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Trump's lawyers just made a $2 billion mistake
Politics / Supreme Court
Trump’s lawyers just made a $2 billion mistake
Trump’s attack on USAID hits a snag because of a stupid mistake by his legal team.
by Ian Millhiser
Mar 5, 2025, 11:21 AM EST
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas at the conclusion of Trump’s second inauguration. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court handed down a very brief order that effectively requires the government to pay foreign aid contractors as much as $2 billion for work they’ve already completed. The Court’s order is quite narrow and is unlikely to have many implications for future cases.
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office for a second time, his administration attempted to halt funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Wednesday’s Supreme Court order is the latest chapter in ongoing litigation over whether cutting off this funding is legal. In that order, the Supreme Court leaves in place a lower court decision which forbade the administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement of appropriated foreign-assistance funds” that had been authorized as of January 19.
So this is a defeat for Trump, but it is an extremely small one. The Supreme Court’s order is only one paragraph long, and it mostly says that the Court will not second-guess the lower court because of an amateurish mistake by acting solicitor general Sarah Harris and the other Justice Department lawyers working on this case.
The Supreme Court also decided this case, known as Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, in a 5-4 vote — with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joining a dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito. That means that, despite Harris’s error, four justices nonetheless sided with Trump.
{snip}
Trump’s lawyers just made a $2 billion mistake
Trump’s attack on USAID hits a snag because of a stupid mistake by his legal team.
by Ian Millhiser
Mar 5, 2025, 11:21 AM EST
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas at the conclusion of Trump’s second inauguration. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court handed down a very brief order that effectively requires the government to pay foreign aid contractors as much as $2 billion for work they’ve already completed. The Court’s order is quite narrow and is unlikely to have many implications for future cases.
Shortly after President Donald Trump took office for a second time, his administration attempted to halt funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Wednesday’s Supreme Court order is the latest chapter in ongoing litigation over whether cutting off this funding is legal. In that order, the Supreme Court leaves in place a lower court decision which forbade the administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement of appropriated foreign-assistance funds” that had been authorized as of January 19.
So this is a defeat for Trump, but it is an extremely small one. The Supreme Court’s order is only one paragraph long, and it mostly says that the Court will not second-guess the lower court because of an amateurish mistake by acting solicitor general Sarah Harris and the other Justice Department lawyers working on this case.
The Supreme Court also decided this case, known as Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, in a 5-4 vote — with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joining a dissenting opinion by Justice Samuel Alito. That means that, despite Harris’s error, four justices nonetheless sided with Trump.
{snip}
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