{"id":38146,"date":"2025-02-06T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T02:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38146"},"modified":"2025-02-06T20:10:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T02:10:22","slug":"unions-sue-trump-administration-over-usaid-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=38146","title":{"rendered":"Unions sue Trump administration over USAID shutdown\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Unions representing government employees&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/25515233-american-federation-of-government-employees-v-trump\/\"><u>sued the Trump administration<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;Thursday evening to block efforts to shut down the government\u2019s independent foreign assistance agency.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/elon-musk\/\"><u>Elon Musk\u2019s\u2002<\/u><\/a>Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) launched a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/technology\/5122676-usaid-shutdown-elon-musk-doge\/?_thumbnail_id=5096327\"><u>full-scale assault<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) over the weekend, shutting staff out of internal systems and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/5127162-usaid-workers-placed-on-administrative-leave-until-further-notice\/\"><u>placing thousands on administrative leave<\/u><\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The Trump administration&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/international\/foreign-aid\/5131710-trump-administration-slashing-usaid-reports\/\"><u>reportedly slashed<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;the workforce from more than 10,000 to fewer than 300 employees on Thursday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE)&nbsp;filed a lawsuit against President Trump, Secretary of State&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/marco-rubio\/\"><u>Marco Rubio,<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;Treasury Secretary&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/scott-bessent\/\"><u>Scott Bessent,<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;USAID, the State Department and the Department of Treasury seeking an injunctive relief \u201cto immediately cease actions to shut down USAID\u2019s operations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese actions have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors. They have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled U.S. national security interests,\u201d the plaintiffs wrote in the suit.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The lawsuit specifically calls for the appointment of an independent acting director of USAID, the reopening of USAID buildings, the restoration of USAID systems and webpages, the resumption of all grants and contracts, a pause on placing additional workers on administrative leave, and the recall of furlough notices and mandatory evacuation orders.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The Hill has reached out to the White House, State Department, USAID and Treasury Department for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/international\/5131863-unions-sue-trump-administration-usaid\/\">thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unions representing government employees&nbsp;sued the Trump administration&nbsp;Thursday evening to block efforts to shut down the government\u2019s independent foreign assistance agency.&nbsp; Elon Musk\u2019s\u2002Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) launched a&nbsp;full-scale assault&nbsp;on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) over the weekend, shutting staff out of internal systems and&nbsp;placing thousands on administrative leave.&nbsp; The Trump administration&nbsp;reportedly slashed&nbsp;the workforce [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":38147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1268,1230,2251],"class_list":["post-38146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-government","tag-trump","tag-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38146"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38149,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38146\/revisions\/38149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}