Trump Overstepped His Constitutional Authority In Freezing Congress' Funding For Usaid, Judge Says

President Donald Trump overstepped his constitutional authority in freezing almost all spending on U.S. humanitarian and development work abroad, a federal judge ruled, saying the administration could no longer simply sit on the tens of billions of dollars that Congress has appropriated for foreign aid.

But Judge Amir H. Ali stopped short of ordering Trump officials to use the money to revive the thousands of contracts they have abruptly terminated for U.S. aid and development work around the world.

Ali's ruling Monday evening came hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the administration had finished what has been a six-week purge of programs of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development , cutting 83 of them. Rubio said he would move the remaining aid programs under the State Department.

Rubio made his announcement in a post on X, in one of his few public comments on what has been a historic shift away from U.S. foreign aid and development, executed by Trump political appointees at the State Department and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency teams.

Rubio in the post thanked DOGE and "our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform" in foreign aid.