Foreign aid groups want Rubio held in contempt over funding freeze
Two nonprofits that have had their foreign aid grants frozen asked a judge Wednesday to hold Secretary of State Marco Rubio and another top State Department official in contempt for not following a court order to restart the money flow.
Billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, for everything from HIV prevention to food assistance to support for foreign journalists, are at stake as the groups fight against the Trump administration's 90-day foreign aid freeze.
Administration officials have said they are pausing the funding while they review if the projects comply with President Donald Trump's 'America First' policy.
The groups — the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Journalism Development Network — asked U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, a President Joe Biden appointee, to hold Rubio and Peter Marocco, the State Department's foreign aid assistance director, in civil contempt until they comply with Ali's order from Feb. 13 directing them to restart foreign aid funding. The court should also impose penalties on the two until they comply, the plaintiffs said.
'This Court should not brook such brazen defiance of the express terms of its order,' the plaintiffs wrote in their motion Wednesday.
Marocco — who's also managing the U.S. Agency for International Development — argued in a statement submitted to the court Tuesday night that despite the court's order, he still believed the agency has authority under federal laws and the terms of foreign aid contracts to pause or terminate payments. He said he wants to ensure payments aren't being directed to unreliable or fraudulent purposes and that he would continue to examine outgoing payments as part of a new system to ensure their integrity.
The aid groups argued Wednesday that the judge's order was clear that the administration had to lift the suspension of foreign aid programs and they have not done so.
They also asked the court to order the administration to rescind all suspensions, stop-work orders and terminations issued since Trump returned to the White House and to reimburse foreign assistance recipients for work they've already done, as well as for future work.
Ali ordered the defendants to respond to the contempt motion by 1 p.m. Thursday.
The judge on Feb. 13 ordered the administration to restore funding for hundreds of foreign aid contractors and grantees, arguing that the administration failed to account for the extraordinary harm its broad-based foreign aid halt has caused.
The Trump administration's sudden halt on U.S. foreign aid in late January interrupted foreign programs ranging from food and drug distribution to land mines removal. Thousands of people working for companies and nonprofits in the foreign aid sectors lost their jobs, in the U.S. and abroad.
'Each day, their irreparable harm increased, as did the suffering of millions of people across the world who depend on the work performed with these grants,' the two nonprofits wrote in their filing. They claimed the freeze has already killed people, citing a report from a U.K. media outlet that an elderly refugee woman from Myanmar living in a camp in Thailand died after her oxygen supply was cut off due to the funding freeze.
Plaintiffs also challenged an assertion by the State Department that it and USAID conducted a review of thousands of grants, contracts and other agreements in the last five days and determined the funding termination or suspension was allowed.
'This assertion strains credulity,' the plaintiffs wrote.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Josh Gerstein and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
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