Chief Justice Allows U.S. to Continue Freeze on Foreign Aid Payments

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Wednesday night handed the Trump administration a victory for now in saying that the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department did not need to immediately pay for more than $1.5 billion in already completed aid work.

A federal judge had set a midnight deadline for the agencies to release funds for the foreign aid work. The Trump administration, in an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court just hours before the deadline, said the judge had overstepped his authority and interfered with the president’s obligations to “make appropriate judgments about foreign aid.”

Chief Justice Roberts, acting on his own, issued an “administrative stay,” an interim measure meant to preserve the status quo while the justices consider the matter in a more deliberate fashion. The chief justice ordered the challengers to file a response to the application on Friday, and the court is likely to act not long after.

In another aggressive move on Wednesday to carry out President Trump’s Day 1 directive to gut U.S. spending overseas, lawyers for the Trump administration said that it was ending nearly 10,000 U.S. Agency for International Development and State Department contracts and grants.

The administration actions stunned diplomats and aid workers already reeling from mass firings at U.S.A.I.D., which funds food, health, development and democracy programs abroad, and which the Trump administration has systematically dismantled. A former senior U.S.A.I.D. official said the cuts account for about 90 percent of the agency’s work and tens of billions of dollars in spending.