A judge ordered the government to release frozen foreign aid.
A federal judge on Feb. 26 turned down a government motion to stay an order pending appeal after government officials said they could not comply with the order.
“The purpose of temporary emergency relief was to restore the status quo as it existed before Defendants’ blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated funds, given Plaintiffs’ strong showing of irreparable harm and that Defendants’ blanket suspension of funds was likely arbitrary and capricious. A stay pending appeal would run directly contrary to that purpose,” U.S. District Judge Amir Ali
wrote in his ruling.
Ali’s previous
order gave a deadline of Feb. 26 at 11:59 p.m. ET for federal agencies to unfreeze foreign aid.
That would mean paying at least $1.5 billion across some 2,000 outstanding and newly created requests for payment to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the official serving as deputy administrator for the agency
said in a court filing that accompanied a motion to stay Ali’s order pending appeal.
It would also require paying at least $400 million to resolve outstanding payment requests to the State Department, Pete Marocco, the official, said.
“These payments cannot be accomplished in the time allotted by the Court and would instead take multiple weeks,” he wrote.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ali, in a hearing with government lawyers and attorneys representing the groups that sued over the freeze, was told that the groups had not yet been paid despite his multiple
previous orders, including one on Feb. 13, mandating that the Trump administration unfreeze the foreign assistance.
“I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this: Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before Feb. 13,” the Washington-based judge asked Indraneel Sur, the lawyer for the government, during the hearing. “Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds?”
“I’m not in a position to answer that,” Sur said.
It’s the second time a judge has found the Trump administration did not follow a court order. U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island also
found this month that the administration had not fully unfrozen federal grants and loans within the United States after he blocked sweeping plans for a pause on trillions of dollars in government spending.
In the Washington case, plaintiffs recently
filed an emergency motion to enforce the judge’s temporary restraining order, saying they’re still owed millions of dollars and that their contracts terminated under Trump’s foreign assistance pause remain terminated.
Ali granted the emergency motion during Tuesday’s hearing and ordered the government to comply by Thursday.
Marocco’s declaration came with a motion from the government asking the judge to stay his order as a federal appeals court considers overturning it.
“Defendants are likely to succeed on appeal from the Court’s order for several reasons,” government lawyers
said in the filing. “To start, it is not possible for Defendants to comply,” they said, pointing to Marocco’s declaration.
The government has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
