Late on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts of the United States approved the Trump administration’s appeal for a pause on a lower court’s order. The order had mandated the administration to pay approximately $2 billion towards foreign aid projects managed by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the end of Wednesday.
Justice Roberts, who is responsible for reviewing emergency relief requests from cases in the District of Columbia, single-handedly stopped the decision made by a federal district judge on Tuesday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali required the State Department and USAID to settle outstanding invoices with contractors for work completed before February 13th by Wednesday midnight. Earlier that night, the Trump administration had sought the Supreme Court’s involvement in this dispute regarding frozen foreign aid funds.
Roberts gave the State Department and USAID contractors until Friday noon to respond to the Trump administration’s request.
In a plea for emergency relief from the Supreme Court, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris stated that Judge Ali’s order, which involved an estimated $2 billion, had effectively “moved the goalposts” with his Wednesday night deadline. She argued that the deadline had thrown the government’s orderly review process into disarray as it was not aligned with actual payment deadlines related to the respondents’ invoices or drawdown requests.
She informed the Supreme Court that high-ranking government officials are actively involved in this matter. Harris assured that the Trump administration is making significant efforts to review payment requests and release payments while respecting its constitutional duty to comply with Article III courts. However, she warned that the district court’s deadline makes it impossible to fully comply, as re-initiating funding related to cancelled or suspended agreements involves multiple steps, agencies and documentary evidence.
The Trump administration had previously appealed against the district judge’s order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and requested a pause on the lower court’s decision. But, as the D.C. Circuit had not yet acted by Wednesday evening, the Trump administration sought the Supreme Court’s intervention citing this as an extraordinary circumstance.
Judge Ali, appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2024, is handling the case filed by a consortium of companies, nonprofits and other organizations that receive funding from the State Department and USAID. He issued a temporary restraining order earlier in the month that stopped the Trump administration from freezing foreign aid funds related to contracts and awards while the proceedings were ongoing.
However, despite Judge Ali’s order, the contractors claimed that foreign aid funds were still not being disbursed and demanded immediate payment for work they had completed weeks ago. They warned that the Trump administration’s failure to restore the funding had forced them to lay off workers and halt vital overseas programs.
The Justice Department lawyers estimated that the payments covered by Judge Ali’s order were close to $2 billion, with the challengers alone claiming at least $250 million. They argued that this new order requiring payment of such large sums in less than 36 hours deeply infringed on the Executive Branch and the President’s responsibility under Article II to ensure the laws are executed faithfully.
Peter Marocco, the State Department’s Director of Foreign Assistance, stated that the administration was conducting an individual review of contracts and grants. He warned that determining the course of those awards was a comprehensive, multi-step process that would take several weeks for the federal government to make the payments required by the district court judge. He added that restarting funding related to terminated or suspended agreements was not a simple task and involved complex payment systems from the USAID and State Department, and disbursements from several other agencies.
