Trump sued by USAID workers union for shutting down global aid agency: ‘Profound moral stain’

The administration’s actions have triggered a ‘humanitarian crisis,’ according to latest federal lawsuit. Unions representing United States Agency for International Development workers are suing Donald Trump and his administration following an unprecedented attack against the global aid agency, which supports dozens of life-saving missions in more than 100 countries. Thousands of USAID employees are imminently expected to lose their jobs as Trump’s administration, with Elon Musk’s guidance, make visceral cuts across government agencies.

The complaint, filed by Public Citizen Litigation Group and Democracy Forward on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees, stresses that “not a single one” of the administration’s actions received congressional approval. “Given the severe ongoing harms suffered by plaintiffs and defendants’ intent to inflict imminent future harm, plaintiffs now file this Complaint and will seek a temporary restraining order directing Defendants to reverse these unlawful actions and to halt any further steps to dissolve the agency until the Court has an opportunity to more fully consider the issues on the merits,” the lawsuit states.

“This reckless decision is sowing chaos and fear” while endangering USAID staff around the world, according to Randy Chester, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents nearly 2,000 foreign service officers who work with USAID. The “sudden disorganizing chaotic departure” will also have enormous taxpayer costs; repatriating Americans abroad will cost at least $20 million, according to Chester, who spoke to reporters as the lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C.

The administration’s abrupt decimation of the agency is “a profound moral stain,” according to Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group. The administration’s “unlawful seizure” of the agency has “generated a global humanitarian crisis,” imperling the mission of the agency and stopping the delivery of “life-saving food, medicine and other support to people all over the world,” according to Democracy Forward’s Robin Thurston.

A memo on the agency’s website earlier this week noted that nearly the entire workforce would be put on “administrative leave” by the end of the week, with only a small number of “designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs” who would be exempt. USAID workers abroad, which account for roughly two-thirds of the agency’s staff, will “be offered optional and fully reimbursed return travel to the United States within 30 days,” though “personnel are not required to accept Agency-sponsored travel or to return to the United States within any specific deadline.”.

“Beyond 30 days, however, Agency funded and arranged return travel may not be available unless an individualized exception is sought and granted,” the memo states. “Thank you for your service,” it reads. Musk has said he wants to feed USAID “into the woodchipper while baselessly smearing the agency as a “criminal organization” and a “radical-left political psy op.”. “The agency’s collapse has had disastrous humanitarian consequences,” according to the complaint. “Among countless other consequences of defendants’ reckless dissolution of the.

agency, halting USAID work has shut down efforts to prevent children from dying of malaria, stopped pharmaceutical clinical trials, and threatened a global resurgence in HIV. Deaths are inevitable. Already, 300 babies that would not have had HIV, now do. Thousands of girls and women will die from pregnancy and childbirth. Without judicial intervention, it will only get worse.”. The lawsuit is the latest facing the Trump administration, which has been hit with an avalanche of litigation within his first three weeks in the White House.