The administration began laying off federal workers Friday.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from laying off federal workers during the government shutdown, which has now stretched to two weeks.

Two unions sued the Trump administration last month ahead of the shutdown after the White House signaled a plan to lay off workers through “reductions in force” (RIFs) at federal agencies. At a hearing on Wednesday, a federal judge in the Northern District of California granted the unions’ motion to issue a temporary restraining order preventing the layoffs, which began on Friday.

“The activities that are being undertaken here are contrary to the laws,” U.S. District Judge Susan Yvonne Illston said. “You can’t do this in a nation of laws.”

Illston said that the Trump administration had “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending and government functioning to assume that all bets are off, the laws don’t apply to them anymore, and they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like.”

Illston said that she believed the plaintiffs can demonstrate that the Trump administration’s actions were illegal, in excess of authority and “arbitrary and capricious.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Themins Hedges argued that employment-related harms were “reparable” and that losing employment was not an “irreparable harm.”

But the judge issued a temporary restraining order, saying it would go into effect immediately. She said she plans to issue the order in writing later Wednesday.

An earlier filing from the government stated that the administration had begun laying off at least 4,000 workers.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said that Trump “seems to think his government shutdown is distracting people from the harmful and lawlessness actions of his administration, but the American people are holding him accountable, including in the courts.”

The judge’s statements, Perryman said, “make clear that the president’s targeting of federal workers — a move straight out of Project 2025’s playbook — is unlawful,” adding that “playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful and a threat to everyone in our nation.”

Highlights from Oct. 15, 2025

• SHUTDOWN VOTES: The Senate failed to advance the House-passed short-term spending bill for a ninth time as the government shutdown stretched into a third week. Republicans needed at least five more Democrats to break a filibuster and have made no progress in the more than two weeks since the shutdown began.
• LAYOFFS BLOCKED FOR NOW: A federal judge today temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from laying off federal employees during the shutdown. Russell Vought, director of the White House budget office, estimated the administration could cut more than 10,000 positions during the shutdown.
• AN UNPRECEDENTED ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Trump today said he authorized the CIA to take unspecified action in Venezuela. His remarks come hours after The New York Times published a story reporting that the administration had approved the agency to commit covert, lethal action in the country.
• VOTING RIGHTS: The conservative-majority Supreme Court today appeared open to undermining the landmark Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana. The justices heard oral arguments about whether states can ever consider race in drawing new districts while seeking to comply with Section 2 of the 1965 law.

Judge says Trump administration’s layoffs are ‘far from normal’

In her written order tonight, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston wrote that the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force (RIFs) efforts during a government shutdown “are not ‘ordinary’ RIFs in any sense of the word.”

“Based on the record before the Court, some employees do not even know if they are being laid off because the RIF notices were sent to government e-mail accounts, and furloughed employees may not access their work e-mail during a shutdown,” Illston wrote.

Illston said it was “far from normal” for an administration “to fire line-level civilian employees during a government shutdown as a way to punish the opposing political party.”

“But this is precisely what President Trump has announced he is doing,” she wrote.

She said the thousands of layoffs across the federal government during a government shutdown “is the epitome of hasty, arbitrary and capricious decision-making.”

Trump confirms he authorized CIA action in Venezuela

Trump’s comments were an extraordinary acknowledgment from a president, and they step up the administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The CIA’s operations abroad are usually shrouded in secrecy, but President Donald Trump said Wednesday he had authorized it to take unspecified action in Venezuela, an extraordinary and unprecedented acknowledgment from a commander in chief.

“Why did you authorize the CIA to go into Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump at the White House.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump said. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America.”

The second reason, he said, was narcotics trafficking.

“And the other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela,” he said.

Trump made the highly unusual remarks only hours after The New York Times reported that the Trump administration had authorized the CIA to carry out covert lethal action in Venezuela.

The CIA declined to comment on the report.

Asked whether the CIA had authority to “take out” the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Trump said: “Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”

“I think Venezuela is feeling heat,” he added. “But I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat, too.”

Trump said Tuesday on social media that the U.S. military had carried out a strike on another boat in the Caribbean, which he claimed was smuggling narcotics to the United States. It was the fifth such strike since early September.

Trump also was asked whether he was considering U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan soil and said it was an option.

“Well, I don’t want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of days where there isn’t a boat to be found.”

NBC News has reported that U.S. military officials are drawing up options to target drug traffickers inside Venezuela.

Trump said the lethal strikes against alleged drug smuggling boats had saved American lives by preventing narcotics from reaching the United States. He also said that after U.S. forces struck the boats, “you see that fentanyl all over the ocean,” adding: “It’s, like, floating in bags. It’s all over the place.”

U.S. officials so far have not provided detailed information about exactly what narcotics have been in most of the targeted vessels.

The Trump administration has labeled multiple drug cartels from Venezuela and other Latin American countries as foreign terrorist organizations, citing in part the high death toll from fentanyl use in the United States.

Fentanyl is mainly smuggled over land routes in small, easily concealed amounts across the Mexico-U.S. border, not by boat through the Caribbean, experts say.