Trump’s aid shutdown stalled by court rulings

This was the first case involving the new administration to come before the Supreme Court, two of its six-member conservative majority siding with the court’s three liberals.

US courts reined in President Donald Trump’s early efforts to shut down foreign aid and domestic refugee resettlement programmes last week. Both the Supreme Court and a district court in Seattle issued rulings against the administration.

The US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld a lower court order that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) pay contractors for work already done and that the Trump administration’s abrupt shuttering of USAID had violated administrative law provisions that dictate how the government operates. The court directed the judge who had ordered the payments to hold a hearing to determine how the administration should comply with his decision.

This was the first case involving the new administration to come before the Supreme Court. Two of the six-member conservative majority, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sided with the court’s three liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissent from the decision that was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Coney Barrett, a practising Catholic who was nominated to the court by President Trump in 2020, faced particular criticism from his supporters, with one prominent conservative social media influencer, Mike Cernovich, labelling her “evil”. Fox News host Mark Levin said Barrett had “deceived people into thinking she was a reliable constitutionalist”.

In Seattle, District Court Judge Jamal Whitehead ordered the Trump administration to produce a “status report” detailing its implementation of an earlier injunction barring the administration from closing refugee resettlement programmes that had been established by Congress. The administration’s actions constituted a “nullification of congressional will”, Whitehead wrote.

The plaintiffs in that case were several religious groups and individual refugees. They complained that the administration was not restarting the programs, as previously ordered. When asked in court about the charge that the administration had not restarted the programme, the administration’s lawyer August Flentje said a directive had been sent out, but added: “I don’t have any further information on the details there.” Whitehead asked for the status report by 10 March.

Jesuit Relief Services (JRS) said it received notification that the State Department had lifted the suspension of funding for two of its programmes, one in Colombia and one in South Sudan, but so far, the money has not begun to flow again. The South Sudan initiative amounts to $1.9 million annually, and the Colombia programme has a $5 million budget.

JRS also was informed that the government was planning to terminate funding for its programmes in Chad, Ethiopia, India, Iraq and Uganda. It anticipated receiving approximately $18 million in government funding this year, about two-thirds of its annual budget. The rest comes from private donations.

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