A federal judge has set a new deadline of Monday for the Trump administration to pay a large batch of backlogged invoices for foreign aid programs, but he sharply scaled back the amount of money that will need to be sent out by then.
Deadline Extension and Payment Adjustments
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued the new directive Thursday, just a day after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s emergency appeal of an earlier order that Ali issued in a pair of lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s broad freeze on foreign aid. The judge’s earlier order had imposed a deadline of Feb. 26 for the State Department to send out an estimated $2 billion the government owes to contractors and grant recipients who run aid programs abroad.
But the Feb. 26 deadline passed while the administration’s appeal was pending, and the high court on Wednesday sent the case back to Ali with instructions to “clarify” the government’s obligations now.
New Payment Deadline
Ali’s new order gives the Trump administration until 6 p.m. Monday to pay the plaintiffs in the lawsuits all the money they are entitled to on invoices and similar requests to draw down grant funds initiated prior to Feb. 13. Contractors and grantees who are not parties to the litigation are not subject to the new Monday deadline, so the money they are owed will likely remain frozen for now.
It’s not entirely clear how much money the administration will be required to disburse by Monday, but people involved in the litigation said it appears to be at least several hundred million dollars.
Judge’s Emphasis on Compliance Timelines
During a hearing Thursday afternoon that stretched to more than four hours, Ali repeatedly emphasized that he was seeking to follow the Supreme Court’s admonition that he show “due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
“I intend to take that instruction very seriously,” the judge said.
State Department officials worked overnight Wednesday to approve about $70 million in payments to the plaintiffs in the suits, Justice Department attorneys said in a court filing Thursday.
Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, said that volume of approvals gave him confidence that the State Department could get the remainder of the accumulated bills out to the plaintiffs by working at a similar pace over the next four days.
Legal Arguments and Future Proceedings
Most of Thursday’s hearing was devoted to the issue of whether Ali should issue a preliminary injunction extending a temporary restraining order he issued last month against the foreign-aid freeze Trump initiated shortly after he took office. That order is set to expire on Monday.
The Justice Department contends that the freeze has been lifted and officials have conducted a case-by-case review of each contract and grant, terminating many of them for specific reasons.
“The pause is essentially finished,” Sur said, arguing that there is no need for the court to continue to block a blanket policy that is no longer in effect.
But an attorney for some of the aid contractors, Stephen Wirth, said the review was a sham to allow the pause to continue despite Ali’s order to halt it.
“Defendants never lifted the pause on foreign assistance. … Instead they doubled down,” Wirth said, as he asked the judge to reverse the contract terminations. “I don’t think here that the government has changed course.”
Ali didn’t immediately rule on the aid groups’ request for an injunction that would prolong the restraining order, but he said he was considering “benchmarks” to get the full backlog of past-due payments processed.
