WASHINGTON: The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency.
The order requires the Trump administration to restore email and computer access to all employees of USAID, including those put on administrative leave, though it appears to stop short of reversing firings or fully resurrecting the agency.
In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, US 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 demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”
The judge acknowledged that it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions.
“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote in the preliminary injunction.
The lawsuit filed by USAID employees and contractors argued that Musk and DOGE are wielding power the Constitution reserves only for those who win elections or are confirmed by the Senate. Their attorneys said the ruling “effectively halts or reverses” many of the steps taken to dismantle the agency.
The administration has said that DOGE is searching for and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, consistent with the campaign message that helped Trump win the 2024 election. The White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Musk, his team and Trump political appointee Pete Marocco have played a central role in the two-month dismantling of USAID. In one instance in early February, the administration placed the agency’s top security officials on forced leave after they tried to block DOGE workers 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 at least 83 percent of USAID’s program contracts.
The moves were 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 US 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 public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how 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 first to find that Musk’s actions violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which mandates presidential approval and Senate confirmation for certain public officials.
“They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government,” he said in a statement.
Oxfam America’s Abby Maxman in a statement urged all staffing and funding to be reinstated. “The funding freeze and program cuts are already having life or death consequences for millions around the world,” said the chief executive of the humanitarian group.
Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution
https://arab.news/wqvkh
Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution

- Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper”
US judge blocks Trump’s mass layoffs in blow to government overhaul

- US District Judge Susan Illston barred agencies from mass layoffs, a key piece of Trump’s plans to downsize or eliminate many federal agencies
- The Trump administration has asked the US Supreme Court to pause Illston’s temporary ruling
In her order, US District Judge Susan Illston barred agencies from mass layoffs, a key piece of Trump’s plans to downsize or eliminate many federal agencies, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofits and municipalities.
On May 9, Illston had blocked about 20 agencies from making mass layoffs for two weeks and ordered the reinstatement of workers who had already lost their jobs.
In Thursday’s order, she largely continued the relief provided in the temporary restraining order, with some refinement.
The administration has asked the US Supreme Court to pause Illston’s temporary ruling, saying she improperly infringed on Trump’s constitutional powers to control the executive branch.
That bid is likely to be moot after Thursday’s ruling, which the Trump administration can immediately appeal.
Federal agencies have broad authority to implement large-scale layoffs government lawyer Andrew Bernie said at Thursday’s hearing.
Trump’s executive order merely asked agencies to determine what cuts can be made without calling for any concrete actions such as layoffs or office closures that plaintiffs could sue over at this point, he added.
“Those decisions will be disclosed when they are made, and when they are made, the plaintiffs can challenge them. Indeed, the plaintiffs have challenged individual decisions,” Bernie said, citing pending lawsuits over cuts at the departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security.
Danielle Leonard, who represented the plaintiffs, said directives from Trump and other White House officials made clear that agencies had little say in whether to gut their workforces.
“They are saying what to cut, when to cut, where to cut, and all they’re asking the agencies to do is come forward with a plan,” she said.
The case involves the departments of agriculture, health and human services, treasury, commerce, state and veterans affairs, among others.
Trump has urged agencies to eliminate duplicative roles, unnecessary management layers, and non-critical jobs while automating routine tasks, closing regional offices and cutting back on outside contractors.
About 260,000 federal workers, most of whom have taken buyouts, have left or will leave by the end of September. And several agencies have been earmarked for deep cuts, such as more than 80,000 jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs and 10,000 at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Dozens of lawsuits have challenged the administration’s efforts, and Illston’s earlier ruling this month was the broadest yet of its kind.
An appeals court has paused another judge’s March ruling requiring agencies to reinstate nearly 25,000 probationary employees, who typically have been in their current roles for less than a year or two.
G7 nations paper over differences on tariffs and Ukraine, agree to address ‘imbalances’

- Statement condemned Russia’s continued brutal war against Ukraine,” yet that language was milder than last year’s
- But they did agree that further sanctions on Russia could be imposed if no ceasefire with Ukraine is reached
BANFF, Alberta: Top finance officials from the world’s seven wealthiest democracies set aside stark differences on US tariffs after two days of talks and agreed to counter global “economic imbalances,” a swipe at China’s trade practices.
In a communiqué issued Thursday, the Group of Seven finance ministers and central bank governors, meeting in the Canadian Rockies, left out their traditional defense of free trade and toned down their references to Russia’s war in Ukraine, compared with last year. But they did agree that further sanctions on Russia could be imposed if the two countries don’t reach a ceasefire.
The communiqué said the G7 members would continue to monitor “nonmarket policies and practices” which contribute to imbalances in global trade. The statement did not mention China but nonmarket policies typically refer to that country’s export subsidies and currency policies that the Trump administration charges gives it an advantage in international trade.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears to have succeeded in steering the communiqué largely in the direction the Trump administration sought, particularly regarding China’s trade practices.
The high-profile gathering of officials from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy also appeared to be more congenial than an earlier meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March. Yet that meeting, also in Canada, occurred as President Donald Trump was in the midst of threatening stiff tariffs on Canada and suggesting it could become the 51st state.
Canada is president of this year’s G7 and the sessions this week are intended to lay the groundwork for a meeting of the heads of state on June 15-17 in Kananaskis, Canada. The White House said Thursday that Trump will attend that gathering.
“Throughout our G7 presidency, the tone of the discussions has become progressively more constructive,” Tiff Macklem, governor of the Bank of Canada, said at a news conference at the conclusion of the summit.
Yet that unity appears to have been achieved by jettisoning many items that in the past had been agreed to by the G7 countries. In addition to leaving out any mention of trade, the communiqué dropped sections on combating climate change and cooperating on international tax policy, issues the Trump administration has dismissed.
“There will always be tension around tariffs,” said Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s finance minister. “But there are also places where you find common ground. ... This year our focus was to return to the G7 core mission, restoring global growth and stability.”

The shift comes as Trump has slapped widespread tariffs on imports, including a 10 percent global duty on all goods, even those from the other G7 allies. Trump has also imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel, aluminum, and cars, and on April 2 imposed much steeper tariffs on about 60 nations, which he then paused until early July.
Valdis Dombrovskis, European Union Trade Commissioner, said that trade was “obviously a difficult topic” during the negotiations. The EU, which participates in the G7 but doesn’t serve as one of the rotating presidents, pushed for stronger language that would have highlighted the economic harms from tariffs.
“The US administration is having a somewhat different view of the situation,” Dombrovskis told reporters. He added that details about US tariffs weren’t discussed because the G7 members are negotiating individually with the Trump administration about duties.
On Ukraine, the communiqué condemned “Russia’s continued brutal war against Ukraine,” yet that language was milder than last year’s, which referred to Russia’s “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked full-scale invasion.” Trump officials in the past have pushed to avoid antagonizing Russia while seeking peace talks.
Champagne, however, called the invasion “illegal” in Thursday’s news conference.
Bessent also successfully included an agreement in the statement that “no country or entity” that supported Russia’s war efforts would be able to profit from Ukraine’s reconstruction, a restriction that would bar Chinese companies from participating.
Dombrovskis said the EU had proposed to lower the current price cap on Russian oil — previously agreed to as part of early sanctions slapped on Russia in the wake of its 2022 invasion — to $50, from $60, but the communiqué says little about specific measures.
Still, the EU was largely satisfied with the G7’s agreements on Ukraine, Dombrovskis said, including the willingness to impose more sanctions. The group also agreed to continue freezing Russia’s financial assets until they can be used to help pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Mark Sobel, a former top Treasury Department official and senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, criticized the communiqué as “feeble.”
The statement “closes its eyes to the elephants in the room — the word ‘tariffs’ or a reference to destructive US trade policies are nowhere to be found,” Sobel said.
“On Ukraine, the G7 will ‘explore options’ if a ceasefire isn’t reached when the time for action is now,” he added. “This risible communiqué cannot hide the fissures in the G7 and hardly bodes well for the larger fractures looming for the upcoming G7 leaders’ summit.”
Still, John Kirton, a political scientist at the University of Toronto and director of the G7 Research Group, said it was a positive sign that a communiqué had even been issued. “That was in considerable doubt to the very end,” he said.
Yet both Sobel and Kirton noted there was no reference to US budget deficits and their role in the “global imbalances” the ministers seek to combat. The federal budget deficit, by contributing to higher US demand, worsens the US trade deficit that the Trump administration seeks to reduce.
The communiqué said that “economic policy uncertainty has declined from its peak,” a view that Kirton said was “puzzling,” given that the US Congress is considering a tax and spending package that has unnerved financial markets this week, pushing up the interest rate on US Treasury securities.
“There’s great uncertainty out there in financial markets,” Kirton said. “The dollar is going down, and we don’t know when that will end.”
Bessent held several bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the G7, including with Champagne and Japan’s Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato.
Bessent and Kato discussed trade and currencies, the Treasury Department said, with both sides agreeing that “exchange rates should be market-determined.” The US has often criticized Japan in the past for intervening in currency markets to lower the yen’s value.
Yet the two sides “did not discuss foreign exchange levels,” Treasury said, a sign the US isn’t pressuring Japan about the yen’s current value.
Trump’s image of dead ‘white farmers’ came from Reuters footage in Congo, not South Africa

- In meeting with South Africa’s president, Trump showed article with picture of body bags
- Trump said bodies were those of white South Africans killed in the country
- Picture was a screenshot of a Reuters video taken in Democratic Republic of Congo in February
JOHANNESBURG: US President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.
“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In fact, the video, published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the news agency’s fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in the Congolese city of Goma. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot following deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.
The blog post showed to Ramaphosa by Trump during the White House meeting was published by American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, about conflict and racial tensions in South Africa and Congo.
The post did not caption the image but identified it as a “YouTube screen grab” with a link to a video news report about Congo on YouTube, which credited Reuters.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Andrea Widburg, managing editor at American Thinker and the author of the post in question, wrote in reply to a Reuters query that Trump had “misidentified the image.”
She added, however, that the post, which referred to what it called Ramaphosa’s “dysfunctional, race-obsessed Marxist government,” had “pointed out the increasing pressure placed on white South Africans.”
The footage from which the picture was taken shows a mass burial following an M23 assault on Goma, filmed by Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty.
“That day, it was extremely difficult for journalists to get in ... I had to negotiate directly with M23 and coordinate with the ICRC to be allowed to film,” Al Katanty said. “Only Reuters has video.”
Al Katanty said seeing Trump holding the article with the screengrab of his video came as a shock.
“In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by Black people,” Al Katanty said.
Ramaphosa visited Washington this week to try to mend ties with the United States after persistent criticism from Trump in recent months over South Africa’s land laws, foreign policy, and alleged bad treatment of its white minority, which South Africa denies.
Trump interrupted the televised meeting with Ramaphosa to play a video, which he said showed evidence of genocide of white farmers in South Africa. This conspiracy theory, which has circulated in far-right chat rooms for years, is based on false claims.
Trump then proceeded to flip through printed copies of articles that he said detailed murders of white South Africans, saying “death, death, death, horrible death.”
Record floods devastate eastern Australia

- State Emergency Service said more than 2,000 workers had been deployed on rescue and recovery missions
MAITLAND: Record floods cut a destructive path through eastern Australia on Friday, caking houses in silt, washing out roads and separating 50,000 people from help.
Four bodies have been pulled from vast tides of floodwater engulfing parts of northern New South Wales, a fertile region of rivers and valleys some 400 kilometers (250 miles) up the coast from Sydney.
Salvage crews were preparing to launch a major clean-up operation as waters started receding Friday morning, surveying the damage from half a year’s worth of rain dumped in just three days.
“So many businesses have had water through and it’s going to be a massive cleanup,” said Kinne Ring, mayor of the flood-stricken farming town of Kempsey.
“Houses have been inundated,” she told national broadcaster ABC.
“There’s water coming through the bottom of houses, it’s really awful to see and the water is going to take a bit of time to recede.”
State Emergency Service boss Dallas Burnes said more than 2,000 workers had been deployed on rescue and recovery missions.
“A real focus for us at the moment will be resupplying the isolated communities,” he said, adding that 50,000 people were still stranded.
Burnes said rescue crews had plucked more than 600 people to safety since waters started rising earlier this week.
People clambered atop cars, houses and highway bridges before helicopters winched them away.
Although the floods were easing, Burnes said the stagnant lakes of muddy water still posed a threat — including from snakes that may have slithered into homes in search of shelter.
“Floodwaters have contaminants. There can be vermin, snakes. You need to assess those risks.
“Electricity can also pose a danger as well.”
The storms have dumped more than six months’ worth of rain over three days, the government weather bureau has said, smashing flood-height records in some areas.
“These are horrific circumstances,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday as he traveled into the disaster zone.
“The Australian Defense Force will be made available. There’s going to be a big recovery effort required,” he told local radio.
“There’s been massive damage to infrastructure and we’re going to have to all really pitch in.”
In the town of Taree, business owner Jeremy Thornton said the “gut-wrenching” flood was among the worst he had seen.
“It is pretty tough, we’ve had a few moments but you have to suck it up and push on,” he told AFP on Thursday.
“We are reliving it every second — hearing the rain, hearing the helicopters, hearing the siren.”
Locals spotted dead cows washing up on beaches after swollen rivers swept them from their pastures inland.
The government has declared a natural disaster, unlocking greater resources for affected areas.
From the arid outback to the tropical coast, swaths of Australia have recently been pummelled by wild weather.
The oceans surrounding Australia have been “abnormally warm” in recent months, according to Australia’s government weather bureau.
Warmer seas evaporate more moisture into the atmosphere, which can eventually lead to more intense rains.
Although difficult to link to specific disasters, climate change is already fueling more extreme weather patterns, scientists warn.
Flood modelling expert Mahdi Sedighkia said this week’s emergency offered “compelling evidence” of how climate change could affect regional weather patterns.
Seoul says no talks with US on potential troop pullout

- The allies last year signed a new five-year agreement on sharing the cost of stationing US troops in South Korea.
SEOUL: South Korea’s defense ministry said Friday there have been no talks with Washington on pulling US troops from the South, after a Wall Street Journal report claimed Washington was considering a partial withdrawal.
Citing US defense officials, the WSJ report said Washington is considering whether to move around 4,500 troops out of South Korea and deploy them to other locations, including Guam.
Washington, South Korea’s long-time key security ally, stations around 28,500 troops in the South to help protect it against the nuclear-armed North Korea.
But US President Donald Trump said last year — before winning the election — that if he returned to the White House, Seoul would pay billions more annually to host American troops.
When asked about the WSJ report, Seoul’s defense ministry said: “There has been no discussion whatsoever between South Korea and the United States regarding the withdrawal of the United States Forces Korea.”
The allies last year signed a new five-year agreement on sharing the cost of stationing US troops in South Korea, with Seoul agreeing to raise its contribution by 8.3 percent to 1.52 trillion won ($1.1 billion) for 2026.
“US Forces Korea have served as a key component of the South Korea-US alliance, maintaining a strong combined defense posture with our military to deter North Korean aggression and provocations,” Seoul’s defense ministry said, adding this contributed to “peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.”
“We will continue close cooperation with the US to further strengthen this role going forward.”
United States Forces Korea declined to comment when contacted by AFP, saying any remarks on the matter should come from Washington.