Refusing to comply
By 
As we criticize the people who capitulate to Trump immediately or preemptively — more on that soon! — we should praise those who don’t:
The Trump administration’s purge of dozens of senior officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development encountered resistance on Thursday when the career employee who carried out the original directive rescinded it, calling the purge an “illegal” violation of “due process.”
The official was then promptly placed on administrative leave — according to emails obtained by The Washington Post — in the latest convulsion stemming from President Donald Trump’s 90-day freeze on foreign aid, which has ground to a halt humanitarian aid programs around the world and prompted U.S. contractors to furlough hundreds of employees and prepare to let go many thousands more.
“DOGE instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process,” wrote Nicholas Gottlieb, the director of employee and labor relations at USAID, referring to the budget-slashing commission known as the “Department of Government Efficiency.” “I was notified moments ago that I will be placed on administrative leave, effective immediately. It has been an honor working with you all.”
The episode underscores the tumult at a U.S. agency that is the world’s largest provider of food assistance, and the role that DOGE, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, is playing in the sweeping edicts that are attempting to downsize and overhaul swaths of the federal government.
Trump’s foreign aid directive, signed on his first day in office, and a “stop-work” order approved by Secretary of State Marco Rubio last Friday have prompted widespread confusion in the aid community. Some aid contractors have had to go without pay for work they already completed, said two senior aid workers who, like some others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of punitive action.
Trump has long criticized foreign aid, complaining that it too often goes to countries that do not show respect to the United States. His spokeswoman at the State Department, Tammy Bruce, has defended the aid pause, saying the United States will no longer “blindly dole out money with no return for the American people.”
Yes, that Tammy Bruce — there is a name I have not heard in a etc.
It is not in fact legal for Trump to unilaterally ignore civil service rules, just as it is illegal for him to impound congressional appropriations — he is relying on people unwilling to push back against him, so we need more Gottliebs.