The U.S. Supreme Court has finally intervened in one of the plethora of oppositional lawsuits filed against President Donald Trump's administration to delay or deny the implementation of his policy agenda.

Wednesday evening, Chief Justice John Roberts imposed an indefinite block on the order of a Washington D.C. district judge who'd directed the Trump administration to resume making foreign aid payments by an arbitrary deadline, according to Newsmax.

All U.S. foreign aid payments were temporarily paused for review under a Day One executive order from Trump, and the district court judge sought to assert himself as above the president's authority -- only to be knocked back down by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Trump ordered a pause on all U.S. foreign aid

On President Trump's first day in office, he signed an executive order titled "Reevaluating and Realigning U.S. Foreign Aid," in which he declared that the U.S. foreign aid "industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values."

Thus, the president said, "It is the policy of the United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States."

As such, he ordered a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign aid during which all relevant department and agency heads were to immediately halt all "new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy."

Judge's order appealed to Supreme Court

Of course, a coalition of interest groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration and found favor with U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali, who'd just been hastily appointed and confirmed to the D.C. district court by former President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats in December.

According to SCOTUSblog, Judge Ali first ruled on February 13 to bar the administration from suspending any U.S. foreign aid, then followed that up with another order on February 25 that set a deadline of midnight the next day for the administration to finalize roughly $2 billion in payments to all contractors and grant recipients for work done prior to the initial order.

The administration swiftly filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court with two requests -- that Ali's order be paused before the midnight deadline and that it eventually be overturned altogether.

Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris argued that the judge's order "effectively allows a single federal district court to supervise the federal government’s contracting decisions regarding foreign aid -- an area where the Executive Branch ordinarily has the broadest discretion."

She further asserted that Ali didn't even have jurisdictional authority to hear the case or render any sort of decision, as disputes over contract payments and federal funding are supposed to be handled by the separate Court of Federal Claims.

Roberts issues a stay blocking judge's order

It would appear that Acting SG Harris' arguments were successful, at least for the first request for the Supreme Court to block Judge Ali's order before the deadline arrived at midnight on Wednesday.

With just a couple of hours to spare, Chief Justice Roberts did exactly that in a single-page signed order that said the lower court's order was "hereby stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court."

Roberts also set a deadline of his own for noon on Friday for the plaintiffs to file a response to the Trump administration's filing, suggesting the high court will move quickly to consider arguments and render a final decision on the matter.