A U.S. federal appeals court cleared the way Wednesday for the Trump administration’s dismantling of foreign aid, scrapping an earlier order that had forced the State Department to pay out billions of dollars in frozen foreign aid previously approved by Congress.
The 2-1 decision came after months of back-and-forth in Washington, D.C., with a group of nonprofits suing the Trump administration on Feb. 11. The next day, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s biggest contractors followed suit, with DAI, Chemonics, and others filing a case of their own.
The organizations all argued that the government’s foreign aid freeze — which in late January brought international assistance to a halt — was unconstitutional and had resulted in “unlawful actions that are harming and will harm countless individuals and entities.”