The judge said administration officials must lift a temporary 90-day freeze on foreign aid, in line with a February court order.
A federal judge ordered federal government officials on Feb. 20 to comply with his earlier order to lift a freeze on nearly all foreign aid, though he stopped short of holding them in contempt of court.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali said administration officials—including those from the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Office of Management and Budget, and their agents—had instead “come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension” of funding.
“[T]he Court’s TRO does not permit Defendants to simply continue their blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated foreign aid pending a review of the agreements for whether they should be continued or terminated,” Ali wrote in his order.
“That is the very action that the Court temporarily enjoined because Plaintiffs had shown that blanket suspension pending review would cause irreparable harm and was likely arbitrary and capricious under the APA [Administrative Procedure Act] for failing to consider the massive reliance interests.”
In February, Ali ordered the administration to temporarily restore funding for nonprofit organizations that rely on federal grants to provide foreign aid assistance after President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause.
In the Feb. 13 order, Ali said the administration had failed to justify why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid was “a rational precursor to reviewing programs.”
Administration officials said in court filings earlier this week that it was complying with the order, but was reviewing its contracts and grants and had so far determined that all of them allowed it to cancel or suspend them.
The administration pointed to a line in the judge’s order that states, “Nothing in this order shall prohibit the Restrained Defendants from enforcing the terms of contracts and grants.”
Officials said that while they had “worked diligently” to comply with the judge’s order, they had not yet identified a “termination, suspension, or stopwork order issued on a USAID contract, grant, or cooperative agreement that was not allowed” under the judge’s order.
