Judge Nichols, a Trump appointee on Friday declined to block the Trump Administration’s move to place thousands of USAID workers on leave.
Last week Judge Nichols temporarily extended his restraining order blocking the Trump Admin from placing USAID workers on leave.
The restraining order expired on Friday and the judge declined a request for a preliminary injunction.
Judge Nichols said in a 26-page decision that the plaintiffs (the union that represents the USAID workers) have not demonstrated that further preliminary injunctive relief is warranted.
Based on this record, the Court concludes that the prospect of plaintiffs’ members suffering physical harm from being placed on administrative leave while abroad is highly unlikely. And to the extent that plaintiffs allege that paid administrative leave will harm their members in ways other than via the supposed removal of security protections—such as by tarnishing their members’ reputations or by preventing them from performing their standard duties, those types of standard employment harms “fall[] far short of the type of irreparable injury which is a necessary predicate to the issuance of a [preliminary] injunction,” Judge Nichols wrote.
Thousand of USAID workers will be placed on administrative leave.
CBS reported:
A federal judge on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from putting thousands of employees with U.S. Agency for International Development on administrative leave and recalling others from overseas, clearing the way for the president to resume his efforts to overhaul the agency as part of his plans to slash the size of the federal government.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, appointed by President Trump, denied a request for a preliminary injunction sought by two labor unions that represent members of the Foreign Service and civilian employees. Nichols had issued a temporary order earlier this month that prevented the administration from placing thousands of USAID employees on administrative leave and evacuating workers from overseas posts, and ordered the Trump administration to reinstate USAID workers who had already been placed on leave.
But in turning down the request for the preliminary injunction, Nichols now allows the Trump administration to resume those efforts.
Earlier this month Secretary of State Marco Rubio took over as Acting Director of USAID after the agency’s staffers were told to leave the headquarters overnight.
Rubio said the USAID is supposed to respond to the State Department’s policies and it was refusing to do so.
“It’s supposed to respond to the State Department’s policies. It refuses to do so. A lot of functions of USAID will continue, but it has to be aligned with our foreign policy,” Rubio told reporters a few weeks ago.
President Trump said Musk’s DOGE will help uncover hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and abuse.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that,” President Trump told Fox News host Bret Baier earlier this month.
Paul Martin, the inspector general at the USAID was fired a couple of weeks ago just one day after his office released a report blasting the Trump Administration for working to gut the agency.
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