US Supreme Court rejects Trump's bid to freeze $2 billion in foreign aid

The court voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court order requiring that payments be made on aid contracts that have already been completed.

A DIVIDED US Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to freeze some $2 billion (€1.8 billion) in foreign aid payments.

The court, in its first significant ruling on a legal challenge to the Trump administration, voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court order requiring that payments be made on aid contracts that have already been completed.

The justices said the federal judge who ordered the resumption of payments for contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department “should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill.”

Conservatives John Roberts, the chief justice, and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, voted with the three liberal justices on the nine-member Supreme Court.

Judge Samuel Alito wrote a dissent that was joined by the three other conservative justices.

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” he said.

District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order last month prohibiting the Trump administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing” foreign assistance funds.

Trump has launched a campaign led by his top donor Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government.

The most concentrated fire has been on USAID, the primary organisation for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world with health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including the world’s poorest regions.

Numerous aid programmes have already been cut, with USAID staff either being placed on leave or being dismissed from their positions.

The US president has said USAID was “run by radical lunatics” and Musk has described it as a “criminal organization” needing to be put “through the woodchipper.”

USAID is seen as a vital source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China, where Musk has extensive business interests.

As of 2023, the most recent year for which full data was available, the top three recipients of aid from USAID were Ukraine, Ethiopia and Jordan, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Other top recipients of aid included the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Syria.

The scale of USAID’s funding for Ukraine is significant, with the war-torn European country receiving more than $16 billion in macroeconomic support, according to US government data.

Founded in 1961, the agency’s budget of more than $40 billion is a small drop in the US government’s overall annual spending of nearly $7 trillion.

The United States is the world’s largest provider of official development assistance, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Here at home, Irish humanitarian groups were left reeling from the suspension of US foreign aid funding announced by the Trump administration.

Some of the most prominent Irish organisations rely heavily on funding from the US government, and as a result work in multiple areas across the world has already been suspended.

The Journal understands that Irish aid organisations have received a flurry of memos from the US State Department since the suspension, which have led to confusion and uncertainty about what will happen next.

One Irish aid organisation has had to pause most of its operations as a result of the funding freeze.