US District Judge Carl Nichols ordered the extension after a nearly three-hour hearing on Thursday, much of it focused on how employees were affected by abrupt orders by the Trump administration and Mr Musk, who leads Mr Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, to put thousands of USAID workers on leave and freeze foreign aid funding.
Earlier on Thursday, a judge in a separate case over the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID and US aid programmes abroad said that his order halting the Trump administration’s plans to pull all but a fraction of USAID staffers off the job worldwide will stay in place for at least another week.
The ruling is the second to deliver a major setback for the Trump administration in what has been its dismantling of the six-decade-old US Agency for International Development (USAID), which Mr Trump and key ally Elon Musk have accused of being out of line with Mr Trump’s agenda.
The ruling also bars secretary of state Marco Rubio and other Trump officials from enforcing stop-work orders that the Trump administration and Mr Musk have sent to the companies and organisations carrying out foreign aid orders.
The funding order applies to contracts that were in place before Mr Trump issued his January 20 executive order declaring a freeze on foreign assistance, calling much of US aid out of line with his agenda.
