A federal judge blocked President Trump’s takeover of a federal agency that invests in Latin America and the Caribbean, finding Friday that he likely went beyond his authority.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered the administration indefinitely reinstate Sara Aviel, the ousted president of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), and stop various other efforts to gut the foundation as her lawsuit proceeds.
“Because accepting Defendants’ arguments would leave parts of the Constitution in tatters, Ms. Aviel has shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits,”said AliKhan, an appointee of former President Biden.
Established by Congress in 1969 as a nonprofit corporation, the IAF funds efforts to combat poverty, migration and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The administration began efforts to gut the agency on Feb. 19, when Trump signed an order directing the IAF and several other groups be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
AliKhan’s ruling comes weeks after another judge declined to block Trump’s takeover of the U.S. African Development Foundation, another agency listed in the order.
Within days of Trump’s directive, the administration removed Aviel and the IAF board as the Department of Government Efficiency injected itself into the foundation. At a court hearing Wednesday, the government said the IAF now has only one employee and one active grant remaining.
Trump appointed Peter Marocco, a State Department official who has played a central role in the administration's efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, as the IAF’s sole acting board member.
The judge's order Friday effectively reverses Marocco’s takeover of the agency, blocking him from serving on the board and unwinding all actions he has taken, including any grants that were frozen.
The Justice Department had insisted both Aviel’s termination and Marocco’s appointment were legal, part of a broader theory advanced by the administration that the president has expansive authority to hire and fire officials across the federal bureaucracy.
In her ruling, AliKhan called the logical extension of the argument “frightening.”
“Then the President could appoint an ‘acting’ board member indefinitely without ever needing to seek the advice and consent of the Senate,” AliKhan wrote. “That reading eviscerates the Appointments Clause. When the court pressed Defendants’ counsel for a limiting principle at oral argument, Defendants had no response — convincing or otherwise.”
The government also asserted Aviel wasn’t entitled to an injunction at the early stage of the case because she hadn’t made the necessary showing of irreparable harm, pointing to two recent appeals rulings that cleared the way for Trump to fire other federal agency leaders. The judge rejected that argument, ...
