U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper could not grant a motion from unions representing federal workers to stop layoffs.

The plan, which also involves forcing staffers posted overseas to return home, would all but dismantle the nation’s chief foreign aid agency.

A federal judge on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from putting more than 2,000 U.S. Agency for International Development workers on leave, a setback for government employee unions suing over what they have called an effort to dismantle the foreign aid agency.