US supreme court allows Trump to withhold nearly $5bn in foreign aid

The supreme court on Friday extended an order that allows Donald Trump’s administration to keep frozen nearly $5bn in foreign aid, handing him another victory in a dispute over presidential power.

The court acted on the Republican administration’s emergency appeal in a case involving billions of dollars in congressionally approved aid. Trump said last month that he would not spend the money, invoking disputed authority that was last used by a president roughly 50 years ago.

The justice department sought the supreme court’s intervention after US district judge Amir Ali ruled that Trump’s action was likely illegal and that Congress would have to approve the decision to withhold the funding.

The federal appeals court in Washington declined to put Ali’s ruling on hold, but John Roberts, the chief justice, temporarily blocked it on 9 September. The full court indefinitely extended Roberts’ order.

The court has previously cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip legal protections from hundreds of thousands of migrants, fire thousands of federal employees, oust transgender members of the military and remove the heads of independent government agencies.

The legal victories, while not final rulings, all have come through emergency appeals, used sparingly under previous presidencies, to fast-track cases to the supreme court, where decisions are often handed down with no explanation.

Trump told House speaker Mike Johnson in a 28 August letter that he would not spend $4.9bn in congressionally approved foreign aid, effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.

He used what’s known as a pocket rescission. That’s a rarely used maneuver when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice essentially flips the script. Under federal law,

Congress has to approve the rescission within 45 days or the money must be spent. But the budget year will end before the 45-day window closes, and in this situation the White House is asserting that congressional inaction allows it to not spend the money.

The Trump administration has made deep reductions to foreign aid one of its hallmark policies, despite the relatively meager savings relative to the deficit and possible damage to America’s reputation abroad as people lose access to food supplies and development programs.

Justice department lawyers told a federal judge last month that another $6.5bn in aid that had been subject to the freeze would be spent before the end of the fiscal year next Tuesday.