A federal judge on Friday paved the way for the Trump administration to move forward with plans to remove thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers from their jobs.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied a request from labor groups to issue a preliminary injunction after the Trump administration said thousands of USAID employees would be placed on administrative leave and ordered agency personnel abroad to return to the U.S. within 30 days.
“Weighing plaintiffs’ assertions on these questions against the government’s is like comparing apples to oranges. Where one side claims that USAID’s operations are essential to human flourishing and the other side claims they are presently at odds with it, it simply is not possible for the Court to conclude, as a matter of law or equity, that the public interest favors or disfavors an injunction,” Nichols wrote.
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“Plaintiffs have presented no irreparable harm they or their members are imminently likely to suffer from the hypothetical future dissolution of USAID,” Nichols wrote. “And it is not clear why the speed of proceedings in the relevant agencies would be insufficient to address the only actions that have already happened and are presently ripe for review: administrative leave placements, expedited evacuations, and other changes to working conditions of the sort those bodies routinely confront.”
Earlier this month, the judge had paused the administration’s move to place 2,200 USAID staff on administrative leave. He also rescinded leave for 500 workers and paused efforts to expedite evacuations for personnel abroad. The temporary restraining order on those actions extended until the judge’s ruling on Friday.
The lawsuit was initially filed by the American Foreign Service Association, a union representing 1,980 foreign service officers working for USAID, and the American Federation of Government Employees. They argued that efforts to dissolve USAID have had “disastrous humanitarian consequences” by terminating the agency’s efforts to stop children’s malaria deaths, ending pharmaceutical clinical trials and threatening HIV resurgence.
They also alleged that the move to gut the agency had “already imperiled American lives,” and referenced the State Department last month advising U.S. nationals to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to safety concerns tied to protests at U.S. government buildings.
“By abruptly putting staff on administrative leave, Defendants left USAID workers in perilous situations stranded, without any information or funding to escape,” the lawsuit said.
Tom Yazdgerdi, the president of the American Foreign Service Association, called the judge’s ruling “a setback in our fight to protect our members from efforts that threaten to dismantle USAID, but it does not change the importance of their mission — advancing U.S. interests and delivering life-saving assistance worldwide.”
Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, one of the firms representing the unions in the lawsuit, said that they would “continue to pursue all legal options in this case in order to ensure the safety of Americans at home and abroad.”
“The Trump administration’s attack on USAID is part of a coordinated effort to undermine the will of Congress and isolate America on the global stage,” Perryman said in a statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.
The Trump administration has indicated it hopes to cut up to 10% of the federal workforce. Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has played a central role in those efforts and in overall plans to drastically reduce government spending.
In addition to promoting false conspiracy theories about USAID, Musk recently referred to the agency as “a criminal organization” in a post on X that added, “Time for it to die.”
