DOJ in emergency filing asking Supreme Court to let officials block foreign aid

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to wade into its efforts to withhold billions of dollars in congressionally appropriated foreign aid.

The Justice Department filed an emergency application at the high court Tuesday asking the justices to pause a judge’s order that requires the administration to create a plan for spending the funds by a deadline at the end of next month.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the lower court had appointed itself “supervisor-in-chief” and requested a decision by next week.

The emergency appeal references a procedural oddity, where U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s decision requiring the money to be spent remains in effect despite an appeals court having sided with the Trump administration earlier this month.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that only Congress’s comptroller general can challenge a president’s purportedly unlawful impoundments, not the nonprofit groups that had sued over the major cuts. The groups have asked the D.C. Circuit’s full bench to reverse that finding, but it has not yet weighed in.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the D.C. Circuit’s inaction will preclude the government from proposing rescissions and allowing funds to expire if Congress fails to act before September 30,” Sauer wrote.

“In other words, it will effectively force the government to rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds that would expire September 30 and to continue obligating tens of billions of dollars more—overriding the Executive Branch’s foreign-policy judgments regarding whether to pursue rescissions and thwarting interbranch dialogue,” he added.

The case has reached the Supreme Court before.

In March, the justices rejected Trump’s ask that nearly $2 billion in blocked foreign aid payments remain frozen in a 5-4 decision. Since then, the case has continued to play out in lower courts.

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