Federal Judge: Actually, Trump’s CIA Director Can Fire DEI Personnel

You mean the elected president and his Senate-confirmed appointees actually have authority over subordinates in the executive branch? No kidding! Someone had better alert the media.

Amusingly, it took federal judge Anthony Trenga two tries before getting this right. Trenga had previously issued a TRO against CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who had issued dismissal notices to 51 CIA and ODNI employees assigned to enforce DEI policies, in accordance with an executive order from Donald Trump. Trenga wanted to get Ratcliffe to justify the dismissals.

In the end, Trenga followed the law, but wasn’t happy about it:

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can go ahead with plans to fire dozens of officers from the CIA and other intelligence agencies who had temporary jobs working on diversity programs. 

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga said if fairness and morals were the standard on which he had to rule, he might have delivered a different decision. But the law dictates otherwise, he said. …

The ruling could open the way to wider firings at the CIA and across the intelligence community as the Trump administration presses ahead with plans to slash the federal workforce and the size of the federal government. At least 51 CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence officers now face imminent dismissal, according to Kevin Carroll, the lawyer representing some of the officers. 

Trenga wanted Ratcliffe to justify the terminations, rather than just have the same officers assigned to other tasks. Yesterday, Ratcliffe’s answer was essentially that it was none of Trenga’s business:

In a new brief filed Wednesday, the government submitted a declaration by Ratcliffe saying he had made the decision to terminate all intelligence officers working in the diversity and inclusion office because he determined it was “in the interests of the United States.” The declaration cited federal law that gives intelligence directors wide authority to dismiss employees if national interests are at stake.

Ratcliffe and the administration made it clear that they would not let Trenga act as the employees’ business agent and get forced into a negotiation in court. Not every judge would take that as an answer. To his credit, Trenga did, but not without attempting to get the government’s attorneys to offer to re-employ them. 

It’s not difficult to understand why Ratcliffe didn’t offer reassignment. In other agencies, especially at State, managers would ‘comply’ with EOs ending DEI and other policies by redistributing personnel that would then conduct the same mission more covertly. The State Department tried that ahead of Trump’s inauguration by nominally ending the Global Engagement Center and its censorship activities, but in reality attempting to perpetuate it. Gabe Kaminsky and Ken Klippenstein exposed it:

The State Department has crafted plans to distribute staffers from a shuttered office accused of censoring conservatives to a new internal “hub” that will coordinate its activities, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The Global Engagement Center, the office that Republicans accused of working with groups aiming to demonetize right-leaning media outlets in the United States, shut down in late 2024 upon lawmakers agreeing to no longer fund it. However, in a non-public letter to members of Congress on Dec. 6, the State Department outlined its plans to “realign” more than 50 GEC officials and tens of millions of dollars in funding to a hub purporting to counter foreign interference, documents show.

The plans, which have not been reported on until now, will likely lead to investigations from Republicans into the State Department’s handling of the GEC’s closure.

It led to more than just an oversight investigation. It dictated the new approach of firing people in units pushing discontinued policies and practices. Perhaps the people who hid the GEC and reorganized the effort into the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference Hub” can be publicly named and thanked for making clear that the only way to deal with such personnel is to terminate them rather than trust them with other assignments. 

Regardless, give credit to Trenga for recognizing that the judiciary can’t tell the executive which people to hire and fire short of violating actual statutes. Not every federal judge has passed Con Law 101 in the past month.