Democratic attorneys general from several states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration Thursday over the government’s mass layoffs of federal employees — layoffs, the challengers say, that are inflicting economic harm on their states.
Other legal challenges to the administration’s employee termination tactics have had only mixed success, as some judges have concluded that courts should not play a role in what they see as employment disputes. The Democratic attorneys general are arguing in their new case that, beyond the harm the layoffs are causing the employees themselves, the mass terminations are costing their states tax revenue.
The complaint estimates that, for the District of Columbia alone, the administration’s firing of probationary employees will cause “millions of dollars in lost annual income tax revenue.”
The states also argue that, because the administration is allegedly not following the proper procedures for the layoffs, states are having to “scramble and expend additional resources to identify even which agencies have conducted layoffs” so that they can offer unemployment insurance and other required benefits.
“Some Plaintiff States have also lost the benefit of services provided by federal employees embedded within state agencies, without any time to prepare,” the lawsuit said. It was filed in Maryland’s US District Court and has been assigned to Judge James Bredar, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
The State Department is moving to close nearly a dozen consulates around the world, according to a source familiar with the matter and a congressional aide.
The moves come as the agency eyes broader organizational changes and significant reductions in its workforce both domestically and abroad. The Trump administration, spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, has taken drastic steps to shrink the federal workforce.
As outposts of US diplomatic missions, consulates provide services like visa processing and other services for American citizens in need. They also serve to collect information to send back to Washington, DC, from areas away from nations’ capitals. Officials say they are an important diplomatic tool as the US looks to counter nations like China. Most consulates do not have a large workforce.
A memo was circulated within the State Department identifying a number of consulates the agency was looking to shutter, mostly in Western Europe, one source said. According to a congressional aide, the State Department informed Capitol Hill last month that it was looking to close ten outposts – Leipzig, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf in Germany, Bordeaux, Rennes, Lyon and Strasbourg in France, Ponta Delgado in Portugal and Belo Horizonte in Brazil.
On Monday, the State Department said it was moving forward with the closure of the consulate in Gaziantep, Turkey, a base for humanitarian work with Syria.