Shutdown, judge blocks Trump's dismissals for now

A federal judge has banned, for at least two weeks, Donald Trump's administration from carrying out any layoffs during the shutdown. In a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees Susan Illston said that the mass layoffs across all agencies, more than 4,000 people torpedoed so far, are an example of how the administration has 'taken advantage of the downturn in government spending and government operations to assume that all was lost, that the laws no longer applied to them'.