A Trump-appointed judge on Friday greenlit the administration’s plans to place thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) employees on administrative leave and recall many from field offices around the world.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols dissolved his order temporarily staving off the purge and declined to provide further relief, contending that the plaintiffs’ initial assertions of harm were “overstated.”

"Weighing plaintiffs’ assertions on these questions against the government’s is like comparing apples to oranges,” Nichols wrote in a 26-page order. “Where one side claims that USAID’s operations are essential to human flourishing and the other side claims they are presently at odds with it, it simply is not possible for the Court to conclude, as a matter of law or equity, that the public interest favors or disfavors an injunction.”

He said that unions representing government employees that sued the Trump administration failed to prove irreparable harm, that their claims are likely to succeed on the merits or public........

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