By Blake Brittain and Brendan Pierson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday extended for one week a pause on the Trump administration’s plan to put thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers on leave while he considers a lawsuit by government employee unions.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington said at a hearing that he was concerned about the safety of USAID workers stationed abroad, and ordered the government to provide more information about what it would do to ensure the safety of any workers placed on leave.
The judge extended his previous temporary order against putting the employees on leave, which had been set to expire this Friday, until next Friday, February 21, saying that would give him more time to consider the unions’ motion for a broader and longer-term order.
The unions are asking him not only to block the administration from putting workers on leave, but to halt a wide range of actions it has taken to scale back the agency’s funding and operations while the lawsuit goes forward.
Nichols expressed skepticism of the unions’ case, however, saying that government workers who have a dispute over their employment are generally required to go through an administrative process rather than suing in federal court.
Hours after he was inaugurated on January 20, President Donald Trump, a Republican, ordered all U.S. foreign aid to be paused to ensure it is aligned with his “America First” policy, throwing USAID, the United States’ main foreign aid agency, into chaos.
The U.S. State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives after the executive order was issued, halting lifesaving aid programs around the world with limited exceptions for emergency food delivery. The Trump administration has said it intends to merge USAID into the State Department and eliminate most of its staff.
The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association sued last week, claiming that the Trump administration is illegally moving to shut down USAID without authorization from Congress and in the process is creating a global humanitarian crisis.
Eric Hamilton, a Justice Department lawyer, said at Thursday’s hearing that the administration was not shutting down USAID but only pausing its operations as part of Trump’s plan to “recalibrate” foreign aid policy, and that some foreign aid “continues to flow.”
But Karla Gilbride, a lawyer for the unions, countered that in reality USAID contracts have been canceled en masse, humanitarian work has ground to a halt and a waiver process promised by administration officials to allow vital aid to continue is not functioning.
Gilbride argued that, without a broad order halting the administration’s actions while the lawsuit proceeds, USAID will be “dismantled” before the workers can get any relief in court.
“There has been a mismatch in the proceedings today between words on paper and actions experienced on the ground,” she said.
Two similar lawsuits were filed earlier this week, one by two non-profit groups that receive funding from USAID and one on behalf of contractors that handle much of its work. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali is currently weighing whether to enter a temporary restraining order in those cases.
In fiscal year 2023, the United States disbursed $72 billion of aid worldwide, partly through USAID, for initiatives including women’s health in conflict zones, clean water access, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. It provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024.
Foreign aid, which makes up less than 1% of the United States’ total budget, has historically been justified not only on humanitarian grounds but as part of Washington’s efforts to build alliances, reinforce diplomacy and counter the influence of adversaries such as China and Russia in the developing world.
(Reporting By Blake Brittain in Washington and Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Alistair Bell)
