Nearly 1,300 probationary employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — roughly one-tenth of the agency’s workforce — are being forced out under the Trump administration’s move to get rid of all probationary employees.

The judge’s ruling came after a lawsuit was filed earlier this month on behalf of families with transgender or nonbinary children who allege their health care has already been compromised by the president’s order.

The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency.

CTU vice president Jackson Potter said the union is “very concerned” about Linda McMahon’s potential confirmation as she’s expected to carry out orders to essentially dismantle the Department of Education.

Asked by reporters how soon he would like the department closed, President Donald Trump responded: “Oh, I’d like it to be closed immediately. The Department of Education is a big con-job.”

A federal judge on Wednesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump ’s plan to downsize the federal workforce with a deferred resignation program.

Critics complain the independent agency, funded by the Federal Reserve System, lacks sufficient supervision and regularly exceeds its regulatory authority. Defenders argue the bureau’s watchdog mission has strong bipartisan support.

“I support President Trump in many ways,” state Sen. Jil Tracy (R-Quincy) said, “but I don’t think he understands that this just signals that the corruption in Illinois is just accepted, rather than it has to stop.”

The federal government is the second largest employer in Illinois, with 82,000 federal workers in the state.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid following the Trump administration’s foreign funding freeze and idling of staffers, a government watchdog warned Monday.

Lurie Children’s Hospital will continue to provide hormone therapy and puberty blockers, a hospital spokesperson confirmed, and specifically noted that mental health care will also continue as part of the hospital’s gender care program.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston challenges the Trump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health over efforts to reduce funding that goes to so-called indirect costs — including lab, faculty, infrastructure, and utility costs.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted on charges that included seeking to sell an appointment to then-President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children’s hospital.

President Donald Trump says he has ordered the U.S. Mint to stop making pennies, which he correctly says cost more than one cent to produce.

President Donald Trump will need the Supreme Court, with three justices he appointed, to enable the most aggressive of the many actions he has taken in just the first few weeks of his second White House term. But even a conservative majority with a robust view of presidential power might balk at some of what the president wants to do.

State Department officials and others were appealing to the Trump administration to allow more USAID workers to remain on the job at least temporarily, including to manage the return home of thousands of USAID direct hires, contractors and their families abroad.