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Judge: Release Foreign Aid Fu 02/14 07:27
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on
Thursday to temporarily lift a three-week funding freeze that has shut down
U.S. aid and development work worldwide, citing the sweeping damage that the
sudden shutdown has done to the nonprofits and other organizations that help
carry out U.S. assistance overseas.
The court ruling was the second to deliver a major setback for the Trump
administration in what has been its dismantling of the six-decade-old U.S.
Agency for International Development, which President Donald Trump and ally
Elon Musk accuse of being out of line with Trump's agenda.
Thursday's ruling by the U.S. district court in Washington is the first
ruling that targets what aid groups and others say has been a sudden and
absolute cutoff of USAID funds for programs abroad.
The funding cutoff has left contractors, farmers and suppliers in the U.S.
and around the world without hundreds of millions of dollars in pay for work
already done and forced wide scale layoffs among those enterprises.
Judge Amir Ali issued the temporary order Thursday in the U.S. in a lawsuit
brought by two organizations, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the
Global Health Council, representing health organizations receiving U.S. funds
for work abroad.
In his order, Ali noted that the Trump administration argued it had to shut
down funding for the thousands of USAID aid programs abroad to conduct a
thorough review of each program and whether it should be eliminated.
However, administration officials "have not offered any explanation for why
a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set
off a shockwave and upended" contracts with thousands of nonprofit groups,
businesses and others "was a rational precursor to reviewing programs," the
judge said.
Lawyers for the administration had failed to show they had a "rational
reason for disregarding...the countless small and large businesses that would
have to shutter programs or shutter their businesses altogether," the judge
added.
The ruling also bars Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump
officials from enforcing stop-work orders that the Trump administration and
Musk have sent to the companies and organizations carrying out foreign aid
orders.
The funding order applies to contracts that were in place before Trump
issued his Jan. 20 executive order declaring a freeze on foreign assistance.
Ali also rejected the Trump administration's argument that it was buffering
the impact of the funding freeze, offering waivers to allow funding to keep
flowing to some aid partners.
Ali cited testimony that no such waiver system yet existed and that the
online payment system at USAID no longer functioned.
He rejected a request from the health organizations to challenge Trump's
executive order itself, limiting his ruling to temporarily blocking Rubio and
other administration officials from enforcing it.
Earlier Thursday, a judge in a separate case over the Trump administration's
dismantling of USAID and U.S. aid programs abroad said that his order halting
the Trump administration's plans to pull all but a fraction of USAID staffers
off the job worldwide will stay in place for at least another week.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ordered the extension after a nearly
three-hour hearing Thursday, much of it focused on how employees were affected
by abrupt orders by the Trump administration and Musk, who leads Trump's
Department of Government Efficiency, to put thousands of USAID workers on leave
and freeze foreign aid funding.
The judge said he plans to issue a written ruling in the coming days on
whether the pause will continue.
Nichols closely questioned the government about keeping employees on leave
safe in high-risk overseas areas. When a Justice Department attorney could not
provide detailed plans, the judge asked him to file court documents after the
hearing.
USAID staffers who until recently were posted in Congo had filed affidavits
for the lawsuit describing the aid agency all but abandoning them when looting
and political violence exploded in Congo's capital last month, leaving them to
evacuate with their families.
The funding freeze and purge of top USAID officials meant agency staffers
are now stranded in Washington, without homes or agency funding, and facing the
loss of their jobs, staffers said in the affidavits.
The judge handed the administration a setback last week by temporarily
halting the plans that would have put thousands of workers on leave and given
those abroad only 30 days to return to the United States at government expense.
His order was set to expire by the end of Thursday.
Two associations representing federal employees asked him to continue his
stay, as well as suspend Trump's freeze on almost all foreign assistance. The
president's pause has shut down almost all of the thousands of U.S.-funded aid
and development programs around the globe, USAID workers and humanitarian
groups say.
Nichols grilled lawyers for USAID unions in Thursday's hearing, probing how
workers were being affected by the stoppage of funding for the agency's work.
The judge's questions probed the concept of legal standing --- whether the
unions can show the kind of legal harm that would justify a continued block on
the Trump administration's plans.
Standing is a legal technicality, but an important one. A different judge
cited it when he sided with the Trump administration and allowed a Musk-backed
plan to cut the federal workforce through deferred resignations, often known as
buyouts.
While the administration and DOGE, Musk's cost-cutting initiative, have
taken aim at other agencies, they have moved most destructively against USAID,
asserting without evidence that its work is wasteful.
In a court filing, deputy USAID head Pete Marocco argued that
"insubordination" made it impossible for the new administration to undertake a
close review of aid programs without first pushing almost all USAID staffers
off the job and halting aid and development work. He did not provide evidence
for his assertion.
USAID staffers, in court filings, have denied being insubordinate. They said
they were doing their best to carry out what they describe as vague and
confusing orders, some of which were said to come from a Musk associate and
other outsiders.
Agency supporters told Democratic senators earlier this week that the
shutdown -- along with other administration steps, including revoking USAID's
lease on its Washington headquarters -- was really about eradicating USAID
before lawmakers or the courts could stop it.
The employee groups, the Democratic lawmakers and others argue that without
congressional approval, Trump lacks the power to shut USAID or end its
programs. His team says the power of courts or lawmakers to stand in the way is
limited at best.
"The President's powers in the realm of foreign affairs are generally vast
and unreviewable," government lawyers said in court documents.
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