‘Immediate relief’ for USAID programs not expected despite court order

A U.S. federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to reverse its foreign aid funding freeze on the U.S. Agency for International Development’s global programming. But given the chaos that has defined the global halt to programming — accompanied by a trickle of opaque guidance from the administration — there are expectations that restarting programming could be far from straightforward. Under the U.S. State Department’s stop-work order, there have been some waivers for lifesaving activities — such as HIV treatment services under the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. But the power of this court order is that it supersedes these “failed” and “disturbingly restrictive” waivers, and speaks directly to implementers to tell them they can restart work, said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP. But because of the “chaos” the stop-work order caused, rebuilding trust, mechanisms and programs is going to be “extremely challenging,” Russell said. Additionally, a leading 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 said. Based on the court order, “contracting officers and agreement officers would go back into overdrive to reissue contracts that had been canceled,” a USAID employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Devex. “But we have not received clear direction from Washington.” In recent weeks, a major problem has been that USAID payment systems have been frozen. This means partner organizations can’t get money even if their work is covered under a waiver, and USAID staff are also owed reimbursements. One of USAID’s implementing partners in Kenya, the Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies, hadn’t received payment advances from USAID and therefore has “no funds to operate” even though its HIV work is covered by a waiver. According to the USAID employee, up until Thursday, there were two employees from billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and one USAID employee allowed to certify payments for the entire agency — causing a massive backlog in approvals. This employee said that their teams were informed over Thursday night that the people certifying payment have been increased to 50 people globally. “It's going from three individuals — including two that have no experience in our systems whatsoever — to 50,” this person said. “We’re hoping that this is going to unlock a lot of the payment issues, both on the partner side and even on our own internal processes.” But this employee added that there have been some indications that they will still need to get certain certifications of payment from agency headquarters in Washington, D.C. And there’s a backlog of payments that need to be processed. “It's just going to take a long time to clear those out of the pipeline before we can even start thinking about getting payments out,” the employee said. “I don’t see immediate relief unless something dramatically changes.” The Trump administration had also begun to formally cancel hundreds of USAID contracts and grants, and USAID and partner organization staff had been let go. One chief executive officer at an implementing organization in Uganda said their organization will need to call staff back and reorganize things — after having to write hundreds of suspension letters to staff in recent weeks. This person said it is causing a lot of confusion and administrative burdens. “Now you have to go back to the drawing board of where you stopped, and how you start,” the CEO said.