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Administration Battles USAID 02/12 06:48
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Trump administration will present an unforgiving
argument for dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development to a
federal judge Wednesday: USAID is rife with "insubordination" and must be shut
down for the administration to decide what pieces of it to salvage.
The argument, made in an affidavit by political appointee and deputy USAID
administrator Pete Marocco, comes as the administration confronts a lawsuit by
two groups representing federal employees.
USAID staffers deny insubordination and call the accusation a pretext to
break up the more than 60-year-old agency, one of the world's biggest donors of
humanitarian and development assistance.
Accounts of USAID staffers filed Tuesday in support of the lawsuit revealed
new details of the destruction of the agency.
That includes a sworn statement from a USAID staffer describing a specific
leader in billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency teams
allegedly directing USAID staffers on Monday in the immediate termination of
about 200 USAID programs without proper authorization or process.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, an appointee of President Donald Trump,
dealt the administration a setback Friday in its dismantling of the agency,
temporarily halting plans to pull all but a fraction of USAID staffers off the
job worldwide.
Nichols is due to hear arguments Wednesday on a request from the employee
groups to keep blocking the move to put thousands of staffers on leave as well
as broaden his order. They contend the government has already violated the
judge's order, which also reinstated USAID staffers already placed on leave but
declined to suspend the administration's freeze on foreign assistance.
Trump and Musk's cost-cutting DOGE have hit USAID particularly hard as they
look to shrink the size of the federal government, accusing its work of being
wasteful and out of line with Trump's agenda.
In the court case, a government motion shows the administration pressing
arguments by Vice President JD Vance and others questioning if courts have the
authority to check Trump's power.
"The President's powers in the realm of foreign affairs are generally vast
and unreviewable," government lawyers argued.
USAID staffers and supporters call the aid agency's humanitarian and
development work abroad essential to national security.
They argue each step of the administration's breakup of USAID has been
unnecessarily cruel to its thousands of workers and devastating for people
around the world who are being cut off from clean water, life-saving medical
care, education, training and more since Trump signed an executive order on
Jan. 20 freezing foreign assistance.
"This is a full-scale gutting of virtually all the personnel of an entire
agency," Karla Gilbride, attorney for the employee associations, told the judge
last week.
The American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of
Government Employees argue that Trump lacks the authority to shut down the
agency without approval from Congress. Democratic lawmakers have made the same
argument.
In an affidavit ahead of Wednesday's hearing, Marocco, a returning USAID
political appointee from Trump's first term, presents without evidence a
description of agency workers stalling and resisting the administration's
orders to abruptly cut off funds for programs worldwide and subject each one to
a rigorous review.
In the face of "deceit," "noncompliance" and "insubordination," USAID's new
leaders "ultimately determined that the placement of a substantial number of
USAID personnel on paid administrative leave was the only way to ... faithfully
implement the pause and conduct a full and unimpeded audit of USAID's
operations and programs," Marocco stated.
Staffers deny resisting the funding freeze. They argue that the cutoff of
money and resulting collapse of U.S.-funded programs abroad, the shutdown of
the agency's website and lockout of employees from systems made it impossible
for those reviews to take place.
Nichols also agreed last week to block an order giving thousands of overseas
USAID workers who were being placed on administrative leave 30 days to move
back to the U.S. on government expense.
Both moves would have exposed the workers and their spouses and children to
unwarranted risk and expense, the judge said.
Nichols pointed to accounts that the Trump administration had cut off some
workers from government emails and emergency alert systems they needed for
their safety.
"Administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in
Bethesda," the judge said last week, referring to the Washington, D.C., suburb.
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 other difficulties.
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