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The conservative majority has been largely receptive to the administration’s claims of executive power.
By Ann E. Marimow
Reporting from Washington
Aug. 27, 2025, 10:02 a.m. ET
The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court for the second time to allow the government to freeze, for now, billions of dollars in foreign aid.
In an emergency request, the administration asked the justices to lift an order from a federal judge that requires the administration to spend funds Congress already budgeted for foreign aid.
The administration has moved aggressively to seize control of the executive branch and claimed broad authority to halt federal dollars appropriated by Congress for programs at odds with President Trump’s agenda.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has generally been receptive to the administration’s claims, handing the president a series of technically temporary victories that have nevertheless had broad practical consequences. In emergency rulings, the justices have allowed Mr. Trump to fire independent agency regulators, cut grants to teacher training programs and remove protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
But in an earlier iteration of the foreign aid case in March, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, along with the three liberal justices, rejected Mr. Trump’s request to freeze nearly $2 billion while the case continued in the lower courts.
Lower court judges have issued a series of conflicting rulings as to whether Mr. Trump can refuse to spend the funds.
