A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plans to lay off thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown, siding with unions, which have argued that the dismissals are illegal.

Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said on Oct. 15 that the administration must halt its layoffs, less than a week after eight agencies — Commerce, Education, Energy, Environmental Protection, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury — had issued reduction-in-force notices to more than 4,100 workers.

“The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” the judge said.

White House budget director Russell Vought told “The Charlie Kirk Show” that same day that the administration planned to push ahead with layoffs, suggesting that the government may lay off more than 10,000 workers.

“We’re definitely talking thousands of people,” Vought said. “We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy.”

Washington Post, Oct. 15