The United States Supreme Court in a very divided decision on Wednesday rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to rebuke a federal judge who imposed a quick period of releasing millions of dollars in foreign aid.
The United States Supreme Court, conservative majority, rejected an order by President Donald Trump on Wednesday to freeze about 2,000 million dollars in payments to international aid organizations.
In its first ruling contrary to a Trump measure, the Court voted 5 to 4 to confirm the sentence of a lower court that requires the administration to make the payments contemplated in the contracts in force.
When assuming the presidency on January 20, Trump signed a decree he ordered to freeze international assistance for 90 days.
The Supreme Magistrates say that the federal judge who ordered the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department to restore payments “must clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill.”
Conservative magistrates John Roberts, president of the Supreme Court, and Amy Coney Barrett, appointed by Trump, voted in favor of the measure with the three liberal judges of the Chamber.
With a vote of five against four, the Court ordered Judge Amir Ali to clarify his previous order that required the Republican Administration to release almost 2,000 million in aid for works that had already been carried out.
The action of the Court keeps in force the Ali temporal restriction order that had paused the freezing of spending; Ali is celebrating a audience on Thursday to consider a more lasting pause.
The majority pointed out that the Administration had not challenged the initial order of Ali, only the deadline, which won last week.
The Court asked Ali “to clarify what obligations the Government must comply with to guarantee compliance with the temporary restriction order, taking into account the viability of any compliance schedule.”
The president of the Court, John Roberts, and Judge Amy Coney Barrett, two conservatives, joined the three liberal judges to form a majority.
Judges Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the dissent of Alito.
The Trump administration has argued that the situation has changed because it has replaced a freezing of general expenses for individualized determinations that led to the cancellation of 5,800 contracts of the Agency for International Development and another 4,100 subsidies of the State Department, totaling almost 60,000 million in help.
The federal government froze foreign aid after a Trump executive order that pointed to what he called wasteful programs that do not correspond to his foreign policy objectives.
The subsequent demand alleges that the Pause infringes the federal law and has closed the financing even for the most urgent lives of lives abroad.
Ali ordered the temporary restoration of the financing on February 13, but almost two weeks later he found that the Government did not show signs of compliance and established a deadline to release payment for already completed works.
The administration appealed, describing the order of Ali as “incredibly intrusive and deeply wrong” and protesting the schedule to free the money.