(Headline USA) A federal judge on Friday dealt President Donald Trump a big setback in the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, ordering a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
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.
The Associated Press 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 deep state’s defacto piggybank, pending more hearings on the workers’ lawsuit.
Nichols stressed in the hearing earlier Friday on the request to pause the Trump administration’s actions that his order was not a decision on the employees’ request to roll back the administration’s swiftly moving destruction of the agency.
“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 Elon Musk, chair of the budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have made USAID their biggest target so far in a sweeping effort to reduce government waste, inefficiency and corruption.
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.
“This is a full-scale gutting of virtually all the personnel of an entire agency,” Karla Gilbride, the attorney for the employee associations, told the judge.
Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate argued that the administration has all the legal authority it needs to place agency staffers on leave. “The government does this across the board every day,” Shumate said. “That’s what’s happening here. It’s just a large number.”
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
