US Supreme Court lets Trump withhold Ksh518B in foreign aid
The U.S. Supreme Court sided again on Friday, September 26, 2025, with Donald Trump, allowing his administration to withhold about Ksh518 billion in foreign aid authorised by Congress for the current fiscal year as the Republican president pursues his “America First” agenda.
The case raises questions about the extent to which a president has the authority to rescind funds that Congress has appropriated for programs that do not align with his policies. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse.
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The justices, for now, granted the Justice Department’s request to block U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order, which had directed the administration to promptly spend the aid at issue in the dispute. Ali’s decision came in a lawsuit by aid groups challenging the administration’s action.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
The court said in its unsigned order that the aid groups may lack the legal authority to bring their challenge. It also expressed concerns that ruling against Trump at this stage in the case would threaten to impair his ability to conduct foreign affairs.
The court’s liberals, in a dissent written by Justice Elena Kagan, called the ruling an affront to the constitutional principle that power is separated between the three branches – executive, legislative and judicial – of the U.S. government. They noted that the Constitution “gives Congress the power to make spending decisions through the enactment of appropriations laws.”
“If those laws require obligation of the money, and if Congress has not by rescission or other action relieved the Executive of that duty, then the Executive must comply,” Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The administration said in court papers that the money it targeted is “contrary to U.S. foreign policy,” reflecting Trump’s effort to scale back U.S. assistance abroad as part of an “America First” agenda. Trump has also moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, the main U.S. foreign aid agency.
The U.S. government’s 2025 fiscal year ends on September 30, 2025. The Ksh518 billion in aid spending at issue in the case was intended by Congress for foreign aid, United Nations peacekeeping operations and democracy-promotion efforts overseas.
Congress budgeted billions of dollars in foreign aid last year, about Ksh1.4 trillion of which was set to expire at the end of the fiscal year.
The administration sought to block the Ksh518 billion at issue in the case through a “pocket rescission”, an unusual move aimed at avoiding spending funds appropriated by Congress.
The administration has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court this year to intervene to allow implementation of Trump policies impeded by lower courts. The court has sided with the administration in almost every case it has been called upon to review since Trump returned to the presidency in January.
In an earlier iteration of the foreign aid case, the court in a 5-4 vote in March declined to let the administration withhold payment of some Ksh259 billion to aid organizations for work they already performed for the government.
