Judge blocks Trump from placing thousands of USAID workers on leave
With all but several hundred staff forced out and funding stopped, the agency has ‘ceased to exist’, an official said.
A judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2,200 employees of the US Agency for International Development on paid leave.
Additionally, the US President’s move would have given agency workers abroad just a 30-day deadline to return to America.
District Court judge Carl Nichols agreed with arguments, made by two government employee associations, that both orders exposed US aid and development workers abroad to unwarranted risk and hardship.
Justice Nichols 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.
The workers associations argue that Mr Trump lacks the authority for his swift dismantling of a six-decade-old aid agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
Crews used duct tape to block out the agency’s name on a sign outside its Washington headquarters on Friday, and a flag was taken down. Someone placed a bouquet of flowers outside the door.
A group of USAID officials speaking to reporters on Friday strongly disputed assertions from secretary of state Marco Rubio that the most essential life-saving programmes abroad were getting waivers to continue.
With all but several hundred staff forced out and funding stopped, the agency has “ceased to exist”, one official on the call said.
The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programmes.
The administration told remaining USAID officials on Thursday afternoon that it planned to exempt 297 employees from global leave and furloughs ordered for at least 8,000 staff and contractors, according to USAID officials.
Late that night, a new list was finalised of 611 employees to remain on the job, many of them to manage the return home of thousands of staff, contractors and their families abroad, the officials said. Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate confirmed the 611 figure in court.
The USAID officials and staff spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring them from talking publicly.
Some of the remaining staff and contractors, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired employees abroad, would run the few life-saving programmes that the administration says it intends to keep going for now.
It was not immediately clear whether the reductions would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says will be a review of which aid and development programmes it wants to resume.
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 on Monday.
At USAID, among the programmes officials said had not received waivers – 450 million dollars 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 administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staff posted overseas 30 days, starting on 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 mid-year.
In a notice posted on the USAID website late on 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.
