A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) likely violated the Constitution, issuing an indefinite block on further cuts to the agency.
The order mandates that the Trump administration restore email and computer access to all USAID employees, including those placed on administrative leave. However, it does not go as far as reversing firings or fully reinstating the agency, The Associated Press reported.
In one of the first DOGE-related lawsuits targeting Elon Musk directly, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang of Maryland, an Obama appointee, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that Musk is merely an adviser to President Donald Trump. Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge ruled, pointing to a social media post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”
The judge stated that it is likely USAID can no longer fulfill some of its legally mandated functions.
“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote in his injunction.
A lawsuit filed by USAID employees and contractors contends that Musk and DOGE are exercising powers that the Constitution reserves exclusively for elected officials or Senate-confirmed appointees. Their attorneys argued that the ruling “effectively halts or reverses” many of the measures taken to dismantle the agency, the AP noted.
The administration has maintained that DOGE is focused on identifying and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government—a campaign message that helped secure Trump’s 2024 election win. The White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling, the newswire — which has been blocked from certain access to Trump — continued.
Musk, his team, and Trump political appointee Pete Marocco have been central figures in the two-month effort to dismantle USAID. In early February, for example, the administration placed the agency’s top security officials on forced leave after they attempted to block DOGE workers from accessing USAID’s classified and sensitive documents.
With the backing of Musk and DOGE, the administration proceeded to put nearly all of USAID’s staff on forced leave or terminate them, and it canceled at least 83% of the agency’s program contracts, according to the State Department.
The administration’s actions were part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to dismantle the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency and its overseas operations. Musk, for his part, has said that his team has found tens of billions in wasteful spending and that much of what USAID does is impossible to track due to a lack of transparency.
On Inauguration Day, Trump issued an executive order that froze foreign assistance funding and mandated a review of all U.S. aid and development programs, arguing that much of the assistance was wasteful and promoted a liberal agenda. Democratic lawmakers and other USAID supporters contend that Trump lacked the authority to withhold funding that Congress had already approved.
Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s rapid dismantling of USAID most likely caused harm to the public interest by relieving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.”
The lawsuit was initiated by the State Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen, the nonprofit’s executive chair, described the ruling as a milestone in the fight against DOGE and noted that it is the first to conclude that Musk’s actions breach the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which requires 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 noted in a statement, per the AP.
