A federal judge on Friday dealt President Donald Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk their first big setback in their dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, ordering a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
US 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 US on government expense.
Both moves would have exposed the US 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 US 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 US 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 six-decade-old agency and its work, 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 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.
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.”
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 US 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 US 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.
Trump and congressional Republicans have spoken of moving a much-reduced number of aid and development programs under the State Department.
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 US, 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.
Rubio said Thursday during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the government would help staffers get home within 30 days “if they so desired” and would listen to those with special conditions.
He insisted the moves were the only way to get cooperation because staffers were working “to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order” on foreign assistance. Agency staffers deny his claims of obstruction.
Rubio said the US government will continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”
