By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily lift a funding freeze that has shut down U.S. humanitarian aid and development work around the world, and he has set a five-day deadline for the administration to prove it’s complying.
The judge’s ruling late Thursday cited the financial devastation that the near-overnight cutoff of payments has caused suppliers and nonprofits that carry out much of U.S. aid overseas.
The ruling was the first to challenge the Republican administration’s funding freeze. It comes amid a growing number of lawsuits by government employees’ groups, aid groups and government suppliers asking courts to roll back the administration’s fast-paced dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and U.S. foreign assistance overall.
Trump and his aide Elon Musk say the 6-decade-old aid agency and much of foreign assistance overall is out of line with the Republican president’s agenda.
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,” Judge Amir H. Ali said in his ruling.
Contractors, farmers and suppliers in the U.S. and around the world say the Trump administration’s funding freeze has stiffed them on hundreds of millions of dollars in pay for work already done, has forced them to lay off staff and is rapidly putting many near the point of financial collapse.
Farmers and other suppliers and contractors describe fortunes in undelivered food aid rotting in ports and other undelivered aid at risk of theft.
The judge ordered the administration to notify every organization with an existing foreign-aid contract with the federal government of his temporary stay. He set a Tuesday deadline for the administration to show it had done so and was otherwise complying with the order.
There was no immediate public response from the Trump administration.
The judge issued the temporary order 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, the judge 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, 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 judge 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. He cited testimony that no such waiver system yet existed and that the online payment system at USAID no longer functioned.
In a separate ruling in another lawsuit Thursday, a judge said his temporary block on a Trump administration order that would pull all but a fraction of USAID staffers off the job worldwide would stay in place at least another week.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols closely questioned the government about how it could keep aid staffers abroad safe on leave despite the administration’s dismantling of USAID. 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.
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