Supreme Court rejects Trump's request to keep billions in foreign aid frozen

The U.S. Supreme Court, citing a disagreement, rejected the Trump administration's request to freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress. The Supreme Court's ruling was 5-4, but it did not immediately specify when the funds must be unfrozen, allowing the White House to continue to debate the issue in lower courts.

Although the Supreme Court issued an unsigned order, all four conservative justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—dissented. The majority included Chief Justice John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The majority noted that given the court-ordered deadline for spending the funds has passed, the lower court should "clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order." Alito wrote in a strongly worded dissent that he was "shocked" that the Supreme Court allowed a lower court judge to order the government to unfreeze the foreign aid involved in the case. This decision underscores the deep divisions within the court on issues of executive power.

CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said that while the ruling was 5-4, it was "extremely mild." Vladeck explained that the unsigned order did not actually require the Trump administration to immediately pay out up to $2 billion in foreign aid, but simply cleared the way for the district court to enforce those payments, provided that the district court must be more specific about which contracts must be fulfilled.

Vladeck also stated that the fact that four justices strongly dissented from the ruling suggests that the Supreme Court may be divided, even along these exact same lines, in many of the upcoming, more impactful Trump-related cases that it will hear. The appeal was swiftly submitted to the Supreme Court within days, which is extremely rare by the standards of the federal judicial system.

At the heart of the case was the Trump administration's freeze in January of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, aimed at controlling spending and aligning these agencies with his agenda. Several non-profit organizations that rely on these funds for global health and other projects filed a lawsuit, claiming that the government's move usurped Congress' power to control government spending and violated a federal law governing how agencies make decisions.

On February 13, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ordered that most of the funds continue to flow temporarily while the case was under review. Days later, the plaintiffs argued that the government was ignoring the order and continuing to block spending, and Mehta subsequently ordered the Trump administration to spend the funds by midnight on Wednesday. The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court hours before the deadline, urging the court to at least suspend the order for a few days. The government argued that it was making "substantial efforts" to review payment requests and spend the funds, but could not turn on the spigot fast enough to meet Mehta's timeline.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats said the ruling shows that Trump's power to freeze spending is not unlimited. House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks said, "The money was already appropriated, things were already in the process, so I think the Supreme Court made the right decision, and now the administration needs to unfreeze those funds and allow those contractors and work to get done."

Representative Pramila Jayapal called it "a very important ruling" from "a Trump-dominated court." Jayapal stated, "I think it reinforces...that Congress has the power of the purse, and people rely on that authorization to implement these projects, and when you do the work, you should get paid after the authorization." When asked if she was confident that payments would be turned on, Jayapal said she was not confident about anything, "but I hope the Trump administration will heed the Supreme Court."