Archive for March, 2025

PSJD News Digest – March 7, 2025

March 7, 2025 at 1:08 pm · Filed under Public Interest Law News Bulletin

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Photo: Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress

Hi Interested Public,

Here we are again, hanging together yet (I hope). Major stories among the editor’s choices–including a letter out of Georgetown Law that’s worth a close look. In other news, the Trump Administration is planning a “final mission” for the Department of Education, which may include spinning student debt off onto the Small Business Administration. OPM has revised its instructions to federal agencies regarding probationary employees, and the Department of Defense has announced it will look at its independent authority to implement the employment policies laid out in Executive Orders along the lines formerly prescribed by OMB. The New York Times is working to track employees fired–and rehired–across the federal government, and state and local governments are stepping into the breach to try and catch employees cut from the federal civil service. As always, these stories and more are in the links below.

Solidarity,

Sam

Editor’s Choice(s)

  • Organization of American Historians: Federal Employees and Contractors Oral History Project (OAH; 4 Mar 2025)

    “OAH is launching an oral history initiative to document the experiences of federal workers and federal contractors affected by these shifts. These recorded histories will serve as a vital resource for historians and the public, offering insight into the lives and contributions of our nation’s federal workers, and documenting these stories for future generations.”

  • D.C. U.S. attorney tells Georgetown he won’t hire from any school with ‘DEI’ (Washington Post; 5 Mar 2025)

  • Georgetown Law School defends practices amid US attorney’s DEI threat (WUSA 9; 7 Mar 2025)

    • Dean Treanor’s Response to Interim United States Attorney Martin (Georgetown Law; 6 Mar 2025)

      “Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution. It inquires about Georgetown Law’s curriculum and classroom teaching, asks whether diversity, equity, and inclusion is part of the curriculum, and asserts that your office will not hire individuals from schools where you find the curriculum ‘unacceptable’. The First Amendment, however, guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it…This is a bedrock principle of constitutional law–recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration in which you serve. The Department of Education confirmed last week that it cannot restrict First Amendment rights and that it is statutorily prohibited from ‘exercising control over the content of school curricula.’ Your letter informs me that your office will deny our students and graduates government employment opportunities until you, as Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, approve of our curriculum. Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution. …Georgetown-educated attorneys have, for decades, served this country capably and selflessly in offices such as yours, and we have confidence that tradition will continue. We look forward to your confirming that any Georgetown-affiliated candidates for employment with your office will receive full and fair consideration.”

    • DOGE layoffs may ‘overwhelm’ unemployment system for federal workers, report finds (CNBC; 7 Mar 2025)

      “The terminations of federal workers by the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — headed up by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk — may ultimately stretch into the hundreds of thousands. That would amount to the largest mass layoff in U.S. history. The scale of cuts would likely “overwhelm” the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) program, the “rarely utilized and creaky” system most federal workers use to claim unemployment benefits, according to a report by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank. ”

Conflicts Over Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

Academic Funding Reductions

  • As Trump Goes After Universities, Students Are Now on the Chopping Block (NYTimes; 6 Mar 2025)

    “Since taking office, the Trump administration has issued orders that threaten to broadly undercut the financial foundation of university based research, including deep reductions in overhead cost reimbursements through the National Institutes of Health. Court challenges have paused some of the cuts, but universities are bracing for uncertainty…In some cases, schools are pre-emptively cutting their expenses as a precautionary measure… ‘I hate to sound fatalistic,’ said Dr. Cooper, who specializes in the study of limb development. ‘But at this point I think they’re trying to break the academic enterprise. And cutting academic science has impacts on the educational mission of the entire university.’”

Student Loans & the Dept of Ed

2025 Federal Reductions in Force

  • Trump Abruptly Walks Back His Directive To Fire Thousands Of Federal Employees (Huffington Post; 4 Mar 2025)

    “In revised guidance issued to the heads of federal agencies, the Office of Personnel Management ― the human resources agency of the federal government ― tries to rewrite history by claiming it never actually ordered agencies to fire probationary employees (people who generally have held their jobs for a year or less)…Instead, OPM claims it’s been up to each agency all along to decide who to fire…OPM’s guidance doesn’t say anything about federal agencies being encouraged to rehire all the people who were fired…Separately, the memo spells out how agencies can use administrative leave as a way to remove employees from the workplace. It gives agencies until Sept. 13 to update their internal policies to comply with OPM’s regulations on this.” [emphasis added]

  • Memo: “Independent Department of Defense Determination to Terminate Probationary Employees” (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense; 3 Mar 2025)

    “Consistent with [EO 13217, EO 14210,] and the Secretary of Defense’s clear direction to streamline operations and…re-direct scarce and limited resources…the Department is taking independent steps to reduce the size of the civilian workforce…The first step in doing this will be terminating those probationary employees whose continued employment at the Department would not be in the public interest. These terminations will commence on Monday, March 3, 2025.” [emphasis added]

  • Fired, Then Rehired, by the Trump Administration (NYTimes; 6 Mar 2025)

    “Even as the Trump administration continues to slash federal jobs, a number of federal agencies have begun to reverse course — reinstating some workers and pausing plans to dismiss others, sometimes within days of the firings. The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday revised earlier guidance calling for probationary workers to be terminated, adding a disclaimer that agencies would have the final authority over personnel actions. It is unclear how many more workers could be reinstated as a result.”

State & Local Gov’t Response to Federal RIF

Other Topics

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