The United States Supreme Court has again sided with President Donald Trump in allowing him to freeze $4bn in foreign aid from being disbursed.
The ruling on Friday, which reverses a lower court’s order, is the latest victory for the Trump administration in its effort to overhaul the money the US provides to humanitarian and other efforts abroad.
It is also the latest example of the conservative-dominated top US court granting a broad interpretation of presidential power.
The aid in question had already been approved by Congress, but its authorisation was set to expire by September 30. Trump moved to freeze the aid in a process known as a “pocket rescission”, essentially running out the clock on it being spent.
The funds had been earmarked, in part, for United Nations peacekeeping operations and democracy-promotion efforts overseas.
On September 3, US District Judge Amir Ali ordered Trump to disburse the funds before the expiration date. He warned that Trump’s move raised “a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers”.
Under the US Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse, and there is little precedent for a president clawing back funds already approved by the legislative branch. The White House has said the “pocket rescission” tactic was last used in 1977.
In court filings in the Supreme Court case, administration lawyers argued that disbursing the funding would be “contrary to US foreign policy”.
Trump has sought to overhaul US foreign aid, cutting funding to the UN and largely dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The administration has framed the cuts as an effort to rein in spending while surging funding to domestic immigration enforcement.
Critics have said the cuts undermine Washington’s soft power abroad and could threaten US long-term interests.
The 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration in almost every case it has reviewed, often adopting a wide interpretation of previously untested limits of executive power in the US.
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