SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – A new legal push against President Donald Trump’s administration for its sweeping government cuts – including cuts related to his multibillionaire advisor Elon Musk’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – kicked off this week. Two Bay Area counties are leading the charge.
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“We plan to take very prompt action to seek injunctive relief, and we’re hopeful that the court will take action quickly, perhaps as early as this week,” said Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti, as reported this week by KCBS Radio. He added that Congress hasn’t authorized the administration’s actions.
Earlier this year, Audacy reported on how Judge William H. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted a temporary restraining order against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and its Acting Director, Charles Ezell for cuts to probationary employees. NPR noted this week that the Supreme Court later vacated the reinstatement order but has not yet considered whether the firings were illegal.
Santa Clara County – as well as the city and county of San Francisco – led a coalition of labor organizations, non-profit groups, and local governments in Illinois, Maryland, Texas, and Washington to file the new suit this Monday in the Northern District of California. It seeks judicial intervention to stop the “Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative” executive order.
Per a press release from Santa Clara County, “the lawsuit describes how President Trump, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and Office of Management and Budget (OMB), unlawfully ordered the restructuring and mass termination of federal employees without first obtaining required congressional authority, in clear violation of the Constitution’s fundamental separation of powers principles.”
Santa Clara County said the Trump administration’s actions “resulted in the dismantling of the federal government on a scale unprecedented in U.S. history,” and that it impacts government services across the country. As quoted by KCBS Radio, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Otto Lee said that 30% of the county’s budget comes from federal funding.
“When DOGE and the OMB put forward funding freezes, or try to cut federal funding at such a massive scale, we at the local level will feel the impacts very, very sharply. It’s going to really hurt,” he said.
Cuts have had a wide-ranging impact, from local governments to the scientific community, Santa Clara County said. Under the executive order targeted by the lawsuit (Executive Order 14210), the Department of Health and Human Services began eliminating more than 10,000 positions throughout the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, it explained.
KCBS Radio’s Shannon Golden noted that this lawsuit is one of 200 that have been filed against Trump or his administration during the first 100 days of his second term.
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