WASHINGTON: The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency.
The order requires the Trump administration to restore email and computer access to all employees of USAID, including those put on administrative leave, though it appears to stop short of reversing firings or fully resurrecting the agency.
In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, US District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.
Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”
The judge acknowledged that it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions.
“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote in the preliminary injunction.
The lawsuit filed by USAID employees and contractors argued that Musk and DOGE are wielding power the Constitution reserves only for those who win elections or are confirmed by the Senate. Their attorneys said the ruling “effectively halts or reverses” many of the steps taken to dismantle the agency.
The administration has said that DOGE is searching for and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, consistent with the campaign message that helped Trump win the 2024 election. The White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.
Musk, his team and Trump political appointee Pete Marocco have played a central role in the two-month dismantling of USAID. In one instance in early February, the administration placed the agency’s top security officials on forced leave after they tried to block DOGE workers from accessing USAID’s classified and sensitive documents.
The administration, with Musk’s and DOGE’s support, went on to order all but a fraction of the agency’s staffers off the job through forced leaves and firings, and terminated what the State Department said was at least 83 percent of USAID’s program contracts.
The moves were part of a broader push by Musk and the Trump administration to eradicate the six-decade-old foreign assistance agency and most of its work overseas.
Trump on Inauguration Day issued an executive order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all US aid and development work abroad, charging that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
Democratic lawmakers and other supporters of USAID have argued Trump had no authority to withhold funding that Congress already approved.
Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.”
The lawsuit was filed by the State Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen, the nonprofit’s executive chair, said the ruling is a milestone in pushback to DOGE and the first to find that Musk’s actions violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which mandates presidential approval and Senate confirmation for certain public officials.
“They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government,” he said in a statement.
Oxfam America’s Abby Maxman in a statement urged all staffing and funding to be reinstated. “The funding freeze and program cuts are already having life or death consequences for millions around the world,” said the chief executive of the humanitarian group.
Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution
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Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution
- Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper”
Venice expands its day-tripper tax program in bid to combat overtourism
Opponents of the day-tripper fee say it has done nothing to discourage tourists from visiting Venice even on high-traffic days
VENICE, Italy: Venice is charging day-trippers to the famed canal city an arrivals tax for the second year starting Friday, a measure aimed at combating the kind of overtourism that put the city’s UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status at risk.
A UNESCO body decided against putting Venice on its list of cultural heritage sites deemed in danger after the tax was announced. But opponents of the day-tripper fee say it has done nothing to discourage tourists from visiting Venice even on high-traffic days.
Here’s a look at Venice’s battle with overtourism by the numbers:
5-10 euros (about $6-$11)
The fee charged to visitors who are not overnighting in Venice to enter its historic center during the second year of the day-tripper tax. Visitors who download a QR code at least three days in advance will pay 5 euros ($5.69) — the same amount charged last year throughout the pilot program. But those who make last-minute plans pay double. The QR code is required from 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. and is checked at entry points to the city, including the Santa Lucia train station, the Piazzale Roma bus depot and the Tronchetto parking garage.
54
The number of days this year that day visitors to Venice will be charged a fee to enter the historic center. They include mostly weekends and holidays from April 18 to July 27. That is up from 29 last year. The new calendar covers entire weeks over key holidays and extends the weekend period to include Fridays.
2.4 million euros
That is the amount Venice took in during a 2024 pilot program for the tax. The city’s top budget official, Michele Zuin, said last year the running costs for the new system ran to 2.7 million euros, overshooting the total fees collected. This year, Zuin projects a surplus of about 1 million euros to 1.5 million euros, which will be used to offset the cost of trash collection and other services for residents.
450,000
The number of day-trippers who paid the tax in 2024. Officials say 8,000 day-trippers paid in advance to enter the city on Friday, among the 77,000 who have already registered so far to enter the city this year. Another 117,000 have registered for exemptions, which apply to anyone born in Venice, those paying property taxes in the city, studying or working in the historic center, or living in the wider Veneto region, among others.
75,000
The average number of daily visitors on the first 11 days of 2024 that Venice charged day-trippers. That’s about 10,000 people more than the number of tourists recorded on each of the three important holidays during the previous year. City council member Giovanni Andrea Martini, an opponent of the measure, said the figures show the project has not deterred visitors.
48,283
The number of official residents in Venice’s historic center composed of over 100 islands connected by footbridges and traversed by its famed canals. The population peaked at 174,000 in 1951, when Venice was home to thriving industries. The number shrank during Italy’s postwar economic boom as residents moved to the mainland for more modern housing — including indoor plumbing which was lacking in Venice. It has been shrinking dramatically over recent decades as local industry lost traction, families sought mainland conveniences and housing prices rose. Activists also blame the “mono-culture” of tourism, which they say has emptied the city of basic services like shops for everyday goods and medical care.
51,129
The number of beds for tourists in Venice’s historic center, including 12,627 in the less regulated short-term rental market, according to April data from the Ocio housing activist group. The number of tourist beds surpassed the number of permanent residents in 2023, according to Ocio’s monitor. Anyone staying in a hotel within the city limits, including on the mainland districts of Mestre and Marghera, pays a lodging tax and is therefore exempt from the day-tripper tax.
25 to 30 million
The number of annual arrivals of both day-trippers and overnight guests roughly confirmed by cellphone data tracked from a Smart Control Room since 2020, according to city officials.
Queen Elizabeth’s former solicitor linked to wealth management of alleged war criminal Rifaat Assad
LONDON: The private solicitor to the late Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain also helped manage the wealth of an alleged Syrian war criminal known as “the Butcher of Hama,” according to a report in The Guardian newspaper.
Mark Bridges, who was knighted for his services to the Queen in 2019, acted as a legal adviser to Rifaat Assad, the uncle of former Syrian president Bashar Assad.
Bridges served as the Queen’s solicitor between 2002 and 2019 and was a trustee of financial trusts linked to Rifaat or his relatives, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported.
Assad, now 87, commanded an elite Syrian force accused of massacring up to 40,000 civilians during the brutal suppression of an uprising in the city of Hama in 1982.
After leading a failed coup in 1984, he was exiled from Syria and went on to invest heavily in the UK, France, and Spain.
Bridges’ prestigious London law firm, Farrer & Co, said his work for Assad complied with regulatory standards and that he had received “credible information” at the time that cast doubt on the war crimes allegations.
Bridges served as a trustee for Assad between 1999 and 2008, and continued to provide “ad-hoc and limited” legal advice until 2015.
The Crown Prosecution Service began efforts to freeze Assad’s British assets in 2017, obtaining a court order preventing the sale of a £4.7 million (SAR 23.39 million) Mayfair home. However, it came too late to block the £3.72 million sale of a seven-bedroom property in Leatherhead, Surrey. Assad’s £16 million townhouse in Mayfair had already been sold.
A 2018 ruling by a court in Gibraltar noted that Bridges had been a trustee of two financial trusts connected to Assad, the English Palomino Trust and the Oryx Trust.
In 2020, Assad was convicted in France of embezzling Syrian state funds to build a French property empire valued at £80 million.
Bashar Assad and his British-born wife Asma fled to Moscow after his regime collapsed late last year.
Responding to the revelations, Farrer & Co. told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: “Whether the same decision (to act for Rifaat) would be made today in light of further information now available and, arguably, the more stringent demands of the regulatory environment, is a point on which one might speculate.”
Britain’s King Charles highlights interfaith values in Easter message
- Monarch praised Islam’s ‘deep human instinct’
LONDON: Britain’s King Charles has praised the ethics of Judaism and the human instinct of Islam in his Easter message, calling for greater love and understanding across all faiths.
In a message issued on Maundy Thursday, the King wished the public a “blessed and peaceful Easter,” reflecting on the enduring importance of compassion. “The greatest virtue the world needs is love,” he said.
In his Easter message, the King said: “On Maundy Thursday, Jesus knelt and washed the feet of many of those who would abandon him.
“His humble action was a token of his love that knew no bounds or boundaries and is central to Christian belief.
“The love he showed when he walked the Earth reflected the Jewish ethic of caring for the stranger and those in need, a deep human instinct echoed in Islam and other religious traditions, and in the hearts of all who seek the good of others.”
Since becoming monarch, King Charles has made interfaith dialogue one of his key priorities, often highlighting his admiration for the values found across different religions and encouraging greater communication between faiths.
While he has issued Easter messages in previous years, including during his time as Prince of Wales, this year’s message marks one of his clearest acknowledgements yet of the shared principles across Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other traditions.
‘Defend ourselves’: Refugee girls in Kenya find strength in taekwondo
- Kakuma is Kenya’s second-largest refugee camp, home to over 300,000 people — from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Burundi
- Taekwondo black-belt teacher Caroline Ambani, who travels sporadically from Nairobi, pushes the sport’s discipline in each lesson
KAUMA, Kenya: Along one of the many dirt tracks leading into Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp there is a large hidden compound, where inside, twice a week, adolescent girls gather to learn taekwondo, the martial arts lessons offering a safe space in the often chaotic settlement.
Kakuma is Kenya’s second-largest refugee camp, home to over 300,000 people — from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Burundi — and managed by the Kenyan government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since its establishment in 1992.
The camp endured protests last month when rations were reduced after the announcement of the USAID cuts, with President Donald Trump’s decision to slash aid funding impacting many within the area.
But the compound — on the outskirts of the camp proper, down ‘New York City’ lane — was calm when AFP visited.
Roughly 80 teenage girls crammed into an open-sided room, their raucous chatter bouncing off the corrugated metal structure.
Fifteen-year-old twins Samia and Salha are among them, Samia explaining they joined because they live in the camp’s dangerous Hong Kong district.
“In the past when we were beaten up, we couldn’t defend ourselves but now we are able to defend ourselves,” Samia told AFP.
Her twin, Salha — who can neither speak nor hear — is just as fiery as her sister, their father Ismail Mohamad said with a grin.
The 47-year-old, who fled Burundi 15 years ago, was initially hesitant about letting his daughters join, but the difficulties that Salha faces in the camp changed his mind.
“I thought it would be good if I brought her here so she could defend herself in life,” he said.
“Now, I have faith in her because even when she’s in the community she no longer gets bullied, she can handle everything on her own.”
Taekwondo black-belt teacher Caroline Ambani, who travels sporadically from Nairobi, pushes the sport’s discipline in each lesson.
Yelling through the chatter, she tried to bring the excitable girls to order: “Here we come to sweat!“
But her affection and pride in her students is evident, particularly girls like Salha.
“Some of these girls have been able to protect themselves from aggressors,” she told AFP.
However, the three-year program, run by the International Rescue Committee and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), is coming to the end of its funding.
Instructors hope the skills they have imparted will be enough to see the girls through the coming years.
One of the captains, 18-year-old Ajok Chol, said she will keep training.
She worries about violence in the camp — like what she fled in South Sudan aged 14.
“We were so scared about that,” she told AFP. “We came here in Kakuma to be in peace.”
Now she wants to become an instructor herself, “to teach my fellow girls... to protect the community.”
Karachi mob kills member of Ahmadi minority
- The mob of 100-200 people beat a 47-year-old owner of a car workshop to death
KARACHI: A mob attacked a place of worship of Pakistan’s Ahmadi minority community in Karachi on Friday, killing at least one man, police and a community spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for the Ahmadi community, Amir Mahmood, said the mob of 100-200 people beat a 47-year-old owner of a car workshop to death with bricks and sticks and was still surrounding the building, with around 30 people trapped inside.
The superintendent of police for Karachi’s Saddar neighborhood, Mohammad Safdar, confirmed the death and told Reuters that police were mobilizing efforts to subdue the crowd.
Ahmadis are a minority group considered heretical by some orthodox Muslims.
Pakistani law forbids them from calling themselves Muslims or using Islamic symbols, and they face violence, discrimination and impediments blocking them from voting in general elections.
