senseless firing of government workers, and sign our petition asking the Department of the Interior to rehire vital National Park Service employees.

Elon Musk and administration officials are restructuring and downsizing within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). PEER is calling on NOAA to immediately release all communications with Musk’s DOGE and key players at NOAA with commercial interests in companies that would benefit from the privatization of NOAA functions. Read more>>

The Trump administration has suspended normal spending authority and travel approvals across the entire U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees national parks, wildlife refuges, memorials, and rangelands throughout the country, causing chaos across the agencies that manage our public lands. Read more>>

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