US Supreme Court rejects Donald Trump’s US$2b foreign aid freeze

• The US Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s bid to freeze $3.5 billion in foreign aid payments.
• The court voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court order requiring payments for completed aid contracts.
• Trump has said USAid was “run by radical lunatics”.

A divided US Supreme Court has handed a legal defeat to President Donald Trump, rejecting his bid to freeze some US$2 billion ($3.5b) in foreign aid payments.

The court, in its first significant ruling on a legal challenge to the Trump administration, voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court order requiring that payments be made on aid contracts that have already been completed.

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The upheaval of U.S. foreign aid is impacting a company in Rhode Island that makes a product called Plumpy’Nut that helps treat 5 million malnourished children each year. Plumpy'Nut is basically fortified peanut butter. The product’s ingredients — peanuts, milk powder, soy whey — all come from U.S. farmers. The company, Edesia Nutrition, is still owed $22 million by the U.S. government and just learned that all their shipment companies that deliver Plumpy'Nut to among the poorest places in the world - like Haiti and Sudan - had their contracts with the U.S. government abruptly ended this week. Many clinics and hospitals are in the same boat. And the company says even if they get paid the $22 million and restart their production, those shippers, hospitals and clinics are also essential in getting Plumpy'Nut to the kids who need it. #NPR

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The justices said the federal judge who ordered the resumption of payments for contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department “should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfil”.

Conservatives John Roberts, the chief justice, and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, voted with the three liberal justices on the nine-member Supreme Court.

US President Donald Trump, who addressed Congress yesterday, has launched a campaign to downsize or dismantle swathes of the US government. Photo / AFP

Judge Samuel Alito wrote a dissent that was joined by the three other conservative justices.

“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] 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” he said.

District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order last month prohibiting the Trump administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing” foreign assistance funds.

Trump has launched a campaign led by his top donor Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swathes of the US government.

The most concentrated fire has been on USAid, the primary organisation for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world with health and emergency programmes in around 120 countries.

Trump has said USAid was “run by radical lunatics” and Musk has described it as a “criminal organisation” needing to be put “through the woodchipper”.

-Agence France-Presse