President Donald Trump has been keeping his foot on the gas of governmental reform since taking office last month, but that is not to say that he has not encountered some noteworthy obstacles along the way.
Amid the administration's efforts to slash thousands of jobs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a federal judge has put a temporary halt on the measure, siding with two employee unions who sued to stop Trump's momentum, as the New York Post reports.
One of the agencies targeted for massive cost-cutting by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is USAID, and after an initial review of its operations, plans were announced to cut its workforce down from over 10,000 to just a few hundred.
In response to the administration's stated direction, the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees sued, contending that the planned layoffs would jeopardize the safety of workers placed abroad as well as the continuity of nongovernmental organizations that rely on USAID funding to operate.
Countering that position was Trump Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate, who argued that Trump had the authority to place USAID workers on leave due to findings of “corruption and fraud” said to be rampant at the agency.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concurred with the unions -- at least for now -- and ordered the administration to reinstate all agency employees placed on leave, also barring anyone else from being placed on leave or being ordered to return from overseas posts on any “expedited timeline.”
The stay on any such significant personnel moves will remain in place until at least Feb. 15, according to Nichols, and the parties will reconvene for a preliminary injunction hearing that is now set for Feb. 12.
The Trump administration, despite the setback from Nichols, appears undeterred in its plans to dismantle or dramatically reshape USAID, with the president himself stating, as the Daily Mail noted, that it has “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been named acting administrator for USAID, lamented the tumultuous nature of the attempted changes, saying, “I'd have preferred not to do it this way.”
However, he added, “When we tried to do it from the top down by getting cooperation from the central office and USAID, what we found instead are people trying to use the system to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order. We found people that were uncooperative in terms of giving us information and access.”
Rubio assured concerned parties that the administration is not abandoning the concept of foreign aid, but rather initiating reforms to ensure that it is delivered in an appropriate way.
“The United States will be providing foreign aid. But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” priorities that DOGE and the president believe have been missing in the agency's operations.
Both sides in the dispute over USAID appear to be fully entrenched in their positions, with the federal unions contending that the administration's efforts to dismantle the agency are invalid due to the lack of any congressional authorization for them.
Trump, however, has insisted that he has executive authority to combat what he says is corruption “at levels rarely seen before,” but whether his -- and Musk's -- position will ultimately win the day, only time will tell.
