A federal judge ordered a temporary block Friday on Trump administration orders that would have placed thousands more workers of the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave, and would have given agency workers abroad just a 30-day deadline to return to the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed with arguments by two government employee associations that both orders exposed U.S. aid and development workers abroad to unwarranted risk and hardship.
Nichols pointed to accounts from workers abroad that the Trump administration, in its rush to shut down the agency and its programs abroad, had cut workers off from many of the ways they needed to reach the U.S. 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.
But the judge declined the employee groups’ request to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency and its work, pending more hearings on the workers’ lawsuit.
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