by Jordan Boyd at the Federalist
Alito concluded the high bench’s ruling was ‘a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris.’
In a decision that left Justice Samuel Alito “stunned,” the U.S. Supreme Court denied President Donald Trump’s administration request to remove an order forcing the government to shell out $2 billion on foreign expenditures it tried to pause.
Shortly after Trump took office, a sole judge in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order designed to hamper the administration’s efforts to cut back the United States Agency for International Development’s abuse of American tax dollars. That same judge grew so “frustrated with the pace at which funds were being disbursed” that he used an unappealable order to force the Trump team to pay $2 billion to various organizations in just 36 hours.
In his dissent, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Neil Gorsuch, Alito deemed the case worthy of being thrown out or at least stayed due to lack of jurisdiction. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Democrat-nominated justices in affirming the DC District Court’s overreach and activism.
“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? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” Alito began.
The administration expressed concern about…
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