Washington – A federal judge said Friday that it will prevent the Trump administration from placing 2,200 employees of the United States Agency for International Development or USAIDOn administrative permit, it stands with unions that represent employees for now.
Judge Carl Nichols, of the United States District Court, for the Columbia district, whom President Trump appointed the bank in 2019, said in the court that he would approve a limited temporary restriction order that would prevent employees from being Administrative license, a move that was ready to enter into midnight. He also said that he would decide if the 500 workers who are already licensed would be reinstated. The details about the pause would be established in an upcoming presentation, he said.
He said that the unions, the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government employees, established that they would suffer “irreparable damage” without a pause, while the government did not. “Frankly, there is zero damage to the government” in a short -term break, Nichols said from the bank.
At a hearing on Friday afternoon, the plaintiffs asked the court to immediately stop the evacuation orders given to the USAID personnel in international publications, and to restore access to computer systems for people in the field in all parts of USAID and its contractors.
The Government acknowledged that 2,200 USAID employees were ready to be fired at midnight, except for the judicial action, not including the other 500 people who are already licensed before today. Six hundred and eleven essential personnel would stay in Usaid, and the government added that it has no plans to reduce that number.
The lawyers of the plaintiffs argued that the main reduction of force, evacuations and the uprooting people of their works and homes were violations of the separation of powers and appropriations of Congress. They said that families are being separated, and the children of USAID employees are being removed from schools around the world. According to unions, employees have been eliminated from access to medical care, and many have to return to housing without housing or source of income, according to unions.
“This is the large -scale destruction of practically all the staff of an agency,” said a USEID employee lawyer, adding that it is “butcher shop” on land for the workforce and USAID contractors.
Nichols pressed government lawyers for a reason why the Secretary of State Frame Rubio, who is the interim chief of USAID, must place license employees on Friday night. “I don’t think the Rubio Secretary needs to provide one,” replied one of the lawyers.
Nichols pushed government lawyers to detail what “findings” there are corruption and fraud in the agency, as President Trump and his allies alleges. The lawyers had no response. The judge also dismissed with the government framing that Rubio could control USAID in his role as Secretary of State, not as an interim administrator, since it is a separate agency.
Nichols’s decision to block the move to place licensee employees arrived hours after workers were seen to eliminate signage at the USAID headquarters in the Washington center.
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