Another Trump win: Appeals court says president CAN slash billions in USAID funds

In a 2-1 ruling Wednesday, the D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled that President Trump can move forward with slashing billions of dollars slated for foreign assistance via USAID, reversing a lower court’s preliminary injunction.

Roughly $2 billion had been held back from the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of the work of DOGE, the Department of government Efficiency.

As Fox News reports, the lower court judge had required the Trump administration to resume its payments on nearly $1.98 billion in owed funds for USAID projects previously approved by Congress, after the Trump administration froze them earlier this year. The issue has been held up in federal court for months.

Writing for the majority, Judge Karen L. Henderson, a President George H.W. Bush appointee, said that the plaintiffs lacked the proper cause of action to sue the Trump administration over its decision to withhold the funds, or what is known as impoundment.

Henderson said the plaintiffs “may not bring a freestanding constitutional claim if the underlying alleged violation and claimed authority are statutory.”

“Nor do the grantees have a cause of action under the APA because APA review is precluded by the Impoundment Control Act (ICA),” she added

Henderson was joined in the majority opinion by Judge Greg Katsas, a Trump appointee.

Fox noted that it was not immediately clear whether the plaintiffs in the case would seek to have their case reviewed en banc— or by the full panel for the Democrat-majority U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi responded on X, “In a 2-1 ruling, the DC Circuit lifted an injunction ordering President Trump to spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars on wasteful foreign aid projects.”