In less than a month in office the Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled foreign aid programs that support fragile democracies abroad and put on leave federal workers who protect US elections at home in a move that current and former officials say abandons decades of American commitments to democracy.

ProPublica’s reporting provides new details about what legal risk officials were prepared to take and what laws they may have violated on their way to creating a “constitutional crisis.”

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, an appointee of President Donald Trump, dealt the administration a setback Friday in its dismantling of the agency, temporarily halting plans to pull all but a fraction of USAID staffers off the job worldwide.