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Attorneys for the Trump administration on Tuesday night filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to prevent the government from spending billions of dollars in foreign aid that Congress had already approved. The request returns the USAID funding fight to the high court for the second time in six months.

The emergency request would have immediate practical consequences: The nearly $12 billion in funding at issue is meant to be distributed to foreign aid projects by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. President Donald Trump has acted swiftly to restrain the outflow of foreign aid since he returned to the White House in January, signing an executive order on his first day in office that ordered the federal government to pause nearly all foreign aid disbursements. The president justified the move as part of an effort to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” in U.S. foreign spending.

The order was swiftly challenged in court. In February, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, D.C., issued a nationwide injunction barring the administration from cutting off money for foreign aid projects that had already been approved by Congress. Judge Ali’s decision forced the Trump administration to resume payments on billions of dollars in USAID grants.

The Trump administration has not accepted the ruling. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to take up the case, which it ultimately decided 2-1 to vacate Judge Ali’s injunction. Writing for the majority, Judge Karen L. Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, said that the plaintiffs in the case — several foreign aid groups seeking to have their grant payments restored — had no adequate legal basis to sue the administration. Henderson said that the groups lacked a proper “cause of action” based on what is known as the doctrine of impoundment.

The appeals court’s ruling is a major victory for Trump. But the D.C. Circuit has yet to issue a formal mandate to implement the ruling, a process that could take weeks. That has left Judge Ali’s injunction — and the payment schedule laid out by his decision — technically in place. That means the administration is now on a ticking clock to avoid being forced to disburse the full $12 billion in foreign aid before the fiscal year ends at the end of September.

Emergency Request to the High Court

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who filed the emergency request with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, argues in the filing that if the court does not act, the Trump administration “will be required to rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds” by Sept. 30. Sauer added that it is “not for the federal courts to resolve” the dispute.

“Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” Sauer wrote in the filing. He continued: “Any lingering dispute about the proper disposition of funds that the President seeks to rescind shortly before they expire should be left to the political branches, not effectively prejudged by the district court.”

Plaintiffs, which include a coalition of foreign aid groups whose projects are dependent on USAID funds, say otherwise. In their view, the president does not have the authority to rescind funds that Congress has already earmarked for specific projects. The ICA, a 1970s law that was meant to check the president’s discretion over federal spending, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act, are the primary statutory bases for the plaintiffs’ arguments.

In its previous ruling in the case earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a narrow 5-4 ruling. The justices will now again be asked to intervene in the high-stakes fight, with billions of dollars and a president’s discretion over foreign spending at stake.

The White House’s policy on foreign aid forms part of a larger effort to fundamentally transform U.S. spending priorities and to wrest greater control over the foreign assistance programs that the U.S. government funds around the world. The fight in court, for aid groups, represents an existential one, with projects in the field that have already been approved, dependent on the release of the promised funds. If aid groups win, programs already underway could be scaled back or shuttered entirely.

The Supreme Court’s consideration of the latest emergency appeal from the Trump administration, and its handling of the politically fraught case more generally, could also have a major impact on the broader funding landscape and set the stage for more expansive limits on presidential power over congressionally approved spending.