United States President, Donald Trump, has been blocked by a federal judge from implementing its plan to place 2,200 employees of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on leave at midnight.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who is a Trump appointee, in an order late Friday, issued a temporary restraining that prevents the President and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from placing the employees on administrative leave as had been planned.
Some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave also had the judge ordering their reinstatement. The judge also ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
Meanwhile, the judge had earlier, during a hearing Friday afternoon, said he would issue the temporary restraining order, saying the restraining would prevent the “accelerated removal” of USAID employees from their posts overseas
This follows a lawsuit by two foreign service unions amid the Trump administration’s attempts to reduce USAID’s workforce from 14,000 to only 300 employees in a bid to slash government spending.
“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,” Judge Nichols said at the hearing.
During the hearing, lawyers from the Department of Justice acknowledged that 500 USAID employees have already been placed on leave, while 2,000 more are scheduled to go by 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.”
However, the American Foreign Service Organization and the American Federation of Government Employees, in their lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court on Thursday, alleged 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 on Friday.
The attorneys continued, “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 imperilled U.S. national security interests,” the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs also accused Trump of unilaterally attempting to reduce the agency without congressional authorization, arguing that Congress is the only entity with the authority to dismantle USAID.
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