Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh.

A federal judge is temporarily blocking the Trump administration from laying off federal workers during the government shutdown.

NPR Stephen Fowler has more on today's court hearing.

Judge Susan Ilson of California said the Trump administration's push to fire workers during the shutdown was hastily done and illegal.

During a hearing, she said efforts to lay off more than 4,000 federal workers, and the subsequent

reversal of some notices was like, quote, ready, fire, aim. So for now, those reductions in force,

and any future ones are on hold. It's unclear for how long.

The White House has painted the firings as financially necessary and a leverage point to get

Democratic lawmakers to agree to a spending plan that reopens the government. Stephen Fowler,

NPR News. Well, today the Senate was once again unable to pass a short-term spending measure to

reopen the federal government,

and today's vote pushes the shutdown toward a 16th day. The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on Louisiana's

congressional map stands to upend a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. It outlaws voting practices

that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.

And P.R.'s Nina Totenberg reports on the historic implications if the court's conservative majority strikes down Section 2.

Since 2013, the increasingly conservative court has time and again gutted key provisions of the law. The one big exception

has been the provision aimed at ensuring that minority voters are not shut out of the process

of drawing new congressional districts. If the court removes the guardrails to redistricting that

it endorsed just two years ago, indeed, if the Supreme Court either nullifies

this part of the Voting Rights Act or makes it much more difficult to enforce, recent studies

indicate that Democrats could lose as many as 19 congressional seats in the process, putting

control of the House effectively out of reach for the foreseeable future.

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