Judge pauses Trump administration plan to put USAID civil servants on leave
A plan by the Trump administration to put almost all civil servants at the US government’s international development agency on leave has been put on hold until later this week after legal action by trade unions.
It was announced last week that most staff at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – which mainly works on supporting foreign aid and overseas charities, with humanitarian, development and security missions in more than 100 countries around the world – would be put on administrative leave.
This came after president Trump and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, both warned there was corruption and fraudulent payments at the agency.
As a result, the administration has indicated that USAID would be merged with the US Department of State. US secretary of state Marco Rubio stated in an interview that USAID is “supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so”.
However, trade unions argued the move to put officials on leave was in “excess of the executive’s authority” and “in violation of the separation of powers”.
In response, judge Carl Nichols issued a “limited” temporary restraining order, which will be in place until 14 February.
The lawsuit was filed by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). AFSA president Tom Yazdgerdi said that “USAID foreign service officers are non-partisan patriots who serve under every president, regardless of party, to implement US foreign policy and advance national security”.
He added: “AFSA is committed to using every tool at our disposal to protect these professionals, safeguard their careers, and ensure that USAID retains the expertise necessary to fulfil its mission.”
Read more: Trump administration puts USAID staff on leave as DOGE sets out spending cuts
Lawsuit pauses civil service resignation drive
This lawsuit is one of a number of actions being taken by trade unions in response to Trump administration orders related to the civil service.
A federal judge has also granted a limited temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from implementing its deferred resignation programme following a lawsuit from AFGE.
Following Trump’s return to the White House, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said it would launch a “deferred resignation” programme, with staff being asked to decide by 6 February whether they wanted to leave the government. Those that did so would receive eight months’ salary as a severance package.
Details were published on the OPM website under the heading ‘Fork in the Road’, which set out that the offer had been made in the context of a number of changes Trump planned to the federal workforce. These include a requirement to return to the office five days a week; updated performance standards to produce “excellence at every level”; a downsized civil service with officials reclassified as political appointments; and “enhanced standards of conduct” with a requirement that employees “are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work”.
Another legal challenge has restricted the access that the Department of Government Efficiency has to key US government databases.
Members of the DOGE team had access to the Treasury department’s central payment system in violation of federal law, according to a case filed by 19 Democratic attorneys general.
US district judge Paul A Engelmayer also said anyone prohibited from having access to the sensitive information since 20 January must immediately destroy all copies of material downloaded from Treasury department systems.
Lawsuit also filed to pause Schedule F
AFGE also filed a lawsuit to stop Trump’s efforts to introduce Schedule F. Alongside American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the lawsuit asserted that Trump had exceeded his authority in attempting to reinstate the Schedule F provisions that he had introduced – but not made use of – in his last term in office.
Schedule F was intended to convert a number of existing nonpartisan career civil servant roles to political appointee status, expanding the ranks of officials who are presidential appointments. The original executive order was revoked by president Biden in his first days in office in 2021, and he subsequently issued rules intended to protect career civil servants across the federal government from changes to their job protections.
From the archive: Biden administration boosts protections for career civil servants
Trump moved to rollback this order and restore Schedule F – now renamed Schedule Policy/Career – to empower the executive to move federal workers in policy-orientated roles from the government’s main federal pay scale to a new employment category, under which the usual civil service protections would not apply. This would allow these officials to be replaced by political appointments.
The AFGE and AFSCME lawsuit says the Office of Personnel Management had failed to adhere to the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations, in its attempts to roll back the Biden-era rules.
“AFGE is filing suit with our partner union today to protect the integrity of the American people’s government,” said AFGE national president Everett Kelley. “Together, we can stop the efforts to fire hundreds of thousands of experienced, hard-working Americans who have dedicated their careers to serving their country and prevent these career civil servants from being replaced with unqualified political flunkies loyal to the president, but not the law or Constitution.”
Read more: US Treasury leaves major climate risk mitigation network
US government CIOs set to become political appointees
In addition, the Trump administration has set out plans to turn all US federal chief information officer roles into potential political appointees.
In a memo sent to all department heads, the Office of Personnel Management’s acting director Charles Ezell said that the role of CIOs in government had changed, meaning that it was “[n]o longer the station of impartial and apolitical technocrats, [but] the modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determinant capacities across a range of controversial political topics”.
As a result, OPM said it was now recommending that each agency with a CIO role classified as part of the federal government’s Senior Executive Service should be reclassified. Most of these CIO posts are currently positions reserved for career officials, but the OPM is now recommending these become general positions, which could be filled by any type of government appointee, and protections against being removed from posts by political appointees would be removed.
According to the memo, agency CIOs are often responsible for key policy decisions in areas such as cybersecurity; artificial intelligence and machine learning; digital infrastructure including internet, cloud and privacy policy; government accountability and efficiency; digital access and communications; diversity, equity and inclusion; and accessibility and sustainability and innovation. “Each of these items standing alone and all of them taken together amount to significant political issues over which CIOs exercise authority,” the memo stated. “When an agency CIO makes policy choices about which of these topics to prioritise and fund – and which should be deemphasised or defunded – the CIO determines government policy in important ways.”
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