A federal judge on Friday said that she would expand an order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from conducting mass layoffs during the shutdown. The decision came at the request of unions representing federal employees, which had accused the government of trying to fire workers in violation of her earlier directive.
Judge Susan Illston, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, said her new order would spare a wider array of civil servants from being dismissed while many are furloughed and agencies are closed. She coupled that prohibition with a stern warning for the Justice Department, saying of the layoffs: “Don’t do it.”
“This is a terrible situation, and we ought not make it worse,” she said.
Judge Illston, who said she would issue her full order soon in writing, delivered her latest verbal rebuke on a day when President Trump and his top deputies forged ahead with their aggressive campaign to weaponize the shutdown, now in its 17th day.
In court filings, Trump officials signaled anew that they could still try to cull the federal work force, while the White House announced its latest punitive measure halting federal aid to Democratic-led cities and states. This time, it targeted $11 billion in federal infrastructure funds for cities such as New York and San Francisco.
Together, the actions of Mr. Trump and his deputies underscored the legal risks and political stakes of a government closure that appears to have no end in sight. Even as the costs of the shutdown mount, the president has expressed little desire to broker a resolution, opting to use the stalemate to attack his foes and slash the budget without the approval of Congress.
Before Friday, the administration had paused or canceled about $28 billion in federal aid that had been mostly reserved for Democratic-run cities and states, while embarking on an effort to lay off about 4,000 workers across eight major federal agencies. Mr. Trump also promised to unfurl a fuller roster of steeper cuts, saying of his plans at one point this week: “It’s thousands of people and it’s billions of dollars.”
The extent of those plans took clearer shape on Friday.
In federal court, Elizabeth Hedges, a Justice Department lawyer, said that the administration would abide by Judge Illston’s order from earlier this week. That directive temporarily prohibited the government from conducting layoffs at agencies and in offices with workers represented by the unions that had sued to stop the firings.
But Ms. Hedges at times appeared uncertain about the extent to which the Trump administration might be looking to shed workers beyond the roughly 4,000 cuts that it first unveiled last week. Some federal agencies had been preparing layoffs in the months before the shutdown, as part of Mr. Trump’s vast campaign to reduce the size of Washington.
Some agency officials, meanwhile, signaled in court filings that they had similarly left the door open for future work force reductions.
Officials at agencies including the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services appeared to suggest that they could target workers in offices and programs that were not fully represented by the original set of unions that had sued. Others, including the Interior Department, suggested that they might soon announce layoffs that had been in consideration well before funding lapsed.
Judge Illston, seemingly frustrated at times by the federal government’s ambiguity, said she would broaden her court order and incorporate a set of additional unions that sought to protect their workers from dismissal. That fulfilled a request from groups, including the American Federation of Government Employees, that feared Mr. Trump might have been trying to violate the original court order.
In doing so, Judge Illston also suggested she would be skeptical of any layoffs, known as reductions in force, conducted during the shutdown, saying she did not think such firings “should be happening” now.
The White House did not comment on the matter.
Separately, the president’s budget chief, Russell T. Vought, announced on Friday on social media that the administration would halt another round of federal aid to cities and states during the shutdown. This time, he targeted $11 billion in “lower-priority” projects from the Army Corps of Engineers, which helps to fund major infrastructure improvements and repairs.
Mr. Vought said the money would be reviewed, and in some cases could be canceled. The White House declined to provide a list of affected investments, saying only that the funds involved 12 states, including California, Maryland, New York and Oregon, all of which are led by Democratic governors.
According to the White House, more than $7 billion of the paused funds were reserved for New York, which is also the home of the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate. The president had previously threatened to terminate other federal funding for the state, including long-sought funds to repair a key tunnel damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
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