(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from orchestrating its plan to place 2,200 employees of the United States Agency for International Development on leave at midnight.
In an order late Friday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — issued a temporary restraining that prevents Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency from placing the employees on administrative leave as had been planned. The judge also ordered the reinstatement of some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave and ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
The judge’s order came several hours after a hearing Friday afternoon during which Nichols said he would issue the temporary restraining order.
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.
Earlier Nichols had said the order would prevent the “accelerated removal” of USAID employees from their posts overseas.
“This is about how employees are harmed in their capacity as employees — in the employee/employer relationship — and it seems to me that, for reasons I will discuss in this order, that I will enter there, the plaintiffs have established at least that there is irreparable harm as it relates to that relationship,” Nichols said at the hearing.
Lawyers from the Department of Justice acknowledged that 500 employees from USAID have already been placed on leave, with 2,000 more set to go on leave at midnight.
Acting assistant attorney Brett Shumate told the judge the layoffs were necessary because “the president has decided there was corruption and fraud at USAID.”
“He doesn’t have to justify to the plaintiffs and the court how he exercises his foreign affairs,” Shumate argued. “The president has determined, in his view, significant serious action needs to be taken tonight to prevent taxpayer funds from being sent outside the United States, used for purposes that he doesn’t think are appropriate.”
The American Foreign Service Organization and the American Federation of Government Employees filed the lawsuit in D.C. federal court Thursday, alleging that Trump engaged in a series of “unconstitutional and illegal actions” to systematically destroy USAID.
“Children are being pulled out of school during the middle of the school year at developmentally fragile time periods,” plaintiffs’ attorneys told the judge Friday. “People are being cut off from their access to health care without being able to make arrangements for new health care providers when they have serious health conditions. People are being asked to go back to the United States where they may not have housing they don’t have a home to come back to, and they’re being asked to do that with no source of income or in prospects.”
These actions have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors. They have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled U.S. national security interests,” the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs said Trump has unilaterally attempted to reduce the agency without congressional authorization, arguing that Congress is the only entity with the authority to dismantle USAID.
The lawsuit reads like a timeline of the last two weeks, laying out each step that formed the groundwork to break USAID, beginning with Trump’s first day in office. Shortly after Trump froze foreign aid via an executive order on his first day, he began to target USAID by ordering his State Department to begin issuing stop work orders, the lawsuit said.
“USAID grantees and contractors reeled as they were — without any notice or process — constrained from carrying out their work alleviating poverty, disease, and humanitarian crises,” the lawsuit said.
Next came the layoffs, the lawsuit alleges, with thousands of contractors and employees of USAID losing their jobs, leading medical clinics, soup kitchens, and refugee assistance programs across the world to be brought “to an immediate halt.”
“The humanitarian consequences of defendants’ actions have already been catastrophic,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleges the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk — who boasted about “feeding USAID into the woodchipper” — made the final move to gut the agency, locking thousands of employees out of their computers and accessing classified material improperly.
While each step to dismantle the organization differed, the lawsuit alleged that they were unified by one thing: “Not a single one of defendants’ actions to dismantle USAID were taken pursuant to congressional authorization.”
The plaintiffs have asked the court to declare Trump’s actions unlawful and issue an order requiring the Trump administration to “cease actions to shut down USAID’s operations in a manner not authorized by Congress.”
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