US judge pauses plan to put USAID workers on leave

A US judge has temporarily allowed roughly 2,700 US Agency for International Development employees put on leave by President Donald Trump's administration to go back to work, pausing aspects of a plan to dismantle the agency.

US District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, who was nominated by Trump during his first term, partially granted a request from the largest US government workers' union and an association of foreign service workers who sued to stop the administration's efforts to close the agency.

Nichols's order, which will be in effect until February 14, blocks the Trump administration from implementing plans to place about 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave beginning on Saturday and reinstates some 500 employees who had already been furloughed.

It also bars the administration from relocating USAID humanitarian workers stationed outside the United States.

Nichols will consider a request for a longer-term pause at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. He wrote in the order that the unions had made a "strong showing of irreparable harm" if the court did not intervene.

Nichols rejected other requests from the unions to reopen USAID buildings and restore funding for agency grants and contracts.

The administration in a notice sent to the foreign aid agency's workers on Thursday said it will keep 611 essential workers on board at USAID out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000.

A Justice Department official, Brett Shumate, told Nichols that about 2,200 USAID employees would be put on paid leave under the administration's plans, adding that 500 had already been placed on leave.

"The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID," Shumate said.

Trump in a post on Truth Social on Friday accused USAID - without evidence - of corruption and spending money fraudulently.

He said the corruption at USAID "IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!"

Hours after he was inaugurated on January 20, Trump ordered all US foreign aid be paused to ensure it is aligned with his "America First" policy. Chaos has since consumed USAID, which distributes billions of dollars of humanitarian aid around the world.

The State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives after the executive order was issued, effectively freezing all foreign aid with the exception of emergency food assistance. That brought USAID programs covering lifesaving aid across the globe to a grinding halt, in a move that experts warned risked killing people.

The gutting of the agency has largely been overseen by businessman Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a close Trump ally spearheading the president's effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

In the 2023 fiscal year, the United States disbursed, partly via USAID, $72 billion (AED 264 trillion) of aid worldwide on everything from women's health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work.

It provided 42 per cent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024, yet that represents less than 1 per cent of its total budget.