Supreme Court’s USAID Ruling Sends an Important Message
The court sides with the rule of law and hands President Trump a big defeat in one of their first confrontations.
A symbol that still means something — for now.
Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North AmericaThe US Supreme Court has proven its mettle in its first important confrontation with the Trump administration — barely. By a 5-4 vote, the court upheld an order by a federal judge requiring the government pay some $2 billion owed to contractors for work they’d completed for the US Agency for International Development. The decision effectively repudiated President Donald Trump’s unlawful executive order that froze all foreign aid spending. The court’s four most conservative justices dissented. But Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices to stand up for the rule of law.
The background to the court’s decision is an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office. The Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid order called for a “90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.”