Andrew Natsios, a Republican who served under George W. Bush, knocked the pair for pushing "a lot of garbage" in their efforts to gut the agency.

While Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk said he was working to "shut down" USAID, it wasn't clear whether the official position of President Donald Trump's administration was to shut it down or merge it into the U.

The suit says the administration's actions are costing thousands of jobs, threatening national security interests and causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

The largest U.S. government workers' union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.