US supreme court temporarily halts lower court order reinstating $5bn in foreign aid

The US supreme court on Tuesday temporarily halted a lower court’s order that the Trump administration spend nearly $5bn in congressionally appropriated foreign aid money that it is seeking to cancel.

The order from the conservative chief justice, John Roberts, comes amid legal wrangling over Donald Trump’s moves to aggressively downsize US support of global development and emergency response, which has resulted in the dismantling of USAID.

Late last month, Trump informed the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, that he would not spend $4.9b in foreign aid that Congress had previously approved, decrying it as “woke, weaponized and wasteful spending”. The money was to go to United Nations organizations and peacekeeping operations, as well as development assistance and democracy-promotion projects.

The move was a “pocket rescission”, when a president announces he will not spend money shortly before the 30 September end of the federal fiscal year, preventing Congress from acting on his request within the 45-day timeframe and leaving the money to go unspent. It was the first time in 50 years such a rescission had been made.

Washington DC federal judge Amir Ali last week ordered the Trump administration to spend those funds, prompting an appeal to the supreme court. In his order, Roberts, who handles emergency petitions from Washington DC, gave the aid groups who sued the administration until Friday to file a response to his order.

In July, congressional Republicans approved a request from Trump to claw back $8bn for foreign assistance programs, over the objections of the Democratic minority.