A federal appeals court issued a divided decision on Tuesday, instructing a lower-court judge in Maryland to throw out a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general against the Trump administration for mass layoffs of federal employees.

According to The Washington Post, the three judge panel for the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit "had been asked by the federal government to weigh the appropriateness of a preliminary injunction issued in April by U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar that instructed the Trump administration to rehire the fired probationary workers and proceed with their terminations only if they are done legally — including abiding by a federal procedure that requires states affected by mass layoffs to receive a 60-day warning, which the Trump administration did not initially give."

In the 2-1 ruling decided by a Reagan-appointed and Trump-appointed judge, respectively, the court found the attorneys general lack the standing to bring the lawsuit.

“We acknowledge that the abrupt and indiscriminate dismissal of the probationary employees here exacted all-too-human costs upon those affected,” wrote Judge Harvie Wilkinson. “But this real impact on the employees, who are not parties here, cannot govern our review.”

The ruling instructs Bredar to dismiss the case outright, unless the states appeal the case further. Per the report, "It’s unclear what impact the ruling would have on the administration’s efforts to fully carry out its plan to downsize the federal government by eliminating thousands of jobs."

This is not the only case challenging Trump's ability to ignore the 60-day notice requirement for mass layoffs; another lawsuit over this is still being litigated in California.

As US President Donald Trump expands his authoritarian takeovers of Democrat-led cities, more than 1,000 students from four universities in Washington, DC, walked out to protest the Republican's recent actions in the nation's capital.

Students from American University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Howard University are protesting Trump's deployment of National Guard troops and federalization of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), which have also provoked a lawsuit from DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb and a congressional resolution that aims to stop his takeover.

"Students are showing the country that we won't be silent while Trump tries to strip DC residents of our rights," American University student organizer Asher Heisten said in a statement circulated Tuesday by the youth-led Sunrise Movement.

"When Trump sends federal forces into DC, he is trying to intimidate and silence us," Heisten continued. "But students are proving that we will fight back to reject Trump's dangerous authoritarianism."

The students were joined by a pair of progressive lawmakers, US Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

"Trump's federal takeover is a direct attack on democracy and the people of Washington, DC," Jayapal said in a statement. "The students leading today's walkouts are showing the entire nation what it means to resist authoritarianism with strength and solidarity."

The congresswoman told a crowd at Georgetown, her alma mater, that "this is an unprecedented moment in our country, where we have an authoritarian leader who is deploying federal troops to Washington, DC—to cities across the country, militarizing our streets, kidnapping people on the streets."

"The only bulwark that we have is the people, and so what you are doing here today is so important, because, at the end of the day, the checks and balances that were supposed to be built into our Constitution so that we could protect our constitutional rights are not working right now," she stressed, calling out Republicans in Congress and US Supreme Court justices for refusing to hold Trump accountable.

Acknowledging the thousands of protesters who marched to the White House on Saturday, Jayapal declared that "we are not powerless," a line that drew loud cheers from the crowd.

Markey, in his remarks at Georgetown, noted that when the president's supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in hopes of stopping the certification of his 2020 electoral loss, "Trump refused to send in troops."

"He allowed for that assault," Markey said of the attempted insurrection. "But now, here in DC, the president is attempting to create an impression that the crime rate is going up rather than down, that there is in fact a crisis here in the District of Columbia."

"And what he is doing, not just here in DC, but in Chicago, in LA, in Boston, is to try to characterize communities that are majority minority, that are majority Black and brown, as being unsafe to live," Markey noted. "And it's not a coincidence... It is to scare America. You cannot make America great again by making America hate again."

Markey argued that "this is not about policing, this is about political theater," and denounced Trump's DC takeover as a "charade."

Like the lawmakers, Georgetown student Scout Cardillo suggested that the DC takeover isn't just about the district. Cardillo told The Washington Post that "the effects of the occupation of DC and federalization of MPD is going to be felt throughout the country imminently, and it is on us to take a stand and fight back."

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being criticized and mocked for his latest take on mass shootings, suggesting that video games and psychiatric medicines could be to blame, despite numerous studies that largely show otherwise.

The secretary, an attorney with no medical training who is widely regarded as a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine activist, appeared to dismiss existing research on the potential effects of video games and psychiatric medications—studies that have found no link to mass shooting violence.

“Oh, there are many, many things that happened in the 1990s that could explain these” mass shootings, Kennedy claimed.

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“One is the dependence on the psychiatric drugs, which is in our country, is unlike any other country in the world,” he alleged. Studies have shown that most teenage mass shooters had not been prescribed psychiatric drugs.

Kennedy also said that “there could be connections with video games, with social media, a number of things, and we are looking at that at NIH.”

Video games, however, have been found not to have a causal effect on mass shootings.

Brady, the nonprofit working to prevent gun violence, responded to Kennedy, writing: “Access to guns is the problem. Not mental illness. Not SSRIs. Not video games. Not transgender communities. These are hateful and dangerously misguided distractions from the only real solution: gun reform.”

Kennedy, in his remarks, noted that “Switzerland has a comparable number of guns as we do, and the last mass shooting they had was 23 years ago. We’re having mass shootings every 23 hours.”

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Kennedy’s claim about Switzerland’s gun ownership is questionable, but reports have shown that a large number of Swiss residents rely on guns for hunting, sport, and prior military service.

He also declared that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now conducting studies “to look at the correlation and the connection, potential connection between over medicating our kids and this violence.”

Critics jumped on Kennedy’s remarks.

Journalist Jane Coaston mocked the Secretary, writing, “finally, we’re back at ‘video games did it,’ I love the 90s.”

“I am 28 years old,” wrote journalist Matthew Cardenas, “and have played games like Call of Duty, Halo and Gears of War since I was a teenager. Not once have the video games motivated me to commit a mass shooting. This is such a lazy argument.”

“This is no different than asking a random person why shootings occur,” observed Robert E. Kelly, a professor of political science. “He’s obviously not read any work on the issue. He’s just grasping Trump’s refusal to choose people w/ topical expertise is maddening.”

Former defense journalist Kevin Baron blasted Kennedy, urging him to “just Google it.”

See the video and social media post below or at this link.

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