USAID implementing partners told government must pay up

Some organizations that implement programs for the U.S. Agency for International Development received memos this week saying the government must pay them. According to the memo, obtained by Devex, USAID told its partners that the government must “not withhold payments or letter of credit drawdowns” — a method of advancing payments to federal award recipients — for work completed prior to Feb. 13. It’s unclear how many organizations received this memo. This comes in the wake of U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order on Monday that the Trump administration must pay USAID partners for billions of dollars in international aid work, warning the president doesn’t have “unbounded power.” The order came as a result of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration by plaintiffs including the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, Chemonics, DAI, and others, that challenged the blanket termination and suspension of foreign assistance projects globally, arguing it was an abuse of power of the government’s executive branch to block funds appropriated for this purpose by the U.S. Congress. The “decision affirms a basic principle of our Constitution: the president is not a king,” Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group, said in response to the judge’s order. However, Ali’s order fell short of reinstating foreign assistance grants that were terminated en masse in order to “avert the humanitarian disaster caused by the Trump Administration’s freeze on foreign assistance,” according to the Public Citizen Litigation Group. The memo to the agency’s implementing partners about receiving payment for their work before Feb. 13 said the Trump administration is prohibited from “unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds and shall make available for obligation the full amount of funds that Congress appropriated for foreign assistance programs,” citing the Further Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2024. It noted that the court ordered the Trump administration to “take all steps necessary” to carry this out, which includes providing written notice of the order to all recipients of contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements that were in existence since the foreign aid pause went into effect on Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, and Feb. 13, which is when Ali first ordered the Trump administration to reverse its foreign aid funding freeze on existing programs. The Trump administration did not comply with this initial order last month. “We will provide further guidance on this preliminary injunction as soon as we are able to do so. Award-specific direction will be communicated through cognizant contracting and agreement officers as appropriate,” the memo told implementing partners.