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A federal judge said Thursday that the Trump administration has kept withholding foreign aid despite a court order and must at least temporarily restore the funding to programs worldwide.
Judge Amir H. Ali declined a request by nonprofit groups doing business with the U.S. Agency for International Development to find Trump administration officials in contempt of his order, however.
The Washington, D.C., district court judge said administration officials had used his Feb. 13 order to temporarily lift the freeze on foreign aid to instead “come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension” of funding.
Despite the judge’s order to the contrary, USAID Deputy Secretary Pete Marocco, a Trump appointee, and other top officials had “continued their blanket suspension of funds,” Ali said.
The ruling comes in a lawsuit by the nonprofit groups challenging the Trump administration’s month-old cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department, which shut down $60 billion in annual aid and development programs overseas almost overnight.
Even after Ali’s order, USAID staffers and contractors say the State Department and USAID still have not restored payments even on hundreds of millions of dollars already owed by the government.
Marocco and other administration officials defended the nonpayment in written arguments to the judge this week. They contended that they could lawfully stop or terminate payments under thousands of contracts without violating the judge’s order.
The Trump administration says it is now doing a program-by-program review of all State Department and USAID foreign assistance programs to see which ones meet the Trump administration’s agenda.
Aid organizations, and current and former USAID staffers in interviews and court affidavits, say the funding freeze and deep Trump administration purges of USAID staffers have brought U.S. foreign assistance globally to a halt, forced thousands of layoffs, and are driving government partners to financial collapse.
Billionaire Elon Musk appeared at a conservative gathering outside Washington on Thursday waving a chainsaw in the air, showing openness to auditing the Federal Reserve and accusing Democrats of “treason.”
Musk, the Tesla CEO who has become perhaps President Donald Trump’s most influential adviser, spoke about his crusade to cut government spending and downsize the federal workforce with the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The entrepreneur was first announced earlier that day as a speaker, drawing huge cheers from activists gathered at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Before his appearance, he met with Argentine President Javier Milei, who has been frequently praised by Musk and popularized the power tool while campaigning in 2023 and proposing slashing public spending.
After Musk appeared onstage, wearing shades and his trademark black “Make America Great Again” hat, he said Milei had a gift for him. The Argentine leader then walked onstage with the red chainsaw and passed it to Musk. The chainsaw was engraved with Milei’s slogan, “Viva la libertad, carajo,” which is Spanish for “Long live liberty, damn it.”
“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,” he said.
Musk slammed the previous Biden administration for its immigration policies, specifically naming an app that was used by nearly 1 million people to be allowed into the U.S. on two-year permits with eligibility to work. He accused Biden and Democrats of doing that as an “investment” to get more support in swing states.
“A lot of people don’t quite appreciate that this was an actual real scam at scale to tilt the scales of democracy in America,” Musk said before Newsmax host Rob Schmitt asked him, “Treason?”
Musk responded, “Treason.”
When Schmitt asked him if he would consider auditing the Federal Reserve, Musk responded, “Yeah, sure, while we’re at it.”
“Waste is pretty much everywhere,” Musk said.
The billionaire joked that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has told him he is worried about his security and said he was open to ideas on how to improve his safety measures.
“President Bukele from El Salvador, who managed to put in prison like a hundred thousand murderous thugs, and he called me. ‘I am worried about your security,’” he said the Central American leader told him. “I’m like, ‘Dude, you are worried about my security?’”
When asked to describe what is like inside his mind, Musk replied: “My mind is a storm. It’s a storm.”
Steve Bannon, a popular Trump ally who once served as his chief strategist, followed Musk’s appearance and acknowledged he was not the evening’s top attraction as he took the stage to a far less enthusiastic reception.
“How did I draw the card to follow Elon Musk?” Bannon asked about a man he has frequently criticized as insufficiently loyal to Trump. “C’mon man! You bring out the world’s wealthiest guy, Superman. I’m supposed to follow it? I’m just a crazy Irishman!”
The moment that local officials in Washington have been dreading for months is finally here. President Donald Trump, one month into his second term, has publicly returned to one of his longtime talking points: a federal takeover of the District of Columbia.
It would take some doing, though — including, literally, an act of Congress. But the issue bubbled up again this week, the latest in the blizzard of initiatives that have surfaced since Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Whether it was just a reminder that the president possesses the power to set off alarms with an off-the-cuff remark or by directing his administration to take concrete steps to make it happen remains to be seen. As with efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico, make Canada the 51st state, or make Greenland a U.S. territory, a lot depends on what happens next.
Here’s a look at some of the questions surrounding the issue:
Could this really happen?
Yes, but Trump can’t do it alone. Congress, with both houses controlled by Republicans, could absolutely vote to repeal the 1973 Home Rule Act. That would be a deeply controversial vote that would likely test the strength of the three-seat GOP majority in the House of Representatives.
Why now?
That’s a bit of a mystery. Mayor Muriel Bowser has set a conciliatory tone ever since Trump was elected again. She traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and said she looked forward to working with the new administration and emphasized the common-ground issues — such as their mutual desire to get federal workers back to their offices.
Trump, in his brief comments on Air Force One, said he and Bowser “get along great.”
Bowser responded with a posting on X, declaring D.C. “a world-class city” and listing the District’s virtues.
Trump was also responding to a specific question from a reporter, so it’s possible this was an off-the-cuff comment and not indicative of an immediate priority issue for him.
What can Trump do unilaterally?
Local government officials have been quietly predicting some sort of executive order imposing stiffer criminal penalties or a crackdown on homeless encampments, but a full “ takeover” would still require an act of Congress.
He could theoretically take over the Metropolitan Police Department — something that was considered during the 2020 mass protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Justin Hansford, a professor at D.C.'s Howard University School of Law, said such a step would need some sort of “justifying emergency.” Trump’s perspective on what constitutes such an emergency, Hansford said, “would absolutely be challenged in court.”
How bad are the problems he mentioned?
Violent crime rates, particularly homicide and carjacking, legitimately spiked in 2023, leaving officials publicly scrambling for answers. Those numbers came down significantly in 2024, in the face of a new public safety bill and a concerted MPD crackdown. They’re up a bit so far in 2025 but still down from their recent peak but also well below the late 1990s when D.C. regularly led the nation in per-capita homicides.
Graffiti in D.C. is common but not exactly a civic crisis. The city has worked to both cleanup graffiti hotspots and transform young taggers into publicly sponsored muralists.
Multiple homeless encampments are a fact of life in Washington, but the District government is partially handcuffed by the fact that large swaths of the public greenspace, including many parks and traffic circles, are under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. The last few years have settled into a cyclical dynamic, with homeless encampments slowly growing into mini tent cities on NPS land, followed by a mass clearing with bulldozers once or twice a year.
What’s the history between Trump and DC?
It’s not positive.
During Trump’s turbulent first term, he and the local government publicly sparred multiple times — in tones ranging from playful to deeply personal. When Trump floated the idea of a massive July 4 military parade complete with tanks rolling through the streets, the D.C. Council publicly mocked him.
Trump accused Bowser of losing control of her city during protests over the murder of George Floyd. He backed down from a threat to take over the MPD, and eventually declared his own multi-agency lockdown that included low-flying helicopters buzzing protesters. Bowser responded by having “Black Lives Matter” painted on the street in giant yellow letters one block from the White House.
Trump’s feelings remained intense during the four years after leaving office. He repeatedly promised a federal takeover while on the campaign trail as part of an effort to stoke fears about violence in U.S. cities generally. In August 2023, when he briefly came to town to plead not guilty on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 electoral loss to former President Joe Biden, Trump blasted the capital city on social media, calling it a “filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation.”
What about Congress?
Activist Republicans in Congress have long used the House Oversight Committee as a forum to employ their power over the local government. During the crime spike in 2023, Bowser and members of the D.C. Council were regularly summoned for inquiries before the committee. That year, Congress also, for the first time in decades, fully overturned a D.C. law when it repealed a rewrite of the D.C. criminal code. But that required Congressional Democrats to join in, and then-President Biden to sign off on it.
Members of Congress have also repeatedly used budget riders to alter D.C. laws in minor ways, targeting everything from marijuana legalization to the city’s use of traffic cameras.
As an indication of just how personal and petty this dynamic has become, the bill previously introduced in Congress proposing to repeal D.C. home rule was titled to produce an antagonistic acronym. It’s called the Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident Act or the BOWSER Act.
Is there any silver lining for D.C.?
Perhaps the most optimistic interpretation among D.C. officials is a quiet belief that Trump and Congress have no actual interest in the hassle of managing a city of 700,000 residents — more populous than two U.S. states.
They expect a wave of budget riders from GOP members of Congress emboldened by Trump’s statements. However, some observers believe Congress will stop short of assuming the responsibility and liability that would come with a full federal takeover.
“As a lawyer, I’m thinking about who I would sue if there’s a police brutality case,” said Hansford, the Howard law professor. “I don’t think Congress wants to deal with all that.”