Judge tells Trump administration it has less than 2 days to resume USAID funding

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to resume hundreds of millions of dollars in payments for U.S. Agency for International Development projects across the globe.

U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali gave the government until the end of Wednesday to comply.

The defendants, USAID and the State Department, have appealed the order to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Ali first ordered Trump officials to reopen the flow of funding to thousands of aid projects on Feb.13. But in a telephone hearing Tuesday, he said the Trump administration has provided no evidence it has done so.

During the hearing, a Justice Department attorney said he was not in a position to answer whether the government had resumed payments.

“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” said Ali, who has grown increasingly impatient with the government.

The plaintiffs, who represent everyone from food distribution programs to investigative journalists, have asked the judge to find the Trump administration in contempt of court, but so far Ali has declined to do so.

Judge cites irreparable harm

The judge has already determined that the funding cut-off is doing irreparable harm to organizations which say they have had to lay off staff and halt projects.

The government has said in filings that it has the right to withhold funds as it reviews grants and contracts. But its critics say Trump officials are ignoring the judge as they starve aid recipients of crucial money that has already been approved by Congress.

“The Trump administration is not above the law,” said Abby Maxman, the president and CEO of Oxfam America, which fights poverty and inequality and is party to another suit against the Trump administration regarding USAID. “Its failure to abide by the rule of law and reinstate humanitarian funding, as ordered by Judge Ali, is causing even more chaos and putting the lives of millions of the world’s poorest and most marginalized people in further jeopardy.”

In fiscal year 2023, USAID spent more than $40 billion in about 130 countries. The vast majority of money went to help with governance, health and humanitarian assistance. More than a quarter of the total budget went to sub-Saharan Africa. USAID is one of the tools the United States uses to develop goodwill and soft power as it competes for influence around the world with authoritarian rivals such as China.

A first target

USAID was the first agency targeted by President Trump and Elon Musk’s cost-cutting entity known as DOGE. In an executive order on Jan. 20, Trump called for a 90-day pause to all funding for foreign assistance. Less than a week later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there would be a review of all foreign assistance programs to ensure they were efficient and consistent with Trump’s “America First” agenda.

In his order, Trump said the U.S. foreign aid industry and bureaucracy is “in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”

Musk has — without evidence — called USAID “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” “evil” and “a criminal organization.”

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