(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the Trump administration to pull thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development staffers off the job in the United States and around the world.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols declined to keep in place his temporary block on the effort to remove all but a small fraction of USAID staffers from their posts, as part of an administration plan that would also give those abroad a 30-day deadline to move back to the U.S. at government expense.
His ruling comes in a broad lawsuit filed by unions on behalf of USAID bureaucrats. Judge Nichols found that the unions’ challenge must be dealt with under federal employment laws rather than in district court.
President Donald Trump and the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency tied to billionaire Elon Musk have moved swiftly to shutter USAID, asserting that its work is wasteful and out of line with the president’s agenda.
But the problems with USAID run deeper than those described by Trump and Musk. Indeed, USAID has a long history of being used essentially as a CIA cutout.
In 2003, for instance, the Bush administration used the USAID to foment a coup against the Georgian government. According to antiwar.com editorial director Scott Horton, the coup was assisted by a non-profit organization called the Liberty Institute, which at the time was funded by the USAID and George Soros.
More recently, the Biden administration’s head of USAID, Samantha Power, was involved in numerous regime-change efforts—most notoriously, in Libya.
As noted by antiwar.com’s Dave DeCamp, Power pushed for the coup against Libyan ruler Moammar Gaddafi when she was on Barrack Obama’s National Security Council. Since the overthrow of Gaddafi, Libya is now a failed state with open slave markets.
Most recently, Power was accused last February of fomenting unrest in Hungary, where Viktor Orban crushed his globalist opponents in the nation’s 2022 elections. Power went to Budapest in her capacity as USAID administrator to “support independent Hungarian partner organizations working to protect the rule of law, strengthen democratic institutions and civil society, and support independent media.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
