Washington (AP) – Divided Court of Appeals Judge It ruled on Wednesday The Trump administration can suspend or terminate funds allocated to Congress for foreign aid.
Two of three judges in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that grant recipients challenging the freeze did not meet the requirements for a provisional injunction to restore the flow of money.
In January, on the first day of his second term at the White House, Republican President Donald Trump issued an executive order to the State Department and the US International Development Agency to freeze the freeze on foreign aid.
US District Judge Amir Ali after a group of grant groups appealed to challenge the order. Ordered government Congress will release the full amount of foreign support that it has allocated for the 2024 budget year.
A majority of the appeals courts partially vacated Ali’s order.
Judges Karen Lecraft Henderson and Gregory Cassas concluded that the plaintiffs do not have a valid legal basis for the court to hear their claims. The ruling was not a merit in whether the government unconstitutionally infringed Parliament’s right to spend.
“The parties also challenge the scope of the district court’s relief package, but there is no need to resolve it… because the grantee did not meet the requirements for the interim injunction in any case,” Henderson wrote.
Judge Florence Pan, who opposed, said the Supreme Court held that the president “is not an uncertainty condition” if he had no authority to violate the law on policy reasons.
“But that’s what the majority today can enable,” Pan writes. “In this way, the majority opinion misunderstands the claims of human rights segregation raised by the grantees, misuse precedents, and allows executives in the executive branch to avoid a judicial review of conduct that is not constitutionally acceptable.”
Funds in question include nearly $4 billion for USAID to spend on global health programs and more than $6 billion for HIV and AIDS programs. Trump portrays foreign aid as wasteful spending that doesn’t align with his foreign policy goals.
Henderson was appointed to court by Republican President George HW Bush. Cassas was nominated for Trump. Pan has been nominated for Democratic President Joe Biden.
