Voting 5-4 the US Supreme Court has rejected President Donald Trump’s quest to freeze $2 billion in foreign aid payments.
A lower Court had ordered Trump to make the payments on aid contracts that have already been completed.
The justices said the federal judge who ordered the resumption of payments for contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department “should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfil”.
Conservatives John Roberts, the chief justice, and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, voted with the three liberal justices on the nine-member Supreme Court.
Trump has launched a campaign led by his top donor Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swathes of the US government.
The most concentrated fire has been on USAid, the primary organisation for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world with health and emergency programmes in around 120 countries.
Trump has said USAid was “run by radical lunatics” and Musk has described it as a “criminal organisation” needing to be put “through the woodchipper”.
