USAID contractors join others suing Trump administration over dismantling of agency

Neither the president nor his subordinates have authority to thwart duly enacted statutes and substitute their own funding preferences for those Congress has expressed through legislation,

the lawsuit said

Defendants have dismantled the federal foreign-assistance system, reducing USAID to a husk of its former self: stripped of funding, devoid of employees, unable to perform basic tasks, and ultimately swallowed by the State Department,

it added

One cannot overstate the impact of that unlawful course of conduct: on businesses large and small forced to shut down their programs and let employees go; on hungry children across the globe who will go without; on populations around the world facing deadly disease; and on our constitutional order,

the U.S. businesses and organizations said

The Court must hold these actions unlawful and set them aside,

the plaintiffs wrote