Status report filed in USAID contractors case: "The parties jointly report that they were unable to come to an agreement with regard to a schedule for Defendants to come into compliance with the Court’s temporary restraining order."
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Plaintiffs ask judge to require payment of the money owed (estimated at $2 billion) by 6pm on March 10.
Government says it has processed some payments with more being processed right now (worth about $200 million) and more to come, and says plaintiffs' deadline is "not feasible."
As someone with knowledge here, the gov is being literally truthful here. They can’t hit that deadline. Remember, they slashed the agency staff by 90%! Making payments isn’t like pressing the send button. 1/4
There’s a whole chain of people who review and approve things to make sure it is a valid payment. They fired 90% of them. The admin fired everyone and is now saying “oh our hands are tied, we can’t do all that work .” 2/4
It’s either going to take a lot more time, or the judge is going to have to order USAID to bring people back to work on this. I hope it is the latter, but I doubt it. Probably some kind of monitoring where the admin shows what it has done every day to prove it is trying. 4/4
So they'll say it's not feasible, appeal the decision back to the Supreme Court, who will sit on it for a week, say they have to pay it but now that the deadline is passed they'll need the district judge to give a new deadline, which they'll say isn't feasible, repeat until the death of the sun
This part by the govt highlights the extent of their non-compliance. There was nothing unique to the Feb 25 order that wasn't already required by the Feb 13 TRO. We're already 24 days since the TRO, and they're admiting that they still haven't started the process and would need 30-45 days from now.
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Government says it has processed some payments with more being processed right now (worth about $200 million) and more to come, and says plaintiffs' deadline is "not feasible."