Judge orders Trump to stop reductions in force, rehire fired workers

A federal judge ordered the administration to quit moving ahead with reductions in force, saying Wednesday that the law President Trump signed to reopen the government last month forbids them.

Judge Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee to the court in California, rejected the State Department's claim that it had commenced the reductions well before the shutdown.

She said the stopgap spending bill, or continuing resolution, that Congress approved to reopen the government is broad enough to bar any reductions no matter when they began.

She also ordered that thousands of employees who were "RIF'd" during the shutdown be brought back to their same jobs and same pay.