A federal judge in Washington Monday appeared inclined to deny an urgent request to temporarily block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from firing employees or accessing sensitive records at half a dozen federal departments, according to ABC NEWS.

“It’s a whole bunch of chaos and confusion,” said Ruark Hotopp, National Vice President of the American Federation of Government Employees District 8, which is based in Eagan. “Each administration has its own priorities — some a little more easier than others, but we’ve learned to roll with that.”

Hotopp said some probationary workers at the U.S. Veterans Administration, U.S. Forestry Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture received termination notices on Friday.

Hotopp shared about one USDA scientist who learned he was let go. “His was pretty heavy, he relocated to South Dakota for that, single dad, three kids, yeah that one was really tough,” Hotopp said.

ABC News is reporting that Elon Musk and his team at the new DOGE and administration are targeting roughly 200,000 federal employees who have been on the job for less than a year.

“We want to downsize government but make it better, run it better, but downsize,” said President Donald Trump on Friday. The Administration had offered federal workers a buyout or risk being fired.

Over the weekend, the government’s Office of Personnel Management told ABC News that some employees who responded to the buyout offer ahead of the deadline last week may have received termination notices by mistake.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS asked Hotopp how many Minnesota-based federal workers took the buyout offer. “The numbers are all over the place — I’ll summarize it like this — we’ve got about 18,000 employees in the state of Minnesota,” Hotopp said. “Of those folks, I’ve had two contact me and ask ‘Is this a good deal, because I think I want to take it.'”

After a nearly hour-long virtual hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said she planned to issue a ruling within 24 hours on a request by 14 state attorneys general to issue a temporary restraining order that would block DOGE from firing employees or accessing data from the Departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation, Commerce, and Office of Personnel Management as part of President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to slash the federal government, ABC News reported.

ABC News contributed to this report.