US Supreme Court Allows Trump to Temporarily Halt USAID Payments – Rezazade

The first vice president of the Iranian opposition in Washington, Ali Reza Rezazade, says the US Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily halt nearly $2 billion in foreign aid that the government was supposed to restore by midnight.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. granted the temporary stay late Wednesday night, allowing time for a full hearing of the case in the Supreme Court.

The case was heard by District Judge Amir H. Ali, who gave the government until 11:59 p.m. to fulfill its obligations and restore funding to organizations working in poor regions of the world. Trump had suspended the payments in late January. Acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris, the administration’s chief appellate attorney, has asked the Supreme Court to block the decision. She said it had “created chaos” in the government’s operations.

Harris stressed that the court had no authority to force the administration to pay out money “at the whim of a judge.” She added that the government was willing to pay the legal amount for the work it had done, but could not follow the court’s “random” demands.

This is the second time the Trump administration has appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts blocked its actions. Last week, the court refused to allow Trump to immediately fire Hampton Dellinger, the head of the independent oversight agency.

Immediately after his inauguration, Trump suspended payments to USAID, an agency that provides humanitarian assistance to more than 100 countries and has a budget of $40 billion. This has put millions of people who depend on U.S. aid at risk and has left thousands of USAID employees without jobs. Some of them have been left in dangerous conditions with no way to return home.

The lawsuit against the administration was filed by two organizations, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. On February 13, Judge Ali, appointed by President Biden, issued a temporary injunction to stop the payments, but now the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to stay the decision for now.