In his preliminary injunction Monday, Ali said Trump could not simply ignore most of what is roughly $60 billion in foreign assistance funding that was given to USAID and State by Congress, which under the U.S. Constitution has the authority to spend money.
“The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the President’s own — and it is Congress’s own,” Ali wrote, adding elsewhere that Trump officials “offer an unbridled view of Executive power that the Supreme Court has consistently rejected.”
But Ali declined the request from nonprofit groups and businesses to revive the canceled contracts for foreign assistance work around the world, saying it was up to the administration to make decisions on specific contracts. The mass contract cancellations also were a separate matter than the funding freeze that two global health groups, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, had originally gone to court to challenge, he said.
Ali also ordered Trump officials to pay all of the roughly $2 billion it owed to aid groups and businesses up to mid-February, and ordered them to do it at a pace of at least 300 back payments a day.
Despite claims from the administration it was continuing to fund at least life-saving programs in its foreign aid freeze, USAID staffers and the agency’s nonprofit and business partners say all payments through USAID were cut off until recently, and that USAID’s payment system itself disabled by Musk’s DOGE.
A union for U.S. Agency for International Development contractors asked a federal judge Tuesday to intervene in any destruction of classified documents after an email ordered staffers to help burn and shred agency records.
Judge Carl Nichols set a Wednesday morning deadline for the plaintiffs and the government to brief him on the issue. A person familiar with the email who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal verified that it was sent to at least some essential personnel.
Also today:
Trump overstepped his constitutional authority in freezing Congress’ funding for USAID, judge says (AP)
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