When President Donald Trump said there would be so much winning for this country if he was given a second shot at the White House, we’d all be sick of it he was almost right. There’s been a whole lot of winning, but it’s safe to say the American people are far from being sick of it.
The latest victory for the Trump administration comes from a federal appeals court on Wednesday that ruled to lift an injunction that required the State Department to keep making foreign aid payments, which the Department of Government Efficiency had hacked and slashed in its early days when it to a machete to USAID.
In a 2-1 vote, a panel comprised of three judges on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stated that a lower court made a mistake by ordering the administration to continue paying the the foreign aid payments that were previously approved by Congress.
Here’s more from Yahoo:
Trump imposed a 90-day pause on all foreign aid on January 20, the same day he was inaugurated for a second term in the White House. His executive order was followed by aggressive moves to gut USAID, the main U.S. foreign aid agency, including by placing much of its staff on leave and exploring bringing the formerly independent agency under the State Department.
Two nonprofit groups that receive federal funding, AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Journalism Development Network, brought litigation alleging Trump’s funding freeze was unlawful. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered the Trump administration to pay nearly $2 billion in outstanding aid to its humanitarian partners worldwide.
Writing for the two-judge majority, Circuit Judge Karen Henderson said the nonprofit groups “lack a cause of action to press their claims” and therefore failed to satisfy the requirements for an injunction. Henderson wrote that only the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, could challenge the president’s efforts to withhold foreign aid funding.
Henderson, a Bush Sr. era appointee, stated that the court who issued the initial decision didn’t address the question of whether the freeze on foreign aid signed into action by the president violated the Constitution by infringing on the spending power of Congress.
The opinion was joined by Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee to the bench.
“Circuit Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, wrote in a dissenting opinion that her colleagues were allowing the Trump administration to disregard federal law and the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution,” Yahoo reported.
“The court’s acquiescence in and facilitation of the Executive’s unlawful behavior derails the carefully crafted system of checked and balanced power that serves as the greatest security against tyranny – the accumulation of excessive authority in a single Branch,” Pan said in the opinion.
Keep the winning coming, Mr. President.
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