Judge Says Trump Admin Can’t Put ‘Blanket’ Pause On Foreign Aid

A federal judge temporarily blocked the enforcement of the Trump administration’s foreign aid pause, ruling that the administration did not have a compelling reason to implement the freeze. 

U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Judge Amir Ali sided on Thursday with several government-funded global health nonprofits that had sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the foreign aid funding pause. The suit was filed over President Donald Trump’s executive order initiating a 90-day pause on foreign funding to evaluate whether the programs were in America’s national interest. 

Ali asserted that the Trump administration had “not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs.”

The judge, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said that his order did not block the Trump administration’s “comprehensive internal review of government programs,” only “the implementation of the blanket suspension of foreign aid funding.”

Ali said he was blocking the administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement of appropriated foreign-assistance funds in connection with any contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, loans, or other federal foreign assistance award.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said Friday that federal judges should not be able to dictate foreign policy. 

“No district court judge has the power to run the foreign policy of the United States,” he posted on X. “To even suggest as much is to lay waste to our constitutional heritage.”

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Trump’s day one executive order said that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.” Waivers for “life-saving humanitarian assistance” were granted by the State Department as part of the pause.

This agenda has included massively shrinking the role of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and moving it under the role of the State Department and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The agency drew the scrutiny of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency project, which argued that the agency has funded ideological programs around the world. 

Rubio has said that the U.S. would continue to provide foreign aid but slash programs that don’t align with the national interest. 

“The goal of our endeavor has always been to identify programs that work and continue them,” he told reporters in the Dominican Republic. “And to identify programs that are not aligned with our national interest, identify those, and address them.”