Trump puts foreign aid cuts to test at SCOTUS  

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Donald Trump pushed the Supreme Court to shut down billions in foreign aid contracts on Wednesday, warning that lower courts are creating a path to usurp funding negotiations by the political branches.

Trump’s emergency appeal marked the second time the fight over foreign aid contracts has landed on the justices’ shadow docket. The high court issued a split ruling in March, refusing to block $12 billion in funding disbursement for the U.S. Agency for International Development contractors.

The administration was forced to pay nearly $2 billion in contractual work completed prior to a pause on foreign aid funds, but Trump urged the justices to step in before the government was forced to hand over billions more in contract funding.

“Given the vast sums involved and the significance of the case to the separation of powers and U.S. foreign policy, the district court’s holdings, if allowed to stand, would clearly warrant this court’s attention, and those holdings would not survive review,” U.S. Solicitor John Sauer wrote in the emergency application.

Nonprofits and private companies sued the administration after the wholesale pause of congressionally approved funds. The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council said that the abrupt loss of funds caused severe harm to contractors and those who relied on their services.

Under the 2024 Appropriations Act, USAID-apportioned funds expire on Sept. 30. The administration urged the justices to intervene before Sept. 2 to prevent the remaining funds from being disbursed.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 requires the executive branch to distribute congressionally appropriated funds. But Trump claimed that the judiciary has little involvement in enforcing the law, leaving negotiations over funds to the political branches.

Two weeks ago, a D.C. Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that nonprofits and private plaintiffs could not challenge foreign aid funding cuts under the Impoundment Act. The groups asked the full D.C. Circuit to rehear the appeal.

Trump balked at the appeals court’s decision to uphold a lower court injunction in the meantime. The injunction holds the administration to the Sept. 30 funding deadline.

Trump warned that the lower court’s ruling would also create a path for others looking to challenge the administration’s funding decisions.

“The district court’s reasoning would open the floodgates to suits by private parties who compete for appropriated funds and who seek to impose judicial oversight on executive spending decisions at odds with the process Congress prescribed,” Sauer wrote.

Lauren Bateman, a Public Citizen attorney and lead counsel for the plaintiffs, said that the injunction posed no greater emergency now than it did for the last five months.

“It has been over five months since the preliminary injunction was issued, and the government never sought a stay,” Bateman said in a statement. “But now they are running to the Supreme Court, claiming at the last second that they would be harmed by compliance with the district court’s order. The Supreme Court should see through that ruse.”

On his first day back in 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.

Months after slashing the agency’s funding, Trump officially shut down USAID in July.

USAID programs saved more than 90 million lives over the past two decades, according to a July study published in the Lancet. Researchers estimated that if the Trump administration’s funding cuts continue through 2030, 14 million people who might have otherwise lived could die.

Despite losing his previous appeal on aid funding, the Supreme Court has overwhelmingly ceded to the president’s wishes in his two dozen emergency appeals. Four justices expressed sympathy for the administration’s arguments against funding the contracts in March.

Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, dissented from the March order, stating that he was stunned with his colleagues’ “unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, and Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined Alito’s dissent.

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