Justice Alito Says He Is ‘Stunned’ By Majority’s Failure To Crack Down On ‘Judicial Hubris’ Targeting Trump Admin

Justice Samuel Alito wrote Wednesday that he is “stunned” by the majority’s failure to call out a lower court’s “judicial hubris” in the case considering the Trump administration’s foreign aid spending freeze.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court declined to block U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order requiring the government to pay $2 billion in foreign aid. Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily paused the order last week after Ali gave the Trump administration just a day to resume the payments.

Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, slammed his colleagues in a dissent for neglecting their “duty to ensure that the power entrusted to federal judges by the Constitution is not abused.”

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito questioned. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”

Alito wrote that the district court’s order was “too extreme a response.”

“A federal court has many tools to address a party’s supposed nonfeasance,” Alito wrote. “Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them.”

Nonprofits sued the Trump administration in early February over its 90-day freeze on foreign aid funding. Ali issued a temporary restraining order Feb. 13 blocking the freeze and then issued an order Feb. 25 giving the administration until the end of the next day to comply.

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that the “arbitrary timeline” of the order threw “what should be an orderly review by the government into chaos.”

“That mandate creates an untenable payment plan at odds with the President’s obligations under Article II to protect the integrity of the federal fisc and make appropriate judgments about foreign aid—clear forms of irreparable harm,” the government wrote in its emergency application.

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