Chief Justice Allows U.S. to Continue Freeze on Foreign Aid Payments
Trump Administration
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Supreme Court Bails Trump Out on Foreign Aid Cuts Because of Course
Chief Justice John Roberts stepped in at the last minute to save Donald Trump from being forced to unfreeze $2 billion in foreign aid payments that he paused upon entering office.
Roberts issued an administrative stay on the order after lawyers for the president rushed to the Supreme Court Wednesday, desperate to subvert the decision from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali. Ali had ordered Tuesday that money for lifesaving humanitarian assistance should continue to flow to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development while he considered the legality of Trump’s funding freeze.
When Trump failed to respond, Ali imposed a deadline for Trump to pay up, which would have been at 11:59 pm Wednesday. The Trump administration claimed it would take “multiple weeks” to satisfy the judge’s request.
The newest order from Roberts supplies the highest court in the land with more time to review the arguments in the case, and aid organizations challenging Trump’s disastrous freeze have until Friday to file their responses. It’s likely that the order will stay in effect into next week.
Trump’s efforts to gut USAID have threatened the delivery of therapeutic food assistance to nearly 400,000 severely malnourished children abroad.
Roberts’s order is the first time the Supreme Court has responded to Trump’s flurry of legislative activity and the torrent of legal challenges it has produced. There is currently another pending Trump-related case in the Supreme Court, concerning his ousting of leadership at the Office of Special Counsel.
Earlier this year, Roberts found himself behind the steering wheel of the most conservative court in a century for the decision in Trump’s presidential immunity case. The Supreme Court’s ruling in that case single-handedly opened the door for Trump’s return to the White House and cemented this court’s conservative lean for decades to come.
In his year-end report, Roberts echoed Trump, warning that criticism of the court constituted “illegitimate activity” that undermines independent judges—meanwhile making way for Trump and Elon Musk to challenge and in some cases openly defy the rulings of federal courts.
The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a judge’s order that requires Donald Trump’s administration to unfreeze roughly $2 billion in foreign aid payments..
On Wednesday night, a brief order from Chief Justice John Roberts said the lower court’s order will remain on hold until the justices consider the case.
Trump had called on the high court to intervene hours before a midnight deadline to pay up.
One day earlier, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ordered the administration to reinstate funding for U.S. Agency for International Development contracts, arguing that Trump officials failed to comply with an earlier order to fulfill contracts while Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency-led attempt to dissolve the entire aid agency sparks global chaos.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden-appointed District Judge Amir Ali reprimanded government lawyers who could not appear to answer whether the administration ever paid foreign assistance contractors and nonprofit organizations for work that had already been performed.
“We’re now 12 days in [after the order], and you can’t answer to me whether any funds you acknowledge are covered by the court’s order are unfrozen?” said “You can’t give me any facts about funds being unfrozen under the [temporary restraining order]?”
Department of Justice lawyer Indraneel Sur told Ali he was “not in a position to answer.”
Ali gave the government until midnight Wednesday to make those payments. The administration was also ordered to provide the court with any notices or guidance that officials sent out about complying with the previous court order to unfreeze that aid.
But in court filings on Wednesday, government lawyers said payments had not restarted. Instead, “nearly 5,800 USAID awards were terminated, and more than 500 USAID awards were retained,” lawyers with the Department of Justice wrote.
Attorneys for aid groups suing the administration have said that their clients are facing a crisis, from forced layoffs to legal and physical threats for failing to be able to pay vendors and creditors in some of the countries in which they operated.
Earlier this month, a separate court ruling paved the way for Trump to begin firing thousands of workers at the global aid agency, which supports dozens of life-saving missions in more than 100 countries. Musk has pledged to put the agency through a “wood chipper” and smeared USAID as a “criminal organization” that should “die.”
The Supreme Court request could mark the first test at the nation’s high court as Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service face a barrage of lawsuits questioning the constitutionality of the unelected billionaire’s role in the executive branch, and whether the administration has authority to unilaterally blow up federal agencies and funding appropriated by Congress.
“What the government cannot do is pay arbitrarily determined demands on an arbitrary timeline of the district court’s choosing or according to extra-contractual rules that the court has devised,” the administration told the Supreme Court.
Trump is separately asking the Supreme Court to let him fire a government watchdog. Hampton Dellinger, the top official at the independent U.S. agency that protects government whistleblowers and enforces ethics rules, sued the administration earlier this month after he received an email from the president simply stating that his role is “terminated, effective immediately.”
Justices did not immediately reach a decision in that case, but the president is once again asking the court to intervene. “In short, a fired Special Counsel is wielding executive power,” acting solicitor general Sarah Harris wrote to the court on Wednesday.
