A federal judge on Tuesday blocked billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency from taking any more steps to shut down the US Agency for International Development, saying their efforts to close the foreign aid agency likely violated the US Constitution.
In a preliminary ruling, US District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland ordered Musk, and the agency Musk spearheads to restore access to USAID’s computer systems for its direct and contract employees, including thousands who were placed on leave.
In addition to ordering them to restore employees’ computer access, he barred them from disclosing any sensitive employee information.
Chuang did not block the mass terminations of most of USAID’s contracts and personnel, which have ended much of the agency’s operations worldwide and thrown global humanitarian relief efforts into chaos.
He found that while those terminations likely did violate the Constitution, they had been approved by government officials who are not named in the lawsuit.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by current and former USAID employees, one of several currently pending over the rapid dismantling of Washington’s primary humanitarian aid agency.
Trump said his administration would appeal the ruling.
“I guarantee you we will be appealing it. We have rogue judges that are destroying our country,” Trump said on “The Ingraham Angle.”
Trump, a Republican, on his first day back in the White House, ordered a 90-day freeze of all US foreign aid and a review of whether aid programs were aligned with his administration’s policy.
The plaintiffs claimed in their February 13 lawsuit that Musk seized control of USAID and effectively acted as an officer of the US, violating the Constitution’s requirement that such officers be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
They said Musk and DOGE had overstepped the authority of the executive branch of government, by effectively gutting an agency established by Congress.
