Trump administration is flouting an order to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, judge says

People protest at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, against the Trump administration's blanker decision to shut down the USAID and freeze foreign aid worldwide. (AFP)
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  • Judge Amir H. Ali noted that Trump's appointees to the State Department and USAID had 鈥渃ontinued their blanket suspension of funds鈥�
  • The judge earlier issued a freeze order based on a lawsuit by the nonprofit groups challenging Trump's cutoff of US foreign assistance

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has kept withholding foreign aid despite a court order and must at least temporarily restore the funding to programs worldwide, a federal judge said Thursday.
Judge Amir H. Ali declined a request by nonprofit groups doing business with the US Agency for International Development to find Trump administration officials in contempt of his order, however.
The Washington, D.C., district court judge said administration officials had used his Feb. 13 order to temporarily lift the freeze on foreign aid to instead 鈥渃ome up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension鈥� of funding.
Despite the judge鈥檚 order to the contrary, USAID Deputy Secretary Pete Marocco, a Trump appointee, and other top officials had 鈥渃ontinued their blanket suspension of funds,鈥� Ali said.
The ruling comes in a lawsuit by the nonprofit groups challenging the Trump administration鈥檚 month-old cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department, which shut down $60 billion in annual aid and development programs overseas almost overnight.
Even after Ali鈥檚 order, USAID staffers and contractors say the State Department and USAID still have not restored payments even on hundreds of millions of dollars already owed by the government.
Marocco and other administration officials defended the nonpayment in written arguments to the judge this week. They contended that they could lawfully stop or terminate payments under thousands of contracts without violating the judge鈥檚 order.
The Trump administration says it is now doing a program-by-program review of all State Department and USAID foreign assistance programs to see which ones meet the Trump administration鈥檚 agenda.
Aid organizations, and current and former USAID staffers in interviews and court affidavits, say the funding freeze and deep Trump administration purges of USAID staffers have brought US foreign assistance globally to a halt, forced thousands of layoffs and is driving government partners to financial collapse.