Donald Trump waves as he departs a campaign event at Central Wisconsin Airport, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Mosinee, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash).
A group of international aid organizations are asking a federal appeals court to deny the Trump administration’s request to stop a lower court’s order to release hundreds of millions of dollars in approved funding by Wednesday midnight. They argue that the appeal is just a delay tactic.
The plaintiffs argue that after ignoring the district court’s order for 12 days, the administration is now trying to avoid complying by appealing prematurely. They urge the court to reject this tactic and dismiss the appeal.
The legal proceedings in this high-profile case have been moving quickly. It all started with an emergency hearing before U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali on Tuesday morning after the plaintiffs showed evidence that the administration had not followed the temporary restraining order to halt the freezing of funds.
During those proceedings, Ali lambasted the government’s attorney for saying he was “not in a position to answer” whether any of the funds covered by the court’s order had been unfrozen
A frustrated Ali concluded the hearing with a series of onerous directions to enforce compliance with the temporary restraining order, instructing the administration to unfreeze funds for contract payments on work completed before Feb. 13, 2025, by 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday.
The administration immediately filed a petition with the Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington seeking a short-term administrative stay on Ali’s order as well as a stay pending appeal. The administration asserted that it would be impossible for the government to abide by the directive within the allotted time frame, claiming that it could not pay out “nearly $2 billion in taxpayer dollars within 36 hours” unless it were to disregard its own payment-integrity systems.
Wednesday morning’s emergency motion from the government further asserted that even if the appeals court declines to halt Ali’s order, government leaders had already determined that the ordered payments “cannot be accomplished in the time allotted by the district court.”
Plaintiffs responded Wednesday afternoon, arguing that Ali’s temporary restraining order is generally not appealable and that the government’s funding freeze was unlawfully arbitrary and capricious.
According to the plaintiff’s filing, the defendants “have abjectly defied the court’s temporary restraining order” and have taken “no action whatsoever” to comply with the court’s order to “restore the status quo as it existed before Defendants’ blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated funds.” It was only after Ali imposed a specific deadline on the release of funds that the Trump administration claimed for the first time that compliance with the court’s order was not possible, the plaintiffs said.
“For twelve days, Defendants have stonewalled and abjectly defied the district court’s unambiguous temporary restraining order,” plaintiffs wrote. “Now that the court has ordered compliance by a date certain, Defendants for the first time on appeal assert that compliance will not be possible for weeks to come. That assertion — which Defendants had every opportunity to make before the district court, but did not — simply beggars belief. This is not a question of payment volume or velocity. Defendants have disbursed essentially no funds since the district court ordered them to lift the unlawful funding freeze.”
The plaintiffs further contend that any alleged “impediments” to dispersing the funds are entirely “of the government’s own making” as they’ve employed a “ready, fire, aim” tactic to dismantle foreign-assistance programs that’s left nothing but chaos in its wake.
“At bottom, the government is not above the law, and the Court should not countenance the utter disregard of an Article III court’s orders,” plaintiffs argued. “The appeal should be dismissed and motion to stay denied.”
Also on Wednesday afternoon, Ali rejected the government’s request that his order be stayed pending the appeal, noting the government took 12 days before notifying the court it was “not possible” to comply with the order “apparently without taking any meaningful steps to unfreeze the funds.”
