The Trump administration cut about half the agency’s work force, saying the move would enable it to deliver services more effectively. The attorneys general called the layoffs “reckless and illegal.”

It’s important to note that the Republican plan has always been to gut everything, and then ignore the courts. Here’s J.D. Vance back in 2022:

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

This is a description, essentially, of a coup.

This means the one lever that Democrats really have is the ability to refuse to end debate on a continuing resolution to fund the government, since that requires a 60-vote supermajority to pass. It’s worth giving your Senators a call and asking them to vote ‘no’ on cloture for the continuing resolution until the lawbreaking is reversed.