(LifeSiteNews) — A judge temporarily blocked the Trump Administration from placing thousands of employees of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), many of whom are stationed overseas, on paid leave, just hours before the President’s order was to go into force.
Judge Carl Nichols, whom Trump appointed during his first administration, issued a temporary restraining order against the President’s directive. That directive gives all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days to return to the U.S., with the government covering their travel and moving costs.
Two unions — the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees — argued before the judge that the Trump administration’s unilateral move circumvented constitutionally required congressional approval while also placing severe hardships on many USAID employees and their families.
“In agreeing to stop the 30-day deadline given USAID staffers to return home at government expense, Nichols cited statements from agency employees who had no home to go to in the U.S. after decades abroad, who faced pulling children with special needs out of school midyear, and had other difficulties,” according to an Associated Press (AP) report.
“The judge also ordered USAID staffers already placed on leave by the Trump administration reinstated,” explained the report. “But he declined a request from two federal employee associations to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency and its work, pending more hearings on the workers’ lawsuit.”
“This is a full-scale gutting of virtually all the personnel of an entire agency,” an attorney for the employee associations, told the judge.
The Trump Administration, working in conjunction with newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Elon Musk, have sought to completely dismantle the agency after exposing billions of taxpayer dollars wasted by USAID on woke, often overtly anti-American, projects and propaganda.
“For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” asserted a statement from The White House on Monday, which also listed some of the most egregious, indefensible examples of the agency’s wasteful spending:
- $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
- $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
- $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam
- $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia
- $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru
- $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala
- $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt
- Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a non-profit linked to designated terrorist organizations — even AFTER an inspector general launched an investigation
- Millions to EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab
- Funding to print “personalized” contraceptives birth control devices in developing countries
- Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the Taliban
“Under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ENDS NOW,” declared the White House statement.
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But the ill-use of taxpayer funding by USAID extends far beyond wastefulness to objective evil, as reported by LifeSiteNews’ Calvin Freiburger:
Operation Rescue notes that in 2022 alone, USAID under former President Joe Biden spent $607.5 million on so-called “family planning and reproductive health,” which in practice meant promoting abortion abroad. U.K. abortion business Marie Stopes International received almost $27 million a year from the program.
Fox News adds that in 2023, Rep. Chris Smith found that USAID sent $96.5 million to Population Services International (PSI) and $10.1 million to Village Reach, both pro-abortion groups, via the USAID program United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
“For many years, USAID was part of the criminal Abortion Cartel, promoting the killing of innocent babies in the womb and coercing developing nations to accept abortion,” OR president Troy Newman said. “Thanks to President Trump, that bloody reign of terror inflicted on the world by the Biden Administration has now come to an end. We call on President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio to take steps to ensure that our tax money will never again be used to kill babies in the womb.”
RELATED: Trump’s USAID freeze cuts off millions in funding to pro-abortion groups
“The CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” said Trump on Truth Social on Friday morning, using all caps for emphasis.
“USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE,” said Trump.
By early Friday, the administration had wasted no time in effacing physical evidence of USAID’s existence in the nation’s capital, erasing its name, until then chiseled into stone outside its D.C. headquarters, and removing USAID flags.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took over as acting administrator of USAID on Monday, told reporters that the “level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid writ large should have.”
He justified the Administration’s short mandatory timeline for USAID employees to return to the US as necessary because agency staffers were already working “to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order” regarding further foreign assistance.
“This is not about ending the programs that USAID does, per se,” said Rubio while visiting Caribbean and Central American nations this week. “There are things that it does that are good, and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about.”
Secretary of State Rubio promised that the U.S. government would continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”