President Donald Trump’s government may currently continue the massive redundancies of federal employees, a federal judge has ruled, rejecting trade unions to stop dramatically reducing the workforce in federal services.

The ruling of Judge Christopher Cooper, the Federal Court of Washington, is temporary.

But it is a victory for the government, which seeks to greatly reduce the number of about 2.3 million employees in these services and to cut what it considers to be wasted and fraudulent.

The union of employees in the Ministry of Finance and four other trade unions appealed to justice last week to prevent the government from dismissing hundreds of thousands of people or giving compensation to those who voluntarily withdraw. They demanded that the redundancies be stopped in eight services, including the Ministries of Defense and Health, the Consumer Protection Office and the Ministry of Veteran.

Cooper said he probably did not have the jurisdiction to hear the case and that trade unions should submit their complaint to the Federal Labor Council, which is considering disputes between trade unions and federal services.