Judge demands suspension be lifted from USAID payments

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

The judge was born in Canada to Iranian(?) parents. He emigrated to the US a few years ago and was appointed by Biden a couple of weeks after the 2024 election.

The way he wrote his order presented so many loopholes to punch through, it really speaks to his ineptitude and lack of qualifications to hold his position. You'll see that in just how well Rubio dismantled these bogus awards while still complying.


https://youtu.be/Pt2rXHWGv1I

[SVPete]

Has the Chief Justice Finally Seen Enough?

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/02/27/chief-justice-enough-n3800239

Has the Supreme Court finally gotten fed up with courts setting executive-branch policies? Based on last night’s intervention by Chief Justice Supreme Court John Roberts, the answer could be yes.

At the very least, Roberts appeared annoyed with the circumstances of the order to restart foreign-aid payments. Federal judge Amir Ali had ordered Donald Trump to comply by midnight last night, but Roberts said not so fast, pal:

Chief Justice John Roberts late Wednesday granted the Trump administration's request to put on hold a lower court order that required it to pay an estimated $2 billion in foreign assistance funds for State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development projects by midnight Wednesday.

Roberts, who oversees requests for emergency relief arising from cases in the District of Columbia, acted alone in halting the decision from a federal district judge issued Tuesday. The judge, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, gave the State Department and USAID until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday to pay its bills to contractors for work that had been completed before Feb. 13. The Trump administration had earlier in the night asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the dispute involving frozen foreign assistance funds.

Roberts gave the State Department and USAID contractors until noon Friday to respond to the Trump administration's request.

What makes this especially interesting is the sequence. The Trump administration had appealed Ali’s decision to the appellate circuit, but they dragged their feet on handling the emergency request. With the deadline only a few hours away, the White House went over the heads of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Normally, the Supreme Court would decline to intervene ahead of the appellate court, but Roberts may have smelled a rat in how the emergency request was being handled.

If so, what happened next probably confirmed it for Roberts:

If I understand all this maneuvering:

* Judge Ali (Canadian, of Arabic heritage, law degree from Harvard) ordered Trump (metonym here and in what follows) to pay $2B on various State and USAID contracts within 30 hours;

* Trump appealed the order;

* The appeals court did not respond timely;

* Trump asked the USSC to intervene;

* After Trump's USSC request, the appeals court, absurdly, ruled that Ali's order could not be appealed;

* CJ Roberts stayed Ali's order and ordered the relevant contractors to respond to the USSC by Friday; the stay appears to be open-ended, in the sense that no ending date is specified nor date given by which Roberts (or the USSC?) will issue an order.

The possibilities of Robert's/USSC's order range from Trump being ordered to make the payments, unreviewed (which is what Trump wants to do, review the contracts and services provided), to the appeals court getting a wrist-slapping order to give the matter proper review as subject to appeal, to Trump being allowed to conduct the full review he wants done. It is possible that during the time delay of all this wrangling, the review may be completed, with decisions made as to which payments should and/or should not be made.

Of, course, I am not a lawyer, don't play one on TV, and all my understandings and opinions above may be utter nonsense.