Supreme Court sides with Trump

Supreme Court Lets Trump Freeze $4B in Foreign Aid

The Supreme Court halted a lower court order that mandated the Trump administration to spend $4 billion in foreign aid, which it aimed to cut via a “pocket rescission.”

The high court’s Friday ruling marks the latest victory for the Trump administration on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.

The unsigned order from the high court made clear that the ruling “should not be read as a final determination on the merits” of the case. Instead, the administration showed it was entitled to have the federal district court’s order halted at this point of litigation.

“The Government, at this early stage, has made a sufficient showing that the Impoundment Control Act precludes respondents’ suit, brought pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, to enforce the appropriations at issue here.

The Government has also made a sufficient showing that mandamus relief is unavailable to respondents. And, on the record before the Court, the asserted harms to the Executive’s conduct of foreign affairs appear to outweigh the potential harm faced by respondents,” the ruling said.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court earlier this month to block U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order requiring $4 billion in Congressionally-approved foreign aid to be prepared to be spent pending litigation, after various groups that receive foreign aid sued to compel the administration to spend the funds it aimed to axe via a “pocket rescission.”

And then we get the stupid dissenting opinion--Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent to the order, which Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined. Kagan took aim at the majority’s decision to grant a stay, arguing the Trump administration had failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm by spending the foreign aid funds.

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