FILE PHOTO: San Francisco residents photograph a group of protesters during a demonstration as part of a nationwide series of protests against the mass firings of employees in a campaign by President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk to radically cut back the U.S. bureaucracy, at Fort Mason Park in San Francisco, California, U.S. March 1, 2025. REUTERS/Yuri Avila/File Photo
(Reuters) - Federal judges in California and Maryland on Thursday ordered U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to reinstate thousands of probationary federal workers who lost their jobs as part of mass firings carried out at 19 agencies.
The back-to-back rulings were the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies face a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.
