A federal judge ruled Friday that the Department of Education violated the First Amendment rights of some agency employees when it sent out-of-office messages on their behalf that blamed Democrats for the government shutdown.
The ruling from US District Judge Christopher Cooper is the latest court rebuke of controversial moves by the Trump administration during what has now become the longest shutdown in US history.
Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said the department had unconstitutionally compelled its employees’ speech when it tinkered with the out-of-office messages for furloughed workers so that they included language blaming the shutdown on “Democrat Senators” who “are blocking” passage of a “clean continuing resolution” that would fund the government.
It’s also yet another violation of the Hatch Act. This makes the… let’s see… 7 billionth time Republicans have violated this law? Or is it up to 8 billion violations?
Lol…
The only way the Hatch Act is actually used, is to make government employees not be able to assume office if they win an election.
No one gets fired or written up for saying something political, even when on the clock.
It’s just to divide the actual federal workers from the puppets the oligarchs bought off.
If someone with experience working in the government wants to run for office, they need to quit their job before they enter any races. Which is a huge hurdle, although with the DRP, furlough, and other bullshit. A lot of people with experience actually working in the government are gonna start running for office.
Because now they’re no longer government employees and thats all that was holding them back
I’m old enough to remember when forging government documents resulted in impeachment.
Remember when impeachment meant something? Because it doesnt anymore. Good old flying pieces of metal still work though. Just ask Charlie.
Charlie’s wife didn’t even wait for the body to cool before she was on that next grift. Are we sure she didn’t put a hit out on him?
when has impeachment meant anything? literally just one time it actually lead to someone being held accountable…
How do Republicans square that hole of OBVIOUSLY being on the wrong side of history when your are literally falsifying documents to make your point.
They should all find the nearest cactus and go fuck themselves
Because they don’t care about morals or the country, they care about winning. If being a fraud is the shortest path to power they’ll be frauds. If being a fascist is the shortest path to power they’ll be fascists.
They can’t be on the wrong side of history when history is written by the winners and they already want to win at any cost.
So the person who did it and the person who ordered it will now be charged with hundreds of counts of violating civil rights? Right?
Right?
At this point I believe that USA reds are so focused on remaining in power, because to do the shit they’ve done they basically all became criminals and the moment they lose power is the moment they’ll have to face consequences.
And, simply wanting power aside, they’re scared shitless of that.
But it paints a really grim picture for USA, because the most dangerous animal is the cornered one - as soon as they’ll start actually losing, they will drag ya all to hell :/
It’s not just DOE, a bunch of agencieS were forced to use “out of office” autoreplies blaming Dems, even if that employee was still having to work without pay.
No talk. Action.
NATO: no action, talk only.
This funny. Thank you I never hear this!
I’m super excited to watch as they are subjected to the pain of zero consequences for this.
So fucking do something about it. Pointing out the constant illegality without doing anything about it is tantamount to permission.
I find it disheartening that CNN, formerly educated journalists, now no longer understand why ‘email’ doesn’t get pluralized.
News organizations have in-house usage rules for words, especially modern words that have evolving usage.
Email as a mass noun plural is correct usage, as in “this server handles a massive amount of email every day”. Emails can also be contextually correct as a plural, eg “I received hundreds of emails today”.
As the number of email edited by the department and sent out is being treated as a countable noun, this headline is definitely acceptable usage.
They did what now 0.0
