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.
A lawsuit filed by government employee unions on Thursday seeks to block Trump’s “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that “have systematically dismantled” the agency, creating a “humanitarian crisis” and imperiling national security while jeopardizing thousands of jobs.
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.
Plaintiffs seek a temporary restraining order directing Trump and administration officials to “reverse these unlawful actions and to halt any further steps to dissolve the agency” as a legal battle plays out.
“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.
A sudden and “chaotic departure” of USAID workers stationed around the world 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 63-year-old agency has already “generated a global humanitarian crisis,” according to Democracy Forward’s Robin Thurston.
Cutting off USAID work has stopped efforts to prevent children from dying of malaria, ended pharmaceutical clinical trials, and “threatened a global resurgence in HIV,” according to the lawsuit.
“Deaths are inevitable. Already, 300 babies that would not have had HIV, now do,” the lawsuit states. “Thousands of girls and women will die from pregnancy and childbirth. Without judicial intervention, it will only get worse.”
The employee unions sued the administration shortly after the announcement that only 294 USAID personnel would be spared from the agency’s 10,000-plus staff.
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.
“Thank you for your service,” it reads.
Musk, meanwhile, 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 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.
Two federal judges have blocked his executive order attempting to unilaterally redefine the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause. Judges have also stalled his attempts to freeze federal funding and struck down parts of an executive order that would have forced incarcerated transgender women to move into men’s prisons without access to gender-affirming healthcare.
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