A traffic light shows red in front of the US Capitol, in Washington DC , October 14, 2025.
Celal Gunes/ | Anadolu | Getty Images
A federal judge on Tuesday extended a temporary order blocking the Trump administration’s plans to fire thousands of federal employees during the government shutdown.
The order, called a preliminary injunction, prohibits the administration from issuing reduction-in-force, or RIF, notices until the government reopens, Judge Susan Illston said during a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Illston had imposed a short-term firing freeze, known as a temporary restraining order or TRO, on Oct. 15.
The lawsuit before Illston was filed on the eve of the shutdown by unions representing federal civilian employees, who preemptively challenged the Trump administration’s stated plans to conduct mass layoffs in the event of a lapse in federal funding.
Days after the shutdown began, the plaintiffs expanded their lawsuit to include dozens of additional federal agencies and their leaders.
The Trump administration said it had issued around 4,000 RIFs on Oct. 10.
White House Budget Director Russell Vought, an author of the right-wing government policy guidebook known as Project 2025, said the following week that the total RIF number would likely “end up being north of 10,000.”
Vought’s remark came the same day that Illston granted her TRO, which slammed the mid-shutdown layoff plans as “unprecedented in our country’s history.”
President Donald Trump has said that the shutdown, which is now the second-longest ever, gives his administration an “opportunity” to slash what he has described as “Democrat Agencies.”
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