The Supreme Court has opened the doors for the Trump administration to hold back a whopping $4 billion in foreign-aid funding. While three Democratic appointees to the Court dissented from the decision, the remaining justices all agreed to hit the pause button on a ruling from a federal judge based in our nation’s capital that would have required the government to commit to spending the funds by the end of September, which marks the end of the government’s fiscal year.
Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay on September 9 that blocked an order from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to give the justices time to consider the government’s request to withhold the foreign aid. The Supreme Court’s latest decision extends the administrative stay; however, the unsigned order warned that the ruling “should not be read as a final determination on the merits” but “reflects our preliminary view, consistent with the standards for interim relief.”
The dissenting opinion was crafted by Justice Elena Kagan who was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In the dissent, Kagan said that “the effect” of the Court’s decision is “to prevent the funds from reaching their intended recipients — not just now but (because of their impending expiration) for all time.” Essentially, President Donald Trump wants to truly put America first by withholding funds being sent to other countries in order to apply them to taking care of our own people first.
The order comes eight months after President Trump put out an executive order that said “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.” According to SCOTUS Blog, almost immediately after the order was issued, Secretary of State Marco Rubio froze all foreign-aid funding through the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development so the government could do a “review of all foreign assistance programs to ensure they are efficient and consistent with U.S. foreign policy under the America First agenda.”
Several nonprofit organizations that received foreign-aid funds decided to challenge the freeze in the highest court in the land. In February 2025, the Trump administration appealed to the court, asking for the justices to pause Judge Ali’s order, which demanded the State Department and USAID to pay contractors and recipients for work already completed within a 36-hour time frame.
After that 36-hour deadline came and went, the court voted 5-4 to leave Ali’s order in place. Both Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the three Democratic appointees, informing Ali that he needed to “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with” his order.
Once the case returned to lower courts, Ali decided that the funding freeze likely violated both federal law and the Constitution, he then ordered the administration to spend all the funds Congress had set aside for foreign aid. In late August, the Trump administration turned once again to the Supreme Court, requesting the justices put the order on hold. The request was withdrawn by U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer after a federal appeals court in D.C. rendered it no longer a live controversy.
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The Trump administration refused to give up, going back to the Supreme Court for a third time on September 8, after Ali ordered all the foreign-aid funding, $4 billion in total, be spent by the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Sauer combated the order by stating that it “raises a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers.” Finally, the court ruled in favor of pausing Ali’s order.