A judge ordered the Trump administration multiple times to unfreeze foreign aid. Instead, the administration terminated nearly 10,000 awards and went to the Supreme Court at the eleventh hour to avoid paying up.
Also in today’s edition: How to think about the job search in this moment of crisis, and separating fact from fiction in Trump’s claims about wasteful aid.
Highest authority
With just hours to go before a midnight judicial deadline to restore $2 billion in frozen foreign aid, the Trump administration made it clear it’s in no rush to pay its bills. It went to the U.S. Supreme Court and won a temporary reprieve after Chief Justice John Roberts paused an earlier directive issued by a U.S. District Court to release the funds.
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“The district court’s underlying orders are erroneous,” wrote the Trump administration in an emergency motion to the Supreme Court last night after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied its appeal. “The government is doing what it reasonably can to comply in good faith.”
The plaintiffs in the case — including NGOs and for-profit contractors — would beg to differ that it’s been a “good-faith” effort. Earlier in the day, instead of abiding by the judge’s order to disperse the funds, the administration terminated nearly 10,000 awards, claiming to have reached a “substantial completion” of the review process.
The cuts include 5,800 USAID awards and 4,100 U.S. State Department grants, many of which had already been given waivers for lifesaving humanitarian aid. Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally signed off on the terminations, insisting they serve the national interest. In doing so, he eliminated 90% of USAID’s contracts and grants, decimating what was once the world’s largest bilateral donor.
Where does that leave organizations that have lost tens of millions of dollars? Scrambling. The plaintiffs suing the Trump administration now have until noon tomorrow to respond to the court filings.
Read: Supreme Court pauses order to release billions of dollars in foreign aid
See also: Nearly 10,000 awards cut from USAID, State Department
Plus: What do we know about USAID’s 90-day review?
+ Happening today at 3 p.m. ET (9 p.m. CET): In response to yesterday’s sweeping decision to terminate USAID projects, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with federal contracts expert Robert Nichols for an analysis of what this means for development organizations. The session will cover immediate legal implications, contract considerations, program wind-down processes, and ripple effects across the development sector. This time-sensitive briefing is available to Devex Pro members. Register for the event now.
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Nobody’s home, leave a message
Many of these directives come late at night, or even on a Sunday. One recent email announcing that thousands of USAID staff would be placed on administrative leave or terminated bore a line at the bottom of the notice telling employees they could contact a command center 24 hours a day for assistance.
But a source tells us that a message from the command center said: “For anyone asking the command center to give them their status. We don’t have it. I don’t even have my status and they listed my team as one of the POCs.”
Children at risk
Navyn Salem, CEO of Edesia, was in Sierra Leone last month when she got the devastating news — Trump’s 90-day freeze on U.S. foreign aid. The Rhode Island-based nonprofit, which produces high-nutrient food for malnourished children, was ordered to halt operations.
“We sat there speechless,” she says. “It was the only supply of lifesaving food for these children.”
Thanks to urgent advocacy, USAID lifted Edesia’s stop-work order within a week — but many aid programs remained frozen, leaving food shipments stranded and staff layoffs mounting, writes Devex Senior Editor Tania Karas. Now, Tania tells me, Edesia is one of the many organizations that received contract termination notices yesterday. While we’ll be closely watching the legal back-and-forth, it’s deeply uncertain how (or even if) lifesaving services will be available to these children.
“The system is breaking,” says a humanitarian aid official. “Supplies are not getting to people. We’ve got staff being fired across the board … And you can’t run programs without staff.”
Read: ‘The system is breaking’ — US aid freeze threatens child malnutrition care
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Mythbusters, Devex edition
Trump and his team have been busy justifying the foreign aid freeze and USAID shake-up with some tales about how taxpayer money is spent. Trump claims USAID has been throwing “massive sums” into “ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects.” The reality? USAID makes up less than 1% of total U.S. spending and is the largest provider of global aid. So what’s really going on? My colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz separates fact from fiction. Here’s a taster of the nuances that she found:
Claim: USAID funded a “transgender opera” in Colombia and a transgender comic book in Peru.
Reality: These were State Department projects, not USAID. The opera got $25,000 from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, and the comic book was part of a U.S. education initiative in Peru.
Claim: The Trump administration blocked $45 million for “diversity scholarships in Burma.”
Reality: Yep. USAID was funding scholarships for marginalized students in Myanmar to study abroad, boosting democracy and countering China’s influence. The program is now dead, leaving hundreds stranded.
What’s the bottom line? Aid advocates say the freeze is crippling key programs, shrinking U.S. influence, and hurting the world’s most vulnerable.
Read: How accurate are Donald Trump’s claims about wasteful aid? (Pro)
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Breathe and reboot
There’s no sugarcoating it: The aid sector is being dismantled in real time. USAID has been gutted, tens of thousands are out of work, and millions are losing access to lifesaving programs. “This is disruption at a scale that’s unprecedented for most of us in our working careers,” said Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of the New Economists Foundation.
If your job has been swept up in the chaos, it’s time to take stock. “Focus on the things that you can control,” said Louise James of Accenture Development Partnerships at a recent Devex career event on what to do if you’ve lost your NGO job. “Step back and think about your purpose.”
That may mean pivoting to a new sector. “What skills do you have that you can reframe … outside of our development jargon?” asked Alix Peterson of Duke University. James agreed:
The skills are absolutely transferable, he said, but the language matters. Don’t talk about capacity building — that doesn’t translate. Call it training, leadership development.
For Mia Perdomo, CEO of Aequales, it’s about shifting mindsets. “It’s an entirely different language. It’s an entirely different world,” she said, noting that even high-demand skills like data analysis must be framed in terms of KPIs and profitability.
▶️Watch: In this time of career tumult, focus on what you can control (Career)
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Bee aggressive
On the second day of the United Nations resumed sessions on biodiversity, COP16 President Susana Muhamed began the plenary session with a warning: “We will be like bees running around you to refine L.34,” she said, referring to the document on resource mobilization, the most contentious issue on the table in the three-day negotiations.
“We will have to be effective this morning. Remember that the time here is defined by the translators. We cannot have 10,000 plenaries. We just have time for two plenaries today,” she said, according to Jesse, who is on the ground in Rome.
The morning included procedural discussions, extended conversations about footnotes, and Muhamed begging delegations not to relitigate “clean text,” which refers to previously finalized decisions. Prior to entering the evening plenary yesterday, and prior to seeing the new text, a delegate who requested anonymity told Devex that there was “strong willingness in the room to agree to something.” But the day ended without consensus.
As a result, delegates are tasked with finalizing pretty much everything they set out to finalize before 11 p.m. today, as the meeting rules stipulate that discussions cannot extend beyond 13 hours unless the presidency asks for an extension and parties approve it. Keep an eye out for Jesse’s full write-up in a special newsletter tomorrow.
Background: At COP16 take two, delegates aim to finalize funding for biodiversity (Pro)
In other news
The Nicaraguan government is “systematically executing a strategy to cement total control … through severe human rights violations,” U.N. experts warned. [AP]
European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen said that the bloc’s new energy plan will save €130 billion ($136 billion) annually by 2030. [DW]
A senior U.N. aid official has demanded the Security Council ensure civilian protection and unhindered humanitarian access in Sudan, where 12 million have been displaced during the nearly two-year-long conflict. [UN News]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
