The Trump administration has once again turned to the Supreme Court, seeking its intervention in a long-running legal battle over the allocation of nearly $12 billion in frozen USAID funds. This marks the second time the high court has been asked to reconsider the issue, following an earlier ruling that temporarily blocked the release of the funds. The dispute centers around funds previously approved by Congress for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which were slashed by Trump almost immediately upon taking office as part of his broader policy to eliminate so-called ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ in foreign aid spending.
At the heart of this legal maneuver is a request to halt a lower court’s injunction, which has been preventing the Trump administration from releasing the funds. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal, warning that without intervention, the administration would be forced to ‘rapidly obligate’ the $12 billion in foreign aid funds by the September 30 fiscal year deadline, risking the loss of these funds. The Trump administration’s stance is that the executive branch has the authority to control the distribution of such funds, and that the legal battle over the matter should be resolved at the political level rather than through judicial intervention.
This legal clash has been ongoing for months, with the issue first arising when Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office in January, seeking to block nearly all foreign aid spending. This order was swiftly blocked by a federal judge, who ordered the Trump administration to resume payments on billions of dollars in USAID funding. The ruling was later overturned by the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which ruled 2-1 to vacate the lower court injunction. However, the appeals court has not yet issued a mandate to enforce that ruling, meaning the judge’s order and the previously laid-out payment schedule remain in place for now.
Legal experts suggest that the Supreme Court’s decision in this case could have broader implications for the executive branch’s authority to control federal spending, particularly concerning foreign aid and international development. The administration’s argument that the matter falls under the legal framework of the Impoundment Control Act has been met with resistance from legal groups representing foreign aid organizations, who argue that the executive branch lacks the authority to unilaterally block already-appropriated funds. The Supreme Court’s previous ruling on a similar issue in 2020, which resulted in a 5-4 decision, remains relevant to this ongoing legal battle.