Judge blocks Trump from placing thousands of USAID workers on leave and giving them 30-day deadline

 

 

A federal judge on Friday cornered President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk, ordering a temporary halt to plans to scrap the U.S. Agency for International Development, [U S A I D ] The judge's order came several hours after a hearing Friday afternoon during which Nichols said he would issue the temporary restraining order.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, also agreed to block an order that would have given the thousands of overseas USAID workers the administration wanted to place on abrupt administrative leave just 30 days to move families and households back to the U.S. on government expense.

Both moves would have exposed the U.S. workers and their spouses and children to unwarranted risk and expense, the judge said. Nichols pointed to accounts from workers abroad that the Trump administration, in its rush to shut down the agency and its programs abroad, had cut some workers off from government emails and other communication systems they needed to reach the U.S. government in case of a health or safety emergency.

Already, Two foreign service unions had sued the federal government amid the Trump administration's attempts to reduce USAID's workforce from 14,000 to only 300 employees as part of its efforts to slash government spending.

It was reported earlier that USAID contractors in the Middle East and elsewhere had found even ''panic button'' apps wiped off their mobile phones or disabled when the administration abruptly furloughed them.

'Administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda,'' the judge said in his order Friday night.

In agreeing to stop the 30-day deadline given USAID staffers to return home at government expense, Nichols cited statements from agency employees who had no home to go to in the U.S. after decades abroad, who faced pulling children with special needs out of school midyear, and had other difficulties.

The judge also ordered USAID staffers already placed on leave by the Trump administration reinstated. But he declined a request from two federal employee associations to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency and its work, pending more hearings on the workers' lawsuit.

''CLOSE IT DOWN,'' Trump said on social media of USAID before the judge's ruling.

The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees argue that Trump lacks the authority to shut down the agency without approval from Congress. Democratic lawmakers have made the same argument.

Trump's administration moved quickly Friday to literally erase the agency's name. Workers on a crane scrubbed the name from the stone front of its Washington headquarters. They used duct tape to block it out on a sign and took down USAID flags. Someone placed a bouquet of flowers outside the door.

The Trump administration and Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have made USAID their biggest target so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.

Administration appointees and Musk's teams have shut down almost all funding for the agency, stopping aid and development programs worldwide. They have placed staffers and contractors on leave and furlough and locked them out of the agency's email and other systems. According to Democratic lawmakers, they also carted away USAID's computer servers.