A “Closed” sign is seen at the Washington Monument on October 1, 2025 in Washington, DC, the first day of the 2025 government shutdown. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Interior Department said Monday it will halt efforts to lay off 2,050 employees across the country after a federal judge extended a momentary restraining order behind schedule last week.
The recent filing provides more information about how the Trump administration plans to reduce the size and scope of a department that oversees much of the nation’s public lands.
Rachel Borra, chief human capital officer at Interior, wrote in one 35 page document The layoffs would include employees of the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service and the US Geological Survey.
The National Park Service layoffs would affect several areas of the country, including 63 of 224 workers in the Northeast Regional Office, 69 of 223 in the Southeast Regional Office and 57 of 198 in the Pacific West Regional Office.
The Northeast Region has 83 locations in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.
The southeast region “has 73 parks covering 4 million acres in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
The Pacific West region includes more than “60 national parks in California, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, parts of Arizona and Montana, as well as the territories of Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.”
The layoffs cannot take place under the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California clarified and expanded Friday during an emergency hearing.
The layoffs would be further blocked if Illston, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, were to issue a momentary restraining order during a hearing scheduled for later this month.
Lawyers and current and former Interior Ministry employees have said the state newsroom that low staffing levels throughout the Department and the U.S. Forest Service during the government shutdown are already leaving America’s valuable natural resources vulnerable to eternal damage.
Hundreds proposed for layoffs at Commerce, HHS
The other briefs filed Monday came from the departments of Commerce and Health and Human Services, which said in previous court documents that officials planned to lay off hundreds of federal workers.
The latest figures from the trade show the company would like to make 102 workers redundant, while the Department of Health and Social Care told judges it wanted to make 954 people redundant. Both confirmed that those efforts were put on hold due to the injunction.
The numbers differed from those included in previous submissions in court in the lawsuit filed by unions representing federal workers.
Those statements in the earlier filings detailed the following layoff plans:
- Trade: Approximately 600 employees
- Training: Remains with 466 employees
- Health and Social Services: 982 employees
- Housing and urban development: 442 employees
- Homeland Security: 54 employees
- Treasury: 1,377 employees
Federal prosecutors wrote in Monday’s court filings that all other departments “have determined, to the best of their knowledge and based on their investigations to date, that they are not required to provide additional information in response to the Court’s amended TRO dated October 17, 2025, that was not already contained in their October 17, 2025 statements.”
Democrats protested against layoffs at the Energy Department
The Energy Department wrote in a file that it did not have to notify the court of any planned layoffs because the layoff notices it issued did not have an effective date. A previous court filing said the department sent those notices to 179 employees.
Patty Murray, D-Wash., ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, ranking member of the House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee, wrote in a letter that the Energy Department’s planned layoffs were “a clear act of political retaliation that will harm communities across the country.”
“These actions, which reportedly affect 179 employees, appear to be part of a broader effort to implement the administration’s budget request without congressional approval – thereby circumventing the appropriations process and undermining congressional intent,” Murray and Kaptur wrote. “The Department’s actions will raise energy prices for American families by disrupting the implementation of important programs that increase supply and reduce costs for hard-working Americans.”
The layoffs are one of many ways the Trump administration is approaching the government shutdown differently than during the last extended funding pause, which lasted from December 2018 to January 2019.
White House officials have Financing canceled approved by Congress for projects in regions of the country that tend to vote Democrat. And signals that this must not be the case Providing back pay for federal workers who go on furlough, authorized by a 2019 law signed by President Donald Trump during his first term.
Johnson links the closure to the No Kings rallies
Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said during a morning news conference that he hoped Senate Democrats would soon vote to advance a stopgap bill to allow the government to reopen.
The conclusion of the No Kings protestshe said, could assist ease pressure on Democrats to keep the government closed.
“Now that Chuck Schumer has had his spectacle, he’s had his big protest against America, this is our appeal: We ask, and I think everyone in this room and everyone who hears our voices this morning should hope that now he’s finally ready to get to work, end this shutdown and stop inflicting pain on the American people,” Johnson said.
Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, told According to reporters outside the White House, he believes moderate Democrats, particularly Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, are ready to end the shutdown.
Shaheen told this New Hampshire Bulletin on Friday that no official negotiations to end the shutdown would take place. She also criticized the government’s multibillion-dollar rescue package for Argentina that Trump finalized last week, saying federal authorities remained in the murky during the funding shortfall and health insurance premiums were expected to rise.
But Hassett repeated the argument that Republicans would not negotiate until Senate Democrats voted to reopen the government. He told CNBC said Monday morning that it expects this to happen “sometime this week.”
“If they want to engage in political disputes, they could do so through regular executive order, but simply shutting down the government and denying 750,000 government workers their paychecks is simply not acceptable,” the White House economic adviser said.
The Senate failed to advance the proposal for the eleventh time later in the day An emergency solution bill was passed in the House of Representatives that would keep the government running until November 21st.
The 50-43 vote followed a familiar pattern: Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Maine Independent Sen. Angus King voted with Republicans to advance the bill. Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman, who voted to advance the bill, did not vote. Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul voted no.
Ashley Murray and Shauneen Miranda contributed to this report.
