Politics

Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday night temporarily froze an order by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that would have required the Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion in foreign-aid reimbursements for work that has already been done. In a brief order issued just a few hours before the midnight deadline for the Trump administration to make those payments, Roberts signaled that the court is likely to move quickly on the Trump administration’s request to lift the order by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, as he instructed the plaintiffs in the case to respond to that request by noon on Friday.

The dispute stems from an executive order issued by President Donald Trump last month declaring that foreign-aid funds “are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.” Therefore, Trump directed, going forward, foreign-aid funds should not be disbursed “in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President,” and he instructed agencies to “immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries” and the organizations and contractors that implement those projects to give the agencies time to conduct a review of their foreign-aid programs.