SAN FRANCISCO and CHICAGO—The right-wing regime of GOP President Donald Trump went 0-for-2 against unions in recent rulings in U.S. District Courts in Chicago and San Francisco.
Those two wins for labor follow a frequent pattern in legal confrontations between Trump and unions. It starts with a Trump anti-union dictate or manifesto.
His current chainsaw man, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, carries Trump’s order out—with glee—by firing federal workers. He’s fired 4,000 so far during the federal shutdown, and even after his judicial loss in San Francisco, promised to can 10,000 more.
Or Trump’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, again gleefully, batter, bludgeon, pepper-spray, and tear-gas protesters, reporters, and bystanders before hauling away people, both protesters and even reporters, and placing them in detention centers. They did in L.A. and Chicago.
The reporters are later released, except for one Hispanic-named broadcast and podcast reporter in Atlanta. He was peacefully describing an ICE raid there when agents arrested him, later charged him with being undocumented, and deported him.
In all the other cases, including Chicago, San Francisco, and, before that, Los Angeles, unions then sue to stop such ICE oppression, and win in U.S. District Courts, the federal trial courts.
The Trump regime appeals those wins, and appellate courts split. Most of the few cases that reached the Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court so far produced Trump wins.
The Chicago win involves ICE agents, too. They’ve clobbered not just protesters and suspected undocumented people, but news media members in repeated confrontations outside an ICE detention center in the western suburb of Broadview.
Judge Sara Ellis’s temporary restraining “stop” order is intended to halt all that ICE violence, in all of Northern Illinois, not just at Broadview.
NABET-CWA Local 41 and the Chicago News Guild, TNG-CWA Local 37041, challenged ICE in U.S. District Court, as did small independent community papers. The Illinois Press Association—the big publishers—initially did, too, but backed out. Their executive director promptly quit.
“Joining the lawsuit was a step we had to take after weeks of our members being targeted by agents,” News Guild President Andy Grimm said on the union’s website after that October 9 victory.
ICE and other agents “were indiscriminately throwing tear gas canisters at groups of journalists, pelting them with pepper balls and rubber bullets, threatening and even arresting reporters.
“The judge’s order will remain in effect until a permanent injunction is put in place, which will take weeks or months. We will keep you posted. Just like any court order, we will have to enforce it.”
After an hour-long court hearing in San Francisco on October 15, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued a temporary restraining order against Trump’s mass layoffs of federal workers.
The Trump regime, which hates federal workers and their unions, began layoffs, called “Reductions in Force (RIFs), when the partial federal government shutdown began on October 1. Some 4000 workers were RIFed—governmentese for being fired without cause—in several Cabinet departments.
The Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union of federal workers, joined by AFSCME, sued in San Francisco to reverse those RIFs and won Judge Illston’s order.
“The administration’s move to fire thousands of federal employees who are already going without pay during the government shutdown is not only cruel but unlawful,” said AFGE President Everett Kelley.
“These are dedicated public servants who keep our nation running–protecting public health, supporting education, ensuring fair housing, and driving economic growth. We are pleased with the court’s ruling halting these unlawful terminations and preventing the administration from further targeting hardworking civil servants during the shutdown.”
“This decision affirms that these threatened mass firings are likely illegal and blocks layoff notices from going out,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders. “Federal workers have already faced enough uncertainty from the administration’s relentless attacks on the important jobs they do to keep us safe and healthy. They deserve respect for the work they do – not to be treated as political pawns by the billionaires running this administration who see workers as expendable.”
Judge Illston got Trump’s lawyers, who represented anti-worker Office of Management and Budget director Vought, to admit they have no substantive reasons for the RIFs. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Vought brought “an apparently unlawful political bias” to the RIFs, the judge said.
“You’re not making any statement concerning the government’s position on the merits…whether the RIFS are legal?” Judge Illston asked the government’s attorney, Elizabeth Hedges. “Not today, your honor,” Hedges replied.
In Chicago, Judge Ellis “entered an order barring Department of Homeland Security agents–like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs & Border Patrol–from using force against journalists, as well against protesters who don’t pose a threat to agents,” News Guild President Grimm said on the union’s website.
“It’s important to note this applies to the actions of DHS agents… in the entire Northern District of Illinois, which includes all of the Chicago area–not just Broadview.”
Broadview includes an ICE detention center and the scene of many peaceful, if raucous, protests. The center will also be a focal point for one of the many Chicago-area No Kings Day marches on October 18.
“This is good news, and it would not have happened if we had not stood up for our members alongside the unionized journalists of NABET Local 41, the Chicago Headline Club, Block Club Chicago,” and other groups, not including the state’s newspaper publishers.
Judge Ellis banned ICE and other Homeland Security officers from “dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, threatening, or using physical force against any person whom they know or reasonably should know is a journalist.”
The only exceptions are if agents “have probable cause to believe the individual has committed a crime.” Judge Ellis said the media must be obvious members of the press, by wearing press passes, jackets with the word “Press” in large block letters or carrying cameras and microphones.
Judge Ellis also ordered ICE and other agents to identify themselves—many haven’t—and let them “order a journalist to change location to avoid disrupting law enforcement, as long as the journalist has an objectively reasonable time to comply and an objectively reasonable opportunity to report and observe” agents’ actions.
The same day as the second win, in San Francisco, Trump’s ICE got hit with yet another suit, in federal court in Manhattan. This one challenges ICE’s instant arrests of people who appear in immigration courts for routine check-in hearings. The government deliberately moves to have its cases dismissed, leaving them open to arrest for immigration violations. ICE agents wait in the halls right outside the courtroom doors, nab them, detain them, and deport them overseas.
The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and other groups sued to stop what appears to be obvious entrapment tactics.
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