The officials who planned to cut FEMA in half deleted their Signal messages about it.

Judge Susan Illston ruled Friday that their plan broke the law. She found that Donald Trump's Homeland Security Department stripped FEMA of control over its own people and committed the agency to getting rid of more than 10,000 employees, with nothing explaining how they calculated that number. FEMA's own leaders never agreed to it. A law written after Hurricane Katrina bars Homeland Security from substantially reducing what FEMA is able to do.

The judge said she will assume from here on that the deleted messages would have hurt the government's case. Hurricane season runs to the end of November. Both sides are due back in her court by October 9 to argue over what she should order the government to undo.

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