A very serious constitutional issue is currently being fought over, and the Supreme Court came down on the wrong side.
President Trump had a plan to cut into USAID spending. DOGE basically wiped out about $50 billion in USAID spending, reporting that money as not comporting with American standards of foreign policy. Thus, a temporary federal freeze, an impoundment, was essentially put on those funds. Then, a district court judge put a freeze on the freeze to allow that money to continue to go out the door.
The constitutional issue involved here is whether a district court judge has the capacity to simply shut down a presidential nationwide action.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 vote, essentially remanded the case back to the district court, saying they need clarification as to why and how this is actually being done.
The five judges who voted in favor of doing so included three leftist judges — Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor — and two conservatives — John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett. The SCOTUS order stated:
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia entered a temporary restraining order enjoining the Government from enforcing directives pausing disbursements of foreign development assistance funds. The present application does not challenge the Government’s obligation to follow that order. On February 25, the District Court ordered the Government to issue payments for a portion of the paused disbursements—those owed for work already completed before the issuance of the District Court’s temporary restraining order—by 11:59 p.m. on February 26.
There was an invoice because the work was already done. Does the federal government have to pay the bill?
The SCOTUS order continued:
The Chief Justice entered an administrative stay shortly before the 11:59 p.m. deadline and subsequently referred the application to the Court. The application is denied. Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines.
It is unclear what the scope of this judgment is. SCOTUS is remanding the case back to the district court to figure out exactly what must be paused — and what doesn’t have to be. Are they saying the portion that has to go out is because the work has been completed? Or, are they saying pausing federal spending at all is not allowable? We will need clarification on that.
WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show
The decision elicited a harsh dissent from Justice Samuel Alito, who is awesome, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh.
In the same way some people rank their favorite baseball players, I rank my favorite Supreme Court justices: Thomas is at the top, followed closely by Alito.
Alito was terrific. He wrote:
Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) two billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.
Alito did not pull any punches. He continued:
In capsule form, this is what happened. Respondents are a group of American businesses and nonprofits that receive foreign-assistance funds from the State Department and the U. S. Agency for International Development. They brought suit and claimed that the current administration’s temporary pause of foreign-assistance payments is unlawful. On February 13, 2025, the District Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring the Government to halt its funding pause. It based that decision on a finding that respondents are likely to succeed in showing that the Government violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
After issuing the TRO, the District Judge grew frustrated with the pace at which funds were being disbursed, and on February 25, he issued a second order requiring the Government to pay out approximately $2 billion. The judge brushed aside the Government’s argument that sovereign immunity barred this enforcement order, and he took two steps that, unless corrected, would prevent any higher court from reviewing and possibly stopping the payments. First, he labeled the order as a non-appealable TRO, and second, he demanded that the money be paid within 36 hours.
This left the Government little time to try to obtain some review of what it regarded as a lawless order. The Government moved for a stay pending appeal in the District Court. But the judge shrugged off the Government’s sovereign immunity argument and ignored the Government’s representation that most of the money in question, once disbursed, could probably not be recovered.
Alito further explained:
To start, it is clear that the District Court’s enforcement order should be construed as an appealable preliminary injunction, not a mere TRO. A TRO, as its name suggests, is “temporary,” and its proper role is to “restrain” challenged conduct for a short time while the court considers whether more lasting relief is warranted.
A ”temporary restraining order” does not apply in this instance because it is not temporary; once the money is gone, it’s gone. A typical temporary restraining order could instruct not to engage in a particular action for a certain period of time. But a temporary restraining order cannot instruct one to pay a certain amount of money to a particular person, as that is not a temporary restraining order. Once the money has been paid, there is no clawing it back. This is Alito’s point.
Alito declared, “Nor did the order merely ‘restrain’ the Government’s challenged action in order to ‘preserve the status quo.’ Rather, it ‘act[s] as a mandatory injunction requiring affirmative action’ by the Government.”
“Even if the majority is unwilling to vacate the District Court’s order, it should at least stay the District Court’s enforcement order until the Government is able to petition for a writ of certiorari,” he wrote, meaning that the Supreme Court would take up the full case.
He is right about all of this. He concluded:
Today, the Court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers. The District Court has made plain its frustration with the Government, and respondents raise serious concerns about nonpayment for completed work. But the relief ordered is, quite simply, too extreme a response. A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.
All of this raises questions as to why Justices Roberts and Coney Barrett did what they did. It’s not as extreme an order as it originally seems from the Supreme Court when it basically says any district court judge anywhere can put a nationwide temporary restraining order on the federal government for any reason whatsoever.
But, as Justice Alito says, if the effect of the order is to force the federal government to disperse funds it can’t get back before the adjudication at the Supreme Court level, then that is a massive problem.
Alito is absolutely right about all of that.
We were expecting these types of issues to happen.
The reality is that because President Trump is moving fast and breaking things, there’s going to be a lot of legal action. Most of that legal action is going to redound to the benefit of the Trump administration.
Some will not.
Continue reading this exclusive article and join the conversation, plus watch free videos on DW+
Already a member?
