The decision is a blow to the Trump administration’s effort to drastically and quickly shrink the federal bureaucracy.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has to rehire over 5,000 employees who were abruptly laid off as part of President Donald Trump’s attempts to unilaterally cut down the size of

The firings of over 5,000 probationary employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture may have been unlawful, and the workers should be reinstated for at least the next 45 days, a federal civil service board ruled Wednesday.