Trump Officials Failed to Restart USAID Funding, Judge Says (1)

A judge ruled the Trump administration did not comply with an order to resume federal payments to foreign assistance programs under the US Agency for International Development, the latest instance of the government failing to follow a court directive on spending.

In a ruling late Thursday, US District Judge Amir Ali in Washington said the State Department had “continued their blanket suspension of funds” to the agency known as USAID despite a “clear” temporary restraining order issued on Feb. 13 that was supposed to lift the spending freeze while a lawsuit proceeds.

The decision wasn’t a total loss for President Donald Trump’s administration. Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, did not hold the State Department in contempt as requested by a pair of nonprofits that sued.

Democrats and other Trump critics have expressed concern the president may defy court orders he disagrees with. That worry was amplified after a judge overseeing a different spending-freeze case ruled the Trump administration violated a temporary restraining order by failing to restart the flow of billions of dollars in funds for federal grants, loans and other domestic financial assistance, in a suit brought by Democratic state officials.

Earlier this month, Trump posted on social media that, “He who saves his country violates no law,” further inflaming Democrats and other critics.

The USAID case is one of several challenging Trump’s executive orders aimed at slashing trillions of dollars in spending that has already been approved by Congress. The beleaguered federal agency emerged as a major target of Elon Musk’s so-called government efficiency team, which aims to dramatically reshape and shrink the government.

The State Department declined to comment on pending litigation. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In his written ruling granting the temporary restraining order, Ali said he was convinced that unless he lifted the USAID freeze, “the scale of the enormous harm that has already occurred will almost certainly increase.” The order will remain in place while he considers a longer-lasting injunction against the spending freeze.

On Tuesday, the US Justice Department filed a report with Ali asserting that the government was in compliance with the TRO even though it had still decided to cancel the vast majority of foreign assistance payments.

The judge’s order “clearly and unambiguously” allowed the government “to enforce their rights under the terms of contracts and grants, including by terminating them,” the department said in the filing.

The nonprofits that filed the suit — the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Journalism Development Network — called the government’s explanation “sheer pretext” and accused the State Department of “brazen defiance” of the “unambiguous” language of the TRO.

While Ali declined to hold the government in contempt, he disagreed with the government’s interpretation of his order, saying there was no loophole.

The judge said he was “not inviting defendants to continue the suspension while they reviewed contracts and legal authorities to come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension.”

The case is AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. US Department of State, 25-cv-00400, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

(Updates with the State Department declining to comment.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth, Peter Blumberg

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