The Justice Department filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court Wednesday asking to block a midnight deadline for the Trump administration to unfreeze nearly $2 billion in blocked foreign aid payments.
A federal judge ordered the administration to do so after finding it had not complied with his previous ruling to restart the flow of foreign aid contracts and grants as litigation continues.
“The court’s 11:59 p.m. 30-some-hour deadline thus moved all the goalposts,” acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the motion.
“It is not tailored to any actual payment deadlines associated with respondents’ invoices or drawn-down requests, or anyone else’s. And it has thrown what should be an orderly review by the government into chaos,” she continued.
The administration has filed a similar request with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but that court has not yet acted on the request, with only a few hours until the deadline.