Photo: Alamy
The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in its effort to halt billions of dollars in foreign aid payments, escalating a legal battle over the president’s authority to withhold congressionally approved funding.
In an emergency filing Tuesday, the Justice Department urged the high court’s conservative majority to lift an injunction that has forced the administration to continue disbursing aid despite a 90-day freeze ordered by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office in January.
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled earlier this month that the injunction should not stand, but the full appeals court declined to suspend it last week. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali again rejected the administration’s request to block the order.
The filing comes as the State Department faces a Sept. 30 deadline to spend roughly $12 billion of the affected funds or risk losing them. The administration said the injunction undermines Trump’s “foreign-policy judgments regarding whether to pursue rescissions and thwarts interbranch dialog.”
Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, previously ordered the government to pay nearly $2 billion in outstanding aid to humanitarian partners abroad. The Supreme Court narrowly declined to intervene in March, leaving the administration obligated to release those funds.
Two nonprofits, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Journalism Development Network, sued the administration, arguing the aid freeze was unlawful. They said Trump’s order has imperiled programs serving vulnerable populations and supporting free press initiatives worldwide.
The administration countered that only the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog agency, has the authority to challenge the president’s rescission efforts. In a 2-1 ruling earlier this month, Judge Karen Henderson of the D.C. Circuit agreed with that position, writing that the nonprofit groups had not met the legal standard required to obtain an injunction.
Trump’s order has already led to sweeping changes within the U.S. Agency for International Development, including placing large portions of its staff on leave and weighing the possibility of merging the agency with the State Department.
The Supreme Court could decide within days whether to lift the injunction, a ruling that may determine the future of billions in U.S. foreign aid.