The Greene County Democrat

Tag: John C. Yang

  • Newswire : Federal workers sue over mass firings as Trump faces legal battles

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    A coalition of civil servants across nine federal agencies has filed a formal complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, alleging the Trump administration terminated them solely because of their probationary status rather than their performance or conduct. The complaint, the first of its kind, was brought before Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, who was reinstated to his position by a federal court after Trump attempted to remove him.
    The filing follows a directive from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management instructing agencies to identify employees without full civil service protections and conduct mass terminations. The complaint states that the suit will eventually cover additional agencies.
    “The vast majority of the American people—more than 90%—believe that civil servants should be promoted based on their merit, not on loyalty. Yet, the Trump administration is seeking to undermine that value by purging non-partisan career civil servants and prioritizing partisan loyalists,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the terminated employees.
    “Our civil servants do everything from keeping our food and medicine safe to securing our borders to improving our communities. We will use all legal tools available to protect them from arbitrary firings designed to politicize our government.” Michelle Bercovici, a partner at the Alden Law Group, which joined Democracy Forward in filing the complaint, called the terminations an “unprecedented and grossly unfair circumvention of the merit principles upon which our civil service is based.”
    “These hard-working employees should have the opportunity to let their work speak for itself,” Bercovici said. Two days before the filing of that complaint, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE-IAM) and a coalition of labor unions sued the Trump administration, challenging the legality of the mass firings. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, contests the dismissal of probationary employees, a deferred resignation strategy aimed at pressuring workers to leave voluntarily, and large-scale reductions in force that violate federal statutes.
    “The Trump administration’s executive actions to gut the federal workforce are not only illegal but will also have damaging consequences for federal employees and the public services they provide,” said NFFE National President Randy Erwin. “The courts must intervene and hold this administration accountable for violating federal laws before it is too late. Federal workers are your friends and neighbors who have dedicated their careers to serving our country. We cannot let the president disrupt their lives and dismantle critical services relied upon by the American people.”
    The lawsuit also accuses the administration of unlawfully undermining Congress’s authority by eliminating federal agencies and positions authorized by the legislative branch. It calls for a ruling declaring the mass terminations and deferred resignation program unlawful.
    “If this administration and Elon Musk truly wanted to make our government more efficient, they would have taken the time to understand that these actions will only lead to chaos and poor service for the American people,” Erwin said. “Instead, they are illegally targeting federal agencies, their missions, and workers to pay for proposed tax cuts for the wealthy. These efforts hurt middle-class Americans who chose to work in service to the public as federal employees. It is unpatriotic and unacceptable.” New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury added, “We stand with our federal workers and are fighting back.”
    In another case, a broad coalition of higher education leaders, restaurant workers, and the City of Baltimore has filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to block Trump’s executive orders dismantling diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs. The lawsuit, brought by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), the American Association of University Professors, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, argues that the orders have already led to grant freezes, job losses, and forced self-censorship. “The president’s executive orders are unconstitutional and seek to bring extreme harm and devastation to anybody or anything that does not share his exact values,” Scott said. “That kind of thinking within itself is un-American, as we are supposed to be in a melting pot where all beliefs and values are respected.”
    NADOHE President and CEO Paulette Granberry Russell called Trump’s actions “an affront to the values that define our nation.” “Our fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion is a fight for justice, and we will not waver,” Russell said. ROC Interim President Teófilo L. Reyes warned that Trump’s efforts to dismantle workplace protections and DEIA programs are unlawful. “The president seeks to create barriers and perpetuate fear rather than promote diverse talent and a stronger workforce,” Reyes said. “But Trump cannot override decades of legal precedent. The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and our worker members— the majority of whom are women, people of color, and immigrants—will continue to stand together against this unconstitutional political manipulation.”
    Democracy Forward, representing the plaintiffs, called on the courts to intervene. “The president’s executive orders punish millions of Americans simply because the president does not believe in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” said John C. Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC. “These executive orders penalize not only academic institutions, workplaces, and the various organizations that advocate on their behalf; they will hurt everyone. Terminating funds for federal grantees will have immediate effects by halting critical research and withholding economic support for programs that make our country stronger and more competitive.”
    Separately, FBI agents who investigated Trump have sued the Justice Department, seeking an immediate halt to the administration’s efforts to compile a list of employees involved in probes of the Jan. 6 attack and Trump’s classified documents case. The agents argue that the list is an act of retaliation meant to intimidate personnel and deter future investigations into Trump’s conduct. “The very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature, intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel and to discourage them from reporting any future malfeasance by Donald Trump and his agents,” the lawsuit states. The complaint cites the Justice Department’s recent firing of prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team as evidence that Trump’s administration targets those involved in investigations against him.

  • Newswire : Black and other voters of color restored democracy in America in 2020 Presidential Election

    Biden and Harris

    By Sunita Sohrabji and Pilar Marrero
    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Ethnic Media Services
    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – In a country that is polarized and hurt by Covid-19 and a divisive leadership, a massive turnout of voters resulted in a close election where Democrat Joe Biden was pushed across the finish line by large majorities of voters of color.
    On Saturday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the projected winners of the 2020 elections, relegating Donald Trump to a one term, even as he refused to concede, and his lawyers tried legal maneuvers to argue electoral fraud.
    The Democratic presidential ticket reached that goal mainly because communities of color rejected the Trump Administration by large margins, explained experts who discussed the numbers, the history, and the motivations of electoral choices by communities of color in the United States in a briefing with ethnic media.
    Election eve surveys and exit polling confirmed that the majority of white voters voted for President Donald Trump, but that Asian Americans, Latinx, and Black voters turned out in record numbers to oust the incumbent, and to propel the first woman of color into the White House.
    According to the American Election Eve Poll by Latino Decisions, 56% of whites voted for Trump. A CNN exit poll found a similar number, 57% of whites voting for the President.
    But voters of color were a different story. According to the LD poll, 70% of Latinos, 89% of Blacks, 68% of Asians and 60% of American Indians voted for Biden.
    “I want to thank people of color and communities of color for saving our democracy,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice at the Nov. 6 briefing organized by Ethnic Media Services. “Speaking as a white man, I come from a community that voted in the majority for Donald Trump. And if it were not for the African American, Latinx, and Asian American Pacific Islander Community, we would not be celebrating the victory that we’re celebrating today,” said Sharry.
    It was a very close election, a cliffhanger that lasted from Tuesday November 3rd until Saturday morning, November 7th, when the official numbers made it clear that Biden-Harris had clinched the 270 electoral college votes needed.
    That polarization and the states in which the Biden advantage played out made it clear that lopsided democratic votes by people of color had an outsize role in the results.
    Stephen Nuño-Perez, a senior analyst at Latino Decisions, whose firm conducted an election eve poll of ethnic voters in key battleground states, said that “it’s extremely difficult to win an election when you have mobilized minorities and Latinos in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Albuquerque”. Latinx voters were critical in flipping Arizona blue, said Nuno Perez of Latino Decisions, pointing to counties such as Maricopa, Pima, and Yuma, which all have significant Latino populations.
    Latinx voters also made their presence known in Florida, handing Biden victories in Miami-Dade, Tampa Bay, Orlando, and Broward County. In Miami, Cuban Americans threw their support behind Trump. Nuño warned about taking some outliers, like the Cuban vote in Miami-Dade and a couple of counties near the border in Texas where Trump did much better with Latinos, to project that into the larger narrative.
    “Yes, Latinos are not a monolith, and yes, they are a monolith, they do respond to certain types of messaging and at the national level, seventy percent of Latinos voted for Biden. That’s a clear pattern”, he said.
    Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that a summer of protests for racial justice along with the disproportionate numbers from COVID-19 and record levels of unemployment in black communities, galvanized Black voter turnout in record numbers to remove Donald Trump from office.
    “That explains why we’re seeing Atlanta change Georgia, Philadelphia change Pennsylvania, Milwaukee change Wisconsin, and Detroit change Michigan,” he said. “That’s the enthusiasm and power of the Black vote.”
    Overall Black voters were pragmatic, Johnson noted, pointing to South Carolina where they opted for Joe Biden over Kamala Harris or Corey Booker. “They picked the candidate they thought had the best chance of winning over white voters.” Johnson attributed the small increase in Black males voting for Trump to those Black Republicans who had opted to vote for the first Black president in 2008 and 2012 and who were now returning to the Republican Party.
    Asian Americans turned out in significant numbers for the 2020 election, said John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice/ AAJC. Some 300,000 were first-time voters. Exit polls plus pre-election polls showed there was much more enthusiasm to vote, Yang noted. Between 65%-70% of AAPI voters supported Biden, with 30 percent voting for Trump, consistent with voting patterns in 2012 and 2016.
    While one-third of Asian Americans live in the 10 battleground states, and it would be easy to attribute the margin of victory in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania to the AAPI vote. But Yang said it was the common values that brought Black, Latinx, Native and Asian Americans together that provided the margin of victory for Biden in those states.
    Yang recalled June 16, 2015, when Trump rode down an escalator at Trump Towers to announce his bid for the White House. “That was a defining moment for me and changed my career path. When he talked about illegal aliens being rapists and gangsters and criminals, he was talking about me because I was at one point an undocumented immigrant.”
    Mark Trahant, editor of Indian Country Today, discussed the impact of the Native American vote, indicating that a large number of Native Americans ran for elected office and that next year’s Congress will have a caucus with three Republicans and three Democrats. “This will give a bipartisan spin on Native issues,” he said.
    Native Americans were also elected to state Legislatures including Arizona and Kansas.
    Sharry, of America´s voice, said that the massive vote by minorities was also a rejection of Trump´s flagstone issue: xenophobia and racism.
    “An American public was forced by Donald Trump and his extremism to choose, and they chose to come down on the side of refugees and immigrants. This is a statement of what a multiracial majority in America said through this election. They said ‘we want to be a welcoming country. We don’t like Trump’s separation of families.’”