The Trump administration must make some payments to foreign aid contractors and grant recipients by 6 p.m. (1100 GMT) on Monday, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed the administration’s request to avoid a deadline for the payments.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali came at the end of a hearing in a lawsuit by contractors and non-profit grant recipients challenging President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging freeze of U.S. foreign aid, a day after the groups got a boost from the Supreme Court. It orders the government to pay invoices submitted by the plaintiffs in the case before February 13.
Ali said he would issue a further order with more details on when the U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department must make further payments for past work, including to organizations that are not part of the lawsuit. The government has estimated that the total amount of those payments is close to $2 billion.
The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ali on February 13 had blocked the administration from imposing a blanket pause on nearly all foreign aid, though it left room for the agencies to cancel contracts for other reasons.
Plaintiffs said in court filings that the administration refused to comply, leading the judge on February 25 to impose a deadline late the following day for releasing some funds. The government said it could not meet that deadline, and the Supreme Court, in sending the case back, told Ali to consider the “feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
Since Ali’s original order, however, the government has said that it has reviewed all its foreign aid contracts and grants and made final decisions to terminate most of them, while keeping a small minority.
During Thursday’s hearing, Ali pressed Stephen Wirth, a lawyer for the contractors, to explain how that changed the case. Wirth said the government’s actions remained illegal, with a “breakneck” review that had “one objective, to terminate as many contracts as possible.” The contractor plaintiffs include development firm Chemonics International, the American Bar Association and two associations of businesses and organizations.
Lauren Bateman, a lawyer for the non-profit grant recipients AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Journalism Development Network, said the administration’s terminations of contracts “emphatically were not” within the president’s power, since the funds had been appropriated and directed by Congress.
Indraneel Sur, a lawyer for the government, told Ali that USAID and the State Department had “accelerated” their review of contracts and grants in order to comply with his emergency order. He disputed that the administration had carried out a “mass termination,” saying that terminations instead had reflected “individualized consideration.”
Ali, who was appointed by Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, appeared skeptical of the government’s rapid cancellation of thousands of agreements, and especially of the president’s power to refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress.
“It would seem to me a pretty country-shaking proposition that appropriations are optional,” he told Sur.
The administration said in a status report, opens new tab on Thursday morning that “all legitimate payments” owed to the plaintiffs in the case would be made “within days,” and not more than 10 days, but that foreign aid payments to other parties not in the lawsuit could take much longer, blaming “complicated” payment systems. It said that payments requested from the State Department would be paid within two weeks, and from USAID, within 30 to 45 days.
The administration said that it has paid out at least $87 million in foreign aid since February 26, and approved another $70 million.
Wirth said at the hearing that some plaintiffs had received some payments, but others had still received none.
Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign aid on his first day back in office. That action, and ensuing stop-work orders halting USAID operations around the world, have jeopardized the delivery of life-saving food and medical aid, throwing global humanitarian relief efforts into chaos.
