Among the top priorities in President Donald Trump's administration is the reduction and elimination of wasteful federal spending, particularly in the realm of foreign aid and when that spending doesn't align with the president's foreign policy agenda.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave Trump the go-ahead on an effort to withhold from spending around $4 billion in foreign aid funds that were earmarked by Congress to be spent before the end of the fiscal year later this month, according to the Daily Caller.

A Democrat-appointed federal judge had ordered the Trump administration last week to spend those withheld funds before the end of September, but the Supreme Court effectively suspended that order for the time being with a temporary administrative stay.

Judge orders administration to spend withheld foreign aid funds

Late last month, the Trump administration announced that it had made a rare but legal move known as a "pocket recission," in which Congress was notified -- albeit with little or no time to respond -- that roughly $4 billion in foreign aid appropriations would be withheld and not spent for the intended purposes before the end of the fiscal year.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ruled last week that the administration must spend the funds that Congress had allocated for foreign aid before time runs out, which prompted an emergency appeal for the Supreme Court's intervention from Solicitor General John Sauer.

Judge Ali's order "raises a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers," Sauer asserted.

"To have any hope of complying in time," the top attorney continued, "the Executive Branch would have to immediately commence diplomatic discussions with foreign nations about the use of those funds -- discussions the President considers counterproductive to foreign policy -- and notify Congress about planned obligations that the President is strongly opposing."

Months-long battle between the administration and Judge Ali

SCOTUSblog reported that the Trump administration and Judge Ali have been butting heads over proposed cuts to foreign aid spending since an initial round of recissions were challenged in February.

In fact, this is now the third time that the administration has sought the Supreme Court's intervention against a ruling from this particular judge, with the first coming in February, which resulted in an order for clarification, followed by a separate appeal in August that was later withdrawn following belated action on an earlier appeal by the D.C. Circuit Court.

At that time in August, SG Sauer complained that Ali had "installed" himself "as supervisor-in-chief of further spending and recissions proposals, issuing a preliminary injunction ordering the government to make available for obligation tens of billions of dollars in appropriated foreign aid funds and to spend many billions of dollars by September 30, before those appropriations expire."

Yet, just days later, after the judge ruled that the administration had discretion in "how" congressionally appropriated funds were spent but not "whether" the funds must be spent, Sauer returned to the high court with his warning about the "grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers" that Ali's order posed.

The attorney noted that the judge, "not the government, has created a new emergency with little time left on the clock by issuing a new injunction based on new theories that are even more flawed than their predecessors," and argued that it was incumbent upon the Supreme Court to "reject such brinkmanship, avert further damage to the separation of powers, and stay this injunction as soon as practicable."

Administrative stay granted

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court responded with a one-page order from Chief Justice John Roberts, which stated that Judge Ali's September 3 order was "hereby partially stayed for funds that are subject to the President’s August 28, 2025 recission proposal currently pending before Congress pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court."

Roberts further ordered the opposition groups in the underlying case to file a response to the administration's application no later than the end of the day on Friday