Chief Justice Roberts lets US foreign aid bills go unpaid as SCOTUS considers Trump appeal 

WASHINGTON (CN) — Chief Justice John Roberts gave the Trump administration a temporary win Wednesday night, letting U.S. foreign aid bills go unpaid as the Supreme Court considers whether a White House funding freeze was unlawful.

President Donald Trump filed an 11th-hour emergency appeal at the Supreme Court Wednesday night seeking to overturn a federal judge’s order to release billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid by midnight.

A federal judge gave the administration 36 hours to comply with a two-week-old order restarting foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The Justice Department appealed the order at the D.C. Circuit, but as the court’s deadline approached with no resolution, the Trump administration turned to the Supreme Court.

“The government cannot function — and the President cannot discharge his Article II responsibilities over foreign affairs — if a district court can appoint itself the claims-processor for the federal government and second-guess the executive branch’s determinations on pain of contempt proceedings,” Trump wrote in his emergency appeal.

Shortly after Trump filed his appeal at the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit rejected the government’s appeal. Roberts followed with an administrative stay, keeping the payments on pause for now.

Trump claimed U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali overstepped when asking the government to release billions in payments without time to review where they were going.

“The court also flouts the limitations of Article III by ordering the government to fulfill funding obligations entirely unrelated to respondents and their members,” Trump wrote. “That unlawful order is unlikely to survive this court’s review.”

Ali’s order is the second time a judge found Trump did not follow court orders and comes as some administration officials suggested that the White House ignore court orders it feels interfere with executive authority.

Trump said Ali’s temporary restraining order intruded on the prerogatives of the executive branch.

“The president’s power is at its apex — and the power of the judiciary is at its nadir — in matters of foreign affairs,” Trump wrote.

On day one of his return to office, Trump cut off USAID funding to root out wasteful programs that do not align with his policy goals. Since then, overseas nonprofit groups and businesses have laid off tens of thousands of staff and shut down urgent life-saving programs.

Trump said that forcing the government’s hand threatened to expend enormous sums of taxpayer dollars without conducting basic diligence to ensure that payments are free from fraud and abuse.

Separate from his policy goals, Trump told the justices that the payment of all outstanding amounts by midnight wasn’t logistically or technically feasible.

However, the Justice Department said it was committed to paying for work that was properly completed. According to the application, the State Department will make about $4 billion in payments to two of the groups involved in the suit today, but the funds will take another two days to process.

The nonprofits who filed the case, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Journalism Development Network, work to combat HIV/AIDS and support anti-corruption journalism. They accused the government of going to extreme lengths to flout a court order.

“While the administration refuses to comply with the district court’s order, the irreparable harm to our clients increases each day, as does the suffering of millions of people across the world who depend on the work performed with these grants," Lauren Bateman, a Public Citizen attorney and lead counsel on the case, said in a statement.

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