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Rehiring orders, nominee withdrawal and a Democratic quandary

 
Today's NATIONAL story

Judges tell Trump to rehire fired federal workers

What happened
Federal judges in Maryland and California yesterday ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of probationary workers they said were improperly fired across 19 agencies. Yesterday was also President Donald Trump's deadline for federal agencies to submit plans for further "mass" workforce reductions and significant budget cuts.

Who said what
The "back-to-back rulings were the most significant blow yet" to efforts by Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE team to "drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy," Reuters said. Judge William Alsup in San Francisco and, hours later, Judge James Bredar in Baltimore both said the White House had not followed the proper legal procedures to lay off at least 24,000 probationary employees. They also criticized the administration for blaming the mass firings on performance reviews, with Alsup calling that a "sham to avoid statutory requirements."

Alsup said the White House Office of Personnel Management had unlawfully directed the firings of probationary employees at six agencies, taking advantage of their fewer worker protections. "It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that's a lie," he said. Bredar's ruling, covering 18 agencies, focused on efforts to sidestep federal "rules intended to ensure that states are ready to bear the load cast upon them when mass layoffs occur."

Government lawyers said Trump has broad authority to fire workers and claimed that individual agencies directed the firings, not OPM. The administration "faces dozens of legal challenges to agency dismantlings" and other DOGE-related cuts and information access, The Washington Post said. Several "federal judges have grown frustrated by the inability of the government's own lawyers to answer straightforward questions" about DOGE's structure or activities, The New York Times said. Two judges in Washington this week ordered DOGE to hand over documents and answer questions about its role in Trump's government downsizing, and submit to Freedom of Information Act requests.

What next?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Trump administration "will immediately fight back" against the "absurd and unconstitutional" rulings. The White House also said it would release the details of each agency's second round of cuts and mass layoffs "once the plans are enacted."

 
 
Today's HEALTH story

Trump pulls nomination of anti-vax CDC pick

What happened
The White House yesterday withdrew the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon, a vaccine skeptic and former Florida congressmen, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Senate health committee announced Weldon's pulled nomination an hour before his confirmation hearing was scheduled to begin.

Who said what
Weldon said the White House told him Wednesday night there were "not enough votes to get me confirmed" in the Republican-led health committee. It was a "rare setback" for a Trump nominee in a Senate that has confirmed "every controversial choice brought to a full vote," The Washington Post said. Weldon's withdrawal was "partly driven by concerns about the political consequences" of his "longtime promotion of the false claim that vaccines can cause autism," especially during a growing measles outbreak that's "become a cautionary tale for the consequences of low immunization rates." 

Weldon would have been the "first CDC director nominee to have to go through Senate confirmation — the result of a provision in a law passed during the Biden administration," The Associated Press said. Had he been confirmed, Weldon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a fellow vaccine skeptic, would have wielded enormous control over U.S. vaccine policy.

What next?
It is "unclear" if the White House has a "backup candidate" in mind, The New York Times said. The CDC is being led in the interim by acting director Dr. Susan Monarez, recently the deputy director of the HHS's new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

 
 
Today's POLITICS Story

Schumer: Democrats will help pass spending bill

What happened
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last night that faced with two "terrible" options, he will vote for a House Republican stopgap spending bill, and he reportedly said he had enough Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster by his party. Only one other Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.), has publicly said he will back the legislation. Senate passage before midnight tonight would keep the government funded through September.

Who said what
Schumer's announcement "stunned many of his colleagues" and infuriated House Democrats, The New York Times said. Senate Democrats have "agonized" for days over what "many of them described an impossible choice between two evils." Those opposed to the bill, The Washington Post said, argued it lacks the typical directives that "dictate how money can be spent," enabling President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to "lay off government workers and seek to eliminate programs without congressional input."

Schumer said yesterday that while the GOP bill is "deeply partisan" and "nihilistic," he believed allowing Trump to "take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option." Trump would have "full authority to deem whole agencies" nonessential, "furloughing staff with no promise that they would ever be rehired," he said, while congressional Republicans could revive only "their favorite departments and agencies," leaving the rest to "languish" indefinitely.

What next?
The bill, now likely to pass this afternoon, funds the government at current levels until Sept. 30, "with some key exceptions," The Wall Street Journal said. It cuts $13 billion for nondefense programs, boosts military spending by $6 billion, claws back another $20.2 billion of IRS funds to increase tax compliance by wealthy people and leaves Washington, D.C., with a $1.1 billion shortfall.

 
 

It's not all bad

An Australian man with an implanted artificial titanium heart recently became the first person to ever leave the hospital with the device. The titanium heart kept the unidentified man alive for 100 days, until a donor heart could be fitted in his chest. The device's ability to "sustain him for so long" is being heralded as a sign the "artificial heart could potentially offer a long-term option for people suffering heart failure," said CNN.

 
 
Under the radar

The Supreme Court this week breathed new life into a claim by the Cassirer family over an impressionist painting that was stolen from their ancestors by the Nazis during World War II. The artwork currently hangs in a Spanish museum, and the heirs have been trying to reclaim it for decades.

Lower courts previously ruled that the museum had the right to keep the painting, Camille Pissarro's 1897 "Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain." The central question in the revived case is whether the museum's ownership of the work should be "reconsidered under a California law passed last year that aims to strengthen the claims of Holocaust survivors and their families seeking to recover stolen art," said The Associated Press. 

The artwork was originally owned by Lilly Cassirer Neubauer, a Jew who "surrendered the painting to the Nazis in order to get visas for herself and her husband to leave Germany," the AP said. Estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars, it's one of untold pieces of artwork plundered by the Nazis.

The painting ended up in Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in 1992. The Cassirer family has sued several times to have the work returned to them, but a federal judge in Los Angeles and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that the Spanish museum had "lawfully obtained the painting," said the Los Angeles Times. Now, the Supreme Court has ordered the 9th Circuit to reexamine the case.

 
 
On this day

March 14, 2004

Vladimir Putin was reelected to a second term as president of Russia. He has maintained a stranglehold on power in Russia throughout the 21st century, serving continuously as either president or prime minister since 1999. He won his latest term in 2024, in an election not considered free or fair.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

"Trump ramps up trade war threats," USA Today says on Friday's front page. With his threat of "200% tariff" on European wine and spirits, "alcohol lands on front line of global trade war," The Wall Street Journal says. Trump's "200% tax threat on wines" called "untenable," the San Francisco Chronicle says. "Leaders standing up to Trump widen their support at home," The New York Times says, while "Republicans in Congress cede power" to him. "Democrats torn as shutdown looms," The Boston Globe says. "Cancer takes" Rep. Raúl Grijalva "at age 77," the Arizona Republic says, the second House Democrat lost to the disease this month.

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Four more beers!

Moosehead brewery in New Brunswick, Canada, is offering customers the "Presidential Pack" of 1,461 cans of lager, which it says is "just enough to get through the full presidential term" of Donald Trump. The best way to "weather four years of political uncertainty" is by drinking a "truly Canadian beer," said Moosehead marketing director Karen Grigg. Available only to Canadians living in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario, the pack costs $2,430, including delivery.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Bryan Dozier / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images; Alex Wong / Getty Images; Photographer Name / Alamy; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images