Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that 83% of US international aid programs were “canceled” hours before a federal district judge ruled that the administration’s actions were an overreach of the Executive branch’s power. At risk are thousands of lifesaving humanitarian programs.

In a refugee camp in Bangladesh, 500,000 Rohynga children depend on food treatment aid for their survival. One-year-old Mariam recovered from severe malnutrition after treatment in a UNICEF camp, but now her mother fears the clinic would shutter. 

“If you stop providing us with this therapeutic food, my child could die,” she told UNICEF.  

Thousands of US Agency for International Development (USAID) contracts have been terminated, after Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled that the six-week review of the aid agency is “officially” complete. The remaining programs overseen by the six-decade-old USAID will now be part of the State Department, Rubio said.

Late Monday, a federal district judge said that the Trump administration’s halt of foreign assistance overstepped the Executive branch’s authority. The judge ordered the administration to pay USAID partners for work already completed before 13 February, but stopped short of restoring the more than 10,000 contracts the administration has canceled.

Separation of powers

The judge ruled that the administration could not withhold the billions of dollars Congress had already approved for foreign aid, saying the president does not have “unbounded power” in foreign affairs. 

“The Executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place,” Washington DC district’s Judge Amir Ali said.

Ali ruled in his preliminary injunction late Monday that Trump could not ignore the $60 billion Congress already allocated for foreign assistance to USAID. Congress alone has the power to allocate funding under the US Constitution. 

“The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the President’s own — and it is Congress’s own,” said Ali. In response to a suit filed by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), the Journalism Development Network, and the Global Health Council, Ali ordered the administration to pay aid groups the money owed for work completed up to 13 February, at a pace of at least 300 back payments a day. 

But he declined to restore contracts the administration canceled, saying it was up to the Trump administration to decide which organizations could win contracts. 

Ali’s ruling came after the Supreme Court cleared the way for a lower court to rule on the aid freeze.

Trump ‘is not king’

“Today’s decision affirms a basic principle of our Constitution: the president is not a king,” said Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel representing the two organizations filing suit, in a statement.

“But we are painfully aware that, without unwinding the mass termination of foreign assistance awards, winning on the constitutional issues does not avert the humanitarian disaster caused by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign assistance. And it does not undo the damage that the freeze has already inflicted on millions of vulnerable people across the world. Deaths will continue to mount.

“While the courts have an important role to play in standing up for the rule of law, Americans need more than just the courts. We need Congress, which has always supported foreign aid on a bipartisan basis, to assert itself.”

Whether Congress will act is yet to be seen, especially as the deadline to fund the federal government  looms. The House passed a procedural measure for its funding bill Tuesday along party lines, which critics say is a “blank check” for the Trump administration’s agenda.  

Republican members of congress have voiced support for a narrower definition of US’s involvement in foreign development programs, and support Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts to cut back the federal government. 

Earlier in February, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing titled “the USAID Betrayal,” where chair Brian Mast (R-FL) argued that USAID programs “hurt America’s standing around the globe, and I think the fact is clear that America would have been better off if your money had been simply thrown into a fireplace.”

‘Reform’ completed 

After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.

The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.

In…

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 10, 2025

Rubio’s declaration that thousands of aid contracts were “officially” canceled came after the Trump administration’s six-week battle to gut USAID, calling the move an “overdue and historic reform.” His post was one of the few public comments on the swift dismantling of US policy of soft power and aid in developing countries.

“The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States,” said Rubio on X.

He said the remaining 1,000 contracts would be administered directly by the State Department. 

The Trump administration has made misleading claims that millions of taxpayer dollars were being used for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Funding for many of these activities came through the State Department not USAID, at the request of embassies, according to independent fact checkers.

“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics,” Trump said last month. “And we’re going to get them out.” But the dismantling of USAID has meant a freeze on malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis aid, which combined protect millions of people in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia from the leading infectious diseases. 

“Under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ENDS NOW,” the White House said in a February statement.

Humanitarian groups offer dire warnings 

Mariam and her mother are among thousands of Rohingya refugees at risk of malnutrition in the Cox’s Bazar camp, said Rana Flowers, UNICEF representative in Bangladesh.

“Children in the world’s largest refugee camp are experiencing the worst levels of malnutrition since the massive displacement that occurred in 2017,” she said at a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

Other UN organizations echoed her warning that cuts to humanitarian aid would result in further devastation.

The UN Commmision on Human Rights (UNCHR) has already shut down a US-funded program that worked with torture victims and families of disappeared persons. The US represented more than 40% of UNHCR’s budget in Colombia, meaning the agency’s work of “resolving” and “pre-empting” crises is threatened, said Ravina Shamdasani, UNCHR Chief Spokesperson at the Geneva press conference.

The agency received USAID suspension letters for all projects in Equatorial Guinea, Iraq and Ukraine, as well as Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia and Peru.

‘No replacement’ for USAID

Although the US granted a waiver for UNICEF’s work to prevent malnutrition in refugee camps, there is no guarantee that the agency will be able to continue using the therapeutic food to treat and cure sick children with acute malnutrition.

Flowers noted that the agency needs both the waiver and actual funding to continue the work. Funding for malnutrition treatments runs out in June. Unless additional funding is secured, only half of refugee Rohingya children will have access to treatment this year, Flowers warned. 

Without access to treatment, up to 7,000 children are at risk of severe malnutrition. UNICEF expects an increase in morbidity and mortality in these camps. 

“There’s no replacement for the valuable partnership with the United States,” said Flowers.

“Until now, this community has survived thanks to the solidarity of the international humanitarian community,” she said. “But today, an aid funding crisis risks becoming a child survival crisis.” 

Additional reporting by Elaine Fletcher.

Image Credits: USAID Press Office, USAID, UNICEF/Njiokiktjien.