Associate White House Counsel Grace Pastor told Newsmax Friday that the Supreme Court is "not happy" that it had to rule again on a subject it's already issued a decision on because of the defiance of lower courts.
On Thursday, the high court ruled that the Trump administration can proceed with making sweeping cuts to National Institutes of Health diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) grants.
Ruling in favor of the Justice Department, the Supreme Court lifted U.S. District Judge William Young's June decision that found the grant terminations violated federal law while a challenge brought by researchers and 16 states continues in a lower court.
"I think the bigger deal here – obviously, this is a great win for the Trump administration — but the bigger issue is that the Supreme Court's warning the lower courts that they need to stop defying Supreme Court orders," Pastor said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "At issue in this particular case was whether or not a district court could order the federal government to pay grants, because the Trump administration terminated them and the district court ordered us to reinstate them.
"But the problem is that the Supreme Court already ruled on this exact issue just a few months ago, and they already held that district courts can't order the federal government to pay grant money," she said. "So, this was just an act of defiance by the lower courts and the Supreme Court's not happy about it. A lot of the justices were complaining that if they don't follow precedent at the lower court level, it's going to lead to judicial anarchy."
Pastor pointed out that the DEI grants case is "already the third time in just the last few weeks that the Trump administration has had to go to the Supreme Court just to have the court restate the same ruling."
"I can't emphasize enough how much work it is for the president's attorneys to already get up to the Supreme Court just once," she said. "So, to have to get the same ruling again and again is a complete waste of time, really, for everyone and it's leading to problems at the judicial level, but really for the Supreme Court and for everybody."
Asked if the ruling will give the Trump administration more latitude to slash more federal programs, Pastor said that "this has already opened the floodgates, I guess, a couple of months ago."
"The Trump administration is allowed to terminate grants lawfully because the district courts don't have the authority to order the federal government to pay grants," she said. "Now, there's still some other things being litigated, and that's going to happen in the Federal Court of Claims, but you are going to see DEI cuts."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.