The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to allow the Trump administration keep frozen billions of dollars in foreign aid that is set to expire next week, the latest turn in a lengthy legal saga over the congressionally appropriated funds.  

The emergency intervention came at the administration’s urging to lift a lower court’s ruling ordering it to spend $4 billion in funds approved for aid programs by Sept. 30, its expiration date. 

The unsigned order indefinitely extends the pause on U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s injunction that was put in place earlier this month by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles emergency appeals from the nation’s capital by default, as the high court considered the appeal. 

The court gave a brief explanation of its reasoning, saying that the government “at this early stage” made sufficient showing that the lawsuit is precluded under the Impoundment Control Act and that the plaintiffs can’t force the government to pay up.  

The court also said that the asserted harm to Trump’s foreign policy powers appeared to outweigh potential harm faced by the respondents.  

“This order should not be read as a final determination on the merits,” the order read. “The relief granted by the Court today reflects our preliminary view, consistent with the standards for interim relief.” 

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson that the application raises “novel issues fundamental to the relationship between the President and Congress.” 

Solicitor General D. John Sauer had argued that letting Ali’s injunction stand would force the administration to obligate the money at “breakneck speed,” even as Trump has proposed cancelling the aid to Congress. 

The president’s proposal is known as a “pocket rescission,” a rare and legally murky bid to avoid spending appropriated money by asking Congress to cut the budget late into the fiscal year. It means the 45-day window lawmakers have to act on the request could be cut short by the budget year’s end, leaving the funds to expire. If lawmakers reject the request, the funds must be released. 

Kagan wrote that the “stakes are high,” pinning down the central issue as the allocation of the power of the purse between the president and Congress. She criticized the majority for granting any emergency relief with the weighty issues at play.

However, the administration’s outrage amounts to “the price of living under a Constitution that gives Congress the power to make spending decisions through the enactment of appropriations laws,” she argued. 

“If those laws require obligation of the money, and if Congress has not by rescission or other action relieved the Executive of that duty, then the Executive must comply,” the justice wrote. “It cannot be heard to complain, as it does here, that the laws clash with the President’s differing view of ‘American values’ and ‘American interests.’ 

“That inconsistency, in other words, is not a cognizable harm, to be weighed in the equitable balance,” she continued. “It is merely a frustration any President must bear.” 

Roberts’s temporary order only paused Ali’s injunction as it pertained to the funds subject to Trump’s Aug. 28 rescission proposal to Congress. 

Global health and aid groups challenging Trump’s efforts to freeze the funds rejected the notion it would interfere with Congress’s decisionmaking to make the government pay up. 

“Any emergency is of the government’s own making, as it has been under an obligation to spend the appropriated funds for specified purposes since at least March 2024,” the plaintiffs’ response to the government’s emergency application read.  

Trump paused about $30 billion in foreign aid in one of his first acts back in the White House, prompting the groups to swiftly file suit.  

About $10.5 billion of the total $30 billion is set to expire Sept. 30, but the government planned to obligate $6.5 billion of those funds by the deadline, Sauer said. That left the roughly $4 billion in play. 

“The President can hardly speak with one voice in foreign affairs or in dealings with Congress when the district court is forcing the Executive Branch to advocate against its own objectives,” Sauer wrote in the government’s request for a stay.  

It’s the latest chapter in the convoluted legal battle over Trump’s efforts to slash foreign aid.  

Though the plaintiffs only sued in February, the case reached the Supreme Court for the first time in March. At that time, the justices rejected the president’s request that nearly $2 billion in blocked foreign aid payments remain frozen in a 5-4 decision.  

Last month, a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judges found the challengers did not have standing to bring their lawsuit, striking down Ali’s ruling ordering the administration to spend billions in aid work. 

That ruling was later amended, which left a pathway for the plaintiffs to ask for a preliminary injunction on different legal grounds. After that, Ali granted a new preliminary injunction, the subject of this appeal.  

The Trump administration’s appeal of that ruling yielded a 2-1 decision from the appeals court in the plaintiffs’ favor, prompting the emergency application to the justices. Roberts issued his administrative stay earlier this month. 

Updated at 5:24 p.m. EDT