Judge halting dismantling of USAID says there's no support for Musk/Trump's claim of massive "corruption and fraud"
Last edited Sun Feb 9, 2025, 04:25 PM - Edit history (1)
A federal judge has ordered an immediate halt to key aspects of President Donald Trump’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, blocking Secretary of State Marco Rubio from placing 2,200 employees of the agency on leave Friday and ordering the reinstatement of 500 others.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, wrote that, without legal intervention, Trump’s abrupt order to sideline and hurriedly evacuate thousands of USAID employees could cause immeasurable damage to their livelihoods.
“No future lawsuit could undo the physical harm that might result if USAID employees are not informed of imminent security threats occurring in the countries to which they have relocated in the course of their service to the United States,” Nichols wrote in his seven-page order.
Nichols noted that despite Trump’s claim of massive “corruption and fraud” in the agency, government lawyers had no support for that argument in court. Aside from that assertion, the judge said, the administration was unable to explain “what harm would befall the government if it could not immediately place on administrative leave the more than 2000 employees in question.”
read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/judge-blocks-trump-administration-plan-usaid-workers-leave-00203205
related:
NYT: Fact-Checking Claims About U.S.A.I.D. Funding
Trump administration officials have misled about how the aid agency is spending its funding, in an effort to cite widespread “waste.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/us/politics/usaid-funding-trump-fact-check.html
POLITIFACT Claims about Politico, ‘DEI musical’ and USAID spending distort the facts
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2025/02/07/claims-about-politico-dei-musical-and-usaid-spending-distort-facts/78217656007/
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