I Dared Not Even Hope The Supreme Court Would Defy Him
Joyce Vance, the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017, watched Trump’s speech Tuesday night but noted that no one had to watch the whole horrid thing “to understand where we are as a country. The state of our union… is compromised.”
One of her examples highlighted Trump’s all-present corruption: After his speech, he approached the four active Supreme Court Justices. “‘Thank you again. Thank you again,’ he says to John Roberts. Then he awkwardly slaps him on the shoulder and says, ‘Won’t forget it.’ The moment has an almost classic mob boss feel to it in context… You may recall the reporting that Roberts came to conference with the other Justices with an uncompromising stance in the presidential immunity case, unwilling to deliver anything less than the win he gave to Trump, the win that permitted Trump to give the speech and shake hands last night. The rest of the country is now paying the price for that. The Justices are supposed to protect the integrity and impartiality of the court from even the appearance of impropriety. Last night, and regardless of the truth of the matter, they permitted Donald Trump to insinuate that they are on his side, his captives… The Chief Justice’s humiliation at Trump’s hands last night was reminiscent of the moment where Trump included General Milley, in full uniform, in the walk from the White House to St. John's Church for what turned out to be a political photo op. Milley subsequently apologized, saying ‘My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.’ Milley subsequently fell out of favor with Trump. Whether the Chief Justice, who has life tenure, will take similar steps to protect the integrity of the Court remains to be seen, but seems unlikely. Milley was widely hailed as a hero in the wake of his apology.”
We’ll likely never know if it was related, but the next morning, Roberts dealt Trump a nice strong blow across the snout, part of the 5-4 majority rejecting Trump’s pause on USAID functioning in regard to foreign aid spending. Trump is being sued in dozens of cases around his unconstitutional activities since his inauguration. Let’s hope this decision is an accurate read on the others.
A trio of Washington Post reporters wrote that Amir Ali, a DC federal judge, had ordered USAID money to begin flowing last week, after the Trump administration appeared to flout an earlier ruling that said a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid was imposed too hastily and should be lifted for now. Trump “appealed the Feb. 26 deadline, saying it would take weeks longer for USAID and the State Department to resume payments for work completed before Feb. 13… A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s request to block a lower court order on foreign aid funding, clearing the way for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to restart nearly $2 billion in payments… Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in rejecting the administration’s emergency request in the high court’s first significant action on lawsuits related to President Donald Trump’s initiatives in his second term.
Wednesday’s decision was the first major test before the Supreme Court of Trump’s blitz of executive orders and firings in the opening weeks of his presidency. The administration is already facing more than 100 lawsuits challenging its actions in lower courts, so other rulings are sure to follow.
The majority turned aside arguments by acting solicitor general Sarah Harris, who called U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s deadline an “impossible order” since it gave officials only about 36 hours to comply. Harris also said the judge exceeded his authority, an argument the Trump administration has made repeatedly as the president seeks to significantly expand executive power.
…The lawsuit seeking to restart the funding was brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. They said the Trump administration had defied a temporary restraining order by Ali that initially required payments to begin again in mid-February.
The organizations said the freeze had pushed aid groups to the brink of insolvency, forced layoffs and delayed lifesaving HIV drugs and food assistance to unstable regions worldwide. They said in court filings that the government created an “emergency of its own making” by falling to comply with the TRO.
“Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court confirms that the Administration cannot ignore the law. To stop needless suffering and death, the government must now comply with the order issued three weeks ago to lift its unlawful termination of federal assistance,” the groups said in a statement after the ruling.
A senior USAID official ws placed on leave Sunday after circulating memos saying the spending freeze will result in “preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale.”
In a filing Monday, the global health groups wrote that those memos “further confirm that Defendants have taken no steps toward compliance with this Court’s February 13 TRO and, to the contrary, have actively taken steps to prevent compliance.”
The memos estimate that the pause in foreign aid could cause as many as 166,000 more malaria deaths annually, 200,000 more cases of polio and 2 million to 3 million more deaths a year from shuttering immunization programs, the filing said.
The Feb. 26 deadline Ali imposed required the government to begin paying for all humanitarian relief work completed before Feb. 13. The Supreme Court was only considering whether to delay the Feb. 26 deadline, not the merits of Ali’s broader temporary restraining order, which remains in effect until March 10. That order bars the government from freezing a wider range of payments and taking other steps to dismantle USAID.
But the global health groups are arguing that the government is ignoring the broader order. They sued after Trump, on his first day in office, paused foreign aid for 90 days. He said he wanted his administration to reevaluate the assistance to determine whether it was in line with his foreign policy agenda.
The Trump administration told Ali that it could continue to put a hold on the funds and trim USAID in spite of his temporary restraining order, based on statutes and regulations that exist separately from Trump’s first-day directive on foreign aid.
An administration spokesman has said a review of foreign aid had identified 5,800 USAID awards worth about $54 billion and 4,100 State Department grants that could be cut.
After a tense hearing on the matter Feb. 25, Ali told officials to restart funding one day later.
As long as we’re on a roll… please do take a look at this really great Dutch impression of, among other things, JD Vance (with subtitles):