The Justice Department filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court on Monday, asking for the Trump administration to be permitted to maintain a freeze on $4 billion in foreign aid.
The filing to the high court on its emergency docket came after the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to pause a lower court’s ruling that ordered the government to spend billions of dollars in congressionally-approved foreign aid by the end of the month.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in the petition to the high court that the district court is attempting to force the spending of funds President Donald Trump is seeking to cancel via a “pocket rescission.” A pocket rescission is when a president sends a rescission request to Congress at the end of the fiscal year so that the funds will expire before the legislature can consider the request.
“While proposed rescissions are pending, Presidents do not spend the funds, for obvious reasons: it would be self-defeating and senseless for the Executive Branch to obligate the very funds that it is asking Congress to rescind,” Sauer wrote. “Yet the new injunction would force the Executive Branch to start obligating those funds at breakneck speed to meet the September 30 deadline, even as Congress is considering the rescission proposal and before its 45 days to do so elapse.”
Sauer said the timeline to spend the $4 billion in foreign aid funds is impractical, arguing “it is untenable for the government to now try to scramble to comply as judicial review is rapidly unfolding and the foreign-relations and inter-branch costs of compliance are escalating rapidly.”
“A stay of this late-breaking do-over injunction is abundantly warranted,” Sauer added.
The groups suing the Trump administration over the frozen foreign aid funds issued their own brief on the request on Monday, arguing against a stay and claiming that enacting an administrative stay would effectively impound the funds at the center of the dispute.
“There is no irreparable harm that the government will suffer in the brief period while this Court considers the stay application. Conversely, an administrative stay may effectively moot this appeal and result in the impoundment of billions of dollars in funds, given the government’s representations that immediate preparatory steps are necessary to be able to obligate funds by the deadline,” the filing said.
FEDERAL JUDGES LASH OUT OVER SUPREME COURT JUSTICES’ EMERGENCY ORDERS
The Monday request to the Supreme Court by the Justice Department came on a busy day for the high court’s emergency docket.
The Supreme Court lifted a lower district court’s restrictions on immigration raids in southern California and allowed the Trump administration to fire a Democrat-appointed FTC commissioner while the high court considers the case. Both actions were significant interim wins for the Trump administration.