Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Shutting Down Federal Agency

A U.S. judge on March 6 blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from closing a federal agency, at least for now.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon entered an administrative stay that prevents the federal government from shutting down the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) until at least 5 p.m. on March 11.

Leon issued the stay after Ward Brehm, president and CEO of the foundation, asked for emergency intervention from the court and before federal lawyers had an opportunity to lodge a filing in response.

“An administrative stay ‘buys the court time to deliberate’: it ‘do[es] not typically reflect the courts consideration of the merits,’ but instead ’reflects a first-blush judgment about the relative consequences’ of the case,” Leon wrote, quoting from a previous ruling.

Brehm sued Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after he said DOGE accessed USADF systems in a bid to shutter the agency.

He said Trump’s attempt to close the agency runs counter to a federal law, which states that the agency “shall have perpetual succession unless dissolved by an Act of Congress.”

Related Stories

On March 5, DOGE employees and Pete Marocco, who has been said to have been appointed as the sole USADF board member, tried entering USADF’s offices but were prevented at the direction of Brehm, according to the suit. A White House official told The Epoch Times that the portrayal was inaccurate and that the team was able to access the building after the U.S. Department of Justice determined they had a right to enter.

Brehm requested the court prevent him from being removed, absent a decision from the foundation’s actual board, and an order declaring any actions taken by Marocco and “any other improperly appointed person” void.

Trump, with assistance from DOGE, has been undertaking a broad plan to cut the federal government’s size, including the abolishment of some agencies and the reduction of others.

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, told The Epoch Times in an email: “President Trump signed an executive order to reduce the federal bureaucracy, which reduced the USADF to its statutory minimum, and appointed Peter Marocco as acting Chairman of the Board. Entitled, rogue bureaucrats have no authority to defy executive orders by the President of the United States or physically bar his representatives from entering the agencies they run.”

Trump’s order also listed the Inter-American Foundation, the USADF’s sister agency.

DOGE workers gained access to the Inter-American Foundation’s systems under the guise of helping the foundation modernize, according to the lawsuit. After gaining access, DOGE representatives informed the foundation the plan was to fire all or most of the foundation’s workers and cancel all but a handful of the foundation’s contracts, the complaint states.

After the foundation resisted, Trump appointed Marocco as acting chair of the foundation’s board and said that there were no longer other board members, according to the suit. Marocco then instructed the U.S. Department of Treasury to eliminate most of the foundation’s contracts, and on March 3, he and DOGE began canceling grants, returning outside donations, shutting employees out of the foundation’s systems, and took the website down, the complaint states.