A US Treasury Threat Intelligence Analysis Designates DOGE Staff as ‘Insider Threat’: An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff’s access to federal payments systems “the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.” by Vittoria Elliott & Leah Feiger Wired Feb 7, 2025 2:47 PM https://www.wired.com/story/treasury-bf ... er-threat/
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Members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team have had access to the US Treasury Department’s payment systems for over a week [since Jan. 20]. On Thursday, the threat intelligence team at one of the department's agencies recommended that DOGE members be monitored as an “insider threat.”
Sources say members of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s IT division and others received an email detailing these concerns.
“There is ongoing litigation, congressional legislation, and widespread protests relating to DOGE’s access to Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service,” reads a section of the email titled “Recommendations,” reviewed by WIRED. “If DOGE members have any access to payment systems, we recommend suspending that access immediately and conducting a comprehensive review of all actions they may have taken on these systems.”
Although Treasury and White House officials have repeatedly denied it, WIRED has reported that DOGE technologists had the ability to not only read the code of sensitive payment systems but also rewrite it. Marko Elez, one of a number of young men identified by WIRED who have little to no government experience but are associated with DOGE, was granted read and write privileges on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the BFS, an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024.
“There is reporting at other federal agencies indicating that DOGE members have performed unauthorized changes and locked civil servants out of the sensitive systems they gained access to,” the “Recommendations” portion of the email continues. “We further recommend that DOGE members be placed under insider threat monitoring and alerting after their access to payment systems is revoked. Continued access to any payment systems by DOGE members, even ‘read only,’ likely poses the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.”
The recommendations were part of a weekly report sent out by the BFS threat intelligence team to hundreds of staffers. “Insider threat risks are something [the threat intelligence team] usually covers,” a source told WIRED. “But they have never identified something inside the bureau as an insider threat risk that I know of.”
The Treasury Department and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The email also details this week’s Treasury lawsuit, which resulted in a federal judge granting an order on February 6 to temporarily restrict DOGE staffers from accessing and altering payment system information.
In a section of the email titled “Analyst Notes,” the email delves into the fallout from the suit.
“A court order formalizing an agreement reportedly restricting DOGE’s access to Treasury was issued, but specifically provides ‘read only’ exemptions for Marko Elez (DOGE member at Fiscal Service and Treasury) and Thomas (aka Tom) Krause (DOGE member at Treasury),” it states. “This access still poses an unprecedented insider threat risk.”
Elez previously worked for SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and X, Musk’s social media company. Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal inquired with the White House about his connections to “a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.” Elez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a letter to Treasury secretary Scott Bessent on February 7, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said that “Treasury’s refusal to provide straight answers about DOGE’s actions, as well as its refusal to provide a briefing requested by several Senate committees only heightens my suspicions” and requested that Bessent provide the logs of Elez and any other DOGE-affiliated personnel regarding their access to the Treasury’s systems.
Vittoria Elliott is a reporter for WIRED, covering platforms and power. She was previously a reporter at Rest of World, where she covered disinformation and labor in markets outside the US and Western Europe. She has worked with The New Humanitarian, Al Jazeera, and ProPublica. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and, before transitioning to journalism, worked with startups in Kenya and India.
Leah Feiger is WIRED's senior politics editor. She is the former managing editor of VICE News.
As Elon Musk Warns of Persecution of White People, Trump Says He Will Block Aid to South Africa: In recent days, Musk and Trump have discussed halting aid to the country. The president said “certain classes” [White Guys] are being treated “VERY BADLY.” by Noah Lanard Mother Jones February 4, 2025 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... twitter-x/
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On Sunday, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the United States would cut aid to South Africa because the country is “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people [White Guys] VERY BADLY” and committing a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION.” The South African-born Elon Musk responded with his own posts endorsing Trump’s claims.
Trump and Musk did not need to say who was allegedly taking whose land. Their far-right followers, who have fixated on the prospect of “white genocide” in South Africa for years, knew the two billionaires were invoking the specter of a race war in which Black citizens “steal” the land of their compatriots. The people who seem most excited by Trump and Musk’s recent defense of South African white people appear to be far-right X users known for posting about race, IQ, and the JQ, an anti-semitic abbreviation for the “Jewish Question.”
When asked to clarify by the press later on Sunday, Trump claimed much the same and said South Africa was “doing things that are perhaps far worse.” He repeated that aid would be on hold until a vague investigation was finished.
Musk has kept at it as well by writing “Yes” in response to a post on X that stated: “White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country. Also White South Africans are one of the few population groups that are fiscally positive when immigrating to Europe. We should allow more immigration of White South Africans.” (The Danish man Musk was responding to at 3:36 a.m. is a transparently racist poster who has written that “Non-Western immigration to Northern European countries is morally indefensible.”)
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa did recently sign a controversial law that expands the state’s ability to expropriate land—in some cases without providing compensation. But the law, which was signed by a democratically elected government and is motivated by a desire to address severe injustices imposed on Black people by past regimes, is not what Trump and Musk are making it out to be.
President Ramaphosa wrote on social media that the law is not “a confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution.”
The Democratic Alliance, a more centrist and white-led party in South Africa, has opposed the law and has argued it needs to be amended. Nevertheless, the party strongly objected to Trump’s recent move and said in a statement released on Monday that “it is not true that the Act allows land to be seized by the state arbitrarily.” It added that funding cuts could have devastating consequences for vulnerable South Africans, explaining that the country is slated to receive $439 million this year for HIV/AIDs treatment and support. “It would be a tragedy if this funding were terminated because of a misunderstanding of the facts,” the party stressed.
More broadly, land reform is a response to the staggering inequity that still plagues South Africa. As of 2018, nearly two-thirds of Black South Africans lived in poverty, compared to just one percent of white South Africans. And as the New York Times has reported:
In 1913, the colonial government passed a law confining Black South Africans to just 7 percent of the country’s territory, essentially dispossessing many Black people from their land. Although the Black population would make slight gains in land ownership in subsequent decades, that uneven distribution remained largely in place.
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the government has made efforts to redistribute some land to Black people. But white South Africans, who comprise about 7 percent of the population, continue to dominate land ownership. White-owned farms occupy about half of South Africa’s surface area.
Trump’s claims about the law are also at odds with experts who represent major business interests in South Africa. In response to an interview request, Wandile Sihlobo, the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa, directed me to an article he recently wrote about why there was no need to panic about the law. Fasken, a major international law firm, has taken a similar perspective. South African lawyers at the firm concluded that, while they have some reservations about sections of the law, it is generally “doubtful if the Expropriation Act will generally affect private property rights as envisaged” in the country’s constitution. Even the leader of AfriForum, a far-right group that largely advocates on behalf of white Afrikaners and vehemently opposes the Expropriation Act, has expressed concern with Trump’s decision to target South Africa so broadly.
This is not the first time that Musk or Trump have weighed in on the side of right-wing white people in South Africa. In 2018, Trump tweeted that he had ordered then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.” (Tucker Carlson had recently aired a segment that made those claims.) In 2023, Musk wrote on X that “They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa.”
Musk’s comments would likely have made his late maternal grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, proud. Jill Lepore wrote in 2023 about Haldeman in The New Yorker:
Haldeman was born in Minnesota in 1902 but grew up mostly in Saskatchewan, Canada. A daredevil aviator and sometime cowboy, he also trained and worked as a chiropractor. In the nineteen-thirties, he joined the quasi-fascistic Technocracy movement, whose proponents believed that scientists and engineers, rather than the people, should rule. He became a leader of the movement in Canada, and, when it was briefly outlawed, he was jailed, after which he became the national chairman of what was then a notoriously antisemitic party called Social Credit. In the nineteen-forties, he ran for office under its banner, and lost. In 1950, two years after South Africa instituted apartheid, he moved his family to Pretoria, where he became an impassioned defender of the regime.
Musk’s father, who the billionaire is estranged from, has been more blunt about his former in-laws. “They were very fanatical in favor of apartheid,” he once said. “They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff.”
Seven decades after they moved to South Africa, their grandson, the richest man in the world, is defending white people in his homeland as he pursues a version of anti-democratic (and perhaps more than quasi-fascistic) rule by engineer in the United States with his Department of Government Efficiency. The results are predictably bleak.
Trump dealt HUMILIATION in court as judge issues major rebuke by Brian Tyler Cohen and Marc Elias Democracy Watch with Marc Elias Feb 10, 2025 Democracy Watch episode 258: Marc Elias discusses Trump suffering a major rollback from judge.
Transcript
[Brian Tyler Cohen] This is democracy watch. Marc, Donald Trump just got some bad news from a federal judge. As you know, he moved to fire thousands of usaid employees. That effort didn't work especially well in court. Can you explain what just happened?
[Marc Elias] Yeah, this is breaking news. And this is really, really important, because we have seen Donald Trump Target usaid, we have seen Marco Rubio, who by the way used to say he was a big fan of usaid, he turned out to go along with this, and we saw Elon Musk most importantly perhaps target usaid. And the net effect of this was to try to put on administrative leave 2700 employees of usaid overseas, and 500 of them were put on administrative leave before this lawsuit was filed. As of Friday night at midnight, the remaining 2200 were supposed to be put on administrative leave.
Well, this judge, appointed, by the way, by Donald Trump in his first term [Judge Nichols] blocked it and said, "Nope, those 2200 people cannot be put on an administrative leave, and the 500 people that were put on administrative leave need to be taken off administrative leave.
So this was a big win for democracy forward, the legal organization that brought this lawsuit on behalf of these folks, a big win for usaid obviously, the people who do the work, and a bit of a surprising black eye to Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
[Brian Tyler Cohen] Marc, before we go further into the legal implications of all this, can you just talk about what usaid is, what it does, and really frankly, why Americans should even care about the preservation of this program?
[Marc Elias] Yeah, I mean what's interesting is that usaid was created during the Cold War as a tool to win the Cold War. The idea was that we needed it in order to win the fight against the Soviet Union against Chinese influence in southeast Asia. We needed an agency that would deliver aid to people and thereby garner goodwill towards the United States. Because in many, many parts of the world, the delivery of aid is inextricably linked to the hearts and minds of the local population. So the idea was that if people were getting bags of grain that had an American flag on it saying, "Courtesy of the American people," and there were workers on the ground who are vaccinating their children, or helping build roads, that this was a way to help win the Cold War, to defeat communism, defeat the Soviet Union. It was part and parcel of a number of other programs like this, for example the Peace Corp right? The Peace Corp was also a program built by John Kennedy to defeat the Cold War by, again, creating this sort of soft power. And so over the years, Brian, and this is really important for people, over the years some of the biggest proponents of usaid have actually been conservative, pro-military Hawks, because if you are a foreign policy Hawk, if you're anti-russia, anti China, usaid has been viewed as one of the most effective tools to defeat China's expansionist plans, to defeat Russia's expansionist plans, and like I said, garner the goodwill of the local populations in a lot of parts of the world.
So the undoing of this is just a gift to the communists in Beijing; this is a gift to Vladimir Putin; this is not helping America maintain its position of strength around the world.
[Brian Tyler Cohen] Well, can you dig into that further, because now what happens if usaid goes away, which, by the way, I know that the Elon's of the world will frame this as some massive example of waste, fraud and abuse, this is about a half of 1% of the federal budget, and in exchange for that, to your exact point, we garner goodwill across the world without having to engage in any conflict, without having to fire any bullets. That's just a way to win over countries across the entire planet. So what happens in the absence of usaid given the fact that we would no longer be there?
[Marc Elias] Yeah, so I mean China has its own program along these lines, as does Russia, as does Isis, as does Iran, right? I mean like every time we talk about these programs of influence, you know, how is it that Isis gains a foothold in a place, or how does China expand into Africa, it is oftentimes by setting up local Aid Services, setting up clinics, providing services at the local level. And usaid is a critical piece of doing that for the American public so that people who feel like they are being fed by the United States, or getting vaccines from the United States, are less likely to be susceptible to Russian, to Chinese, to other terrorist movements who are otherwise competing to do that.
So this is a huge win for China. I mean the biggest single victor of this plan is going to be China, because China has been actively acting to get into this area. And they have a very well-funded program. And they will step into the void, right? And China's program is the the Belt and Road initiative.
And to your exact point that the US will kind of seed this ground to China, China is perfectly content to go against the interests of the United States for a fraction of the cost of having to go to war in any of these countries across the world.
Just doing goodwill, aside from the fact that it's just virtuous to do HIV prevention, it's virtuous to do clean water programs, and on and on, we also get to garner that goodwill, and that'll help us economically, it'll help us with our national security, it'll help us militarily across the world. And so [shutting down that program] would be against the interest of the United States. But it's not against the interest of somebody like Elon Musk who has business interests in Beijing, who has business interest in Shanghai. And so he has a vested interest in making sure that he can help out China. And by dismantling usaid, even before he goes into the obvious departments like DOD, for example, which has failed the last almost dozen audits, he'll go into usaid, and the only people that will be better off in the long run as the result of this are going to be the only country that Elon is looking to expand his foothold in, which is China.
I mean what is really sad is that there has been so much misinformation and disinformation spread about us Aid and about what has been going on that as you said you know in sort of your initial question like if you're just an average American and you're reading about this you're thinking oh this is good they're saving money they're not you know they're not uh taking our taxpayer money and using it abroad but the fact is that that that the way in which US Aid money is spent as as you said is some of the most effective ways to make sure that you have pro- us governments you have Pro us populations you have folks who you know Aspire and see the United States as a friendly force and what does that do that means that as those societies develop they become friendlier for American Products as governments form around them they become more friendly to the United States not just on a military basis by the way but also on all these other on all these other bases I mean every time we withdraw from the world's stage it is not just that China China is offering more Aid or you know Military Support or anything else they're also looking to build trading uh trading uh uh partners and that is that is why it is so inexplicable that this is but Brian I want to say there was a lot of talk at the beginning of this Administration about how competent they were going to be remember that like they were going to come in and they were going to be super competent they keep losing court case after court case after court case and I want to bring it back to something that I said this they lost this case before a judge appointed by Donald Trump in his first term now you know that that there are I think two things to take away from that the first is that I think people assume that every judge appointed by Donald Trump is gonna always rule in his favor I don't think we should look at a judge in Florida for example as the iconic example of how all judges uh uh work uh this judge I think had a very thoughtful hearing wrote a very thoughtful opinion uh but the second thing is that you know people can't give up the fight they can't think that there is no way to fight back against these things because the fact is Donald Trump keeps losing these lawsuits I mean Donald Trump has now lost lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit his Department of Justice the lawyers there must be Shell Shocked by the number of cases they are having to defend and make fools out of themselves frankly in some of them but they and they keep losing them and the Department of Justice is not used to losing cases and and that's really the point I want to hammer to everyone it is very unusual very unusual for a federal judge to slap down the Department of Justice over executive power that's just like you know I mean you really have to go a long way to overstep and yet we keep seeing in case after case after case that's what's happening and so I'm sure these doj lawyers don't know what to do of course they're also potentially being asked to retire to to to take early retirement or being threatened with being fired so I'm sure that's not helping but but it's showing that the fight in court is working so I just want to make sure everyone knows that well that's a good opportunity to underscore that you know you you have been consistent in pointing out that the courts are going to serve as our our last and most effective Bull workk against the worst excesses of the Trump Administration and you obviously cover them extensively on a daily basis with democracy docket which is the news Outlet you found it to focus on everything voting in elections highly recommend if you are looking for any news regarding what's happening in the courts which which again are proving that they are up to the task right now of standing up to the Trump Administration in the same way that these republicans in Congress are not please make sure to sign up for democracy. I'll put the link right here on the screen and also in the post description of this video I'm Brian teller Cohen I'm Mark Elias this is democracy watch [Music]a
WASHINGTON — A U.S. judge on Friday said he would enter a "limited" order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from taking some steps to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, adding that 2,200 employees from the agency would not immediately be placed on administrative leave.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, who was nominated by Trump during his first term, announced the decision at a hearing on a lawsuit from the largest U.S. government workers' union and an association of foreign service workers, who sued to stop the administration from dismantling the agency.
Nichols said the written ruling would be issued later Friday.
The administration in a notice sent to the foreign aid agency's workers on Thursday said it would keep 611 essential workers on board at USAID out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000.
"The major reduction in force, as well as the closure of offices, the forced relocation of these individuals were all done in excess of the executive’s authority in violation of the separation of powers," Karla Gilbride, a lawyer for the unions, said at the hearing.
A Justice Department official, Brett Shumate, told Nichols that about 2,200 USAID employees would be put on paid leave under the administration's plans, adding that 500 had already been placed on leave.
"The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID," Shumate said.
However, the judge said his order would prevent those 2,200 employees from being immediately placed on administrative leave and would also pause the relocation of certain humanitarian workers stationed outside the United States.
Hours after he was inaugurated on Jan. 20, Trump ordered all U.S. foreign aid be paused to ensure it was aligned with his "America First" policy. Chaos has since consumed USAID, which distributes billions of dollars of humanitarian aid around the world.
The State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives after the executive order was issued, effectively freezing all foreign aid with the exception of emergency food assistance. That brought USAID programs covering lifesaving aid around the globe to a grinding halt, in a move that experts warned risked killing people.
The gutting of the agency has largely been overseen by businessman Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a close Trump ally spearheading the president's effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
In fiscal 2023, the United States disbursed, partly via USAID, $72 billion of aid worldwide on everything from women's health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work.
The U.S. provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024, yet that represents less than 1% of its total budget.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2,200 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development on paid leave.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was nominated by President Donald Trump, sided with two federal employee associations in agreeing to a pause in plans to put the employees on paid leave as of midnight Friday.
The workers associations argue that Trump lacks the authority for his swift dismantling of a six-decade-old aid agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
“CLOSE IT DOWN,” Trump said Friday on social media of USAID.
Crews used duct tape to block out the agency’s name on a sign outside its Washington headquarters Friday, and a flag was taken down. Someone placed a bouquet of flowers outside the door.
A group of a half-dozen USAID officials speaking to reporters Friday strongly disputed assertions from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the most essential life-saving programs abroad were getting waivers to continue. With all but several hundred staffers forced out and funding stopped, the agency has “ceased to exist,” one official on the call said.
The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.
The administration told remaining USAID officials on Thursday afternoon that it planned to exempt 297 employees from global leave and furloughs ordered for at least 8,000 staffers and contractors, according to USAID staffers and officials.
Late that night, a new list was finalized of 611 employees to remain on the job, many of them to manage the return home of thousands of staffers, contractors and their families abroad, the officials said. Justice Department lawyer, Brett Shumate, confirmed the 611 figure in court.
The USAID officials and staffers spoke on condition of anonymity due to a Trump administration order barring them from talking publicly.
Some of the remaining staffers and contractors, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired employees abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for now.
It was not immediately clear whether the reductions would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says will be a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume.
Trump and Musk have spoken of moving surviving programs under the State Department.
Within the State Department itself, employees fear substantial staff reductions following the deadline for the Trump administration’s offer of financial incentives for federal workers to resign, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. A judge temporarily blocked that offer and set a hearing Monday.
At USAID, among the programs officials said had not received waivers: $450 million in food grown by U.S. farmers sufficient to feed 36 million people, which was not being paid for or delivered; and water supplies for 1.6 million people displaced by war in Sudan’s Darfur region, which were being cut off without money for fuel to run water pumps in the desert.
The administration earlier this week gave almost all USAID staffers posted overseas 30 days, starting Friday, to return to the U.S., with the government paying for their travel and moving costs. Diplomats at embassies asked for waivers allowing more time for some, including families forced to pull their children out of schools midyear.
In a notice posted on the USAID website late Thursday, the agency clarified that none of the overseas personnel put on leave would be forced to leave the country where they work. But it said that workers who chose to stay longer than 30 days might have to cover their own expenses unless they received a specific hardship waiver.
Rubio said Thursday during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the government would help staffers get home within 30 days “if they so desired” and would listen to those with special conditions.
He insisted the moves were the only way to get cooperation because staffers were working “to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order” on foreign assistance. Agency staffers deny his claims of obstruction.
Rubio said the U.S. government will continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”
Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.
The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit filed late Thursday. It asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding.
Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to US national interests,” the suit says.
AP reporters Matthew Lee, Farnoush Amiri and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.
A federal judge today ordered the Trump administration to resume payments for federal programs after the White House violated a previous order blocking a federal funding freeze.
In a blistering order, District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island warned that not complying with a court order could lead to contempt of court, which is a crime.
On Jan. 31, McConnell blocked the administration’s directive freezing federal grants and loans. On Feb. 3, another federal judge in the District of Columbia granted a similar temporary restraining order blocking the same policy.
In a legal filing last week, states said that they still could not access federal money. The Trump administration argued that they were blocking funds to “root out fraud,” but McConnell did not buy it, writing that the continued funding freeze stems from the administration’s directive and not specific findings of possible fraud. He ordered the Trump administration to immediately restore funding to agencies like the National Institutes of Health and programs created under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act — two landmark laws championed by former President Joe Biden.
“The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country,” McConnell wrote in his order.
02/10/25 Case 1:25-cv-00039-JJM-PAS
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
STATE OF NEW YORK; STATE OF CALIFORNIA; STATE OF ILLINOIS; STATE OF RHODE ISLAND; STATE OF NEW JERSEY; COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS; STATE OF ARIZONA; STATE OF COLORADO; STATE OF CONNECTICUT; STATE OF DELAWARE; THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; STATE OF HAWAI’I; STATE OF MAINE; STATE OF MARYLAND; STATE OF MICHIGAN; STATE OF MINNESOTA; STATE OF NEVADA; STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA; STATE OF NEW MEXICO; STATE OF OREGON; STATE OF VERMONT; STATE OF WASHINGTON; and STATE OF WISCONSIN,
Plaintiffs,
v.
DONALD TRUMP, in his Official Capacity as President of the United States; U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; MATTHEW J. VAETH, in his Official Capacity as Acting Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY; SCOTT BESSENT, in his Official Capacity as Secretary of the Treasury; PATRICIA COLLINS, in her Official Capacity as Treasurer of the U.S.; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES; DOROTHY A. FINK, M.D., in her Official Capacity As Acting Secretary Of Health And Human Services; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION; DENISE CARTER, in her Official Capacity as Acting Secretary of Education; U.S. FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; CAMERON HAMILTON, in his Official Capacity as Acting Administrator of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; JUDITH KALETA, in her Official Capacity as Acting Secretary of Transportation; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR; VINCE MICONE, in his Official Capacity as Acting Secretary of Labor; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY; INGRID KOLB, in her Official Capacity as Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy; U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY; JAMES PAYNE, in his Official Capacity as Acting Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; KRISTI NOEM, in her Capacity as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE; JAMES R. McHENRY III, in his Official Capacity as Acting Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice; THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION; and DR. SETHURAMAN PANCHANATHAN, in his Capacity as Director of the National Science Foundation,
Defendants.
C.A. No. 25-cv-39-JJM-PAS
ORDER
The Plaintiff States’ Motion for Enforcement of the Temporary Restraining Order (“TRO”) (ECF No. 66) is GRANTED.
[It is a] basic proposition that all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly. * * * Persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect. The orderly and expeditious administration of justice by the courts requires that an order issued by a court with jurisdiction over the subject matter and person must be obeyed by the parties until it is reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.
Maness v. Meyers, 419 U.S. 449, 458–59 (1975) (citations and quotations omitted) (emphasis added). The Defendants issued a broad, categorical, all-encompassing directive freezing federal funding. The plain language of the TRO entered in this case prohibits all categorical pauses or freezes in obligations or disbursements based on the OMB Directive or based on the President’s 2025 Executive Orders.1 The Defendants received notice of the TRO, the Order is clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance with the Order.
The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds. See Exhibits A-C of the States’ motion, (ECF Nos. 66-1, 66-2, and 66-3). The Defendants now plea that they are just trying to root out fraud. See ECF No. 70. But the freezes in effect now were a result of the broad categorical order, not a specific finding of possible fraud. The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.2 In response to the Defendants’ arguments, they can request targeted relief from the TRO from this Court where they can show a specific instance where they are acting in compliance with this Order but otherwise withholding funds due to specific authority.
Therefore, consistent with the United States Constitution, United States statutes, United States Supreme Court precedent, and the TRO, the Defendants are hereby further ORDERED as follows:
1. The Defendants must immediately restore frozen funding during the pendency of the TRO until the Court hears and decides the Preliminary Injunction request.
2. The Defendants must immediately end any federal funding pause during the pendency of the TRO.
3. The Defendants must immediately take every step necessary to effectuate the TRO, including clearing any administrative, operational, or technical hurdles to implementation.
4. The Defendants must comply with the plain text of the TRO not to pause any funds based on pronouncements pausing funding incorporated into the OMB Directive, like Section 7(a) of the Unleashing Executive Order, and the OMB Unleashing Guidance. The TRO requirements include any pause or freeze included in the Unleashing Guidance.
5. The Defendants must immediately restore withheld funds, including those federal funds appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act. The directives in OMB M-25-11 are included in the TRO. 6. The Defendants must resume the funding of institutes and other agencies of the Defendants (for example the National Institute for Health) that are included in the scope of the Court’s TRO.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
/s/John J. McConnell, Jr.
Chief Judge United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island February 10, 2025
_______________
Notes:
1 The Defendants acknowledged that they understood what the TRO required: “Federal agencies cannot pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate any awards or obligations on the basis of the OMB Memo, or on the basis of the President’s recently issued Executive Orders.” ECF No. 51-1 at 1 (emphasis added).
2 The Court disagrees with the Defendants’ Notice (ECF No. 51), particularly paragraph 2. The Court’s TRO is clear and unambiguous in its scope and effect, which is inconsistent with the Defendant’s interpretation contained in the Notice. ECF No. 51 at 2.
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Ed Martin was part of the mob at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Now, he’s one of the top attorneys in the country, running the agency that successfully prosecuted over 1,500 insurrectionists.
After his inauguration, President Donald Trump appointed Martin to be the Interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. until he permanently fills the role.
Martin earned his law degree in St. Louis, Missouri in 1998, and since then, he has run his own law practice, held senior roles at the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund — a right-wing legal group — and has been a central figure in the Missouri Republican Party and national GOP.
He served as the chief of staff for former Missouri Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2010 and state attorney general in 2012, was elected chair of the Missouri GOP in 2013, served as a member of the Republican National Committee and co-authored a book in 2016 called The Conservative Case for Trump.
In 2021, Martin was one of the thousands of insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. He posted on social media that day, saying it’s “Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy. Ignore #FakeNews.” Later that year, the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 Committee subpoenaed Martin, identifying him as an organizer of the Stop the Steal Movement formed after the 2020 election.
Now, four years later, he’s become head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C., a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
When he entered office, he launched an investigation into the DOJ’s Jan. 6 prosecutions using a specific obstruction of justice charge, asking employees to retain records related to those cases. Martin also disbanded the DOJ’s Capitol Siege Section and moved to dismiss cases against those who attacked police officers Jan. 6.
After that, he fired numerous prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases, following a Jan. 31 directive from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and former member of the House’s Jan. 6 Committee, sent a letter last week to Martin, criticizing the firings.
“In firing these [attorneys], your office has lost prosecutors who, collectively, had decades of experience as local and state prosecutors and litigators in the country’s top law firms, including military veterans and graduates of our nation’s best law schools,” Raskin wrote. “All of this was done to appease a president who now apparently believes that the law does not apply to pro-Trump rioters who engage in seditious conspiracy and smash police officers in the face.”
Raskin also condemned Martin for “regularly visiting the White House,” which “violates decades-old safeguards developed to preserve the DOJ’s independence.”
He added that since entering office, Martin personally communicated with “individuals charged and convicted of criminal offenses related to the January 6th insurrection, as well as their attorneys, regarding ongoing matters.”
Less than a week later, Martin threatened those who have opposed Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is tasked with gutting and cutting government agencies.
The department is currently facing numerous lawsuits for attempting to access sensitive data and information from the Education, Treasury and Labor departments.
Martin issued a statement Feb. 3 alleging that “certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees.” He added that his office is “in contact with FBI and other law enforcement partners to proceed rapidly,” and has its “prosecutors preparing.”
Also, in a post on X, he shared a Jan. 7 letter addressed to Musk, thanking him for referring individuals and groups “who appear to be stealing government property and/or threatening government employees.”
Martin also said in the letter, “if people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable.”
[Michael Moore] As the attack took place, Mr. Bush was on his way to an elementary school in Florida. When informed of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, where terrorists had struck just eight years prior, Mr. Bush decided to go ahead with his photo opportunity.
[Teacher] Good morning, boys and girls.
[Students] Good morning.
[Teacher] Read this word the fast way. Get ready.
[Students] "Mad"!
[Teacher] Yes, "mad." Get ready.
[Students] "Calf"!
[George Bush] Yeah!
[Teacher] Okay, get ready to read the words on this page without making a mistake.
[Michael Moore] When the second plane hit the tower, his chief of staff entered the classroom and told Mr. Bush, "The nation is under attack." Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and no Secret Service rushing in to take him to safety, Mr. Bush just sat there and continued to read My Pet Goat with the children.
[9:05 AM]
[9:07 AM]
[9:09 AM]
[Michael Moore] Nearly seven minutes passed with nobody doing anything.
[9:11 AM]
[9:12 AM]
[Michael Moore] As Bush sat in that Florida classroom, was he wondering if maybe he should have shown up to work more often?
Should he have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism with his head of counterterrorism? Or maybe Mr. Bush wondered why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI. Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6th, 2001, which said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes. But maybe he wasn't worried about the terrorist threat, because the title of the report was too vague.
[Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor] I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."
[Michael Moore] A report like that might make some men jump but, as in days past, George W. just went fishing. As the minutes went by, George Bush continued to sit in the classroom. Was he thinking, "I've been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Which one of them screwed me? Was it the guy my daddy's friends delivered a lot of weapons to?
[1983: Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein]
[Michael Moore] Was it that group of religious fundamentalists who visited my state when I was governor? Or was it the Saudis? Damn, it was them. I think I better blame it on this guy." In the days following September 11th all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded.
[Spokesman] The FAA has taken the action to close all of the airports in the United States.
[Newscaster] Even grounding the president's father, former President Bush on a flight forced to land in Milwaukee.
[Newscaster] Thousands of travelers were stranded, among them Ricky Martin due to appear at tonight's Latin Grammy Awards.
[Michael Moore] Not even Ricky Martin could fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one, except the bin Ladens.
[Song: We gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do.]
***************************
The Pet Goat by Wikipedia Accessed: 2/10/25
"The Pet Goat" (often erroneously called "My Pet Goat") is a grade-school-level reading exercise composed by American educationalist Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. It achieved notoriety for being read by US President George W. Bush with a class of second-graders on the morning of September 11, 2001. After being discreetly informed of the September 11 attacks midway through the reading, Bush waited quietly for the reading to finish before responding to the unfolding crisis. The exercise has gained notoriety in the retrospective assessment of Bush's response to the September 11 attacks.
Reading exercise
"The Pet Goat" was composed by Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann, who had written over a thousand similar instructional exercises since the 1970s.[1] It was anthologized in the classroom workbook Reading Mastery: Rainbow Edition, Level 2, Storybook 1. "The Pet Goat" is designed to teach students about words ending in the letter E, using the Direct Instruction (DI) teaching method. The exercise tells a story about a girl's pet goat, which her parents want to get rid of because it eats everything; the parents relent after it foils a robbery by butting the intruder, who is now "sore" (that word ending in e).[2]
George W. Bush during the September 11 attacks
See also: Timeline for the day of the September 11 attacks
On September 11, 2001, US President George W. Bush went to Emma E. Booker Elementary School to meet students and staff and to bring attention to his plans for education reform. Upon arriving at the Sarasota, Florida, school, the president was informed of the first plane crash into the World Trade Center, though he was briefed that it was probably just a small propeller plane. While President Bush sat in Kay Daniels' classroom, and her students read "The Pet Goat", White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted the president to whisper in his ear: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."[3]
Afterwards, the children continued to read and President Bush sat while—as described by The Wall Street Journal—"trying to keep under tight control."[2] Despite the president's efforts to remain stoic and not alarm the children, students knew something was wrong; they later said that the president's face became red and serious, and his expression was "flabbergasted, shocked, [and] horrified".[4]
According to Bill Sammon's book Fighting Back, Bush's gaze flitted about the room—the children, the press, the floor, his staff—while his mind raced about everything he did not yet know. After receiving cue-card advice from his press secretary, Ari Fleischer ("DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET"), the "notoriously punctual" president lingered in the classroom after the reading exercise was finished: he adamantly did not want to give an appearance of panic. After chatting with the students and their teacher, Bush deflected a Trade Center–related question from a reporter and began to learn about the magnitude of the attacks.[5]
Public attention to "The Pet Goat" first came to the fore with Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, though the film incorrectly gave the title as "My Pet Goat" and called it a book. Within a few weeks, a blogger named Peter Smith tracked down the correct name and origin as a reading exercise by Engelmann.[1]
It was anthologized in the classroom workbook Reading Mastery: Rainbow Edition, Level 2, Storybook 1.
Reactions
The New Yorker described a seven-minute video of President Bush holding Reading Mastery while "staring blankly into space" as the most memorable bit in Fahrenheit 9/11;[1] the film presents the president as faltering in the face of the crisis.[2]
The commander-in-chief's supporters argued that there was nothing for Bush to do but wait for more information while not alarming the pupils.[2] On his own behalf, Bush said that "his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. The national press corps was standing behind the children in the classroom; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."[6] Booker Elementary Principal Tose-Rigell supported the president's reactions at her school—"I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if [Bush] had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"—as did Daniels' students, who later said that Bush's actions were the right ones.[4]
A year after the attacks, Kay Daniels' classroom still had the chair in which the president sat; it was festooned with a purple ribbon.[3] By 2004, Engelmann (then a retired professor) was surprised at the attention "The Pet Goat" received: "It hasn't brought me any fame, [...] It's fascinating that anyone would even be interested in something like this."[2]
Editions
• Engelmann, Siegfried; Bruner, Elaine C. (1995). "The Pet Goat". Reading Mastery II: Rainbow Edition, Storybook 1. Worthington, OH: SRA Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. pp. 153–155. ISBN 0026863553.[1][2]
References
1. Radosh, Daniel (July 18, 2004). "The Pet Goat Approach". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. OCLC 320541675. Archived from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved September 12, 2019. 2. Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. (July 2, 2004). "Bush's Goat Tale Is Tough to Find". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. OCLC 781541372. Archived from the original on April 12, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2019. 3. Adair, Bill; Hegarty, Stephen (September 8, 2002). "The drama in Sarasota". St. Petersburg Times. Sarasota, Florida. ISSN 2327-9052. OCLC 5920090. Archived from the original on November 14, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2019. A day promoting the president's education policy suddenly becomes a historical turning point. 4. Padgett, Tim (May 3, 2011). "The Interrupted Reading: The Kids with George W. Bush on 9/11". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. OCLC 1311479. Archived from the original on March 9, 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2019. They are in their teens now, but when they were second-graders, they shared the moment the President of the United States learned the country was under attack 5. Sammon, Bill (2002). "Bifurcation". Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism—from Inside the Bush White House. Massachusetts Avenue: Regnery Publishing. pp. 83–132. ISBN 0-89526-149-9. 6. "Staff Statement No. 17" (PDF), Improvising a Homeland Defense (After action report), National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, p. 22, archived (PDF) from the original on December 24, 2016, retrieved September 18, 2019
White House Failed to Comply With Court Order, Judge Rules: The federal judge in Rhode Island said the Trump administration had failed to comply with his order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal grants by Mattathias Schwartz New York Times Feb. 10, 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/t ... uling.html
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A federal judge said on Monday that the White House had defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump administration is disobeying a judicial mandate.
The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court ordered administration officials to comply with what the judge called “the plain text” of an ruling he issued on Jan. 29.
That order, he wrote, was “clear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants’ compliance.”
Shortly after Monday’s ruling, Trump administration lawyers appealed the judge’s initial order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, asking the appellate court to pause Judge McConnell’s order to keep federal funds flowing while their case was being considered. The White House responded with more defiance.
“Each executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman. “Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people.”
The legal actions on Monday marked a step toward what could evolve quickly into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after Vice President JD Vance claimed in a social media post that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Mr. Fields’s statement suggested that the president would ultimately prevail in court, but neither he nor the Justice Department explained what the White House would do in the meantime. It appeared that the administration was trying to win through the legal system’s established procedures, even as officials questioned the legitimacy of those procedures from the outside.
To that end, some of Mr. Trump’s supporters accused the judges ruling against the president of overstepping their authority.
“Activist judges must stop illegally meddling with the president’s Article II powers,” wrote Mike Davis, who leads the Article III Project, a conservative advocacy group.
The Democratic attorneys general driving much of the legal pushback pressed their position.
“No administration is above the law,” said Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, in a statement shortly after Monday’s order. “The Trump administration must fully comply with the court’s order.”
Already, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed to challenge Mr. Trump’s moves, which have included revoking birthright citizenship and giving Elon Musk’s teams access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems.
Judges have already made preliminary rulings that those two executive actions, the funding freeze and other orders may violate existing statutes. On Monday, federal judges maintained a steady flow of challenges to the president’s authority, temporarily blocking the Trump administration from reducing health research grants and maintaining a stay on efforts to coax federal employees to quit.
The question looming over Washington is how Mr. Trump will respond.
“It’s very rare for a president not to comply with an order,” said Victoria Nourse, the director of the Georgetown Law Center on Congress and Democracy, who was formerly Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s general counsel during his years as vice president. “This is part of a pattern where President Trump appears to be asserting authority that he doesn’t have.”
Judge McConnell had previously ordered the White House to unfreeze federal funds locked up by the White House budget office. A memo from that office had demanded that billions of dollars in grants be held back until they were determined to be in compliance with President Trump’s priorities and ideological agenda.
On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday that money for clean energy projects and transportation infrastructure, allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was exempt from the initial order because it had been paused under a different memo.
Judge McConnell’s ruling on Monday explicitly rejected that argument.
The judge granted the attorneys general’s request for a “motion to enforce” — essentially a nudge. It did not find that the Trump administration was in contempt of court or specify any penalties for failing to comply.
However, the judge was straightforward in his finding that the initial temporary restraining order that he issued Jan. 29 was not being followed.
“These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the T.R.O.,” Judge McConnell wrote. That earlier ruling ordered the administration not to “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel or terminate” money that had already been allocated by Congress to the states to pay for Medicaid, school lunches, low-income housing subsidies and other essential services.
The judge also made clear that White House officials were obligated to comply regardless of how they thought the case might conclude. In his ruling on Monday, Judge McConnell quoted an opinion from a 1975 Supreme Court case noting that “persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.”
Going forward, if the judge finds that the government is still ignoring his initial order, he could order more than a dozen administration officials named in the lawsuit to explain why they should not be held in contempt of court, and then punish them with imprisonment — or, more likely, fines paid by their agencies, according to Adam Winkler, a professor at U.C.L.A School of Law.
“It’s unlikely you can put the secretary of an agency in jail,” he said, “but you can.”
The showdown is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump’s opponents to get congressionally approved funding flowing again. Another order requiring that the disputed funds be released was issued last week by Judge Loren AliKhan of the District of Columbia. That case was filed by a coalition of nonprofits represented by Democracy Forward.
Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward’s chief executive, said that if there were to be a standoff between the executive and judicial branches, she hoped that the legislative branch would step in.
“That is really a call to action for Congress,” she said. “The judicial branch is not going to be able to stop this unlawful and extreme use of executive power on its own.”
The Trump administration has complied with the orders to unfreeze federal grants at least partially, but it is difficult to gauge precisely where funds remain stuck. The states have regained access to portals that allow them to be reimbursed for Medicaid. But David A. Super, a professor at Georgetown Law, said that he had heard directly from a number of groups, both inside and outside of government, that said their funding was still frozen.
“There’s no question that the government is not complying, has not even come close to complying, with the order,” Mr. Super said. “Even funds that weren’t frozen before the order are being frozen now.”
Mr. Super said Judge McConnell appeared to be trying to take the matter one step at a time.
“If you or I did this, the judge’s clerk would be on the phone saying, ‘Bring your toothbrush to the hearing to show cause because you might not be coming home tonight,’” he said. “This is the federal government, so the judge is trying to show restraint — expressing anger and reiterating its order, but not immediately bringing up penalties.”
The defiance may go beyond the domestic funding freeze. In another Monday filing, plaintiffs in a different lawsuit said that the Trump administration was still putting employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development on administrative leave, despite a court order requiring them to stop.
Charlie Savage contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes contributed research.
JD Vance warns Europe to go easy on tech regulation in major AI speech: U.S. vice president pushes for “international regulatory regimes that foster creation” ahead of the artificial intelligence “revolution.” by Clea Caulcutt Politico February 11, 2025 11:14 am CET https://www.politico.eu/article/vp-jd-v ... on-summit/
U.S. Vice President JD Vance called Tuesday on European countries to embrace "the new frontier of AI with optimism and not trepidation" and adopt a lighter touch on tech regulation.
“We want to embark on the AI revolution before us with the spirit of openness and collaboration, but to create that kind of trust we need international regulatory regimes that foster creation," he told attendees at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.
As he echoed grievances aired by U.S. companies against Europe's efforts to rein in Big Tech, Vance called for AI regulation that does "not strangle" the burgeoning industry.
“To restrict it’s development now would not only unfairly benefit incumbents in the space, it would mean paralyzing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations,” he said in his first major trip overseas since taking office.
Vance pointedly attacked Europe's Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, telling attendees, which included European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, that these were “onerous international rules” that have stifled innovation and created unnecessary hurdles for American businesses.
EU tech boss Henna Virkkunen told POLITICO on the sidelines of the summit before Vance's speech that the bloc's tech laws were fair since they applied to everyone equally. However, she said that she would discuss the issue with her American counterparts and promised a more "innovation-friendly" AI regulatory framework.
Despite his various criticisms, Vance's comments are likely to be well received with many of Europe's biggest AI players, as they have have been calling for Brussels to focus more on innovation and less on regulation. Some tech leaders have gone so far as to call for a review of the EU’s AI act, which bans certain practices and introduces safeguards.
Vance added that he welcomed the tone of conversations at the summit, which French President Emmanuel Macron has branded as a moment to embrace the opportunities linked to the development of AI, rather than focus on regulation and pondering its existential threats.
"I like to see that deregulatory flavor making its way into a lot of conversations,” he said.
The U.S. vice president also attacked China during his speech, lambasting “hostile foreign adversaries” that are, according to Vance “weaponizing” AI software to rewrite history and censor speech.
“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes,” he said. "Should a deal seem too good to be true, just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley — if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product."
The rivalry between the U.S. and China to unleash AI potential became more intense last month after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a $500 billion plan to develop artificial intelligence in the U.S. and the Chinese startup DeepSeek released a cutting-edge chatbot allegedly at a fraction of the cost of its American competitors.
Vance delivered his address just hours after Trump enacted new 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imported into the U.S., a move that will impact European businesses and significantly escalate the brewing trade war between Brussels and Washington.
Von der Leyen on Tuesday called the new tariffs "unjustified" and vowed that they will "not go unanswered."
Vance and von der Leyen are expected to meet in Paris later Tuesday.
Judge orders Trump admin to restore removed health agency webpages: The decision by U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, came after a testy Monday afternoon hearing. by Lauren Gardner and Kyle Cheney Politico 02/11/2025 12:52 PM EST https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/1 ... t-00203582
A federal judge ordered federal health agencies Tuesday to restore pages they removed from their websites last month to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology and extremism,” saying the decision to pull them down could be detrimental to public health.
The decision by U.S. District Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, came after a testy Monday afternoon hearing in which he sharply questioned the administration about doctors’ claims that the removal of the pages damaged their ability to care for patients.
Bates said Tuesday that the pages’ removal appeared to harm some doctors’ ability to treat patients and was done without any public rationale, recourse or ability to challenge the decisions, despite laws and regulations that typically require them.
“No backend remedy could ameliorate the inability to provide all required care during an appointment time to a patient who cannot return in the future,” Bates wrote. Bates’ decision requires federal health agencies — including the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration — to restore by midnight websites identified by Doctors for America, the left-leaning advocacy group that initiated the lawsuit.
The order followed a 90-minute hearing Monday on Doctors for America’s bid to win a temporary restraining order restoring the pages and blocking the agencies “from removing or substantially modifying” other datasets to implement the executive order.
The group sued the Office of Personnel Management, the CDC, the FDA and HHS last week, claiming the missing information “deprives” doctors and researchers of ready access to data that’s critical to treating patients and addressing public health emergencies.
Bates’ order is the latest in a growing list of court decisions to slow or stop Trump’s early blitz of executive orders that are remaking the federal bureaucracy.
Zachary Shelley, an attorney with consumer advocacy group Public Citizen representing the doctors, argued the removal of datasets and guidance — including guidelines on HIV and contraception drugs and information on student health — has hampered their ability to timely treat patients based on federally vetted information.
“There’s nothing that can be done to un-delay research, un-delay progress,” he said. “Every day that’s lost now can’t be given back if pages eventually go up.”
DOJ attorney James Harlow argued that agencies are free to stop sharing information or to remove it for review, even if that data was once routinely disclosed.
“An agency’s maintenance of a website is not the functional equivalent of an agency’s formulation of an order,” he said. But Bates challenged Harlow’s “maintenance” assertion, arguing the agencies could have announced their intent to review the webpages in question while leaving them up in the interim.
“It’s termination,” Bates said of the pages’ removal. “That’s different than … ‘ordinary maintenance.’”
In his opinion, Bates said the agencies’ decisions to take down certain webpages “likely” constitute an “order” that’s reviewable under federal administrative law. “The decision to remove myriad public-facing webpages, some of which had been active for decades, is certainly a ‘form of agency power’ or ‘action’ that the [Administrative Procedures Act] reaches,” he wrote.
Dr. Reshma Ramachandran, a Yale School of Medicine professor who provides primary care at a clinic that serves low-income people, said in a declaration to the court that the webpages’ removal has impacted her work. Ramachandran said the disappearance of CDC guidelines on prescribing HIV preventive medication added time and confusion to a recent patient visit.
Patients visiting federally qualified health centers like where she practices tend to use public or scheduled transportation options that leave them with tight timelines to receive care and medications, Ramachandran said. Reducing the risk of HIV transmission requires timely care, she said. “The delays imposed by CDC’s removal of information is extremely harmful,” Ramachandran added.
Harlow’s argument that patients weren’t losing access to health care “because CDC pulled down a couple pages” prompted Bates to loudly reprimand him for “questioning” the judge. “‘Adequacy of treatment’ — that’s a pretty clear term,” Bates said.
In his opinion, Bates signaled those impacts on patient care convinced him the doctors had a case.
“These doctors’ time and effort are valuable, scarce resources, and being forced to spend them elsewhere makes their jobs harder and their treatment less effective,” he wrote.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
DONALD TRUMP, et al.,
Defendants.
Case No. 1:25-cv-00352
PLAINTIFFS’ NOTICE OF DEFENDANTS’ NON-COMPLIANCE WITH COURT ORDER AND EMERGENCY MOTION FOR SHOW CAUSE HEARING
Plaintiffs American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) hereby notify this Court of Defendants’ non-compliance with this Court’s Temporary Restraining Order, ECF No. 15, and move for a hearing to show cause as to the basis for non-compliance.
Factual Background
On February 7, 2025, this Court granted in part Plaintiffs’ Motion for Temporary Restraining Order (TRO), ECF No. 9, and entered a TRO that provided:
All USAID employees currently on administrative leave shall be reinstated until that date, and shall be given complete access to email, payment, and security notification systems until that date, and no additional employees shall be placed on administrative leave before that date. No USAID employees shall be evacuated from their host countries before February 14, 2025 at 11:59 PM.
ECF No. 15.
Plaintiffs have since become aware that Defendants have not fully complied with the terms of this Court’s order. Plaintiffs’ members report the following:
• Patricia Doe was placed on administrative leave on January 31, 2025, and lost systems access that same day. As of 10:52 am this morning, systems access has not been restored. She has no ability to assess whether she has been reinstated from administrative leave. Ex. A.
• Quinn Doe was locked out of USAID systems on January 31. As of 10:48 this morning, systems access has not been restored. She has no ability to assess whether she has been reinstated from administrative leave. Ex. B.
• Rebecca Doe was also placed on administrative leave on January 31, and as of 10:33 am today, lacks access to systems and cannot tell whether she has been reinstated. Ex. C.
Plaintiffs understand that, in some cases, members have had systems access restored consistent with this Court’s order. But Plaintiffs and their attorneys understand that access has not been restored to many others. Those members, therefore, cannot assess whether they have been reinstated from leave.
Further, Plaintiffs believe this Court’s order should cover Personal Services Contractors (PSCs), who are “USAID employees.” PSCs, including those in extremely dangerous areas of the world, report that access to their computer systems has not been restored as of 12:27 pm today. Ex. D (Declaration of Ursula Doe).
Further, some USAID employees report that they were told that access to systems could not be restored until “political leadership signed off.” Id.
Beyond non-compliance with the TRO, factual developments that occurred immediately before and in the wake of the February 7 hearing also suggest that the government intends to continue taking potentially irreversible actions to dismantle the agency before the Court can adjudicate the lawfulness of those actions on the merits. Those factual developments include the following:
• At 9:31 am on Friday, February 7, Defendant Trump posted on Truth Social, “USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY . . . CLOSE IT DOWN!”1
• USAID signage at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center—USAID’s headquarters—has been taken down.2 Press reports suggest that Customs and Border Protection has taken over the lease of the office space that had been allocated to USAID.3
• Reports indicate that contracts and awards are being terminated en masse, and that the procurement team at USAID is being subject to hourly targets regarding execution of these terminations.4
• Officials turned away USAID staffers that arrived at work this morning at its Washington offices. At least some USAID employees received messages that the “former USAID headquarters” were closed until further notice, and were instructed to telework.5
Request for Relief
In light of evidence suggesting that Defendants have not complied with this Court’s TRO and factual developments suggesting that Defendants continue to take immediate, irreparable action to dismantle the agency, Plaintiffs hereby respectfully request the Court schedule a show cause hearing today, directing the government to show why they have not fully complied with this Court’s order granting emergency relief. Plaintiffs also request any further relief that this Court deems just and proper.
Dated: February 10, 2025
Respectfully submitted, /s/ Lauren Bateman Lauren Bateman (DC Bar No. 1005886) Allison Zieve (DC Bar No. 424786) Public Citizen Litigation Group 1600 20th Street NW Washington, DC 20009 (202) 588-1000 [email protected]
Respectfully submitted, /s/ Kaitlyn Golden Kaitlyn Golden (DC Bar No. 1034214) Kristen Miller (DC Bar No. 229627) Kayla M. Kaufman (DC Bar No. 90029091) Robin F. Thurston (DC Bar No. 1531399) Skye L. Perryman (DC Bar No. 984573) Rachel L. Fried (DC Bar No. 1029538) Democracy Forward Foundation P.O. Box 34553 Washington, D.C. 20043 (202) 448-9090 [email protected] (DC Bar No. 90029091)
Counsel for Plaintiffs
Certification Regarding Local Rule 7(m)
As required by Local Rule 7(m), counsel for Plaintiffs and counsel for Defendants met and conferred about this motion. Defendants oppose.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE ASSOCIATION, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
DONALD TRUMP, et al.,
Defendants.
Case No. 1:25-cv-00352
ORDER
Plaintiffs, two unions that represent employees of USAID, object to various recent executive branch actions that they allege have “systematically dismantled” that agency. ECF No. 1 (Compl.) at 2. Plaintiffs allege that their members are suffering or will suffer irreparable harm because of those actions, and late this morning filed a motion for a temporary restraining order that would “maintain the status quo” while the Court considers more fully whether the challenged actions are legal. ECF No. 9-1 (Mot.) at 2. The Court explored the alleged harms and claims at a hearing this afternoon and, for the reasons explained below, will enter a limited TRO.
To obtain a TRO, “the moving party must show: (1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, (2) that it would suffer irreparable injury if the [TRO] were not granted, (3) that [the TRO] would not substantially injure other interested parties, and (4) that the public interest would be furthered” by the TRO. Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches v. England, 454 F.3d 290, 297 (D.C. Cir. 2006); see also Hall v. Johnson, 449 F. Supp. 2d 1, 3 n.2 (D.D.C. 2009) (explaining that the TRO and PI standards are the same). “When the movant seeks to enjoin the government, the final two TRO factors—balancing the equities and the public interest—merge.” D.A.M. v. Barr, 474 F. Supp. 3d 45, 67 (D.D.C. 2020).
Plaintiffs frame their TRO request as pertaining to one overarching event: the allegedly “illegal and unconstitutional dismantling of USAID.” Mot. at 9. But at the TRO hearing, it became clear that plaintiffs’ allegations of irreparable injury flow principally from three government actions: (1) the placement of USAID employees on administrative leave; (2) the expedited evacuation of USAID employees from their host countries; and (3) Secretary Rubio’s January 24, 2025 order “paus[ing] all new obligations of funding . . . for foreign assistance programs funded by or through . . . USAID.” Dep’t of State, Memo. 25 STATE 6828. The Court finds that a TRO is warranted as to the first two actions but not the third.
I. Administrative Leave
When the Court received plaintiffs’ TRO motion, it was not clear how many USAID employees had been or would be placed on administrative leave, or even what precisely “administrative leave” entailed. The TRO hearing provided some clarity. The government reported that 500 USAID employees have already been placed on administrative leave and that, absent a TRO, 2,200 additional USAID employees would be placed on administrative leave by midnight tonight. The government also reported that employees would still be paid while on administrative leave. Plaintiffs, meanwhile, contended—as they had in their complaint and motion—that USAID employees placed on administrative leave, including USAID employees stationed abroad, lack access to the agency’s email, payment, and “internal security warning/alert systems.” Mot. at 20; see ECF No. 9-1 ¶ 18. As plaintiffs’ counsel put it at the hearing, overseas USAID employees placed on administrative leave exist within an “informational vacuum” with respect to possible threats to their safety.
Taking the TRO factors somewhat out of order and beginning with irreparable injury, the Court finds that plaintiffs have adequately demonstrated that their members are facing irreparable injury from their placement on administrative leave, and that more members would face such injury if they were placed on administrative leave tonight. Many USAID personnel work in “high-risk environments where access to security resources is critical.” ECF No. 9-10 ¶ 14. No future lawsuit could undo the physical harm that might result if USAID employees are not informed of imminent security threats occurring in the countries to which they have relocated in the course of their service to the United States. The government argued at the TRO hearing that placing employees on paid administrative leave is a garden-variety personnel action unworthy of court intervention. But administrative leave in Syria is not the same as administrative leave in Bethesda: simply being paid cannot change that fact.
Turning to the likelihood of success on the merits, plaintiffs have asserted at least a colorable argument that placing almost 3,000 USAID employees on administrative leave would violate the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024, which requires the State Department and USAID to consult with Congress before, among other things, “reorganiz[ing]” or “redesign[ing]” USAID, including by “downsiz[ing]” it. Pub. L. 118-47 §§ 7063(a), (b), 138 Stat. 460 (2024). To be sure, the government strongly objects to this argument, and the Court—without the benefit of a brief from the government and given the highly compressed timeline—has not had the opportunity to consider it in detail. But the TRO inquiry operates on a “sliding scale,” wherein “a strong showing on one factor c[an] make up for a weaker showing on another.” Changji Esquel Textile Co. v. Raimondo, 40 F.4th 716, 726 (D.C. Cir. 2022) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Given plaintiffs’ strong arguments about the seriousness of the safety risks posed to overseas USAID employees bereft of government support, the Court concludes that plaintiffs’ merits argument is enough to support a TRO here.
The last TRO factor requires the Court to balance the equities. When the Court asked the government at the TRO hearing what harm would befall the government if it could not immediately place on administrative leave the more than 2000 employees in question, it had no response—beyond asserting without any record support that USAID writ large was possibly engaging in “corruption and fraud.” The Court thus has no difficulty concluding that the balance of the hardships favors the plaintiffs. A TRO as to this issue is warranted.
II. Expedited Evacuations
Plaintiffs have also alleged that, in addition to being placed on administrative leave, USAID employees stationed abroad are being ordered to return to the United States on expedited timelines that are far shorter than those the agency normally prescribes. Specifically, whereas USAID’s “usual process” provides foreign service officers with six to nine months’ notice before an international move, plaintiffs allege that USAID has now issued a “mandatory recall notice” that would require more than 1400 foreign service officers to repatriate within 30 days. Mot. at 18.
Plaintiffs have demonstrated that this action, too, risks inflicting irreparable harm on their members. Recalling employees on such short notice disrupts long-settled expectations and makes it nearly impossible for evacuated employees to adequately plan for their return to the United States. For instance, one of plaintiffs’ members attests that, if he is recalled from his foreign post, he will be forced to “[ u]proot” his two special-needs-children from school in the middle of the year, “set[ting] back their development with possible lifelong implications.” ECF No. 9-5 ¶ 6. He also attests that, because his family has no home in the United States and his children have “lived overseas nearly their entire life,” there will be “an inevitable gap—possibly a long one—before they are back in a stable routine . . . that medical professionals have determined they need to overcome developmental delays.” Id. Other of plaintiffs’ members tell similar stories, explaining that the abrupt recall would separate their families, interrupt their medical care, and possibly force them to “be back in the United States homeless.” See ECF ECF No. 9-4 ¶ 7; ECF No. 9-5 ¶ 8; ECF No. 9-9 ¶ 6. Even if a future lawsuit could recoup any financial harms stemming from the expedited evacuations—like the cost of breaking a lease or of abandoning property that could not be sold prior to the move—it surely could not recoup damage done to educational progress, physical safety, and family relations.
The remaining TRO factors shake out in similar way as they did with respect to the administrative leave question. Plaintiffs again have a plausible argument that the expedited evacuations are unlawful (here because, on plaintiffs’ telling, they flow from the ultra vires unilateral closure of USAID’s overseas offices and operations), and the government, while opposing this argument, has not submitted any briefing on the issue. Nor has the government articulated any harm that would result to its interests if it could not continue recalling USAID employees during the next week, while preliminary injunction briefing proceeds. For these reasons, and again in light of plaintiffs’ strong showing of irreparable harm, the Court finds a TRO is warranted. See Changji, 40 F.4th at 726.
III. Funding Freeze
Plaintiffs finally seek a TRO as to Secretary Rubio’s January 24, 2025 order freezing funding to USAID’s contractors. As a threshold matter, the Court notes that there are significant factual questions about what the practical effect of that order is. The government argued at the hearing that the order only prevents USAID from entering “new obligations of funding”—leaving it free to pay out contracts that it entered into prior to January 24, 2025—and indeed, the text of the order does seem to permit that result. Dep’t of State, Memo. 25 STATE 6828. Yet, plaintiffs maintained at the TRO hearing that payments on existing USAID grants have been frozen, preventing certain “contracting officers” employed by USAID from using agency funds to fulfill monetary commitments that the agency had already made.
This factual dispute is relevant to plaintiffs’ TRO arguments, but ultimately is not dispositive of them. Plaintiffs allege that, by some legal mechanism, USAID contracting officers can be held personally liable for existing contractual expenses that USAID is supposed to, but does not, pay. Plaintiffs thus argue that those officers face irreparable harm as a result of the funding freeze because they will be left “holding the bag” when USAID imminently fails to disburse funds. Separately, plaintiffs argue that the general population of USAID employees will be emotionally harmed by the agency’s inability to pay its contractors because they will be stuck “watching a slow speed train wreck” as the agency reneges on its humanitarian commitments.
Even assuming the funding freeze indeed prevents payments on existing grants in the way plaintiffs claim (instead of merely preventing USAID from entering new obligations, as the government suggested during the hearing), the Court concludes that plaintiffs have not demonstrated resulting irreparable harm. Plaintiffs’ claims about the risk of financial exposure for contracting officers are simply too speculative. They have not explained how or why contracting officers would be held personally liable for contracts entered into by USAID, nor have they explained why there would be no recourse after the fact if that did somehow happen. In response to the Court’s questioning on those points at the TRO hearing, plaintiffs’ counsel asserted that the mere “uncertainty” regarding potential exposure would be injurious. But the Court concludes that this is the kind of hypothetical harm insufficient to warrant a TRO. Cf. Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, 454 F.3d at 297 & n.2. The same is true of the similarly hypothetical emotional harm that might befall USAID employes who are unhappy with the agency’s direction. Id. A TRO as to the funding freeze therefore is not warranted.
IV. Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, the Court will grant in part plaintiffs’ Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, ECF No. 9. The Court will enter a TRO as to the administrative leave and expedited evacuation issues until February 14, 2025 at 11:59 PM. All USAID employees currently on administrative leave shall be reinstated until that date, and shall be given complete access to email, payment, and security notification systems until that date, and no additional employees shall be placed on administrative leave before that date. No USAID employees shall be evacuated from their host countries before February 14, 2025 at 11:59 PM.
The Court will also hold an in-person preliminary injunction hearing on February 12, 2025 at 11:00 AM in Courtroom 17. The government shall submit a brief in opposition to Plaintiffs’ Motion, ECF No. 9, on or before 5:00 PM on February 10, 2025, and plaintiffs shall submit a reply brief on or before 5:00 PM on February 11, 2025.
