US judge halts Trump calls for mass firings at agencies

A California federal judge 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.

US District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said during a hearing 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.

US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who oversees the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, are spearheading an unprecedented effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy, including through job cuts.

Those efforts have resulted in 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. But Trump has backed Musk to the hilt and has embraced Musk's goal of slicing $1 trillion (AED 3.6 trillion) from the nation's $6.7 trillion (AED 24.6 trillion) budget.

Budget experts say Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is unlikely to reach his target by trimming jobs and reducing waste and fraud, and may have to slash government programs, including benefits.

On Thursday, hundreds of probationary workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts climate science, were notified they were being let go, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Officials at NOAA did not respond to a request for comment.

At the Internal Revenue Service, the head of the agency's Transformation and Strategy Office, a group of 60 employees working on modernisation efforts, told his team Thursday there was a risk the whole office would be eliminated, according a person briefed on the matter.

David Padrino, chief of the office, told his team that he planned to resign effective a week from Friday, the person said, adding that IRS executives have been told to brace for a "drastic" cut to headcount in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, OPM, the federal human resources agency, has instructed at least two dozen of its own employees working remotely that they must relocate to Washington in order to keep their jobs. They were given until March 7 to decide.

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.