The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Structure, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency.
The order requires the Trump administration to revive email and computer access to all employees of USAID, including those placed on administrative leave, though it appears to stop wanting reversing firings or fully resurrecting the agency.
In one in every of the primary DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.
Musk’s public statements and social media posts show that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to a web based post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”
The judge acknowledged that it’s likely that USAID is not any longer able to performing a few of its statutorily required functions.
“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote within the preliminary injunction.
The lawsuit filed by USAID employees and contractors argued that Musk and DOGE are wielding power the Structure reserves only for many who win elections or are confirmed by the Senate.
Their attorneys said the ruling “effectively halts or reverses” most of the steps taken to dismantle the agency.
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The administration has said that DOGE is looking for and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, consistent with the campaign message that helped Trump win the 2024 election. The White House and DOGE didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the ruling.
Musk, his team and Trump political appointee Pete Marocco have played a central role within the two-month dismantling of USAID. In a single instance in early February, the administration placed the agency’s top security officials on forced leave after they tried to dam DOGE staff from accessing USAID’s classified and sensitive documents.
The administration, with Musk’s and DOGE’s support, went on to order all but a fraction of the agency’s staffers off the job through forced leaves and firings, and terminated what the State Department said was a minimum of 83% of USAID’s program contracts.
The moves were a part of a broader push by Musk and the Trump administration to eradicate the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency and most of its work overseas.
Trump on Inauguration Day issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all U.S. aid and development work abroad, charging that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
Democratic lawmakers and other supporters of USAID have argued Trump had no authority to withhold funding that Congress already approved.
Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the general public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to come to a decision whether, when and the way to close down an agency created by Congress.”
The lawsuit was filed by the State Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen, the nonprofit’s executive chair, said the ruling is a milestone in pushback to DOGE and the primary to seek out that Musk’s actions violate the Structure’s Appointments Clause, which mandates presidential approval and Senate confirmation for certain public officials.
“They’re performing surgery with a chainsaw as an alternative of a scalpel, harming not only the people USAID serves but the vast majority of Americans who count on the soundness of our government,” he said in a press release.
Oxfam America’s Abby Maxman in a press release urged all staffing and funding to be reinstated.
“The funding freeze and program cuts are already having life or death consequences for hundreds of thousands around the globe,” said the chief executive of the humanitarian group.
Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed reporting.
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