Court documents released Monday show that the Trump administration is exploiting the ongoing government shutdown to pursue mass firings at the US Fish and Wildlife Service amid the nation’s worsening extinction crisis.

The new filings came as part of a legal fight between the administration and federal worker unions , which took emergency action earlier this month to stop the latest wave of terminations.

While the unions secured a victory last week in the form of a temporary restraining order against the new firings, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has repeatedly proven willing to permit large-scale job cuts that labor unions and legal experts say are patently illegal and dangerous.

Tara Zuardo, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity

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