Judge Orders Trump Admin to Comply With Previous Order Restoring USAID Funds

On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to comply with a temporary restraining order (TRO) he issued earlier this month that required the White House to make payments to organizations that were meant to receive federal contracts before the administration imposed an illegal freeze on them.

If President Donald Trump decides not to comply with the order by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, it could spark a constitutional crisis.

Ali’s order came after a contentious two-hour hearing between recipients of some federal contracts and Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ), which failed to explain why payments had not been made. At times, Ali expressed frustration with arguments by the DOJ lawyers, as they tried to re-argue a matter that had already been resolved.

“The purpose of this hearing is to understand and to hear arguments on the motion to enforce TRO. It is not an opportunity to re-litigate the TRO,” Ali said at one point.

The judge also questioned why the DOJ lawyers couldn’t provide an answer regarding why the payments hadn’t been made.

“Twelve days into the TRO, you can’t give me any facts about funds being unfrozen under the TRO?” Ali said.

Ali also stated that:

Defendants have not lifted the suspension or freeze of funds as the [temporary restraining order] required. Defendants have not rebutted that evidence, and when asked today, defendants were not able to provide any specific examples of unfreezing funds pursuant to the Court’s TRO.

After the hearing, Ali ordered the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to make the payments owed to organizations before the February 13 TRO he had issued, setting a deadline for Wednesday at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. He also required any internal documents from the State Department and USAID instructing employees to disobey his previous order to be turned over to the court.

Now comes the moment many legal experts have been anticipating: whether the Trump administration will comply with the order or not.

The administration, of course, has the ability to appeal Ali’s order to a higher court. But many people in Trump’s orbit have suggested that court orders he disagrees with should simply be ignored, an action that would defy hundreds of years of precedent relating to checks and balances on the executive branch of government.

Vice President J.D. Vance, for example, recently made the false claim that it is “illegal” for federal judges to exercise those checks on the president. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance said on social media.

Billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s head of the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), has also offered his take on the matter, calling for the removal of judges who disagree with Trump’s actions or executive orders.

In a recent op-ed for Truthout, Marjorie Cohn, professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, warned that if Trump refuses to abide by court orders, it would constitute an unprecedented crisis in U.S. democracy, noting that Trump himself has also suggested that, “No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision.”

“The Constitution says that the president has a duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,'” Cohn wrote, quoting the U.S. Constitution. “But Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and chief architect of Project 2025, said in 2022 that we are living in a ‘post-Constitutional time.'”

Trump opting to directly disobey a court order, without using the appeals process, would have alarming consequences, Cohn added.

“If a party disobeys a court order, the judge can hold them in contempt, impose fines and even imprison them. The marshals would be charged with enforcing a custodial order. But the Marshal Service is part of Trump’s Department of Justice,” Cohn pointed out, “and he would likely order them not to comply.”