WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a Trump administration push to rebuke a federal judge who imposed a quick deadline to release billions of dollars in foreign aid.
By a 5-4 vote, the court told U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to clarify his earlier order that required the Republican administration to release nearly $2 billion in aid for work that had already been done.
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Although the outcome is a short-term loss for President Donald Trump’s administration, the nonprofit groups and businesses that sued are still waiting for the money they say they are owed. One of the organizations last week was forced to lay off 110 employees as a result, according to court papers.
It’s the second time the new administration has sought and failed to persuade the Supreme Court to immediately rein in a lower-court judge in legal fights over actions taken by Trump.
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Justice Samuel Alito led four conservative justices in dissent, saying Ali lacks the authority to order the payments. Alito wrote that he is stunned the court is rewarding “an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.”
The court’s action leaves in place Ali’s temporary restraining order that had paused the spending freeze, Ali is holding a hearing Thursday to consider a more lasting pause.
The majority noted that the administration had not challenged Ali’s initial order, only the deadline, which in any event passed last week.
The court told Ali to “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, two conservatives, joined the three liberal justices to form a majority.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined Alito’s dissent.
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The Trump administration has argued that the situation has changed because it has replaced a blanket spending freeze with individualized determinations that led to the cancellation of 5,800 U.S. Agency for International Development contracts and another 4,100 State Department grants totaling nearly $60 billion in aid.
The federal government froze foreign aid after an executive order from Trump targeting what he called wasteful programs that do not correspond to his foreign policy goals.
The lawsuit that followed claimed that the pause breaks federal law and has shut down funding for even the most urgent life-saving programs abroad.
Ali ordered the funding temporarily restored on Feb. 13, but nearly two weeks later he found the government was giving no sign of complying and set a deadline to release payment for work already completed.
The administration appealed, calling Ali’s order “incredibly intrusive and profoundly erroneous” and protesting the timeline to release the money.
