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Executive Order: Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Donald Trump, 2025)

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Executive Order: Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid is an executive order that President Donald Trump (R) issued on January 20, 2025, during his second term in office.[1] This was one of 26 executive orders Trump issued on his first day in office.

D.C. Circuit Judge Amir Ali issued an order on February 13, 2025, temporarily pausing part of this executive order. Ali said the government could not suspend foreign aid funding that existed before January 20, 2025. The federal government filed a request on February 26, 2025, with the United States Supreme Court to overturn Ali's order. In a 5-4 opinion, the court denied the government's request and told Ali to "clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance" with the February 26 order.[2] The federal government subsequently provided a schedule outlining the timeline for when it would fulfill funding that existed before January 20, 2025.[3]

Executive orders are directives the president writes to officials within the executive branch requiring them to take or stop some action related to policy or management. They are numbered, published in the Federal Register, cite the authority by which the president is making the order, and the Office of Management and Budget issues budgetary impact analyses for each order.[4][5] Click here to read more about executive orders issued during Trump's second term.

Text of the order

The section below displays the text of the order. Click here to view the order as published on the White House website.

“

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.

Sec. 3. (a) 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy. All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.

(b) Reviews of United States foreign assistance programs. Reviews of each foreign assistance program shall be ordered by the responsible department and agency heads under guidelines provided by the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Director of OMB.

(c) Determinations. The responsible department and agency heads, in consultation with the Director of OMB, will make determinations within 90 days of this order on whether to continue, modify, or cease each foreign assistance program based upon the review recommendations, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State.

(d) Resumption of paused development assistance funding. New obligations and disbursements of foreign development assistance funds may resume for a program prior to the end of the 90-day period if a review is conducted, and the Secretary of State or his designee, in consultation with the Director of OMB, decide to continue the program in the same or modified form. Additionally, any other new foreign assistance programs and obligations must be approved by the Secretary of State or his designee, in consultation with the Director of OMB.

(e) Waiver. The Secretary of State may waive the pause in Section 3(a) for specific programs.

Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. [6]

”

AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. Department of State: Timeline, links, and resources

President Donald Trump (R) issued Executive Order 14169: Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid on January 20, 2025. The order sought to implement a 90-day pause on foreign aid, pending a review of programs receiving funds. The section below provides a timeline of events related to AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. Department of State, a noteworthy lawsuit challenging Trump's order and alleging that it violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. The trial case number in this lawsuit was 1:25-cv-00400 and the appeal case number is 25-5098. A timeline of major events is listed chronologically below, along with relevant documents and links to helpful resources.

  • September 8, 2025

    The federal government filed an emergency appeal of Ali's September 3 order with the Supreme Court.

  • September 3, 2025

    Ali issued a new preliminary injunction, ordering the federal government to pay out foreign aid funding in categories relevant to the plaintiff organizations. Read the order below, or on CourtListener.

  • August 13, 2025

    The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling on the federal government's appeal of Ali's order. The court vacated Ali's March 10 order. Read the opinion below, or on CourtListener.

  • July 21, 2025

    Ali issued an order granting in part and denying in part a plaintiff motion to enforce the March 10 order.[9] Read the order below, or on CourtListener.

  • May 13, 2025

    Ali vacated his April 11 stay, re-establishing the March 10 preliminary injunction.[8] Read the order below, or on CourtListener.

  • April 11, 2025

    Ali issued an order pausing part of his March 10 preliminary injunction. Ali wrote, "Pending this Court's ruling on Defendants' motion for an indicative ruling, the preliminary injunction's requirement that 'the Restrained Defendants shall not withhold payments or letter of credit drawdowns for work completed prior to February 13, 2025,' as to 'any grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts for foreign assistance' is stayed except as it relates to Plaintiffs in No. 25-cv-00400 and No. 25-cv-00402."[7]

  • April 2, 2025

    The federal government filed a notice of appeal of Ali's March 10 order to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Click here to view the docket for the appeal, AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. DOS (25-5098).

View all

Executive orders in the second term of the Trump administration

September 2025

August 2025


July 2025

June 2025

May 2025

April 2025

March 2025

February 2025

January 2025


Historical context

See also: Donald Trump's executive orders and actions, 2025

Overview, 1789-2025

The following chart shows the number of executive orders and average executive orders per year issued by each president of the United States from 1789 to 2025.

Average number of executive orders issued each year by president, 1921-2025

The following chart visualizes the average number of executive orders issued each year between 1921 and 2025, as noted in the table in the section above. The number of executive orders issued declined during this time period with Presidents Barack Obama (D) and George W. Bush issuing the fewest on average at 35 and 36 each year, respectively.

Executive orders issued over time, 2001-2025

The chart below displays the number of executive orders issued over time by Biden, Trump, Obama, and Bush.


See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ White House, "Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid," January 20, 2025
  2. ↑ SCOTUSBlog, "Supreme Court denies Trump request to block $2 billion foreign-aid payment," March 5, 2025
  3. ↑ CourtListener, "AIDS VACCINE ADVOCACY COALITION v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE (1:25-cv-00400)," accessed March 11, 2025
  4. ↑ Cooper, Phillip. (2014). By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. (pgs. 21-22)
  5. ↑ USA Today, "Presidential memoranda vs. executive orders. What's the difference?" January 24, 2017
  6. ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
  7. ↑ CourtListener, "AIDS VACCINE ADVOCACY COALITION v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE," accessed April 15, 2025
  8. ↑ CourtListener, "Order on Motion to Stay — Document #91," accessed May 20, 2025
  9. ↑ CourtListener, "Order on Motion to Enforce AND Set/Reset Deadlines — Document #118," accessed July 22, 2025
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