President Donald Trump's efforts to cut free foreign aid is seeking a boost from the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration has reportedly filed Monday with the top court seeking relief on a lower court judge's order to deliver $2 billion in U.S. Agency for International Development foreign aid without delay.
Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, appointed by former President Joe Biden a year ago, had ordered the government to make the payments before the end of Feb. 26, before the Supreme Court put a temporary hold on the urgent order.
Solicitor General Sarah Harris argued Monday the "36-hour pay-or-else order" was rushed and would lead to the U.S. government being forced to pay out fraudulent claims, The Washington Times reported.
"The government cannot just press a button and disburse funds in response to any request that fits the district court's description," Harris wrote in the filing, according to the Times.
"Instead, the government must undertake a multistep process that complies with federal statutes before payments are authorized for disbursement."
Foreign aid organizations had asked the Supreme Court on Friday to require the Trump administration to promptly pay them as Ali ordered.
The groups — contractors and recipients of grants from USAID and the State Department — urged the justices to reject the administration's request to block Ali's order for the payments to be made.
In a Supreme Court filing Friday, the foreign aid organizations argued they "would face extraordinary and irreversible harm if the funding freeze continues," as would their employees and those who depend on their work.
The organizations' "work advances U.S. interests abroad and improves — and, in many cases, literally saves — the lives of millions of people across the globe. In doing so, it helps stop problems like disease and instability overseas before they reach our shores. The government's actions have largely brought this work to a halt," lawyers for the foreign aid groups wrote.
Ali's order had originally given the administration until Feb. 26 to disburse the funding, which the administration said amounted to nearly $2 billion in thousands of foreign aid payment requests. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts paused that order hours before the midnight deadline.
The interim order by Roberts gave the Supreme Court additional time to consider the administration's more formal request to block Ali's ruling and set a Friday deadline for the foreign aid groups to respond.
Trump, pursuing what he has called an America first agenda, ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid on his first day back in office Jan. 20.
Aid organizations accused Trump in lawsuits of exceeding his authority under federal law and the U.S. Constitution by effectively dismantling an independent federal agency and canceling spending authorized by Congress.
Among the plaintiffs in the litigation are the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the Journalism Development Network, international development company DAI Global, and refugee assistance organization HIAS.
The Trump administration has kept the disputed payments largely frozen despite a temporary restraining order from Ali that they be released and multiple subsequent orders that the administration comply. Ali's Feb. 25 order at issue before the Supreme Court applied to payment for work done by foreign aid groups before Feb. 13, when the judge issued an earlier temporary restraining order.
Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest person, have taken dramatic steps to reshape and shrink the federal government. They have dismantled some agencies, fired thousands of workers, removed or reassigned hundreds of officials and dismissed the heads of independent agencies, among other actions.
USAID administers about 60% of U.S. foreign assistance and disbursed $43.79 billion in the 2023 fiscal year. According to a Congressional Research Service report, the USAID workforce assisted about 130 countries.
Information from Reuters was used to compile this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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