We have this week’s latest developments in the bruising struggle between the Trump administration’s desire to overhaul U.S. foreign assistance and the aid community’s desire to keep it intact. Let’s dive in.
Courts weigh in
Let’s begin with the latest judicial rulings that are pouring warm water on U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze.
Late on Thursday night — and our newsroom just loves how late these orders come in — a federal judge ruled that the administration must restore funding that had been halted after Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a stop-work order for existing programs on Jan. 24.
It’s a significant victory for the hundreds of private contractors and NGOs facing financial ruin after they had to abruptly stop their work, resulting in mass layoffs and millions around the world impacted by the sudden loss of U.S. assistance for everything from medicine to food.
“Defendants have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs,” Judge Amir Ali wrote.
The order, however, is not a cure-all for the U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department implementers, who are the plaintiffs in the case, my colleague Adva Saldinger writes. The ruling does not apply to the pause on all new foreign aid spending, nor does it limit the president’s ability to conduct a 90-day review of foreign aid programs. It also does not address what will happen with the more than 800 contracts that have been terminated in recent days.
The government has until Feb. 18 to show it’s complying with the order.
Read: Judge orders Trump administration to unfreeze existing aid programs
Leave it alone, for now: Meanwhile, USAID’s embattled workforce is also getting a brief reprieve. In a separate case brought by two unions, the judge extended a temporary restraining order blocking the administration from putting thousands of USAID direct hires on administrative leave until Feb. 21.
The order also applies to employees stationed abroad who were told they needed to return within 30 days, though those employees can now choose to return if they decide to.
The judge also questioned Eric Hamilton, the lawyer representing the government, when he claimed the administration had to put thousands of USAID employees on leave during the 90-day review because there had been problems with insubordination, questionable contracts, and practices.
“Surely not 4,000 people,” the judge replied.
Read: Judge extends reprieve for USAID employees in union lawsuit
A certain Musk in the courtroom: A group of current and former USAID employees and contractors have filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that he runs.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on Thursday, alleges that Musk and DOGE’s actions at USAID and across the federal government are illegal, unconstitutional, and financially and emotionally harmful.
On Friday, however, a judge ordered that the complaint be stricken because it didn’t follow court rules of being less than 40 pages in length. The plaintiffs can refile and amend the complaint, the judge said, so stay tuned for more on this latest legal gambit.
Meanwhile, Musk took to his social media platform X to target America’s judicial system, ominously tweeting: “If ANY judge ANYWHERE can stop EVERY Presidential action EVERYWHERE, we do NOT live in a democracy.”
Courting controversy: Musk’s tweet raises a disturbing question: Will Trump bother to follow the judicial rulings?
That question worries the implementers who fought — and won — to have their funding restored, my colleague Sara Jerving writes. After all, the administration promised to issue waivers to exempt programs such as emergency food aid from the freeze, but even when those waivers were granted, the payment system was down, making the waivers a moot point. Opaque guidance has also led to widespread confusion about what is and isn’t allowed to restart.
Because of the “chaos” the stop-work order caused, rebuilding trust, mechanisms, and programs is going to be “extremely challenging,” Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, tells Sara.
Meanwhile, the burning question is whether the Trump administration will accept the judge’s ruling or “defy and push all the way up to the Supreme Court,” she says.
Read: ‘Immediate relief’ for USAID programs not expected despite court order
+ Join us on Tuesday, Feb. 18, for a Devex Pro flash briefing with legal expert Robert Nichols. He’ll break down the latest legal filings, what they mean, and what happens next — critical next steps that could shape the future of USAID. Save your spot now.
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What’s up with those waivers anyway?
The pause on new foreign aid spending and stop-work order on existing programs dropped on Jan. 24. Since then, organizations have been furiously applying for waivers. But has the administration just now formally started the process of reviewing them — even though hundreds of awards have already been terminated?
According to several sources who attended a State Department “listening session” on Thursday, led by Peter Marocco, director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, the agency has now begun its official 90-day review of USAID’s programs.
“Foreign aid has failed,” Marocco told attendees, blaming it on the fact that the president and the American people weren’t convinced of its merits, my colleague Elissa Miolene reports. After the group recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the State Department team said they wanted to bridge the gap for “moms in Bible study, McDonald’s workers, and grad students in the Bronx,” according to several sources’ notes of the session.
On Thursday, the State Department team said they were in the “information-gathering stage” of the review process. The scope extends beyond USAID, with the team planning to assess any agency that provides or spends taxpayer funds overseas — from the Millennium Challenge Corporation to the U.S. Postal Service.
By the end of next week, they plan to create metrics to assess foreign aid programs, which implementing partners will have 30 days to respond to. Marocco’s team will assess programs in March, and by April 19 — the last day of the foreign aid freeze — the formal review will be complete.
Read: US foreign aid review officially begins — after many awards cut
The dismantling continues: Hundreds of USAID awards terminated
+ Stay tuned on Monday, Feb. 17 for an in-depth report by Elissa and Adva on the “lifesaving” waivers that have yet to materialize.
Have Mercy
One thing that hasn’t taken a break during this maelstrom: the unrelenting barrage of furloughs and layoffs among organizations reliant on USAID funding.
Among the most recent casualties: Mercy Corps, which confirmed to my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz that it is making “workforce reductions” in the coming days. The NGO — which gets 26% of its funding from USAID — hasn’t shared details on how deep the cuts will be or which projects will take the hit.
It’s not alone though. The Danish Refugee Council said it planned to cut around 2,000 jobs — about a quarter of its workforce — after losing $70 million in U.S. government funding. Norwegian People’s Aid said it would lay off more than half of its workforce. The Norwegian Refugee Council said it would be laying off people as well, but didn’t specify how many, and Catholic Relief Services is anticipating workforce reductions of up to 50%. Democracy International, which supports fair elections, has also furloughed nearly all of its staff due to unpaid USAID funds.
Likewise, the Boston-based global health nonprofit JSI has laid off half of its staff, encompassing about 1,100 staffers across the U.S. and abroad.
Scoop: Mercy Corps joins several other NGOs hit with layoffs
Read: Global health org JSI laid off half of staff due to US aid freeze
Continental losses: Meanwhile, thousands of health workers in Africa — around 54,000 in Kenya alone — have also lost their jobs due to the aid freeze.
“I was the one who was paying the school fees for my little kids, my children. The family was looking up to me. With that shock — now there’s no job at all,” says H, who requested to go by his first initial out of concern for his privacy.
"The announcement of President Trump on the withdrawal of aid, particularly through USAID on health, is a national crisis that must be addressed quickly," Kilonzo Jr., who is the governor of Kenya’s Makueni County, warns.
But how the crisis can be addressed is unclear, my colleague Ayenat Mersie writes.
“It will require magic” for the Kenyan government to find the funds to fill the gap, says Abidan Mwachi of the Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists Union. “There is a bit of hope, but it’s like clutching onto eyelashes.”
Read: Thousands of African health workers lose jobs due to US aid funding freeze
Congressional combat
The title of the U.S. congressional hearing on Thursday wasn’t exactly subtle: “USAID’s betrayal.”
Republican Rep. Brian Mast, the House Foreign Affairs Committee chair, wasn’t exactly a master of subtlety either.
He declared: “We are here today, very simply, because many of the people, many of the programs at USAID have literally betrayed America. The programs that USAID and the State Department have spent money on are indefensible. They hurt America’s standing around the globe and I think the fact is clear that America would have been better off if their money had been simply thrown into a fireplace.”
Perhaps that’s next to the woodchipper Elon Musk wants to feed the agency to.
Democrats, however, viewed it as a betrayal of a different kind, Adva writes.
“Betrayal is an accurate description of what Musk, Trump, and silent Republicans are doing to the American people by unilaterally dismantling our entire foreign aid apparatus,” said Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat from California. “You have endangered every American that relies on that system to keep them safe from global crises and relies on it to feed their own families.”
She also threw in a jab at a new State Department contract with Tesla to provide armored trucks — “I guess people need Cybertrucks more than they need malaria pills.”
Read: Rifts on USAID, foreign assistance, laid bare at congressional hearing
+ Listen: For the latest episode of our podcast series, my colleagues Rumbi Chakamba, Colum Lynch, and I discuss the legal battles surrounding USAID's closure.
Munich musings
Another member of Congress made his feelings known — from Germany. Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, told Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar at the Munich Security Conference that despite a federal judge's order blocking the Trump administration's foreign assistance freeze, the attempted dismantling of USAID could signal the beginning of a broader campaign to reshape federal agencies.
"If this plan succeeds for them, this will be the playbook by which they go after the Consumer Protection Bureau, FEMA, the Department of Education, and other things," Kim warned.
The senator is also dubious about the administration’s 90-day “review” of foreign assistance.
“They are trying to make the argument that this is a review that they're pausing to assess, but they're not,” Kim said, pointing to plans to reduce USAID staffing to about 600 people and place the agency under State Department control — moves he argued require congressional approval.
“The USAID employees that I talked to, they are traumatized,” said Kim, who previously served as a USAID civil servant himself under both Republican and Democratic presidents. “I find that to be so obscene that a leader in our American government is trying to traumatize patriots that are working to serve our nation.”
Another member of Congress, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, defended that 90-day review, regardless of who is doing it.
“On USAID, Secretary Rubio has made it very clear we're not getting rid of USAID, and there are programs that are indeed vital for our national security, our national interests,” Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, said in Munich. “They're going line by line — of course, they should be going line by line, whether it's Elon Musk doing it in this very public manner or whether it's some staffers at the White House who would be doing it anyway.”
Read: Senator warns legal victory may not stop USAID restructuring plans
ICYMI: Ghana on US aid cuts — ‘as bridges are burning, new bridges are formed’
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
