Supreme Court rejects Trump’s foreign aid freeze, but the freeze continues

Colin Stewart is a 45-year journalism veteran living in Southern…

Foreign aid freeze puts millions at risk of starvation and HIV.

Demonstrators in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5 protest against the shutdown of the U.S. foreign aid agency USAID. (Demetrius Freeman photo courtesy of The Washington Post)

The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to overturn a lower-court order that the Trump administration must release over $1.5 billion to $2 billion in frozen foreign aid payments.

But that ruling doesn’t mean that the foreign aid will actually be disbursed. Two reasons:

The Supreme Court sent the issue back to Judge Amir Ali of the Federal District Court in Washington State to “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill.” Ali had issued a temporary restraining order on Feb. 13 prohibiting U.S. officials from ending or pausing payments of appropriated money under contracts that were in place before Trump took office.
America’s ability to resume aid payments is in doubt, because the foreign aid agency USAID has been largely dismantled, left with just a skeleton crew of anti-foreign aid activists and largely supplanted by bureaucrats in the State Department who have been unwilling or unable to comply with a directive to resume life-saving funding.

The foreign aid freeze has threatened the lives of starving residents of impoverished nations and 20 million women, children and LGBTQ people who were receiving HIV-fighting antiretroviral medications funded by the American foreign aid agency USAID.

The Washington Post reported on the background of today’s ruling:

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The lawsuit seeking to restart the funding was brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. They said the Trump administration had defied a temporary restraining order by Ali that initially required payments to begin again in mid-February.

The organizations said the freeze had pushed aid groups to the brink of insolvency, forced layoffs and delayed lifesaving HIV drugs and food assistance to unstable regions worldwide.

NPR reported:

While the court’s order is only the first of what promises to be a series of lengthy legal dramas, the argument in this case boiled down to this: The Trump administration argued that the lower court order’s deadline, giving mere days for the government to comply, was not feasible. Moreover, the abrupt Feb. 25 order had “thrown what should be an orderly review by the government into chaos” because it did not provide the government sufficient time to discern which payment obligations are “legitimate.” The administration also suggested that the lower court had ventured outside the bounds of its constitutional authority.

“The AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition countered that the emergency the Trump administration complained of was “an emergency of its own making.” The Coalition noted that the government was initially ordered to resume this funding two weeks ago, but took no steps to comply with that order. Only after the temporary restraining order had almost run its course did Judge Ali issue his Feb. 25 “minute order” to force the government to comply. Finally, the Coalition maintained that the government was merely being asked to return to the “status quo” by honoring its existing contracts.