THE WASHINGTON POST: Judge bars Trump administration from putting 2,000 USAID workers on leave

A federal judge said Friday he will temporarily bar the U.S. Agency for International Development from putting 2,200 workers on paid leave as planned by the end of the day after employee groups filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s authority to shut down the agency.

U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols said after a hastily called hearing that he will enter a “limited” order in the lawsuit, brought Thursday, and was still weighing whether to order the government to undo the decision to place an additional 500 workers on paid leave.

Nichols 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 hastily sketched-out claims.

But he said after a 90-minute hearing that the claimants established that they could suffer “irreparable harms” to their families, finances and security overseas, with “enough likelihood of success on the merits.”

Nichols added that “there is essentially zero harm to the government” from a short pause.

The decision came only a day after a filing by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees asking the court to declare unlawful what it called “a series of unconstitutional and illegal actions taken by President Donald Trump and his administration that have systematically dismantled” USAID without authorization from Congress.

The suit represents the first legal challenge to the push by Trump and his allies, led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, targeting U.S. foreign aid programs and USAID staff - part of their effort to reshape the federal government and imprint U.S. foreign policy with the “America First” agenda.

Those efforts have included orders freezing a broad swath of foreign aid programs and firing, furloughing or putting on leave the vast majority of USAID staff at its Washington headquarters and abroad.

“These actions have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors,” the plaintiffs said in a filing Thursday. “They have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled U.S. national security interests.”

Trump, in a social media post Friday morning, said the action to curtail USAID was “DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY.”

In an all-caps message, Trump asserted without evidence that much of USAID’s funding had been spent fraudulently. “THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE,” he said. “CLOSE IT DOWN!”

Outside USAID’s headquarters near the White House on Friday, workers removed the agency’s name from a building sign and took down its flag.

The administration’s actions jeopardize the United States’ longtime status as the world’s largest provider of foreign assistance, funding activities from food aid for malnourished children to vaccine distribution to democracy promotion. Foreign aid represents roughly 1 percent of the federal budget.

The rollout of the orders affecting USAID have been characterized by reversals, bare-bones information and widespread confusion.

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’s payment system remains offline.

Earlier this week, USAID alerted overseas employees that they would be required to curtail their assignments and return to the United States within 30 days to secure government-paid relocation. The order resulted in mass confusion among employees unsure if they would be able to secure waivers allowing their children to finish the school year or if they would receive assistance in relocating back to the United States.

At the outset of Friday’s hearing, Brett Shumate, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s 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 - three times initial plans which were circulated yesterday - would be kept on.

Plaintiffs attorney Karla Gilbride said the actions were part of a “cascade” of irreparable harms to workers posed by the Trump administration’s shutdown of the agency. Workers would be cut off from communications systems that ensure security in dangerous environments overseas; payment systems would be shuttered; workers themselves could be exposed to liability for unpaid funding obligations and face immediate threats to their family’s stability and health.

© 2025 , The Washington Post