President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have just been handed a massive legal victory by a federal judge concerning the administration’s effort to take apart the United States Agency of International Development through the elimination of 800 contractors.
Any win for Trump and DOGE is a victory for the American taxpayer. Of that you can be guaranteed.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, found that the USAID contractors failed to establish that their termination would ultimately result in irreparable harm. Nichols’ ruling shoots down the emergency relief the contractors were trying to use in order to justify blocking any attempt to fire them.
“The ruling aligns with Judge Nichols’ earlier judgment against a USAID union’s effort to stop the administration from terminating more than 2,000 direct-hire employees. He noted that the contractors’ harm was a direct result of changes made to their contracts by the government, suggesting they seek redress through alternative legal avenues,” Trending Politics News reported.
The judge stated that any harm the contractors face is “directly traceable” to changes the government has made to their contracts, according to The Hill, indicating that they should seek relief through a different avenue. The Personal Services Contractor Association, an advocacy group representing U.S. personal services contractors, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last month in an effort to shield contractors from the administration’s push to dismantle the agency. Attorneys for the contractors stated that termination notices had been issued to “possibly hundreds” of the approximately 1,110 contractors employed by USAID, nearly 46 percent of whom are stationed overseas, per The Hill.
“The destruction of USAID is now imminent,” Carolyn Shapiro, an attorney for the challengers, went on to say during a hearing on the subject Wednesday.
Earlier in the year, Trump’s administration decided to freeze all U.S. foreign aid, which led to massive chaos over at USAID. The president made the case that billions of dollars in taxpayer money was essentially being tossed into the garbage on programs that did nothing to advance American interests.
The executive order Trump signed demanded that an investigation into USAID be launched while suspending almost all of its programs.
Over 50 senior officials were placed on leave for allegedly working against the freeze, while hundreds of contractors faced furloughs or terminations. The agency’s security team was also sidelined after attempting to block access to investigators from the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk. Musk publicly slammed USAID as a “criminal organization” beyond repair, leading to the agency’s website being taken offline and staff denied entry to headquarters.
A federal judge placed a short-lived halt on the aid cuts, however Chief Justice John Roberts reinstated the suspension after a review of the case in the Supreme Court.
“Earlier this week, The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid payments, affirming a lower court’s order that USAID must disburse funds to contractors for work already completed. The ruling followed Trump’s executive order pausing foreign assistance for a 90-day review,” the article read.
Shapiro encouraged the judge to place his focus not on the personal hardships that USAID contractors could face, but on the massive damage that’s been done by the government’s “structurally unconstitutional decision-making.”
She then warned him that rejecting the request for temporary relief could cause a “Humpty-Dumpty” situation, saying that once USAID is dismantled, they might not be able to put it back together.
Judge didn’t buy it. Instead, he ruled on Thursday that these concerns are just “generalized grievances” and failed to meet the high bar that is required in order to justify temporary relief.
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