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U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board is falling to MAGA, bad news for civil servants [1]
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Date: 2025-03-03
The Merit Systems Protection Board adjudicates disputes when federal employees are fired and protest that action. You can imagine the chaos there currently with Musk and his mini-me’s firing thousands upon thousands of civil servants without rhyme or reason.
Yet the MSPB is on the brink of becoming irrelevant and powerless, just at the time that it is needed most. During Trump’s first term, he failed to fill vacancies, leaving the board without a quorum and thus unable to hear appeals.
Not it’s happening again. Trump illegally fired Democratic board member and chairperson Cathy Harris on his first day in office; members can be removed only for cause but no surprise that the Trump regime is violating that law.
He then promoted the Republican member, Henry Kerner, to be the new chair.
Harris filed suit and a federal court ordered her provisional reinstatement to the board on February 18 as an emergency measure, pending a full hearing. That hearing began today and the DOJ argued that Trump should be allowed to appoint a replacement for Harris, even if the judge finds in her favor that she was illegally fired. The DOJ attorney said that that should not prevent her dismissal and that the only reasonable recourse for the court would be to award her back pay.
But it gets worse. The other member of the board, Raymond Limon, also a Democrat, tendered his resignation, effective last Friday. Had he stayed on the board and if the judge decides to protect Harris’s tenure through the rest of her term (2028), federal workers would have a good chance of winning appeals against their firing.
As it is, even if Harris retains her position, Trump will be free to appoint a replacement for Limon, giving him two Trumpistas on the three-person board. I think we can safely assume they would uphold every single firing, quite possibly without any hearing beyond “State your name. Guilty. Burn the witch!”
I don’t know Raymond Limon. Maybe he’s not well. Maybe he’s getting personal threats from MAGA cultists.
But once again, when we need Democrats to step up and do what they can to fight the fascists, we get surrender instead. Why?
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