On Thursday, February 13th, a federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s government to temporarily lift the freeze on funding and set a deadline of 5 days for the government to prove compliance with this order.
Before the federal government issued the freeze, it had frozen foreign aid contracts and incentives signed by the U.S. government before President Trump’s inauguration on January 20th. This freeze had caused humanitarian aid projects and development around the world to come to a standstill.
Judge Amir H. Ali stated in the ruling that government officials had not explained why they had completely halted all congressionally approved foreign aid, causing shockwaves and disrupting contracts with thousands of non-profit organizations, businesses, and other entities.
The ruling pointed out that halting payments overnight to suppliers and non-profit organizations carrying out U.S. aid abroad had caused severe financial damage to them.
The judge also ordered the government to notify every organization with current foreign aid contracts with the federal government of the temporary injunction issued by the court, requiring the government to prove by Tuesday that these organizations had been informed, else it would be deemed a violation of the injunction.
This was the first ruling by a court against the federal government’s freeze of foreign aid funds.
According to reports from the Associated Press, contractors, farmers, and suppliers in the U.S. and around the world expressed that the Trump administration’s fund freeze had prevented them from receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for completed projects, leading to layoffs and pushing many businesses to the brink of financial collapse. Farmers, other suppliers, and contractors reported that undelivered food aid was rotting in ports, while other aid faced the risk of theft.
Simultaneously, the number of lawsuits filed by government employee groups, aid organizations, and government suppliers demanding the court to revoke the government’s rapid dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and overall actions in foreign aid continued to increase.
The temporary injunction by the judge was issued following lawsuits filed by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, representing health organizations that receive U.S. funding for overseas work.
The Trump administration has not publicly responded to the court injunction yet, but President Trump and his aide Elon Musk had previously stated the need to halt funding for thousands of USAID overseas aid projects to conduct thorough reviews on each project and determine whether they should be terminated.
The current Trump administration is in the process of streamlining the U.S. federal government bureaucracy, cutting staff, combating corruption and waste, reducing government regulations, and returning to the traditional functions of government.
However, the judge believed that the lawyers of the Trump administration had failed to prove that they had “good reason to disregard…countless small and large businesses, which had to shut down projects or close their operations entirely.”
The Trump administration also mentioned efforts to mitigate the impact of the funding freeze, providing waivers, and allowing funds to continue flowing to some aid partners. But the judge cited testimonies stating that such waivers did not currently exist, and the online payment system of USAID was already unusable.
The court’s ruling also prohibited Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials from enforcing work stoppages issued by the Trump administration and Musk against companies and organizations executing orders for foreign aid.