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President Donald Trumps administration on Monday renewed its request for the Supreme Court to clear the way for plans to downsize the federal workforce while a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities proceeds. The high court filing came after an appeals court refused to freeze a California-based judges order halting the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nations food-safety system and health care for veterans. In her ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trumps administration lacked congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. The administration initially asked the justices to step in last month, but withdrew its appeal for technical, legal reasons. The latest filing is one in a series of emergency appeals arguing federal judges had overstepped their authority. Illston’s order rests on the indefensible premise that the president needs explicit statutory authorization from Congress to exercise his core Article II authority to superintend the internal personnel decisions of the executive branch,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the new appeal. Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk left his role last week. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs, or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go. Illstons order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the presidents workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. The Supreme Court set a deadline of next Monday for a response from the unions and cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco. Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court later blocked his order. By Mark Sherman, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) announced its plans last week to transition to Universal Open Access chargers for electric vehicles as soon as June 6. In preparation for the transition, the NJTA asked Tesla to remove 64 existing Tesla Superchargers from the highly trafficked thoroughfare. Applegreen Electric will provide the new third-party chargers, which will be compatible with all makes and models of EVs, the NJTA said. “The universal chargers will be available as of June 6 at the Vince Lombardi, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Stockton, James Fenimore Cooper, Joyce Kilmer, and Walt Whitman Service Areas,” the authority said in a statement. “The Turnpike Authority is working diligently with Applegreen to get the universal chargers online soon at three other Turnpike locations.” According to the NJTA, the universal chargers are expected to be operational at the Molly Pitcher Service Area next month and the Clara Barton and John Fenwick service areas this fall. The transition is part of a larger agreement The NJTA had previously reached an agreement with Applegreen Electric to operate service areas along the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway. An amendment to the agreement was authorized in 2023 to include the installation of EV chargers. As part of the amended agreement, Applegreen Electric will install and operate 80 EV charging ports by the end of this year and a total of 240 EV charging ports by April 2033. Blackstone-backed Applegreen Electric says it has more than 600 locations across Ireland, the U.K., and the United States. In the U.S., its chargers are concentrated in the Northeast. Tesla and Tesla users are not happy Tesla confirmed the news in a statement on X: “The New Jersey Turnpike Authority (“NJTA”) has chosen a sole third-party charging provider to serve the New Jersey Turnpike and is not allowing us to co-locate. As a result, NJTA requested 64 existing Supercharger stalls on the New Jersey Turnpike to not be renewed and be decommissioned.” The automotive company explained that it had spent the last three years building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike in preparation for this outcome. Tesla said it remains hopeful that NJTA or New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy will reverse the decision. In response to a tweet that shared the news, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote: “Sounds like corruption.” Paul Kanitra, a Republican member of the New Jersey General Assembly, expressed outrage over the decision. “I agree that these decisions by the NJTA are absolutely absurd and will be asking that it gets looked into immediately,” he posted on X. Fast Company contacted Murphy’s office for comment and will update if we receive a response. Some EV drivers prefer Superchargers The reaction to the news has been mixed. In a recent article for InsideEVs, writer Suvrat Kothari discussed the news and shared his experiences using different EV charging stations along the New Jersey Turnpike. Kothari explained he has had trouble when using non-Tesla chargers. [W]atching Tesla drivers pull in, charge, and drive off effortlessly is undeniably enviable,” Kothari said. The news has also generated robust debate on the Electricvehicles subreddit, with more than 660 comments as of Monday afternoon.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus relief, and the remote work boomwhich increased demand for space and unlocked WFH arbitrage as high earners were able to keep their income from a job in, say, New York City or Los Angeles, and buy a home in, say, Austin or Tampa. Federal Reserve researchers estimate that new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand. Unlike housing demand, housing stock supply isnt as elastic and can’t ramp up as quickly. As a result, the heightened pandemic era demand drained the market of active inventory and overheated home prices, with U.S. home prices rising a staggering 43.2% between March 2020 and June 2022. Of course, a lot has changed since then. Not long after mortgage rates spiked in 2022 and return-to-office mandates gained a bit of momentum, national demand in the for-sale market pulled back and the pandemic housing boom fizzled out. The longer we’ve remained in this strained housing demand environment, the more the total number of U.S. active sellers is outmatching the total number of active homebuyers. According to a recent Redfin analysis, there were nearly 490,041 more U.S. home sellers than buyers in April 2025. Thats the most that home sellers have outmatched homebuyers in over a decade. For comparison, at the height of the pandemic housing boom in April 2022, there were 436,106 more U.S. homebuyers than sellers. The balance of power in the U.S. housing market has shifted toward buyers, but a lot of sellers have yet to see or accept the writing on the wall. Many are still holding out hope that their home is the exception and will fetch top dollar, writes Redfin economist Asad Khan. But as sellers see their homes sit longer on the market and notice fewer buyers coming through on tour, more of them will realize that the market has adjusted and reset their expectations accordingly. According to Redfin, theres a wide variation across the country. Thats something that ResiClub has also previously noted. Most of the softest housing markets where homebuyers have the most power are in the Sun Beltin particular, pockets of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and Texas. While the tightest markets where home sellers still have the most power are in pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. While regional variation continues to exist, the housing market across much of the country has, directionally speaking, shifted toward homebuyers over the past year. How did Redfin calculate this? The number of sellers in the market is simply active listings, or the total number of homes actively for sale at any point during a given month. Active listings data come from the MLS, writes Redfin. Redfin economists added: Because there is not a similar metric measuring how many buyers are actively in the market, we developed one. We took active listings and pending sales from the MLS [multiple listing services] to estimate what fraction of homes on the market will sell within a given month. Analogously, we estimated what fraction of buyers on the market will find a home within a given month using Redfin data on the typical time from first tour to purchase. The ratio of these two data points approximates the ratio of buyers to sellers in the market. “We then multiplied that ratio by the number of active listings to get the estimated total number of buyers in the market. Note that our estimate of buyers is not based on Redfin traffic or customer acquisition data, and the purpose of this analysis is to measure the number of buyers and sellers in the housing market as a whole. All metrics that go into our calculation of the number of buyers and sellers in the market are seasonally adjusted. In terms of market labels, Redfin economists view the current housing market as a little softer/weaker than Zillow economists do. (You can find Zillow’s updated market labels here.)
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E-Commerce
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