Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow it to block billions in foreign aid
'Absent this Court’s intervention, the D.C. Circuit’s inaction will preclude the government from proposing rescissions and allowing funds to expire,' solicitor general writes
WASHINGTON
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to block the release of billions of dollars in congressionally-appropriated foreign aid.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in an emergency application late Tuesday that the justices should block a preliminary injunction put in place by a lower court demanding the Trump administration develop a plan to spend the funds by Sept. 30 before they expire.
Sauer accused District Judge Amir Ali of being a "supervisor-in-chief," and asked the top court to weigh in by Sept. 2. The solicitor general pointed to an appeals court panel's 2-1 ruling earlier in August that said the injunction should be lifted. But the full appeals court has yet to weigh in, placing that decision in limbo.
Sauer said the lack of an en banc ruling has left "the government subject to an injunction that the panel held to be deeply erroneous."
"The government is thus forced to ask this Court to give effect to the D.C. Circuit’s decision, which correctly held that private parties cannot enlist Article III courts to supplant the interbranch dialogue regarding the expenditure of appropriated funds," he wrote.
US President Donald Trump quickly sought to freeze all foreign aid shortly after he took office in January, and went on to aggressively gut the US Agency for International Development, which has run worldwide aid programs.
The case that the administration is now seeking to take before the top court comes after two organizations that had run aid programs with federal funding, the Global Health Council and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, sued on allegations that the halt is unlawful.
"Absent this Court’s intervention, the D.C. Circuit’s inaction will preclude the government from proposing rescissions and allowing funds to expire if Congress’s fails to act before September 30," wrote Sauer.
"In other words, it will effectively force the government to rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds that would expire September 30 and to continue obligating tens of billions of dollars more—overriding the Executive Branch’s foreign-policy judgments regarding whether to pursue rescissions and thwarting interbranch dialogue," he added.
