Updated Feb 26, 2025 - Politics & Policy

Supreme Court pauses order on Trump administration foreign aid payments

Rebecca Falconer

Demonstrators, some of them former PEPFAR and USAID employees, protest to demand that Congress stand up to President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" and reinstate lifesaving programs in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill on February 26, 2025 — Demonstrators, some of them former PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and USAID employees, demand that Congress intervene in Trump administration cuts during a protest in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday night temporarily paused a lower judge's order that would've required the Trump administration to restart $1.9 billion in foreign aid payments by midnight.

Why it matters: In the first case the Supreme Court has intervened in since the Trump administration moved to overhaul the federal government and make drastic budget cuts, Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay and requested aid groups that sued the administration to respond by 12 noon Friday ET.

Last week, the high court declined to immediately intervene in a lower court decision to block the administration from firing Hampton Dellinger, the head of independent watchdog agency the Office of Special Counsel, postponing its decision until the lower court's ruling expired.

Driving the news: U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali had given the administration until 11:59pm Wednesday to resume payments for contracts and grants related to foreign aid work contracted by the State Department and USAID.

Acting solicitor general Sarah Harris asked the justices to vacate the midnight deadline, which she called an "arbitrary timeline."
Justice Department lawyers said in a filing earlier Wednesday that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals moved to dismiss that "regardless whether this Court stays the district court's order, agency leadership has determined that the ordered payments 'cannot be accomplished in the time allotted by the' district court."
Two groups, the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, are suing the administration after President Trump signed a Jan. 20 executive order pausing U.S. foreign aid amid a wider, DOGE-led cost-cutting overhaul of the federal workforce and agencies.

Go deeper: Trump administration to cut 92% of USAID foreign aid contracts

Editor's note: This article has been updated with more details on the leadup to the order signed by Chief Justice John Roberts.

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Supreme Court pauses order on Trump administration foreign aid payments

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