On Wednesday, President Trump received a victory from a federal appeals court. According to the court, the administration is still able to freeze or stop spending billions of dollars that Congress had set aside for overseas aid.
Judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled, by a vote of two to one, that the plaintiffs in the case, a collection of international relief organizations, lacked the legal standing to file a complaint.
The President implemented the foreign aid freeze on his first day of office in January.
The funds in question include almost $6 billion for HIV and AIDS programs through 2028 and around $4 billion for global health initiatives through September.
President Trump has referred to foreign aid expenditures that address poverty and disease outbreaks abroad as “wasteful.”The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administered and handled over $30 billion in worldwide health and development initiatives yearly, was abolished by the administration.
U.S. district judge Amir Ali issued a preliminary injunction against the funding freeze in March after a group of international aid groups that received foreign aid grants sued the administration on February 10. The groups claimed that the administration had illegally frozen funds that Congress had authorized.
The justices’ panel did not decide whether the terminations of funds appropriated by Congress were constitutional, but Wednesday’s decision overturned the lower court’s preliminary injunction.
“The grantees have failed to satisfy the requirements for a preliminary injunction in any event,” George H.W. Bush appointment Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson wrote. Judge Gregory G. Katsas, a Trump appointment, joined her.
Joe Biden appointed Judge Florence Pan to write the dissenting opinion.
“The court’s holding that the grantees have no constitutional cause of action is as startling as it is erroneous,” Pan stated. “The majority holds that when the President refuses to spend funds appropriated by Congress based on policy disagreements, that is merely a statutory violation and raises no constitutional alarm bells.”
The decision was denounced in a statement by Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), one of the assistance organizations involved in the case contesting the freeze.
“This government has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for international aid and indifference to the lives of people in the US and abroad. In a broader sense, the majority opinion renders the court complicit, and this ruling—which we will appeal to the fullest extent possible—further undermines Congress’s role and duties as an equal body of government,” Warren stated.
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