16 hours Ago By Bloomberg News
A US judge ordered the Trump administration to undo some of its cuts to billions of dollars in foreign assistance programs through the US Agency for International Development, the latest turn in a legal fight that’s likely to end up at the US Supreme Court.In a ruling Monday, US District Judge Amir Ali in Washington issued a mixed ruling on a an effort by a group of nonprofits to block the spending cuts. The ruling requires USAID to follow through on payments obligations under contracts with groups that provide food and other essential services to people across the globe.
But under the judge’s order, the administration must reverse only the actions it took to freeze spending from Jan. 20 to Feb. 13 — and not mass terminations that took effect after that period.
The USAID case is one of several challenging President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at slashing trillions of dollars in spending that was already approved by Congress. The beleaguered aid agency emerged as a major target of Elon Musk’s so-called government efficiency team, which aims to dramatically reshape and shrink the government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he’d canceled 83% of USAID’s contracts.
Representatives of the nonprofits spearheading the litigation, AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Global Health Council, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The US State Department also didn’t respond to a request for comment.Last month, Ali issued a temporary order against the government that covered as much as $2 billion for work that had already been performed under contracts with hundreds of organizations — a ruling that the Supreme Court allowed to take effect after declining to intervene.
In Monday’s ruling, the judge said the nonprofits were likely to prevail on their claims that the administration’s blanket suspension of congressionally approved aid violated administrative protocols and the constitutional principle of separation of powers.But Ali declined to block funding decisions after mid-February stemming from the administration’s review of foreign aid programs aimed at identifying which ones “make sense for the American people.”‘Must Be Careful’The judge said he “must be careful” to avoid issuing relief to the plaintiffs that could “itself intrude on the prerogative” of one of the co-equal branches of government.
Ali said it was a “close” argument, but concluded that the initial wave of contract terminations was likely the result of a rushed policy change that was different from the later mass terminations which followed a detailed review of USAID agreements. Even so, Ali said the nonprofits are likely to succeed on their claim that the initial sudden cancellations were “arbitrary and capricious,” in violation of the federal Administrative Procedures Act.The administration has “yet to offer any explanation, let alone one supported by the record, for why a blanket suspension setting off a shockwave and upending reliance interests for thousands of businesses and organizations around the country was a rational precursor to reviewing programs,” the judge wrote.
The judge rejected the Trump administration argument that the mass cancellations were necessary for a review to identify potential waste or inefficiencies.‘Rational Connection’“The desire to review programs for efficiency or consistency, and to access information in one place, does not have a rational connection to the directives to proceed with a sudden, blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated aid,” the judge said.The judge has already criticized the Trump administration for failing to restart funding as he’d required under his earlier temporary order.
However, Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, declined to hold the State Department in contempt as requested by the nonprofits that sued.The case is AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. US Department of State, 25-cv-400, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
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