Judge gives 5 days to Trump admin to start lifting USAID funding freeze

Washington: A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to temporarily lift a funding freeze that has shut down US humanitarian aid and development work around the world, and he has set a five-day deadline for the administration to prove it’s complying.

The judge’s ruling late Thursday cited the financial devastation that the near-overnight cutoff of payments has caused suppliers and nonprofits that carry out much of US aid overseas.

The ruling was the first to challenge the Republican administration’s funding freeze. It comes amid a growing number of lawsuits by government employees’ groups, aid groups and government suppliers asking courts to roll back the administration’s fast-paced dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, and US foreign assistance overall.

Administration officials “have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended” contracts with thousands of nonprofit groups, businesses and others, “was a rational precursor to reviewing programmes,” Judge Amir H Ali said. Contractors, farmers and suppliers in the US and around the world say the Trump administration’s funding freeze has stiffed them on hundreds of millions of dollars in pay for work done.