USAID staff are fighting back.
Two unions representing USAID employees on Thursday filed a lawsuit over the cuts against Trump, Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the agency, the State Department and the Treasury Department.
‘What we’re seeing is an unlawful seizure of this agency by the Trump administration in a plain violation of basic constitutional principles,’ said Robin Thurston, the legal director for Democracy Forward, one of two advocacy organizations that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and American Federation of Government Employees.
The lawsuit argues only Congress can dissolve the agency and calls the Trump administration’s actions ‘unconstitutional and illegal.’
Trump is one of the agency’s top critics. He has said of it: ‘It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out.’
And Rubio has defended the government’s actions.
During a joint press conference with the president of the Dominican Republic on Thursday, he said it was the only option.
‘I’d have preferred not to do it this way,’ he noted. ‘When we tried to do it from the top down by getting cooperation from the central office and USAID, what we found instead are people trying to use the system to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order. We found people that were uncooperative in terms of giving us information and access.’
Rubio emphasized that the Trump administration will still be issuing foreign assistance.
‘The United States will be providing foreign aid,’ he said. ‘But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.’
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