Federal Judge Halts White House Workforce Reductions

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2025 – A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from carrying out layoffs at the Commerce Department and other agencies, saying the cuts were likely illegal.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, of the Northern District of California, issued a temporary restraining order halting the administration’s reduction-in-force plans for at least two weeks. 

She said the government had “taken advantage of the lapse in spending” to assume that “all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them anymore,” and predicted unions would ultimately prove the actions unlawful and beyond the administration’s authority.

The American Federation of Government Employees and other federal employee unions filed suit earlier last week, calling the layoffs an abuse of shutdown authority.

The White House signaled early in the ongoing government shutdown that this one might differ from its predecessors, instructing agencies to prepare reduction-in-force plans that could trigger large-scale workforce cuts if funding lapses persisted. 

In an Oct. 10 memo, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought outlined plans to eliminate roughly 4,000 federal positions across seven departments – including 315 at Commerce. A subsequent court filing on Oct. 14 raised the projected number of impacted Commerce staff to 600.

Federal courts to scale back operations 

The courtroom fight over federal layoffs comes as the judiciary itself begins scaling back operations to confront the lapse in funding. 

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said funding for the judiciary ran out on Oct. 17, forcing federal courts to scale back to “limited operations” beginning Monday. 

The shutdown effectively halts the entire federal judiciary system, impacting all 94 district courts, 13 appeals courts, the Court of International Trade, and even parts of the Supreme Court’s administrative staff.

Judges will continue to serve, but most court staff are being furloughed, with only constitutionally required or life-and-property-related work allowed under the Antideficiency Act.

White House adviser says impasse ‘could end soon’

As the shutdown entered its twentieth day, lawmakers were searching for a path forward. 

The U.S. Senate has attempted – ten times – to advance a stop-gap funding bill to reopen the government. Senators’ most recent effort failed on a procedural motion Thursday when the vote came in at 51-45, well short of the 60 votes needed under current rules to move forward.

The stalemate has led some Republican lawmakers to float the idea of whether to waive or eliminate the filibuster threshold, reducing the 60-vote cloture requirement, in order to move a stop-gap spending bill and end the shutdown.

The Senate was due to vote for the 11th time on a stop-gap measure to end the shutdown Monday at 5:30 p.m.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said over the weekend that the impasse could end as soon as “this week,” in an interview on CNBC. Hassett said his “friends in the Senate” believed it was “bad optics for Democrats to open the government before the ‘No Kings’ rallies,” held nationwide on Saturday, and that now there’s “a shot that this week things will come together.”

Despite the ongoing shutdown stalling tech and telecom regulatory oversight in Washington, the Federal Communications Commission says it still plans to move forward with one of its most ambitious open meetings of the year next Tuesday.

Commissioner Anna Gomez confirmed Friday that preparations for the FCC’s October open meeting were still underway during the shutdown, adding that her office “welcomes requests for ex parte meetings regarding the nine items on the agenda,” on X.