【中美创新时报2025 年 2 月 7 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）周四，联邦法官进一步制止了特朗普总统对美国政府的全面改组，其中马萨诸塞州的一名法官暂时禁止官员通过延期辞职方案解雇数千名政府雇员。法官乔治·奥图尔 (George O’Toole Jr.) 阻止人事管理办公室推进该计划，直到周一在波士顿举行法庭听证会。《纽约时报》记者扎克·蒙塔古和玛德琳·恩戈对此作了下述详细报道。
这份辞职提议原定于周四午夜到期，这是特朗普和亿万富翁埃隆·马斯克为大幅削减联邦政府规模而做出的广泛努力的一部分
另一位联邦法官发布了一项临时限制令，限制马斯克的同事访问财政部政府支付系统的能力。司法部同意了这项命令，冻结了目前的情况——正如一位政府律师在昨天的听证会上所描述的那样。
这意味着，被财政部聘为“特殊政府雇员”的两名马斯克同事可以继续访问系统中的数据，但只能“只读”访问，无法更改任何内容。他们不能与马斯克或部门外的其他人分享这些信息，财政部新聘用的“特殊政府雇员”也不能访问这些信息。
另外，美联社报道称，马斯克的政府效率部小组寻求进入财政部支付系统，以阻止资金流向美国国际开发署，而美国政府已表示希望将其解散。
DOGE 阻止美国国际开发署付款的努力破坏了该部门在周二致联邦立法者的一封信中做出的保证，即它只寻求审查付款的完整性，并作为审计过程的一部分对系统拥有“只读访问权限”。
美联社援引两位知情人士的话称，他们因担心遭到报复而要求匿名。
与此同时，第三位联邦法官延长了一项限制令，以阻止特朗普政府冻结高达 3 万亿美元联邦资金的企图，以回应 22 个州的诉讼。这一禁令将一直有效，直到罗德岛州初审法院法官约翰·麦康奈尔 (John J. McConnell Jr.) 决定是否暂停冻结，直到他对此案作出最终裁决。
资金冻结促使马萨诸塞州美国参议员埃德·马基 (Ed Markey) 等人在环境保护局外举行抗议，呼吁停止他们所说的特朗普对清洁空气、清洁水和气候行动关键项目的违宪资金削减。
马基和其他发言人表示，尽管有多项法院命令，但特朗普政府官员未能根据 2022 年通胀削减法案和 2021 年基础设施法案发放数十亿美元的环境支出。马基说，马斯克“想让环保警察停止巡逻”，并将该机构变成“每个污染者的盟友”。
迅速裁减联邦政府员工的努力被称为“岔路口”计划，这是上周发送给大约 200 万联邦雇员的信息的开篇，该计划为员工提供了辞职并领取工资至 9 月底的机会。工会曾质疑该计划的合法性，并敦促员工不要在周四的最后期限前接受该提议。
“我禁止被告采取行动执行所谓的岔路口指令，等待对这些问题的简报和口头辩论完成，”波士顿联邦法官奥图尔说。
这一决定是特朗普遭遇的最新法律挫折，他还拥有两项广泛的禁令，禁止他在全国范围内终止出生公民权。
目前尚不清楚这一决定将如何影响已经通过该计划辞职的联邦雇员。奥图尔指示代表政府的律师迅速联系所有收到辞职提议的雇员，告知他们该计划已暂停。
联邦政府人力资源机构人事管理办公室表示，截止日期已延长至 2 月 10 日，但该计划并未取消。
白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特周四在法官裁决发布时告诉记者，已有 40,000 多名联邦工作人员接受了这一提议。
三个政府工会——美国政府雇员联合会、美国州、县和市政雇员联合会以及全国政府雇员协会——以及自由派非营利组织民主前进组织已提起诉讼，以阻止延期辞职计划，他们称该计划在法律上不合理。
工会认为，这一提议是非法的，部分原因是，如果国会在 9 月份之前尚未拨款补偿工人，政府就无法承诺支付工人的工资。
提议的条件模糊，合法性不明，也引起了相当大的恐慌，因为员工们很难理解它实际上提供了哪些保护。
教育部的员工周三被明确告知，即使他们接受了他们所看到的协议，他们仍可能在周五被解雇，因为他们已经放弃了起诉或收回承诺的七个月工资的任何权利。
周三晚上，社会保障管理局的人力资源办公室通过电子邮件向部门员工发送了一份交易协议样本，其中包括一项规定，即联邦拨款中断（除非国会在 3 月 14 日之前同意新的支出协议，否则将发生这种情况）不会影响该协议。但五段之后，该协议明确指出，政府的义务“取决于拨款的可用性”。
最近几天，人事管理办公室发布备忘录称，对该计划合法性的担忧是“毫无根据的”，离职协议将具有法律约束力。
“工会领导人和政客让联邦工作人员拒绝这一提议，这对他们来说是一种严重的伤害，”该机构发言人麦克劳林·皮诺弗在一份声明中表示。“这是一个难得的、慷慨的机会。”
联邦官员加大了对公务员的压力，要求他们接受这笔交易，并警告未来几个月可能会裁员。
总务管理局公共建筑服务部门专员迈克尔·彼得斯警告员工，该机构未来将“大幅缩小”。
马斯克对总务管理局特别感兴趣，会见了该机构的代理局长，并派遣政府效率部成员采访员工。
其他机构的数百名员工，包括环境保护署，正在试用期或因帮助管理多元化项目而被停职，被告知他们可能即将被解雇，这让许多人开始考虑是否接受这笔交易对他们最有利。
其他办公室的一些高级官员在截止日期前辞职。美国数字服务局副局长泰德·卡斯滕森在一封电子邮件中宣布辞职。该机构为政府提供科技人才，在特朗普就职当天被马斯克的团队接管，并更名为“美国 DOGE 服务局”。
“我不会选择分叉，但在与家人和其他值得信赖的顾问讨论后，我决定是时候走一条不同的道路了，”卡斯滕森在给团队的一封电子邮件中写道，《纽约时报》看到了这封邮件。“对我来说，让团队走到一个每个人都可以选择自己前进道路的地方很重要，这就是我们今天的处境。”
本报告包含美联社的材料。
题图：众议员保罗·通科和亚萨明·安萨里以及参议员爱德华·马基在周四被禁止进入环境保护局与政府效率部 (DOGE) 官员会面后与国土安全部警察进行了交谈。Al Drago/Getty
附原英文报道：
Trump’s remake of government meets more delays in court
By Zach Montague and Madeleine Ngo New York Times,Updated February 6, 2025
Representatives Paul Tonko and Yassamin Ansari, and Senator Edward Markey spoke with Department of Homeland Security police after being blocked from entering the Environmental Protection Agency to meet with Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials on Thursday.Al Drago/Getty
Federal judges put further brakes on President Trump’s sweeping remake of the US government on Thursday, with one in Massachusetts temporarily barring officials from pushing out thousands of government employees through a deferred resignation package.
Judge George O’Toole Jr. stopped the Office of Personnel Management from moving forward with the program until a court hearing in Boston on Monday.
The resignation offer, which was set to expire by midnight Thursday, is part of a wide-ranging effort by Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to drastically cut the size of the federal government
Another federal judge issued a temporary restraining order limiting the ability of Musk’s associates to access a Treasury Department government payments system. The order, which the Justice Department agreed to, freezes the current situation — as described by a government lawyer at a hearing yesterday — in place.
That means two Musk associates who have been hired as “special government employees” at the Treasury Department can continue to access data from the system, but with “read only” access and no ability to change anything. They can’t share the information with Musk or others outside the department, and no new “special government employees” hired at the Treasury Department can be given access to it.
Separately, the Associated Press reported that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency group sought access to the Department of Treasury payment system to stop money from flowing to the US Agency for International Development, which the administration has said it wants to all but dissolve it.
DOGE’s efforts to stop USAID payments undermine assurances the department gave to federal lawmakers in a Tuesday letter that it sought only to review the integrity of the payments and had “read-only access” to the system as part of an audit process.
The AP cited two people familiar who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Meanwhile, a third federal judge extended a restraining order that blocks the Trump administration’s attempts to freeze as much as $3 trillion in federal money, in response to a lawsuit by 22 states. The block will now remain in place until Judge John J. McConnell Jr., a trial court judge in Rhode Island, decides whether to pause the freeze until he has made a final ruling on the case.
The funding freeze prompted US Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and others to stage a protest outside the Environmental Protection Agency calling for an end to what they say is Trump’s unconstitutional funding cuts to critical programs for clean air, clean water, and climate action.
Despite multiple court orders, Trump administration officials have failed to release billions in environmental spending under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 infrastructure law, Markey and other speakers said. Musk “wants to take environmental cops off the beat,” Markey said, and turn the agency into “every polluters’ ally.”
The efforts to reduce swiftly the federal government’s workforce, known as the “Fork in the Road” plan for the opening sentence of the message sent to roughly 2 million federal employees last week, offered workers the chance to resign and be paid through the end of September. Labor unions had challenged the legality of the program and urged employees not to accept the offer ahead of Thursday’s deadline.
“I enjoin the defendants from taking action to implement the so-called Fork directive, pending the completion of briefing and oral argument on the issues,” O’Toole, the federal judge in Boston, said.
The decision was the latest legal setback for Trump, who also has two broad injunctions barring his end to birthright citizenship nationwide.
It remains unclear how the decision will affect federal employees who had already signed up to resign through the program. O’Toole instructed lawyers representing the government to rapidly contact all employees who had received the offer, letting them know the program was paused.
The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources agency, said the deadline was extended to Feb. 10, but the program was not canceled.
More than 40,000 federal workers have accepted the offer, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday as the judge’s ruling was being issued.
Three government unions — the American Federation of Government Employees; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and the National Association of Government Employees — and the liberal nonprofit group Democracy Forward had sued to block the deferred resignation plan, which they called legally unsound.
The unions argued the offer is unlawful in part because the government could not promise to pay workers when Congress has not yet appropriated funds to compensate them through September.
The vague conditions and uncertain legality of the offer also led to considerable consternation as employees struggled to understand what protections it actually afforded.
Employees at the Education Department were told explicitly Wednesday that even if they accepted the agreement they were shown, they could still be fired Friday after having already waived any rights to sue or recover the seven months of salaries promised.
On Wednesday evening, the Social Security Administration’s human resources office emailed department employees a sample deal agreement, which included a stipulation that a lapse in federal appropriations — which would happen unless Congress agreed to a new spending deal by March 14 — would not affect the deal. But five paragraphs later, the agreement makes clear that the administration’s obligations “are subject to the availability of appropriations.”
In recent days, the Office of Personnel Management had issued memos saying that concerns about the program’s legality were “misplaced” and that separation agreements would be legally binding.
“Union leaders and politicians telling federal workers to reject this offer are doing them a serious disservice,” McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement. “This is a rare, generous opportunity.”
Federal officials had intensified pressure on civil servants to take the deal, warning about the likelihood of staff reductions in the coming months.
Michael Peters, commissioner of the General Services Administration’s public buildings service division, warned employees the agency would be “substantially smaller” in the future.
Musk has taken a particular interest in the General Services Administration, meeting with the agency’s acting administrator and deploying members of the Department of Government Efficiency to interview employees.
Hundreds of employees at other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, who are working on probationary status or had been put on administrative leave for helping administer diversity programs, were told they could be fired imminently, causing many to weigh whether they would be best served by accepting the deal.
Some senior officials at other offices resigned before the deadline. Ted Carstensen, a deputy administrator for the U.S. Digital Service, announced in an email that he was stepping down from his role. The agency, which houses tech talent in government, was taken over by Musk’s team and renamed the “U.S. DOGE Service” on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
“I am not taking the fork, but after discussions with my family and other trusted advisers I decided that it’s time for me to pursue a different path,” Carstensen wrote in an email to his team, seen by The New York Times. “It was important to me to get the team to a place where everyone could choose their own path forward, which is where we find ourselves today.”
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
