Employees at one federal agency were reportedly kept up for more than a day and a half straight due to the demands of a staffer from South African centibillionaire's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
That's according to a Friday article from CNN, which reported on DOGE staffer Gavin Kliger's alleged treatment of workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The allegations stem from a sworn declaration a CFPB employee made in U.S. District judge Amy Berman Jackson's court anonymously out of fear of retaliation.
In the declaration, the worker stated that Kliger "kept CFPB staffers working for 36 hours straight to send out mass layoff notices" and was apparently "screaming at those he thought weren’t working fast enough." Kliger — who Reuters reported had amplified content from white supremacist Nick Fuentes — has since been ordered to appear at a hearing scheduled for April 28 pertaining to the mass firing of CFPB employees.
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On Friday, Judge Jackson ruled that the roughly 1,500 fired CFPB workers (out of approximately 1,700) would have to be reinstated, as she weighed whether their firings were a violation of a prior court ordered preventing DOGE from effectively shutting down the agency aimed at protecting American consumers from financial scams.
That prior decision ruled that the mass firings of workers at the agency were illegal, as it would prevent the CFPB from meeting its statutory requirements that Congress legislated at the time of its creation. Because the CFPB is a Congressionally authorized agency, it would take an act of Congress to dismantle it.
The Trump administration argued that the mass firings were legitimate, asserting that the CFPB had "pushed well beyond the limits of the law" in its work while "engag[ing] in intrusive and wasteful fishing expedition. Mark Paoletta, who the administration named as the CFPB's chief legal officer, insisted that leaving the CFPB with just 200 employees was sufficient for the agency to fulfull its statutory obligations.
"An approximately 200 person agency allows the Bureau to fulfill its statutory duties and better aligns with the new leadership’s priorities and management philosophy," he said.
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