A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to pay at least a portion of the nearly $2 billion in owed foreign aid for previously completed projects by 6 p.m. Monday, an expeditious ruling that comes just one day after the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s request to continue its freeze.
The decision from U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali came after a more than four-hour court hearing Thursday, where he grilled both parties on their proposed repayment plans, and a timeframe for the government to comply with the $1.9 billion in owed foreign aid that has been completed.
At the end of the hearing, Judge Ali ordered the government to pay at least a portion of the $1.9 billion by Monday at 6 p.m.
‘I think it’s reasonable to get the plaintiffs’ invoices paid by 6 p.m. on Monday,’ said Judge Ali. ‘What I’ll order today is the first concrete step that plaintiffs have their invoices paid … [and] work completed prior to Feb. 13 to be paid by 6 p.m. on Monday, March 10th.’
That order previously set a deadline of Feb. 26 at 11:59 p.m. for the Trump administration to pay its outstanding debt to foreign aid groups.
The Justice Department had argued that the timeline was ‘impossible’ to comply with— a notion seemingly rejected by Judge Ali during Thursday’s hearing.
At one point, an attorney for the Justice Department asked for more time to get the payments out, citing the potential difficulty of getting financial transactions approved or completed over the weekend. In response, Judge Ali noted that the government had successfully paid out more than $70 million in the hours between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, noting that this ‘ought to be possible’ as well.
Judge Ali stressed during the Thursday hearing that the Feb. 26 deadline he previously set for the government to pay the $1.9 billion in foreign aid had passed.
Now, he said, the job given to him by the Supreme Court is to clarify the government’s role in repayment— instructions, he noted, that he tends to take ‘very seriously.’
The 5-4 Supreme Court decision one day earlier remanded the case back to the D.C. federal court, and Judge Ali , o hash out the specifics of what must be paid, and when. Judge Ali moved quickly following the high court’s decision, ordering both parties back to court Thursday to weigh plausible repayment schedules.
But the early hours of Thursday’s hearing focused more on the government’s role and review of all foreign aid contractors and grants, which Trump administration lawyers told Judge Ali they had already completed and made final decisions for.
Stephen Wirth, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, objected to the administration’s ‘breakneck’ review of the contracts and grants, arguing that they ‘had one objective— to terminate as many contracts as possible.’
Lawyers were also pressed over whether the Trump administration can legally move to terminate projects whose funds are allocated and appropriated by Congress.
This could eventually kick the issue back up to the Supreme Court.
At issue in the case was how quickly the Trump administration needed to pay the nearly $2 billion owed to aid groups and contractors for completed projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), at a time when the administration has issued a blanket freeze on all foreign spending in the name of government ‘efficiency’ and eliminating waste.
President Donald Trump has stated plans to cut some 90% of USAID foreign aid contracts and to slash an additional $60 billion in foreign aid spending.
In a Supreme Court filing, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris said that while the plaintiffs’ claims were likely ‘legitimate,’ the time Judge Ali gave them to pay the outstanding invoices was ‘not logistically or technically feasible.’
Plaintiffs have argued that the lower court judge had ordered the Trump administration to begin making the owed foreign aid payments more than two weeks ago — a deadline they said the government simply failed to meet, or to even take steps to meet — indicating that the administration had no plans to make good on fulfilling that request.