'Brazen defiance': Judge urged to hold Marco Rubio in contempt of court

A federal judge is being asked by contractors and aid recipients to hold Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development in civil contempt of court over their "brazen defiance" of an order to keep the agency functioning.

According to Politico's Kyle Cheney, the motion for contempt was filed by the plaintiffs this afternoon in AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. Department of State.

USAID is an independent agency but takes some directives from the State Department. The Trump administration has sought to subsume the agency under State altogether.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered the administration to allow USAID funding to resume after the Trump administration put a blanket freeze on almost all foreign aid, resulting in federal aid workers, including those abroad, being unexpectedly suspended from duties and food aid piling up unused at U.S. ports.

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“At least to date, Defendants have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs,” Ali wrote at the time.

While it is appropriate to audit and review where foreign aid is going, he continued, “there has been no explanation offered … as to why reviewing programs — many longstanding and taking place pursuant to contractual terms — required an immediate and wholesale suspension of appropriated foreign aid.”

However, on Wednesday morning, USAID Director Peter Marocco's legal team responded by asserting that the State Department had already conducted its review and deemed the aid suspension appropriate, therefore the funds would remain frozen despite the court order.

The plaintiffs are now demanding, in addition to the funds being released, that Marocco and Rubio should be held in civil contempt. "This court should not brook such brazen defiance of the express terms of the order," said the filing.

All of this comes as U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, has also criticized how the administration is managing USAID in a parallel case, calling the current situation "a mess" for foreign aid workers who don't know what they should be doing.