Federal judge orders Trump administration to pay foreign aid contracts for finished work

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 12, 2025 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

A federal judge has ordered the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to make foreign aid payments to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for completed work, but gave administration officials some limited authority in deciding how money will be spent moving forward.

Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office to halt spending for most foreign aid programs established through Congress. Several Catholic NGOs that do humanitarian work overseas — including Catholic Relief Services and Jesuit Relief Services — immediately lost access to funds and subsequently laid off thousands of workers.

Although NGOs must be paid for work they have already completed, the court order does not guarantee that any of those specific organizations will receive additional funds moving forward.

U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, ordered the administration to pay about $2 billion for work that was finished before Feb. 13. He ordered the government to make 1,200 payments over a four-day period, which is about 300 payments per day.

However, Ali wrote in his order that the court intends to avoid “dictating operational decisions” and will not prevent the executive branch from reviewing or terminating individual contracts. He wrote that the court “is mindful of limitations on its own authority” and will not grant any requests from NGOs that “would unnecessarily entangle the court in supervision of discrete or ongoing executive decisions.”

“The court must be careful that any relief it grants does not itself intrude on the prerogative of [the executive] branch,” Ali ruled.

Although Ali granted the executive branch discretion on how foreign aid money appropriated by Congress will be spent, the order put significant restrictions on Trump’s plan to completely end spending on 83% of programs run by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Courts have the authority to resolve “disputes between Congress and the president over foreign policy power,” the order states, and adds the Constitution “explicitly vests in Congress the power to spend” and the administration has not cited “any precedent or history allowing the president to dictate whether to spend foreign aid for the statutory purposes here.” 

“The executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place,” Ali wrote.

“The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the president’s own — and it is Congress’s own,” he added.

For this reason, Ali found that Trump likely exceeded his executive authority in violation of the separation of powers because “the appropriations laws reflect an exercise of Congress’s own, core constitutional power to determine whether and how much money is spent.”

The order states that the administration must stop “unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds.” It adds that the administration must spend the foreign aid money in a way consistent with the rules set by Congress. 

Apart from the broad mandate that the administration must act according to Congress’s intent, the order does not provide any specific mandates on what entities should receive the funds, where the money should go, or when the government must spend it.

Catholic NGOs that had contracts terminated or suspended might not receive any more foreign aid funds from the United States during Trump’s term unless the president changes course and revives the old contracts or decides to enter into new partnerships with those organizations.

Both sides have the opportunity to appeal the court order.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/262701/federal-judge-orders-trump-administration-to-pay-foreign-aid-contracts-for-finished-work