(NewsNation) — Funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development has been temporarily unfrozen by a federal judge three weeks after the Trump administration effectively shut down development work worldwide.
In addition, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cannot enforce the stop-work orders that he, along with the Trump administration and Elon Musk, sent out.
This comes as a handful of Republican legislators from big agricultural states introduced legislation this week to find a way to work around the drastic cuts that President Donald Trump is trying to make to USAID.
The aid agency spends about $2 billion purchasing food from American farmers for their humanitarian food aid programs, like Food for Peace. That business could be in jeopardy if USAID is gutted or folded.
In his decision, Judge Amir Ali noted that the Trump administration’s suspension of foreign aid was to provide an opportunity to review programs for efficiency and consistency with priorities but that “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.”
Though the funding freeze on contracts that existed before Trump’s executive order of Jan. 20, 2025, is now temporarily lifted, the ramifications of the three-week-long freeze are acute. As NewsNation has reported, American jobs and businesses, along with national security, are at risk.
As an example, Ali pointed out that one plaintiff representing small businesses noted they had “to furlough ‘most U.S. national staff in home offices and on contracts and terminate foreign national staff or risk keeping them and being uncertain of payments under stop work orders.’”
Despite the judge’s decision, it is unclear when the payments can resume, even for programs that had been provided a waiver to continue during the freeze. Ali wrote that the plaintiff “attests that even in the event of a waiver, no funds could be disbursed because federal government payout portals are no longer functioning.”
NewsNation has reached out to the State Department for a response to the judge’s decision and to find out if the payout portal is now working.
This ruling comes after another federal judge Thursday extended the block on the Trump administration’s action that put over 2,000 USAID employees on leave. However, according to a report from the Office of Inspector General for USAID, the damage has already been done. Over $489 million dollars worth of food is at risk of spoiling because there’s not enough staff to distribute the products, including wheat, sorghum, rice and vegetable oil.
The Trump administration claims that USAID is wasteful and that is part of the reason they want to gut the agency. However, the Inspector General’s report also said that the lack of staff is hindering the agency’s “ability to receive and respond to allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, or diversion of humanitarian aid,” the very things the Trump administration said it is hoping to do, too.
The inspector general who issued the report was fired after it was made public.
The bill, introduced by House Agriculture Committee Charman G.T. Thompson along with Representatives Tracey Mann, Rick Crawford, Dan Newhouse and David Rouzer and Senators Jerry Moran and John Hoeven, aims to move the Food for Peace program from USAID to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Moving the program from USAID to the USDA would likely help preserve the income that farmers get from the government for this program while also finding another way to support Trump’s desire to curtail the influence of USAID.
Newhouse told NewsNation, “There’s a huge amount of agricultural products that are utilized in that program. It’s important to continue… it’s good for hungry people around the world and good for the American agricultural industry.”
Washington state, where Newhouse is from, produces a lot of wheat and fruits. Kansas, home to Moran and Mann, is a big producer of wheat and sorghum.
However, Dina Esposito, former head of the Office of Food for Peace from 2010-2017, argues the move could actually lead to more waste.
Under Trump’s first administration, the Office of Food for Peace was merged into the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance so food and nonfood relief could be coordinated together in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Esposito said the purpose was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of disaster response. Food, water, shelter and medicines need to be coordinated together.
Esposito explained that while the United States Department of Agriculture may have a mandate to buy food, it’s USAID that has the global footprint and has spent decades refining the model to be on the ground to deliver an integrated response to a disaster.
So if there’s a disaster and USDA and USAID, or its successor, are charged with distributing food aid and nonfood aid separately, the U.S. government will be paying two overheads and often double paying the same partners who are on the ground to get the aid to the people who need it most.
Of the changes that Trump made in his first term, Esposito said, “It was a meaningful reform to the overall humanitarian response system. We should not reverse it.”
