Dem
47
GOP
53
The U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. ruled yesterday that the administration can terminate billions of dollars of foreign aid appropriated by Congress, despite there being a law explicitly forbidding the president from impounding funds appropriated by Congress. After Donald Trump froze spending by USAID in January, grant recipients sued. U.S. District Judge Ami Amir ordered the administration to immediately release all the funds. The administration appealed.
Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson (a George H.W. Bush appointee) and Gregory Katsas (a Trump appointee) ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. That seems very artificial, since Trump's decision to violate the Impoundment Act of 1974 caused them not to get funds that they would have gotten if he had not violated it. To have standing, you have to have been injured by the defendant's actions, which is obviously the case here. Judge Florence Pan (a Joe Biden appointee) dissented, saying that the president may not violate the laws just because he doesn't like them. She wrote: "The majority opinion thus misconstrues the separation-of-powers claim brought by the grantees, misapplies precedent, and allows Executive Branch officials to evade judicial review of constitutionally impermissible actions." (V)