The justices announced they were not ruling on the legality of the specific downsizing plans but they allowed the Trump administration to proceed for now with its restructuring efforts.
The case represents a key test of the extent of President Trump’s power to reorganize the government without input from Congress. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
By Abbie VanSickle
Reporting from Washington
Published July 8, 2025Updated July 9, 2025
The Trump administration can move forward with plans to slash the federal work force and dismantle federal agencies, the Supreme Court announced on Tuesday. The decision could result in job losses for tens of thousands of employees at agencies including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State and Treasury.
The order, which lifted a lower court’s ruling that had blocked mass layoffs, was unsigned and did not include a vote count. That is typical in such emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a public dissent.
The case represents a key test of the extent of President Trump’s power to reorganize the government without input from Congress. The justices’ order is technically only temporary, guiding how the administration can proceed while the challenge to Mr. Trump’s plans continues. But in practice, it means he is free to pursue his restructuring plans, even if judges later determine that they exceed presidential power.the United States added 147,000 jobs, beating analysts’ expectations. Yet the sources of that growth also appeared to narrow, evidenced in a continued slump in manufacturing jobs and lackluster hiring across the retail and professional services sectors. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1 percent, but the number of people out of work for more than six months rose.