On Feb. 13, a U.S. federal court issued a temporary restraining order requiring the Trump administration to lift its blanket freeze on foreign assistance funding for existing projects. Last night, it extended that order and stressed that the administration needed to get the money flowing again, which it has largely refused to do.
The administration had claimed it could terminate nearly all USAID contracts and grants because the judge’s original order stated that normal contract clauses can still be enforced. But in the most recent hearing, Judge Amir Ali pushed back on that assertion.
“The Court was not inviting Defendants to continue the suspension while they reviewed contracts and legal authorities to come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension,” he stated.
But the judge didn’t find the government in contempt, which was what the plaintiffs in the case — including for-profit contractors and NGOs — had been seeking.
Instead, Ali extended the temporary restraining order until midnight on March 10, 2025. Though his earlier reversal hasn’t yet resulted in the thaw of Trump’s funding freeze, this latest order is clear: The administration cannot “simply replace their earlier implementations with ‘other directives’” to suspend, pause, or terminate obligated funds.
Read: Court extends order lifting Trump administration's foreign aid freeze