A federal judge temporarily barred USAID from putting 2,200 workers on paid leave, as opponents of the Trump administration\u2019s DOGE downsizing head to the courts to slow layoffs and shutdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
February 7, 2025 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By\u00a0Spencer S. Hsu<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0 Missy Ryan<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from placing more than 2,000 U.S. Agency for International Development employees on paid leave Friday, representing a setback to the president\u2019s effort to slash the U.S. foreign aid apparatus and bring it in line with his \u201cAmerica First\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, following a hastily called hearing, said he would enter a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit brought Thursday by employee groups challenging the administration\u2019s authority to shut down the agency. He said he was still weighing whether to order the government to undo the decision to place an additional 500 USAID workers on paid leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The decision came only a day after a filing<\/a> by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees asking the court to declare unlawful what they called <\/strong>\u201ca series of unconstitutional and illegal actions taken by President Donald Trump and his administration that have systematically dismantled\u201d USAID without authorization from Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The suit marks the first major legal challenge to the push by Trump and his allies, led by billionaire Elon Musk and his U.S. DOGE Service, or Department of Government Efficiency, targeting foreign aid programs and USAID staff as part of their campaign <\/strong>to reshape the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those efforts have included orders <\/strong>to freeze a broad swath of foreign aid programs<\/a> and fire, furlough or put on leave the vast majority of USAID\u2019s staff<\/a> at its Washington headquarters and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump, in a social media post<\/a> Friday morning, asserted without evidence that much of USAID\u2019s funding had been spent fraudulently. \u201cTHE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE,\u201d he said. \u201cCLOSE IT DOWN!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lawsuit is just one of a score of legal challenges mounted by Trump opponents<\/a> in recent days seeking to <\/strong>slow or halt the administration\u2019s barrage of actions to curtail spending, pare back the administrative state, eradicate diversity initiatives and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nichols, a 2019 Trump appointee, said he would explain his decision in writing Friday evening and cautioned that his freeze would be temporary while both sides flesh out their complex but hurriedly sketched claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he said after a 90-minute hearing that the claimants established that they could suffer \u201cirreparable harms\u201d to their families, finances and security overseas, with \u201cenough likelihood of success on the merits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nichols added that \u201cthere is essentially zero harm to the government\u201d from a short pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ruling was the latest order by federal judges \u2014 many appointed by Republican presidents \u2014 balking at elements of the Trump blitz. Earlier Friday, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of Washington, a George W. Bush appointee, was weighing whether to temporarily bar DOGE <\/em>from gaining access to data on millions of Americans at the Labor Department, expressing skepticism that Musk\u2019s inexperienced young team of software engineers understood confidential handling requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Thursday, Seattle federal judge John C. Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, became the second judge to block Trump\u2019s executive order to curb birthright citizenship, saying the president was trampling the Constitution to pursue \u201cpolitical or personal gain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plaintiffs in the USAID case, in their filing on Thursday, said <\/strong>the whirlwind moves since Trump\u2019s return to office had \u201cgenerated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled U.S. national security interests,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside USAID\u2019s headquarters near the White House on Friday, workers removed the agency\u2019s name from a building sign and took down its flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ruling appears to delay a plan by USAID, announced on its website earlier this week<\/a>, that it would place all global \u201cdirect hire\u201d staff \u2014 most of whom are <\/strong>civil service and Foreign Service employees \u2014 on administrative leave at midnight Washington time on Friday, except forspecially designated employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not immediately clear how the edict would affect the agency\u2019s thousands of locally hired staff at its missions and programs around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Republicans including Sen. James E. Risch (Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have supported merging USAID into the State Department, Democrats say attempting such a move without congressional authorization would be illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The administration has made wildly inaccurate claims about USAID to support its drive to shut it down, including a statement Wednesday in which 11 out of 12 claims were misleading<\/a>, wrong or lacking context, according to a Washington Post analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The White House and USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The administration\u2019s actions jeopardize the United States\u2019 longtime status as the world\u2019s largest provider of foreign assistance, funding activities from food aid for malnourished children to vaccine distribution and democracy promotion. Foreign aid represents roughly 1 percent of the federal budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rollout of the orders affecting USAID have been characterized by reversals, bare-bones information and widespread confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a broad carve-out for humanitarian programs days after the initial order to freeze most assistance programs, aid groups say most of those programs have not been able to restart because USAID has not issued guidance needed for them to proceed, and because USAID\u2019s payment system remains offline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this week, USAID alerted overseas employees that they would be required to curtail their assignments and return to the United States<\/a>within 30 days to secure government-paid relocation. The order resulted in mass confusion among employees unsure if they would be able to obtain waivers enabling their children to finish the school year or if they would receive assistance in relocating back to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the outset of Friday\u2019s hearing, Brett Shumate, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department\u2019s civil division, announced that by the end of the day, 2,200 USAID employees would be placed on paid leave. He said 500 have already been placed on administrative leave, but 600 \u2014 roughly double the tally in a plan circulated Thursday \u2014 would be kept on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe president has discretion to exercise\u201d his constitutional authority over executive branch hiring and firing, and workers had regular avenues to seek remedies after the fact, Shumate said. \u201cIf every employee put on administrative leave could come into court, the government couldn\u2019t function.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Plaintiffs attorney Karla Gilbride said the actions were part of a \u201ccascade\u201d of irreparable harms to workers posed by the shutdown of the agency. Workers would be cut off from communications systems that ensure security in dangerous environments overseas; payment systems would be shuttered; <\/strong>workers themselves could be exposed to liability for unpaid funding obligations and face immediate threats to their family\u2019s stability and health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe president does not have authority to do this,\u201d she said. USAID \u201cis an independent agency created by Congress, and if it is to be reorganized in this manner, it needs to be done through the proper congressional path.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By Spencer S. Hsu<\/a>Spencer S. Hsu is an investigative reporter, two-time Pulitzer finalist and national Emmy Award nominee. Hsu has covered homeland security, immigration, Virginia politics and Congress.follow on X@hsu_spencer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n