SCOTUS denies request to freeze foreign aid payments
The Supreme Court sided with a lower court order for the Trump administration to pay foreign aid contractors.
WASHINGTON − A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s request to block an order that set a deadline for the administration to pay foreign aid organizations for work already performed for the government.
Because the original deadline has lapsed, the court said the judge should clarify how the government should comply “with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines” − but did not overturn the order.
Four of the court’s conservative justices − Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh − dissented.
Alito wrote he is “stunned” that a majority of the court believes one district judge has “the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars.”
Soon after taking office in January, Trump froze foreign assistance, ridiculing some of the past spending choices and accusing the agency that overseas much of the assistance of being run by “radical left lunatics.”
Some of the organizations that receive grants or contract with the government to run public health and other programs in other countries sued, including asking a federal judge to immediately step in because the sudden loss of funding plunged them into “financial turmoil.”
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, temporarily blocked the administration from enacting a blanket freeze as he considers whether the administration acted legally.
Ali also directed the government to pay contractors who had completed work before the freeze.
When the contractors complained they still hadn’t gotten paid, Ali ordered the administration to do so by Feb. 27.
In an emergency request, the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, saying the judge’s deadline for disbursing what they said was nearly $2 billion in payment requests was “not logistically or technically feasible.”
The government also argues the judge is interfering in the powers the Constitution gives the president.
“The President’s power is at its apex – and the power of the judiciary is at its nadir – in matters of foreign affairs,” Sarah Harris, the acting solicitor general, told the Supreme Court.
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Chief Justice John Roberts initially paused the disbursement deadline and asked the foreign aid groups to respond.
The organizations called it “extraordinary” that the administration would seek the Supreme Court’s review of a district court’s compliance order for an “emergency of its own making.”
The groups − which include the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international development company and a refugee assistance organization − said the administration was seeking permission to continue to defy the lower court after making no effort to meet a deadline it now says is impossible.
In the meantime, they said, Americans who work for their organizations have lost their jobs, businesses have been ruined, food is rotting and crucial medical care is being withheld.
“These are the fruits of the government’s actions,” they wrote.
The administration has said it’s ending more than 90% of the foreign aid contracts disbursed through the U.S. Agency for International Development, an entity it’s dismantling, and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world.
