Supreme Court rules Trump administration must unfreeze foreign aid payments
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(WASHINGTON) — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration must comply with a district court order and pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance funds to nonprofit aid groups for work already completed on the government’s behalf.
The court ruled 5-4 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with the liberal justices.
The court did not elaborate on the decision but said the district court judge should “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
A lower court judge is currently weighing whether or not to impose a longer-term preliminary injunction against the foreign aid freeze.
Justice Samuel Alito said in his dissent that he was “stunned” by the majority’s decision.
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) $2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise,” he wrote.
The Trump administration did not immediately comment on the ruling.
The court’s majority did not specify a deadline by which the administration needed to comply.
The administration initially tried to freeze the payments via an executive order before U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali ordered the payments to resume in a temporary restraining order issued three weeks ago.
Last week, Ali, a Biden appointee, ruled the administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order and ordered the Trump administration to dole out delayed payments by 11:59 p.m. Feb. 26.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice acknowledged that the Trump administration ignored the temporary restraining order, which prohibited them from freezing foreign aid funds since the order was issued. Instead, they argued that they should not be required to pay back the money because of “sovereign immunity.”
During an extended exchange with Ali, a DOJ lawyer struggled to answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s compliance with the temporary restraining order.
Chief Justice Roberts ordered a stay before the deadline as the court heard the case.
Foreign aid groups have been teetering on bankruptcy following Trump’s decision to end aid and have been searching for answers.
During a Feb. 13 meeting with representatives from those organizations, Pete Marocco, the Trump administration official tasked with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defended what he called a “total zero-based review,” and arguing that some areas of foreign aid required “radical change,” according to audio from that meeting that was obtained by ABC News.
“As far as payment, one of the reasons that there have been problems with some of the payments is because, despite the president’s executive order, despite the secretary’s guidance, we still had nefarious actors in the agencies that were trying to push out hundreds of illegal payments,” Marocco said. “And so we were able to seize control of that, stop them, take control of some of those people, and make sure that that money was not getting out the door.”
Marocco suggested that payments for organizations with existing contracts would resume the following week, but they remained frozen.
ABC News’ Will Steakin, Lucien Bruggeman and Shannon K. Kingston contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers from both political parties invoked China as a potential winner in international development as the U.S. reviews its foreign assistance programs and non-governmental organizations funded largely by American grants await answers on the fate of funds critical to their missions abroad.
An official for the demining authority in Cambodia on Thursday said he received a notification to “demobilize staff members and operational teams under the support of the U.S.” starting on March 1, calling the loss of the partnership a “critical situation.”
Grantees in Cambodia were ordered to stop work via an email on Jan. 26 from the State Department office which has since 1993 dispersed grants globally to remove landmines and unexploded ordnance.
A State Department spokesperson told ABC News that “each program is undergoing a review with the goal of restructuring assistance to serve U.S. interests,” including the demining grants from the Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement.
In its 2024 annual report, the office said the U.S. was the world’s “top supporter” of weapons destruction projects, including landmine clearance.
‘Clearing unexploded ordnance here for 100 years’
U.S. grants fund 30% of demining work in Cambodia, a vital nationwide effort in the southeast Asian country to remove landmines from its brutal civil war and unexploded bombs dropped by the U.S. in the Vietnam War, said Bill Morse, chairman of Cambodian Self-Help Demining.
“We’ll be clearing unexploded ordnance here for 100 years,” he said to ABC News via video call from Cambodia.
In a statement, Heng Ratana, the director of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC), which oversees demining operations in the country, pointed to other countries in Asia — such as China and Japan — and western nations like Germany and Canada who continue to fund the Cambodian authority on demining.
CMAC estimates the country is laden with as many as 4 to 6 million landmines and other unexploded ordnance. Nearly 20,000 people have been killed — and 10,000 more have had amputations because of their injuries — in explosions, according to HALO Trust, a leading NGO.
Non-governmental organizations that work in coordination with CMAC are looking for new funding sources amid uncertainty during the freeze, said Morse, whose NGO has received grants from the State Department since 2009.
“We’ll take money from anyone if they help us clear landmines. I’m not going to be picky about it,” Morse said.
Demining is viewed as a key link between the U.S. and Cambodia, a developing nation that has increasingly relied on China for infrastructure investments and is an ally of Beijing.
Flying the American flag in the field
Demining “is a highly visible demonstration of American support for a country,” Morse said. “We fly the American flag in the field. Our uniforms carry the American flag on it. The helmets that we wear have the American flag on it.”
“Most people in the country, in the countryside, what they know of the United States is what we’re doing in the field … They’ve never seen an ambassador in their life. I may be the only American they ever meet.”
China, which has been a partner on demining efforts in Cambodia, dispersed $4.4 million to the demining authority last week, CMAC announced.
Democrats and Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sparred over U.S. foreign assistance in a Thursday hearing focused on USAID programs, which Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., said are “indefensible” and “literally betray America.”
“Your money would’ve been better off if it had simply been thrown into a fireplace,” Mast said to open the hearing.
Yet members from both parties pointed to the rising influence of China, alarmed that China could open a spigot of cash for international aid in areas where U.S. programs cease. “It counters China,” former Republican Rep. Ted Yoho testified, describing development work. “If we’re not there, China will be there.”
Strategic competition with China
The top Republican and Democrat on the panel’s East Asia subcommittee framed the assistance issue in terms of strategic competition with China.
“I worry about what’s happening in the Pacific Islands … we’re ceding our influence there,” said Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif. “We’re already seeing China step in and take things over.”
Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., like Bera invoked demining work, citing “reports of CCP officials signaling their willingness to replace USAID in Nepal and demining activities in Cambodia.”
“Even critics of USAID acknowledge the critical soft power value of targeted and efficient programming,” she said.
A House Democratic staffer told ABC News that recipient countries, including allies, of U.S. assistance will be left with little choice but to turn to China.
The U.S. has engaged in Ghana “in part” to limit China’s gains, the staffer said, calling it “a really good U.S. partner” that now has a $156 million gap for which to compensate.
“They don’t want to work with China more. But when you have a country that has such a liquidity crisis — they have a new president, and now they have this huge funding gap — what do you expect them to do?” the staffer asked.
All three expert witnesses at Thursday’s committee hearing agreed that China represents a counterweight to the U.S. in international development.
“The U.S. has owned the space,” the Democratic staffer said, noting Russia’s recent work on mpox and ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, low-visibility assistance that could become more apparent if the U.S. pulls back permanently.
Yoho said good programs run by USAID and the State Department should be “back online as soon as possible” and “mission-driven” projects should be prioritized.
In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week, 17 former ambassadors to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos called for Rubio “to end the 90 day stop work order for U.S. foreign assistance programming that suspends U.S.-funded mine clearance programs” via “a waiver or quick and affirmative review.”
The diplomats said in their letter that U.S.-funded demining work advances national security by ensuring bad actors do not weaponize explosive materials and by fostering important connections in defense and economics.
“As former Ambassadors, we can attest that these programs helped us advance US interests by generating goodwill and providing access to senior government officials,” they wrote.
In its statement to ABC News, the State Department said it was standing up a coordination team to ensure the review of foreign assistance was “accountable” and “transparen[t].”
“Programs that serve our nation’s interests will continue,” the spokesperson said. “However, programs that aren’t aligned with our national interest will not.”
The stakes are life-and-death, Morse said.
“What’s going to happen is, [there’s a] very good chance people are going to die. Next month, they’re going to walk into an area that should have been cleared this month.”
“They’re going to step on a landmine, blow their leg off and bleed out,” he said.
About 81% of cleared land is used for farming, 15% for schools and hospitals and housing, and 4% for energy infrastructure, according to Morse, creating a key second-order effect of development.
“Clearing landmines doesn’t simply save lives,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — For the first time in U.S. history, military aircraft were used this past week to deport scores of undocumented migrants from the United States. Middle schools, Trump administration officials say, are now seen as places to target for immigration enforcement operations. And, according to President Trump’s “border czar,” every undocumented immigrant should worry they could be arrested at any time, even if they have no criminal record.
The “border czar,” Tom Homan, says it’s all part of the Trump administration’s effort to send a “clear” message: “There’s consequences [for] entering the country illegally,” he told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday.
“If we don’t show there’s consequences, you’re never going to fix the border problem,” he said.
More than 11 million undocumented immigrants are currently estimated to be living in the U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to take unprecedented action to remove as many of them as possible and stem the flow of more migrants coming to the southern border.
In his first several days in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the border, announced an end to the so-called practice of “catch and release” — when migrants claiming asylum are given court dates and then released pending those proceedings — and sought to overturn the long-held Constitutional right of birthright citizenship, a move that immediately faced legal challenges and was at least temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
As for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country, Homan said the administration will deport “as many as we can,” starting with threats to public safety threats and national security, Homan said.According to estimates released by House Republicans last year, based on government data, hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants in the country are convicted criminals or have charges pending against them. Government statistics indicate that in the past four years, hundreds of migrants were caught along the southern border with names matching known or suspected terrorists on a government watchlist. And Homan has said more than 2 million people were detected along the border but never captured, so authorities don’t know who they are or what threat some of them could pose.
According to statistics released by the Department of Homeland Security last year, a tiny fraction of those who reached U.S. borders in the prior three years had any kind of criminal record, and the vast majority of them involved nonviolent crimes, such as driving under the influence or previously entering the country illegally.
Homan told ABC News that the Trump administration is only “in the beginning stages” of carrying out its mass deportation plan, making public safety threats and national security threats a “priority,” but “as that aperture opens, there’ll be more arrests nationwide.”
And he warned that there will be “collateral arrests,” especially in the so-called “sanctuary cities” that he says are resistant to helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials locate and arrest undocumented immigrants already in local custody for other crimes.
“Sanctuary cities lock us out of the jails,” said Homan, who led ICE as acting director in Trump’s first administration.
According to Homan, that creates significant safety concerns: When an undocumented immigrant arrested for a serious crime is released by local authorities, instead of being deported, it “endangers the community.”
Nevertheless, Homan said that’s a time when ICE officers would likely make “collateral arrests.”
“When we find him, he’s going to be with others … [and] if they’re in the country illegally, they’re coming too,” he said.
He emphasized that anyone in the country unlawfully is “on the table.”
“It’s not OK to violate the laws of this country,” he said. “We have millions of people standing in line, taking the test, doing their background investigation, paying the fees that want to come in the right way.”
“So if you’re in the country illegally, you got a problem,” he said.
On Monday, during Trump’s first day in office, acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive telling immigration authorities they could conduct operations in so-called “sensitive” areas that he said were off-limits during the Biden administration.
“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” he said in a statement.
Others, however, said the administration was simply creating fear within the immigrant community, with the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration saying that “turning places of care, healing and solace into places of fear and uncertainty … will note make our communities safer.
He said that as they prioritize national security threats and public safety threats, ICE officers might have to even go into schools because “many” members of gangs tied to South and Central America, such as MS-13, are between 14 and 17 years old.
In his interview with ABC News, Homan said that no other law enforcement agency is restricted from entering certain locations to promote public safety in the same way ICE has been.
“Name another agency, another law enforcement agency, that has those type of requirements, that they can’t walk into a school or doctor’s office or a medical campus,” he said. “No other agency is held to those standards.”
“These are well-trained [ICE] officers with a lot of discretion, and when it comes to a sensitive location, there’s still going to be supervisory review,” he said. “But ICE officers should have discretion to decide if a national security threat or a public safety threat [is] in one of these facilities.”
Homan said anyone already in the country unlawfully “should leave,” and those looking to claim asylum should “do it the legal way.”
“Go to the embassy, go to the point of entry,” he said. “You shouldn’t come to this country and ask to get asylum and the first thing you do is break our laws by entering illegally.”
In the meantime, Homan said the Trump administration is using not just the military but the “whole” government, including the Justice Department, to support its mass deportation plan, which allows ICE officers to concentrate on conducting enforcement operations.
But Homan acknowledged that the federal government won’t be able to remove every undocumented immigrant in the U.S., and that his “success is going to be based on what Congress gives us.”
ICE doesn’t currently have enough funding from Congress to detain all of the undocumented immigrants that the Trump administration says it hopes to arrest.
“I’m being realistic,” he said. “We can do what we can with the money we have. We’re going to try to be efficient. But with more money we have, the more we can accomplish.”
“What price [do] you put on national security?” he added. “When you … don’t secure that border, that’s when national security threats enter the country. That’s when sex trafficking goes up. That’s when, you know, that’s when the fentanyl comes in.”
As for what success practically looks like at the end of the Trump administration, Homan said: “Our success every day is taking a public safety threat off the streets or getting a national security threat out of here.”
(WASHINGTON) — When billionaire Elon Musk posted on X last weekend that all federal employees would soon receive an email demanding details of their work from the past week, senior White House officials — who had not been fully briefed on the plan — were initially caught off guard, multiple sources told ABC News.
Musk’s email would then set off widespread confusion across the federal government. It created tension among members of Trump’s Cabinet, as multiple agency heads told their employees to hold off on replying until they themselves were briefed on the situation.
At one point shortly after the Saturday evening email, sources familiar with the discussions said senior White House staff debated issuing guidance to their own employees, informing them that they did not need to reply. Late Monday night, the Office of Personnel Management said that White House staff were exempt from the exercise, citing the Presidential Records Act.
The lack of communication between Musk and President Donald Trump’s top advisers in the White House, who are responsible for executing his second-term agenda, is the latest in a series of controversial moves by the world’s richest man since he arrived in Washington last month that have begun to divide some of those closest to the president.
Musk’s whirlwind approach — marked by rapid gutting of the federal workforce and dominating national headlines — has sparked a rift among some in the White House and Trump’s inner circle, sources told ABC News. Some close to the president have bristled at Musk’s frenetic pace and his apparent disregard for coordinating with senior officials around the president. Others, however, have expressed support for the tactics and embraced Musk’s fast-paced efforts so far, hailing them as a long-overdue shakeup of a stagnant system.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing Tuesday that “the President and Elon, and his entire Cabinet, are working as one unified team, and they are implementing these very common-sense solutions,” adding that more than 1 million federal workers had responded to Musk’s “What did you do last week?” email, including herself. Leavitt said that Musk would attend Trump’s first Cabinet meeting set for Wednesday.
But as Musk has ripped through the federal workforce at a breakneck pace reminiscent of his approach at his own companies, the White House has, at times, first learned of his actions through media reports or his own posts on X instead of through the usual chain of senior staff, sources said, which has ruffled feathers among some top officials who view the billionaire’s methods as increasingly out of control.
But while Musk has some detractors in Trump’s orbit, he has gained support from some of the most powerful voices around the president, including Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and U.S. Homeland Security adviser, and Katie Miller, a senior adviser to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency efforts who is married to Stephen Miller, sources said.
Still, even with some in the White House growing frustrated with aspects of Musk’s first few weeks in Washington, sources said there is hesitancy to intervene, given not only the billionaire’s immense wealth but, perhaps more importantly, his vast influence given his larger-than-ever profile and his ownership of X.
Some concerned with Musk have resigned themselves that the Tesla CEO is unlikely to be reined in anytime soon and are instead focused on managing the situation as best they can until his special government contract comes to an end later this year, though it is not immediately clear if Musk plans to leave Washington then, either.
“Some love it, some can’t wait for [Musk] to leave — bottom line is he’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” a source familiar told ABC News.
In response to this story, a senior White House official told ABC News, “Any insinuation that senior leadership in the Trump White House is not properly being advised on the actions of DOGE is completely false. As an SGE, Elon Musk works directly with the president of the United States and senior members of his team to coordinate the effective and efficient execution of the president’s agenda.”
“The American people widely support the mission of DOGE. Look no further than the Harris poll in which a vast majority of Americans support the mission of DOGE. Anyone who is seen as objecting to this mission in either party is objecting to long overdue change in Washington. If you’re not going to be a part of the solution, you are now a part of the problem,” the official added.
The South African-born businessman spent $270 million to help Trump get reelected. When Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, he empowered Musk to slash federal spending and make key decisions about the future of the U.S. as a lead adviser in the newly created DOGE.
ABC News previously reported that Musk initially wanted an office in the West Wing, but told people he thought what he was given was too small, multiple people familiar with his comments told ABC News, and has since taken up offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where he brought in sleep pods for his young staffers as they worked deep into the night.
Musk has been designated as a special government employee. His companies Tesla and SpaceX have been awarded $18 billion in federal contracts over the last decade. Some of this money has come from agencies the president asked Musk to review, but Musk dismissed the notion that there could be conflicts of interest.
“No, because you have to look at the individual contract and say, first of all, I’m not the one, you know, filing the contract — it’s people at SpaceX,” he told ABC News earlier this month.
