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The Justice Department sought the high court's intervention after U.S. District Judge Amir Ali and that Congress would have to approve the decision to withhold the funding.

The federal appeals court in Washington declined to put Ali's ruling on hold, but Chief Justice John Roberts on Sept. 9. The full court indefinitely extended Roberts' order.

The court has previously cleared the way for the Trump administration to from hundreds of thousands of migrants, , and .

The legal victories, while not final rulings, all have come through emergency appeals, used sparingly under previous presidencies, to fast-track cases to the Supreme Court, where decisions are often handed down with no explanation.

Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in a letter Aug. 28 that he would not spend $4.9 billion in congressionally approved , effectively cutting the budget without going through the legislative branch.

He used what’s known as . That’s a rarely used maneuver when a president submits a request to Congress toward the end of a current budget year to not spend the approved money. The late notice essentially flips the script. Under federal law, Congress has to approve the rescission within 45 days or the money must be spent. But the budget year will end before the 45-day window closes, and in this situation the White House is asserting that congressional inaction allows it to not spend the money.

The majority wrote in an unsigned order that Trump’s authority over foreign affairs weighed heavily in its decision, while cautioning that it was not making a final ruling in the case.

But that was cold comfort to the dissenters. “The effect is to prevent the funds from reaching their intended recipients — not just now but (because of their impending expiration) for all time,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Trump administration has made deep reductions to foreign aid one of its hallmark policies, despite the relatively meager savings relative to and possible damage to America’s reputation abroad as people lose access to food supplies and development programs.

The high court's decision “further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order," said Nick Sansone, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group who represented the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition in the case. “It will also have a grave humanitarian impact on vulnerable communities throughout the world.”

Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge last month that another $6.5 billion in aid that had been subject to the freeze would be spent before the end of the fiscal year next Tuesday.

The case has been winding its way through the courts for months, and Ali said he understood that his ruling would not be the last word on the matter.

“This case raises questions of immense legal and practical importance, including whether there is any avenue to test the executive branch’s decision not to spend congressionally appropriated funds,” he wrote.

In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out an earlier injunction Ali had issued to require that the money be spent. But the three-judge panel did not shut down the lawsuit.

After Trump issued his rescission notice, the plaintiffs returned to Ali’s court and the judge issued the order that’s now being challenged.

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