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Axios
07-03-2025
- Business
- Axios
Judge orders Trump admin to pay USAID partners millions by Monday
A federal judge gave the Trump administration until 6pm Monday ET to make some outstanding foreign aid payments to USAID partners, per multiple reports on Thursday. The big picture: U.S. District Judge Amir Ali's ruling during a case involving several nonprofits and aid groups including the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council comes one day after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to halt the lower court judge's order requiring the Trump administration to unfreeze some $1.9 billion in foreign aid payments. State of play: The groups sued the Trump administration after it froze foreign aid as part of a DOGE-led federal government cuts and large-scale dismantling of USAID, which was the world's largest humanitarian aid organization. Ali said Thursday he thought it was "feasible" for the first set of payments to be made by the Monday deadline, per the Washington Post. What they're saying: Attorneys for the Trump administration said in a filing officials had worked overnight to certify some "$70.3 million in additional payments" to the groups, which were expected to be released on Thursday. "It will take another day or so for those payments to be received vendors accounts," the filing added. "It is currently anticipated that all legitimate payments owed to the Plaintiffs will be processed within days, and not more than ten working days." Representatives for the Trump administration and did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment in the evening. Go deeper: Exclusive: Oversight Dems open probe into Trump's USAID purge
USA Today
05-03-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Supreme Court won't block judge's order requiring Trump administration pay foreign aid groups
WASHINGTON − A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration's request to block an order that set a deadline for the administration to pay foreign aid organizations for work already performed for the government. Because the original deadline has lapsed, the court said the judge should clarify how the government should comply 'with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines' − but did not overturn the order. Four of the court's conservative justices − Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh − dissented. Alito wrote he is "stunned" that a majority of the court thinks one district judge has "the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars." Soon after taking office in January, Trump froze foreign assistance, ridiculing some of the past spending choices and accusing the agency that overseas much of the assistance of being run by "radical left lunatics." Some of the organizations that receive grants or contract with the government to run public health and other programs in other countries sued, including asking a federal judge to immediately step in because the sudden loss of funding plunged them into "financial turmoil." U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, temporarily blocked the administration from enacting a blanket freeze as he considers whether the administration acted legally. Ali also directed the government to pay contractors who had completed work before the freeze. When the contractors complained they still hadn't gotten paid, Ali ordered the administration to do so by Feb. 27. In an emergency request, the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, saying the judge's deadline for disbursing what they said was nearly $2 billion in payment requests was "not logistically or technically feasible." The government also argues the judge is interfering in the powers the Constitution gives Trump. 'The President's power is at its apex – and the power of the judiciary is at its nadir – in matters of foreign affairs,' Sarah Harris, the acting solicitor general, told the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts initially paused the disbursement deadline and asked the foreign aid groups to respond. The organizations called it 'extraordinary' that the administration would seek the Supreme Court's review of a district court's compliance order for an "emergency of its own making." The groups − which include the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international development company and a refugee assistance organization − said the administration was seeking permission to continue to defy the lower court after making no effort to meet a deadline it now says is impossible. In the meantime, they said, Americans who work for their organizations have lost their jobs, businesses have been ruined, food is rotting and critical medical care is being withheld. 'These are the fruits of the government's actions,' they wrote. The administration has said it's ending more than 90% of the foreign aid contracts disbursed through the U.S. Agency for International Development, an entity it's dismantling, and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
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.
Politico
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Politico
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.
