Washington DC - A federal judge ordered a temporary halt on Wednesday to the layoffs by the Trump administration of thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown.

District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the temporary restraining order in response to a suit filed by labor unions claiming the layoffs are illegal, The Washington Post and other outlets said.

Illston issued her order shortly after the White House said it would likely lay off at least 10,000 federal workers during the shutdown.

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"I think we'll probably end up being north of 10,000," White House Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought said in an interview with the Charlie Kirk show.

"We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy," Vought said.

The shutdown has ground into its third week, with Congress deadlocked in a clash over spending and Trump following through on his threats to take a hatchet to the workforce in response.

Illston, during a court hearing, expressed concerns about how the government is going about firing federal employees, the Post said.

"The evidence suggests that the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume all bets are off, the laws don't apply to them anymore," the newspaper quoted her as saying.

Trump has warned that continued refusal by Democrats to support a House-passed resolution to fund the government through late November would result in mass layoffs targeting workers deemed to be aligned with the opposition party.