{"id":610,"date":"2025-07-03T17:04:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T17:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=610"},"modified":"2025-07-03T17:05:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T17:05:28","slug":"federal-judge-halts-the-trump-administration-from-dismantling-the-us-african-development-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=610","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge halts the Trump administration from dismantling the US African Development Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the\u00a0Trump<\/a>\u00a0administration from\u00a0dismantling a U.S. federal agency<\/a>\u00a0that invests in African small businesses.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., ruled that Trump violated federal law when he\u00a0appointed Pete Marocco<\/a>\u00a0the new head of the U.S. African Development Foundation, or USDAF, because Marocco was never confirmed by Congress. As a result, Marocco’s actions \u2014 terminating most of the agency’s employees and effectively ending the agency’s grants \u2014 are void and must be undone, the judge found.<\/p>\n

Congress created USADF as an independent agency in 1980, and its board members must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In 2023, Congress allocated $46 million to the agency to invest in small agricultural and energy infrastructure projects and other economic development initiatives in 22 African countries.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 19, Trump issued an\u00a0executive order<\/a> that said USADF, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Inter-American Foundation and the Presidio Trust should be scaled back to the minimum presence required by law. Trump also fired the agency’s board members and installed Marocco as the board chair.<\/p>\n

Two USDAF staffers and a consulting firm based in Zambia that works closely with USADF sued on May 21, challenging Marocco’s appointment and saying the deep cuts to the agency prevented it from carrying out its congressionally mandated functions.<\/p>\n

The staffers and consulting firm asked the judge for a preliminary injunction, saying Marocco’s \u201cslash-and-burn approach\u201d threatened to reduce the agency to rubble before their lawsuit is resolved. They said the Federal Vacancies Reform Act prohibited Marocco’s appointment to USADF, and that the same law requires that any actions done by an unlawfully appointed person must be unwound.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a victory for the rule of law and the communities that rely on USADF\u2019s vital work,\u201d said Joel McElvain, senior legal adviser at Democracy Forward, the organization representing the USDAF staffers and consulting firm in their lawsuit. \u201cWe will continue fighting against these power grabs to protect USADF\u2019s ability to fulfill the mission that Congress gave it to perform.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro had written in court documents that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act doesn’t apply to USADF, and that the president has the authority to designate acting members of the agency’s board until the Senate confirms his nominees. Any claims about the cuts themselves, Pirro said, must be handled in the Court of Federal Claims, not the federal district court.<\/p>\n

The judge found in a separate case that Trump had the legal authority to\u00a0fire the previous members<\/a>\u00a0of the USADF board. Pirro wrote in court documents in that case that the president also has the legal authority to appoint someone to run the USADF, consistent with Trump’s policy goals, until the Senate could confirm his nominees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the\u00a0Trump\u00a0administration from\u00a0dismantling a U.S. federal agency\u00a0that invests in African small businesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}