BREAKING: Trump concedes DEFEAT in huge court case

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00:00You're watching The Legal Breakdown. Glenn, we have watched as Donald Trump has waged this

00:03massive assault on federal government workers. We've now seen that backfire in a big way as

00:09of right now. Can you explain what just happened? Yeah, Brian, recall, not just one, but two

00:14federal judges ruled that these massive terminations of probationary employees was

00:21illegal and they have been ordered, the judges have ordered the federal government to rehire

00:26them, reinstate these people to their old jobs. And now we have some new reporting from the BBC

00:32that the federal government is in the process of restoring 25,000 unlawfully fired government

00:41employees, public servants to their old jobs. So you know what, Brian, I'm no economist,

00:48I'm not an accountant, I'm not a numbers cruncher, but let's see whether Elon Musk and his

00:55fake government agency, the DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is saving the American

01:02taxpayers' money or squandering, wasting the taxpayers' dollars. Because here's the thing,

01:08these people were unlawfully fired a month or so ago. What happens? They go home, they sit there,

01:16they don't draw their government pay, they also lose their health insurance. And now,

01:23a month later, they're going to be rehired, reinstated into their old jobs, and guess what?

01:29Because they were unlawfully fired, they are almost certainly going to receive back pay.

01:35What does that mean? Our tax dollars will now go to pay millions and millions of dollars

01:42in federal employee salaries for a period of time that these people were sitting home doing exactly

01:49zero work for the American people. Is that Elon Musk saving us money, or is that Elon Musk

01:58squandering Americans' taxpayers' dollars? You know, you want to really dig down and get into

02:06governmental efficiency, probably the best thing to do at this point is fire Elon Musk.

02:13Glenn, at this point, we now have these rulings that say about 7,600 employees have to be

02:18reinstated at the Treasury Department, 5,700 in Ag, 3,200 in HHS, Health and Human Services,

02:25and hundreds more in other departments. And so what are next steps here? Is there

02:28rehiring an absolute guarantee, or is it still subject to appeals by the Trump administration?

02:35Brian, it's an absolute guarantee provided the federal government complies with court

02:41orders. Why do I say that? Because these federal court judges ordered the Trump administration to

02:46provide plans for rehiring these people so that the courts can be confident that they can,

02:53and they will, and they are complying with these orders to rehire folks who were unlawfully fired.

03:00So yes, it is subject to appeal, but in the interim, the federal government has been ordered

03:06and is reportedly complying with those orders, and they are beginning the rehiring process to

03:12restore these people back to their old jobs. Glenn, what kind of an impact is this going to

03:17have on future firings? Obviously, Doge and the Trump administration are hellbent on continuing

03:23to gut the federal government, especially as it relates to these career civil servants,

03:27because they want to replace them with political appointees. And so does this pour cold water on

03:33all of their plans to really dig into the details of enacting Project 2025, where, again, they just

03:39gut the entire civil servant sector all to make sure that they have people in office who are

03:45loyal not to the Constitution, not to their oath of office, not to federal law or the statutes,

03:51but rather just to Donald Trump himself? Yeah, Brian, it should certainly have a deterrent

03:56effect in the event the administration, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or others are intending to fire

04:03other folk from the federal government to try to downsize. Because, look, if you follow the rules

04:09and the law with respect to employees' rights, you can certainly downsize the federal government.

04:16So let's hope that this will chill Trump and Elon Musk and anybody else in the executive branch that

04:23is thinking about firing folk. If they're going to do it, they have to honor the employees' rights

04:29along the way. You know, Brian, when I saw that these probationary employees were just fired in

04:36massive numbers in the course of about 24 hours and they were told these were performance-based

04:44terminations, you know, so many of these probationary employees who had been with the

04:49government for six months, a year, a year and a half, reportedly had glowing evaluations from

04:56their supervisors and their agencies. So when I saw them try to falsely claim that these were

05:02performance-based firings, my, you know, first thought was, boy, the courts are going to reverse this

05:09so fast it will make Doge's head spin. And, you know, a month or six weeks may feel like a long time,

05:16but in, you know, justice system years, that's like a split second. So, you know, if the federal

05:23government wants to go about trying to terminate other employees, they damn well better follow the

05:29rules, the procedures and the law, because if they don't, it looks like this will be the fate they

05:35suffer. Glenn, there are still outstanding lawsuits as it relates to Trump's efforts to fire government

05:42employees. I know that we've been talking about the class action lawsuit with regard to these

05:46federal prosecutors who were fired. Does this have any either precedent or atmospheric precedent

05:52when it comes to those remaining ongoing lawsuits? Yeah, I love the term atmospheric precedent, and

05:59you and I have talked about this before. So when we hear the word precedent, we, you know,

06:05receive that as, oh, well, then this thing has to be followed moving forward. The reality is precedent

06:12is not set by trial court judges. And these rulings we're talking about, these two federal

06:16court judges who determined that these were unlawful firings and ordered that these people

06:22be returned to government employment. These are trial court judges. They don't set precedent. It

06:28is only when rulings or criminal convictions are appealed and the appeals court then takes

06:35up what happened in the trial court. They are the ones when they hand down a ruling that set

06:40precedent that must be followed by all of the judges in the jurisdiction where the appeals

06:45court is sitting. So but you use the term atmospheric precedent, and it's really important

06:51when trial court judges rule a particular kind of firing is unlawful. That may not be legal precedent

06:59because an appeals court didn't hand down that ruling, but it will become important atmospheric

07:05precedent. Other judges will look at it, and indeed federal government agencies will look at it and

07:11say, OK, this gives us some guidance now, even if it's not strictly speaking precedent, and we

07:17better comply with whatever those courts have said about, you know, when we try to terminate somebody,

07:24how we can do it and how we can't do it. Glenn, is there any risk for the Trump

07:29administration appealing this decision knowing full well that, OK, while this specific narrow

07:35instance might not carry any precedent for their ongoing cases as it relates to other

07:40fired federal employees, but if they do bring this case up to the appeals court and the appeals

07:45court agrees with the trial court, well, then you do have precedent. And then that makes it a much

07:50a much steeper hill to be able to scale for the Trump administration, because now you've

07:56got precedent that could apply in their other cases. Brian, you have not only earned your law

08:01degree, it looks like you're working on your LLM, which is like a master's of law.

08:06Well, that would make my mother happy among everybody else.

08:12It's such a good question, because part of the decision we always had to make as prosecutors,

08:17and this translates to the practice of civil law as well. These lawsuits we're discussing

08:22are civil cases, not criminal cases, but the principle is the same. If a judge rules against

08:27a particular party, you know, we would have to decide, well, do we have more to gain or more to

08:33lose if we decide to take an appeal and we lose that appeal? That means not only in this particular

08:40case, given this set of facts, we've lost, but that may set out a broader principle that could

08:46cover and sweep in other facts in other cases that aren't identical. But, you know, in the long run,

08:53if a bad precedent is set for one side or another, it can do some real long-lasting

09:01damage or harm to the way law is practiced. So you're exactly right. You know, Donald Trump

09:06probably wants to look before he leaps, or at least his DOJ does, because if they start setting

09:13really bad precedent in the appeals courts on issues like how can we go about firing federal

09:19government employees, that may have some much broader implications for what they get to do,

09:26and more importantly, what they don't get to do moving forward.

09:30You know, Glenn, a lot of these cases are taking place in Washington, D.C., and obviously that's

09:36a more liberal court system than, for example, the 11th Circuit Court or the 9th Circuit.

09:43Is there any worry that when you have these federal cases with folks that are really found

09:48in the Washington, D.C. area, in the Virginia area, the Maryland area, where they're in that

09:53a more liberal court's jurisdiction, that that poses a risk to the Trump administration? Because

09:59when you do want to appeal these cases and you have judges who are not these far-right judges

10:05like you see, you know, down in Florida, down in Texas, does that pose a risk for the Trump

10:11administration in terms of actually seeking these appeals? Yeah, let me push back a little bit on

10:16the notion that the federal bench in Washington, D.C. is a, quote, more liberal court or more

10:24liberal set of judges. You know, federal judges are appointed by the president, so you're going

10:29to have the same president during his four-year term appoint judges in Florida, in, you know, D.C.,

10:35in Massachusetts, California, New York, Oklahoma, you name it. And yes, depending on which judges

10:41end up in which federal courts in which states, you know, that bench, that federal bench in that

10:48state or that federal jurisdiction might lean a little bit one way or another. Let me just hasten

10:54to add, when we talk about, you know, the D.C. federal courts being on the liberal side, what we

10:59would ordinarily be referring to is the jury pool because, you know, D.C. votes 90 or 93 percent

11:07Democrat, whereas red states obviously vote heavily Republican. So it is the jury pool that

11:13we are referring to when we talk about how courts in one state or another, one jurisdiction or

11:19another, are kind of more liberal or more traditionally conservative. So I don't think that

11:24necessarily plays in. You're going to have Trump-appointed judges in D.C. You're going to have

11:29Trump-appointed judges, you know, in virtually every federal jurisdiction in most states across

11:35the country. And it really comes down to kind of a judge-specific question. Is that judge an honest

11:42broker of the law and the Constitution, or is that judge or justice, if we're talking about the

11:48Supreme Court, not an honest broker of the law and the Constitution? And we have seen lots of

11:55Trump-appointed judges rule against Trump-legal positions, most notably in 2020 during the

12:03challenge to the results of the 2020 election. Every Trump-appointed judge who received one of

12:08those 60-plus cases ruled against Trump. That should give us all a little bit of comfort in

12:16the quality and independence of the federal judiciary overall. And finally, Glenn, let's finish

12:21off with this. Are we certain here that the Trump administration won't be appealing this and that

12:26this ruling, as it stands right now, bringing roughly 25,000 federal employees who had been

12:33fired back into the federal government, is that going to stand? You know, it feels like that ruling

12:38is going to stand. And here's why I say that. Because the reporting, the new reporting, is coming

12:44out of basically what reporters are learning about the federal government and the federal employees

12:49who were first wrongfully terminated and who have now been told they're coming back to work. And

12:55those plans are in place and those plans are in progress. So it feels like the federal government,

13:01the Trump administration, is choosing to comply with this order to rehire 25,000, you know,

13:07wrongfully terminated public servants. And they are now implementing the plan to return them

13:12to government service. Okay, well, obviously, a lot happening on this front. So we'll continue

13:18to stay on top of it. For those who are watching, if you want to follow along, and if you want to

13:21support our channels and independent media more broadly, the best way to do that is to subscribe.

13:26The links to both of our channels are right here on this screen. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen.

13:29And I'm Glenn Kirshner. You're watching The Legal Breakdown.

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