WASHINGTON: The Trump administration said in court filings late on Tuesday that it is not disbursing funds for thousands of foreign aid contracts and grants despite a federal judge’s order last week to lift a widespread freeze on foreign aid funding.

The administration said in the filings that it was complying with US District Judge Amir Ali’s temporary restraining order, pointing to a line in the order saying that the US Agency for International Development and the State Department were not barred from “enforcing the terms of contracts and grants.”

It said it was reviewing the frozen agreements and had determined that all of them allowed the administration to terminate or suspend them, either on their own terms or “implicitly.” It also said that USAID and the State Department had legal authority to halt payments that did not depend on Republican President Donald Trump’s Jan 20 executive order instituting a 90-day freeze on foreign aid, which Ali’s order barred the administration from enforcing.

The administration asked that, if it had “misunderstood” Ali’s temporary order, the judge convert it into a longer-term injunction that it would be able to appeal immediately.

Peter Maybarduk of the legal group Public Citizen, which represents the non-profit plaintiffs, in an email called the filing “outrageous” and said that “people who long have been partners of the United States, in vulnerable situations around the world, will suffer as a result of this failure to restore funding, funding the US already had promised, and that a court last week ordered the government provide.”

Trump’s aid freeze was followed by aggressive moves to gut USAID, including by placing much of its staff on leave and exploring bringing the formerly independent agency under the State Department. The changes have thrown global humanitarian relief efforts into chaos and slowed or stopped delivery of potentially life-saving food and medicine. The two lawsuits before Ali are among several challenging the administration’s foreign aid policies.

It was not immediately clear whether any funding had been restored as a result of Ali’s order. Pete Marocco, who is currently acting as deputy administrator of USAID, said in a court filing that, since the order, USAID had approved 21 payments worth more than $250 million. He did not say whether those approvals were a direct response to the order.

Marocco also said that, since Trump took office, 498 USAID contracts, grants or other funding agreements had been terminated for policy reasons, including because they were related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility; sustainability and climate change; or were wasteful. He said other USAID contracts and grants were suspended, though not how many. The State Department has terminated 25 foreign assistance contracts and 733 grants, according to Marocco’s filing.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2025