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Attorneys for the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday night to give the government the power to withhold billions of dollars Congress had already appropriated for foreign aid. The filing marks the second time this year that USAID funding has been returned to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis.

Nearly $12 billion was set aside for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) aid to foreign governments, which is set to expire at the end of the current fiscal year on September 30. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office in January, in which he ordered the federal government to pause almost all foreign aid spending. Trump characterized the move as part of a larger effort to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse” in overseas spending.

The order was challenged almost immediately, with U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, D.C., ruling in February that the White House must resume funding for projects Congress had already signed off on. Judge Ali’s decision had reinstated payment on billions of dollars in USAID grants.

The Trump administration appealed the decision, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit took up the case this month. The court voted 2-1 to vacate the preliminary injunction that Judge Ali issued, with Judge Karen L. Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, writing for the majority. The court held that the plaintiffs, foreign aid groups seeking to resume their grants, did not have the legal standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place, and that the groups lacked a “cause of action” under what is known as the doctrine of impoundment.

While the court’s ruling is a major victory for the Trump administration, the court has not yet issued its mandate that would allow its ruling to take effect. As of now, the administration is on the clock to either begin spending the money before the September 30 deadline or to risk being forced to spend it all out at once. To prevent that from happening, the administration on Tuesday filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to block further payments.

The case and the respective legal theories being used by each side are more involved than a typical briefing. Legal teams for both sides have been laying the groundwork for the current dispute since at least late January, when the plaintiffs first filed their lawsuit. In Trump’s executive order, the president invoked authority from the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows him to pause spending in certain limited circumstances.

Legal Arguments

In the appeal to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the Supreme Court should take up the case because the administration was otherwise on course to “rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds” by the September 30 deadline. He also wrote that, according to Justice Department legal scholars, the lawsuit “in effect cut the brakes off to future impoundment enforcement suits by private plaintiffs.”

“Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” Sauer wrote. He then added that “any lingering dispute about the proper disposition of funds that the President seeks to rescind shortly before they expire should be left to the political branches, not effectively prejudged by the district court.”

The plaintiffs in the case are a collection of foreign aid groups that receive funds from USAID. Their argument is the exact opposite: that the president has no right to rescind money Congress already approved for USAID programs. They point to a law called the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) and the Administrative Procedure Act, both laws passed in the 1970s in response to President Richard Nixon’s spending decisions, as legal grounds for their position.

Background

The Trump administration was rebuffed by federal courts early this year after attempting to cut payments to USAID. The administration at the time tried to block $3.6 billion in payments to the agency. When Judge Ali declined the request, the Trump administration’s legal team went to the appeals court, where it found another judge who agreed with it. However, the Supreme Court already had ruled on this very same case earlier this year, in a narrow 5-4 decision.

The implications of the case are far-reaching, as the decision of the court could have massive implications on the balance of power between the White House and Congress. The current situation is a high-stakes game for both the plaintiffs and the Trump administration, with the loss of billions of dollars on the line as well as the prestige of a president who sees himself as a successful budget cutter.