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A person leaves flowers, next to a USAID sign which is covered over, at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
A federal judge ordered a temporary block on Friday (February 7, 2025) on Trump administration orders that would have placed thousands more workers of the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave, and would have given agency workers abroad just a 30-day deadline to return to the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed with arguments by two government employee associations that both orders exposed U.S. aid and development workers abroad to unwarranted risk and hardship.
Closing down of USAID
The judge declined to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency’s aid and development work around the world, ahead of a fuller court review and arguments on the employees’ case.
“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Mr. Trump said on social media of USAID before the judge’s ruling.
People hold placards outside the USAID building, after billionaire Elon Musk, who is heading U.S. President Donald Trump’s drive to shrink the federal government, said work is underway to shut down the U.S. foreign aid agency USAID, in Washington, U.S., February 3, 2025.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters
The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees argue that Mr. Trump lacks the authority to shut down the six-decade-old aid agency without approval from Congress. Democratic lawmakers have made the same argument.
Trump’s administration moved quickly on 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 Nr. 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.
USAID staffers face crisis
Administration appointees and Musk’s teams have shut down almost all funding for the agency, stopping aid and development programs worldwide, 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.
Department of Justice 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.”
Within the State Department itself, employees fear substantial staff reductions following the deadline for the Trump administration’s offer of financial incentives for federal workers to resign, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A judge temporarily blocked that offer and set a hearing Monday.
The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the U.S., with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Diplomats at embassies asked for waivers allowing more time for some, including families forced to pull their children out of schools midyear.
In a notice posted on the USAID website late Thursday, the agency clarified that none of the overseas personnel put on leave would be forced to leave the country where they work. But it said that workers who chose to stay longer than 30 days might have to cover their own expenses unless they received a specific hardship waiver.
Judge’s ruling setback for Trump
Friday’s ruling is the latest setback in the courts for the Trump administration, whose policies to offer financial incentives for federal workers to resign and end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. to someone in the country illegally have been temporarily paused by judges.
Earlier Friday, a group of a half-dozen USAID officials speaking to reporters strongly disputed assertions from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the most essential life-saving programs abroad were getting waivers to continue funding. None were, the officials said.
Among the programs they said had not received waivers: $450 million in food grown by U.S. farmers sufficient to feed 36 million people, which was not being paid for or delivered; and water supplies for 1.6 million people displaced by war in Sudan’s Darfur region, which were being cut off without money for fuel to run water pumps in the desert.
The judge’s order involved the Trump administration’s decision earlier this week to pull almost all USAID workers off the job and out of the field worldwide. Besides the 2,200 workers temporarily protected from being put on leave, the fate was not clear of others who work with the agency and have been laid off, furloughed or put on leave.
Trump and congressional Republicans have spoken of moving a much-reduced number of aid and development programs under the State Department.
Published – February 08, 2025 10:36 am IST
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Judge blocks Trump from placing thousands of USAID workers on leave and giving them 30-day deadline
