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.

A federal judge said the Trump administration failed to comply with his order to resume federal payments to foreign assistance programs administered by the US Agency for International Development, but he declined to hold the government in contempt as requested by groups that sued.