LOS ANGELES, United States (AFP) — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the US government to reverse mass firings that are part of President Donald Trump and right-hand man Elon Musk’s plan to slash the government’s workforce, media reported.

The ruling directs the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to withdraw directives sent to a number of federal agencies that resulted in thousands of staff being laid off.

“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 at another agency,” US District Judge William Alsup said, according to The Washington Post.

“Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves. The Department of Defense, for example, has statutory authority to hire and fire,” he said at the federal court in San Francisco.

The ruling comes days after another district judge on the West Coast blocked Trump’s ban on refugee admissions, and weeks after a court suspended his executive order overturning the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.

Thursday’s ruling came after unions and advocacy groups sued over what they said were illegal orders that federal agencies fire all probationary staff.

“OPM lacks constitutional, statutory, or regulatory power to order other federal agencies to terminate employees who Congress authorized those agencies to hire and manage,” attorneys of the petitioners said.

Reckless

Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Jared Huffman of California, the second most powerful member of the House Natural Resources Committee, warned on Thursday that “purging the government of scientists, experts, and career civil servants and slashing fundamental programs will cost lives.”

Hundreds of scientists and experts have been fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a leading US agency responsible for weather forecasting, climate analysis, marine conservation and more.

The cuts came from Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Five former US defense secretaries on Thursday addressed a letter to lawmakers denouncing as “reckless” the recent firings of senior Pentagon officials by Trump.

“We write to urge the U.S. Congress to hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its Constitutional oversight responsibilities,” said the letter signed by the most recent defense chief under Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, Lloyd Austin, as well as William Perry, Chuck Hagel, Leon Panetta and James Mattis, who served in Trump’s first administration.