Trump poised to launch new round of layoffs despite setbacks in court

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration gave no sign on Friday of diverting from its plan for a second wave of mass firings and budget cuts across the U.S. government after two federal court rulings ordered the reinstatement of thousands of workers.

Even so, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged on Friday that mistakes had been made during the downsizing process, which has moved at breakneck speed since Trump took office in January.

Federal agencies had faced a Thursday deadline to submit large-scale reorganization plans as part of Trump's push to radically remake the federal bureaucracy, a task he has largely left to Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

So far, the DOGE effort has produced potential cuts of more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce, the freezing of foreign aid and the cancellation of thousands of programs and contracts.

DOGE's approach at times has been so scattershot that key federal employees such as those who oversee the country's nuclear stockpile and scientists combating bird flu have been fired and recalled.

Vance: Musk's DOGE has made mistakes at times

Vance said on Friday that Musk's DOGE has made mistakes at times and defended most federal employees as hardworking.

"Elon himself has said that sometimes you do something, you make a mistake, and then you undo the mistake. I'm accepting of mistakes," Vance said in an interview with NBC News.

"I also think you have to quickly correct those mistakes. But I'm also very aware of the fact that there are a lot of good people who work in the government — a lot of people who are doing a very good job," Vance said. "And we want to try to preserve as much of what works in government as possible, while eliminating what doesn't work."

Court challenges

Rulings in federal courts in California and Maryland on Thursday ordered some agencies to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who had been dismissed in recent weeks, marking the largest legal setback yet for the administration.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ruled that probationary workers, typically those with less than two years on the job, should be reinstated at the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury.

After Alsup's ruling was handed down, U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore directed the administration to reinstate tens of thousands of federal workers.

Bredar agreed with 20 Democratic-led states that 18 agencies that had fired probationary employees en masse in recent weeks violated regulations governing the process for laying off federal workers.

The White House, calling the judges partisan activists, vowed to fight back. The California ruling has already been appealed, and the administration has asked the judge to pause implementation of his ruling pending the outcome.

With Musk at his side, Trump signed an executive order on February 11 directing all agencies to "promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIF)," using a legal term commonly referred to as RIF to denote mass layoffs.

(With input from agencies)