DOJ Files Emergency Appeal, Seeks to Halt Foreign Aid Funding

The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal late Tuesday asking the Supreme Court to let it continue withholding foreign aid.

The Justice Department, which filed the appeal, asked the court to reach a decision by Sept. 2 due to “additional irreparable harms the government would incur past that point.”

This appeal follows a lower court order demanding that the administration spend billions of dollars of foreign aid by Sept. 30—a command Solicitor General D. John Sauer described as the court installing itself as “supervisor-in-chief.”

The case hinges on whether President Donald Trump has the authority to refuse to spend funds appropriated by Congress.

Following Trump’s inauguration, the administration terminated thousands of foreign aid grants as part of its attempt to eliminate government waste.

In response, several grant recipients—including the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council—sued, arguing that withholding congressionally appropriated funds violated the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act.

In March, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the administration to make available the full amount of foreign assistance funds that Congress had appropriated for fiscal year 2024.

On Aug. 13, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. overturned that decision. 

The panel, citing the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, said that only the U.S. comptroller general—the head of the Government Accountability Office—has authority to challenge a president’s refusal to spend appropriated funds. As a result, it ordered the lower court to vacate its order.

But despite the panel’s decision, the full appeals court has yet to act. And until it acts, the Trump administration remains subject to an order the panel held “as startling as it is erroneous.”

So on Tuesday, the Justice Department took the case to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to either pause the order or decide the case by Sept. 2.

Without that intervention, the department said, the government would be forced to rapidly dispatch $12 billion in funds set to expire Sept. 30 and to continue sending billions more—causing what it called “irreparable harm.”