Supreme Court Lets Trump Keep Freeze on Expiring Foreign Aid (1)

The US Supreme Court will let the Trump administration withhold $4 billion in congressionally approved foreign assistance funding poised to expire at the end of the month.

Over dissents from the court’s three liberals, the court lifted a lower court order that would have required the administration to commit to spending the money.

The order on Friday bolsters President Donald Trump’s effort to claw back funds that Congress approved. The money is set to expire after the fiscal year ends Sept. 30 if the State Department and what’s left of the US Agency for International Development don’t commit to spending it, a process known as obligating.

Read More: Trump Asks Supreme Court to Keep Freeze on Expiring Foreign Aid

The court’s conservative majority explained in an unsigned order that the administration had shown “at this early stage” that it is likely to win the legal fight. The justices also said that the government’s arguments that being forced to spend the money now would hurt its ability to carry out “foreign affairs” outweighed the harms faced by the the groups that sued.

Even though the majority stressed that its order is preliminary, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissenting opinion that the outcome is that roughly $4 billion approved by Congress “will now never reach its intended recipients.” That result “conflicts with the separation of powers,” she added in an opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Kagan also said that the Trump administration had failed to meet the high bar for getting emergency relief from the court at this stage.

Russ Vought, the White House budget director, cheered the decision in a post on X. “Major victory,” he said.

The decision could deepen anger from Democrats already unhappy that Trump has slashed government spending across agencies, mostly without getting congressional approval. The Office of Management and Budget has also threatened a wave of mass firings during a government shutdown, which Democratic leaders have said would also be challenged in court.

Nick Sansone, a lawyer who represents some of the foreign-aid groups, blasted the court for letting the administration withhold money it was “required by law” to spend.

“This result further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order,” said Sansone, a lawyer with Public Citizen Litigation Group. “It will also have a grave humanitarian impact on vulnerable communities throughout the world.”

$30 Billion Fight

The Supreme Court’s latest action isn’t the final word in the funding fight, which broadly involves an estimated $30 billion that Congress approved for programs spanning several years. Two underlying lawsuits, brought by nonprofits and international aid businesses, will proceed over whether the executive branch can unilaterally refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.

In recent weeks, the parties have focused on more than $10 billion set to expire this month. The Justice Department said in its court filings that the administration will meet the deadline to obligate the $6.5 billion by the end of the month, but has argued that Trump should be free to pursue his policies to block the remaining amount.

Trump has formally asked Congress to pull back, or rescind, more than $4 billion in foreign aid, including much of the money at issue in the court fight. It’s widely seen as a test of a novel strategy to run out the clock on the fiscal year and cut the funds if lawmakers don’t act on his requests by the end of the month, a tactic known as a “pocket rescission.”

A law known as the Impoundment Control Act allows the president to pause spending for 45 days once the White House formally asks Congress to cancel money that lawmakers voted to spend. The “pocket rescission” theory is that the president can make such a request within the final weeks of the fiscal year and effectively carry out a funding cut if Congress doesn’t act by the time the money expires.

Some legal experts, lawmakers and the Government Accountability Office — Congress’s nonpartisan fiscal watchdog — have protested that move violates the legislative branch’s core constitutional authority to decide how federal dollars are spent.

In the administration’s Supreme Court request, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the lower courts shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in the political process and that the injunction would force administration officials to rush into negotiations and “undermine US foreign policy interests.”

The challengers said the administration was free to press its requests with Congress up until the Sept. 30 deadline, but argued that courts shouldn’t let the money expire while they pursue cases against Trump and administration officials.

US District Judge Amir Ali in Washington previously signaled he would consider extending the funding expiration deadline if the time crunch made it difficult for the administration to comply with his injunction. It wasn’t immediately clear if the nonprofits and businesses will make that request now, or if Ali can consider it now that his contested ruling is on hold.

The case is Trump v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, 25A269, US Supreme Court.

(Updates with explanations from order and dissent.)

--With assistance from Greg Stohr and Steven T. Dennis.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Peter Blumberg

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