A California federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US Department of Defense and other federal agencies to carry out the mass firings of thousands of recently hired employees.
District Judge, William Alsup in San Francisco gave the order during a hearing, stating that the US Office of Personnel Management lacked the power to order federal agencies to fire any workers, including probationary employees who typically have less than a year of experience.
Recall that President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, are overseeing an effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including through job cuts.
The efforts have led to a fierce pushback from Democrats, unions and federal workers, who argue the job cuts are illegal and could compromise government functions.
Already, the administration has been forced to recall some personnel in critical roles.
However, Trump has backed Musk to the hilt and has embraced Musk’s goal of slicing $1 trillion from the nation’s $6.7 trillion budget.
It was gathered on Thursday that hundreds of probationary workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts climate science, were notified they were being let go.
At the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, the head of the agency’s Transformation and Strategy Office, a group of 60 employees working on modernization efforts, told his team on Thursday that there was a risk the whole office would be eliminated.
The chief of the office, David Padrino, told his team that he planned to resign effective a week from Friday, adding that IRS executives have been told to brace for a drastic cut to headcount in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Office of Personnel Management, OPM, the federal human resources agency, has instructed at least two dozen of its own employees working remotely that they must relocate to Washington to keep their jobs.
In his ruling, Alsup ordered OPM to rescind a January 20 memo and a February 14 email directing agencies to identify probationary employees who are not mission-critical and terminate them.