While US President Donald Trump is on a spree of making decisions as promised in the run-up to the election, the judges in the US too have been watchful of the new president's move, either blocking or delaying some of his crucial decisions. In the latest development, a federal judge on Friday blocked Trump's decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development. The order, which also comes as a setback for Elon Musk, seeks a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
The US administration wanted to place thousands of overseas USAID workers on abrupt administrative leave while leaving them with just 30 days to move families and households back to the US at government expense.
According to a report by news agency AP, USAID contractors in the Middle East and elsewhere had found even “panic button” apps being wiped off their mobile phones or disabled when the administration abruptly furloughed them.
Here's what the Federal Judge said
US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, who also agreed to block the order, pointed to accounts from workers abroad that the Trump administration, in its rush to shut down the agency and its programs abroad, had cut some workers off from government emails and other communication systems they needed to reach the US government in case of a health or safety emergency.
“Administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda,” the judge said in his order Friday night.
Setback for Trump-Musk duo
Nichols stressed in the hearing earlier Friday on the request to pause the Trump administration's actions that his order was not a decision on the employees' request to roll back the administration's swiftly moving destruction of the agency.
The latest development comes as a setback for the Trump-Musk duo, which is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. Both have made USAID their biggest target so far in an unprecedented challenge to the federal government and many of its programs.
(With inputs from AP)
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