Days after a federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from laying off workers during the shutdown, a set of unions said that they had evidence the government might try to violate that order and fire thousands of civil servants imminently.
The possible violation prompted the judge in the case to schedule an emergency status conference for Friday, the day that President Trump had promised to unfurl a list of steep cuts targeting what he has described as “Democrat programs.”
The accusations and attacks framed the rising stakes of a governmentwide closure that has reached its 17th day, with seemingly no end in sight.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans appeared no closer to negotiating a deal that would fund federal operations into the new fiscal year. And, at the White House, Mr. Trump remained disengaged from the work to forge a truce, opting instead to leverage the ongoing stalemate to slash the budget without the approval of Congress.
So far, the administration has paused or canceled about $28 billion in federal aid that had been primarily reserved for Democratic-led cities and states, while embarking on an effort to lay off about 4,000 workers across eight major federal agencies. Mr. Trump also promised a fuller roster of steeper cuts, saying of his plans at one point: “It’s thousands of people and it’s billions of dollars.”
The president declared that on Wednesday, just after a federal court temporarily blocked his attempts to fire government employees during the shutdown. Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California sided with unions, which had sued, as she blasted the White House for having “taken advantage of the lapse in government spending.”
But lawyers for the unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, told the court late Thursday that they had reason to believe the Trump administration might be trying to violate the judge’s order. They said in a filing that they had learned one agency, the Interior Department, was “actively preparing a large-scale” layoff, known as a reduction in force. They estimated the cuts could range in the thousands, and they said they expected it to begin on Monday.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It was not clear if those layoffs would occur, or if they had been in the works before the shutdown. Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has presided over a wide-ranging campaign to shrink the federal work force, which is expected to employ 300,000 fewer people at the end of this year compared with January, many of whom were fired or pressured to resign.
Still, the allegations prompted Judge Illston late Thursday to move up the deadline by which the government must provide more details about its layoff plans. Now, the administration must file that response by Friday at 2 p.m. Eastern time, before she is set to hold another conference to discuss the allegations.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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