The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is deciding the fate of President Donald Trump’s second term thanks to a case involving nearly $2 billion in foreign-assistance payments.
On Jan. 20, Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.” The order’s purpose was to enact a 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”
“It is the policy of the United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President,” the order stated.
What you’ve been paying for through USAID: pic.twitter.com/w4UymkHKLZ
— Rep. Chip Roy Press Office (@RepChipRoy) February 3, 2025
Thanks to Trump’s creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the executive branch has uncovered massive waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money by the federal government, including at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). (Trump Drops Another Executive Order That Could Reshape The Entire Federal Government)
As most expected, the wounded bureaucratic state is lashing out. Its seemingly unlimited money supply is ending and they are looking for any way to force Trump to keep the funding flowing. First, they tried to get the American people on their side. The propagandists in the liberal media peddled stories like women dying in remote hospitals due to the lack of USAID funds for their treatment. But it didn’t work. The American people love DOGE’s efforts to end the federal government’s parasitic funding scheme.
According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!
Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/ltb06VX98Z
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025
Now, they are moving on to legal action. Trump and/or the U.S. government are involved in several lawsuits, ranging from firing federal workers to stopping foreign assistance payments. The idea is to get the judicial system to weaken the executive branch’s power to end Trump’s momentum through lawfare. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
This is where SCOTUS comes in. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered Trump (through the State Department and USAID) to pay nearly $2 billion as an interim remedy for reimbursements on foreign aid-related contracts and grants for work completed before Feb. 13. The court gave Trump just 30 hours to make the payments.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris appealed to the Supreme Court, asking them to vacate the lower court’s temporary restraining order and an administrative stay against paying almost $2 billion in federal assistance payments.
Harris argued that the Trump administration has followed the lower court’s order not to rely on the executive order’s blanket suspension or termination of foreign-aid funding. However, Trump’s additional requirements to “give universal relief” are outside of what Article III of the U.S. Constitution allows district courts to mandate.
We are witnessing utter judicial tyranny here.
Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris lays out the absurdity, and damage done to our constitutional order, due to a district court judge’s issuance of a TRO to halt the Trump administration’s firing of the leader of the Office of… pic.twitter.com/ZOSppKsjYr
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) February 27, 2025
“What the government cannot do is pay arbitrarily determined demands on an arbitrary timeline of the district court’s choosing or according to extra-contractual rules that the court has devised,” she wrote. “That mandate creates an untenable payment plan at odds with the President’s obligations under Article II to protect the integrity of the federal fisc and make appropriate judgments about foreign aid—clear forms of irreparable harm.” (Establishment Republicans Rear Their Ugly Heads In Opposition To Trump’s Biggest Win Yet)
Essentially, Trump’s ability to prevent the bureaucratic state from funding programs antithetical to his America First agenda is at stake.
On Wednesday, SCOTUS granted a temporary stay in both the cases against Trump and the State Department, giving the executive branch temporary relief from abiding by the district court’s order to pay the plaintiffs the nearly $2 billion. The plaintiffs have until noon on Friday to file any response to Harris’ application.
🚨🚨🚨HUGE: pic.twitter.com/Hifpww4QLF
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) February 27, 2025
The SCOTUS decision, in this case, will determine if Trump can prevent agencies like USAID from making foreign assistance payments to organizations and programs that deter his agenda or if a single federal district court has the authority to supervise the federal government’s contracting decisions regarding foreign aid, which has long been a discretionary power granted to the executive branch.
Whichever way SCOTUS decides will set the tone for the next four years of the Trump administration.
Follow Mary Rooke on X: @MaryRooke_
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
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