The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court order that directed the Trump administration to release nearly $2 billion in foreign aid payments by midnight on Wednesday.
The dispute revolves around the administration’s retention of U.S. Agency for International Development funds.
According to an emergency filing by the Justice Department, the administration requires additional time to evaluate outstanding payments for fraud and abuse. The department cautioned that adhering to the expedited timeline could result in irreparable financial damage, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Supreme Court instructed the parties to submit additional responses to their chambers by Friday, without providing any commentary on the case’s merits, as per a concise order issued by Chief Justice John Roberts.
“The order does not limit its abrupt deadline to respondents’ own invoices or letters of credit, instead apparently compelling the government to pay requests from any organization that has asked for such funds,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote.
The fight started when aid groups and contractors sued Trump over his order to stop sending money to other countries for 90 days so that the order could be looked over.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed by President Donald Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, had already said that the freeze was illegal and had given the government until February to lift it. The plaintiffs say they still haven’t been paid, though.
Ali made a new order on Tuesday giving the administration until Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. to release the funds. He criticized officials for not following his first order. Indraneel Sur, a lawyer for the government, couldn’t say what steps were taken to process the payments during a hearing.
In Ali’s most recent decision, he told the government three times to release foreign aid funds that had been frozen after Trump told all foreign aid to stop for 90 days.
Trump asked for more time, but the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia wouldn’t extend the deadline until Wednesday night at midnight. The three-judge panel said that the Trump administration has “not shown that the enforcement orders disrupt the status quo by requiring them to do anything more than they would have had to do absent the temporarily restrained agency actions, which are the subject of ongoing preliminary injunction briefing.”
Plaintiffs in the case say that Trump’s broad aid freeze, which includes the stop-work orders that stopped USAID’s work around the world, has made it impossible for people to get help.
But the administration says that the order’s broad nature—it affects all foreign aid recipients—inadvertently limits the president’s freedom and gets around normal review processes.