A federal judge is now trying to block President Donald Trump and his administration from proceeding with large-scale government employee firings. 

The Daily Caller reports that U.S. District Judge William Alsup - a Clinton appointee - issued his decision on the matter on Thursday.

This comes after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) instructed federal agencies to dismiss thousands of probationary employees.

Alsup has now instructed OPM to rescind this order.

Background

This is all part of President Donald Trump's effort to cut out federal government waste, fraud, and abuse.

Immediately after taking office, Trump had the OPM issue a memo telling agencies to "promptly determine whether [probationary] employees should be retained at the agency." Suffice it to say that the Trump administration determined that many did not need to be retained.

The Daily Caller reports that the Trump administration proceeded to lay off 150 probationary employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This, however, was just the opening salvo. Thousands of more firings were expected.

Civil service labor unions and nonprofit organizations, however, filed a lawsuit on behalf of these employees and others trying to stop the firings. They argued that the OPM lacked the authority to do what it did.

This is how the matter ended up before Alsup.

"OPM does not have any authority..."

Alsup has now ruled against the Trump administration. In his decision, he wrote:

(The) Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe, to hire and fire employees within another agency. The agencies could thumb their nose at OPM if they wanted to.

The Hill notes that, interestingly, Alsup did not say that the Trump administration is stopped from proceeding with the terminations. Rather, he only said that the OPM does not have the authority to do what it did.

The Hill reports:

U.S. District Judge William Alsup said OPM must notify agencies it did not have the authority to call for the firing of those employees but stopped short of directing agencies themselves not to continue with terminations.

The big question is what now. Alsup has indeed ordered the OPM to rescind the memos that it had issued directing agencies to fire probationary employees. It is unclear, however, whether or not the Trump administration will now appeal Alsup's decision, for it appears that it could just rescind the memo and proceed with the firing of the employees.

We're just going to have to wait to see how the Trump administration decides to respond to the ruling.