Judge rules Trump admin violated order to unfreeze foreign aid but declines to hold officials in contempt

A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order to temporarily unfreeze foreign aid but declined to hold officials in civil contempt over the transgression.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali said the administration — namely the State Department, Office of Management and Budget and corresponding officials — “have not complied” with the court’s order to lift the sweeping freeze. He directed the government to abide by his previous order.

“The Court’s TRO does not permit Defendants to simply continue their blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated foreign aid pending a review of the agreements for whether they should be continued or terminated,” Ali wrote in a seven-page order.

“That is the very action that the Court temporarily enjoined because Plaintiffs had shown that blanket suspension pending review would cause irreparable harm and was likely arbitrary and capricious under the APA [Administrative Procedure Act] for failing to consider the massive reliance interests,” he said.

However, the judge determined that finding contempt was “not warranted” given that the government plainly recognized in court filings that “prompt compliance” with the judge’s order is required.

A coalition of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors and nonprofits that claim President Trump’s executive order to freeze foreign funding could irreparably harm their operations asked Ali to hold the administration in civil contempt on Wednesday.

They urged the court not to “brook such brazen defiance of the express terms of its order.”

The coalition’s contempt motion followed the government’s admission in court filings that it is not paying out funds for thousands of foreign aid grants and contracts despite the judge’s order.

The administration contended that keeping the aid frozen did not violate the judge’s order, pointing to a line that reads “nothing in this order shall prohibit the Restrained Defendants from enforcing the terms of contracts and grants.” It argued that it had “not yet identified” any pauses not allowed under the judge’s order, given its apparent caveat.

Ali’s order directed the administration to temporarily cease efforts to terminate any foreign aid contracts and grants in place before Trump returned to the White House, in addition to barring the issuance or enforcement of terminations, suspensions or stop-work orders in connection with any federal foreign aid awards in existence before then.

“The Court’s TRO was clear,” Ali wrote in his order to comply Thursday.

The contractors sued the Trump administration earlier this month, alleging they were collectively waiting on hundreds of millions of dollars in outstanding invoices from the government. Two other nonprofits then filed a complaint alleging Trump’s executive order violated the separation of powers and has caused irreparable harm to their operations, which rely heavily on USAID funding.

They argued in court filings that the government was “plainly in violation of the TRO.”

USAID, which administers billions of dollars in foreign aid each year, has faced blistering attacks from the Trump administration, and the Department of Government Efficiency has sought to systematically dismantle it.

Ali said the court was prepared to hold a preliminary injunction hearing by March 4, which could result in an indefinite pause on the administration’s foreign aid freeze as it pertains to contractors and nonprofits.

A different federal judge temporarily blocked the government from putting hundreds of USAID employees on administrative leave and recalling them back to the United States from their posts around the world, but he has not yet ruled on whether broader restrictions should be imposed while litigation is ongoing.

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