The mass layoff of US government workers proceeded on Thursday and Friday following the predictable refusal of a US district court judge in Washington, D.C. to block the assault on the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal employees by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration can continue its mass firings of federal employees for now, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, rejecting a bid by a group of labor unions to halt President Donald Trump’s dramatic downsizing of the roughly 2.

A federal judge on Thursday allowed President Trump's efforts to shrink the federal workforce to continue moving forward while legal proceedings continue, declining a request from a group of labor unions to temporarily block his firing of federal employees and other actions targeting government workers.