February 27, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Supreme Court Renews Trump’s Foreign Aid Freeze Pending Hearing. Who Controls Foreign Policy? The President Or District Courts?

By Robert Romano

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Feb. 26 temporarily reinstituted President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 freeze of foreign aid pending a hearing of the case by the Supreme Court, lifting a U.S. District Court order that the payments continue in spite of Trump’s freeze.

At issue are $2 billion of payments that were to be sent out but never were. The plaintiffs, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and other organizations, claim that the payments were for services already rendered.

Under the Jan. 20 Trump executive order, departments and agencies were to stop all “new obligations and disbursements”: “All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order.”

The review of foreign aid was ongoing at the time of the U.S. District Judge Ali Amir for the District of Columbia’s Feb. 13 ruling ordering that the payments resume.

In filing to the Supreme Court, Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris noted that the district court was essentially ordering the State Department to write a blank check without any chance to review any of the payments in question: “The order does not limit its abrupt deadline to respondents’ own invoices or letters of credit, instead apparently compelling the government to pay requests from any organization that has asked for such funds. Those requests are not even in the record, nor are the underlying instruments. The timing of the order does not allow the government to conduct payment-integrity review to ensure that payments are made only for obligations that are legitimate or supported by necessary documentation—much less deny improper payments. The timing of the order does not even let the government ascertain whether the sums are actually due or owing under the terms of the instruments.”

Harris added, “The timing of the order is particularly difficult because, based on the district court’s other orders, the government has been expediting review of thousands of foreign-aid grants and contracts to decide which contracts are in the interests of the United States to terminate and which should be retained.”

In other words, the district court’s ruling would just obligate the State Department to pay whoever asks for money, regardless if it was a qualified or legal expense, or if it was properly vetted.

Harris warned the Supreme Court that the district court’s ruling “effectively allows a single federal district court to supervise the federal government’s contracting decisions regarding foreign aid—an area where the Executive Branch ordinarily has the broadest discretion.”

And here is the key point. Since Jan. 20, former President Joe Biden — whose administration approved the contracts in question — is no longer in office, and President Donald Trump now is. Under Article II, Sec. 1 of the Constitution, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

And Presidents absolutely set American foreign policy, whether in negotiating new treaties or in terminating old ones—see George Washington’s 1793 Proclamation of Neutrality to obviated the U.S. military treaty with France when it went to war. Other terminated treaties have included the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty among others.

Are we to believe that the President can terminate treaties — which required two-thirds of the Senate to approve — including those that established military alliances, but that he cannot terminate foreign aid to countries who might no longer be considered allies by the President?

There is a separate question about whether the payments were for services already rendered, but as Solicitor General Harris noted that the U.S. has sovereign immunity from such a case as the district court was not even the proper venue, stating that the federal Court of Claims was the proper venue, “the district court lacked any jurisdiction even to issue this order dictating contractual payments by a date certain to remedy purported contractual breaches. The federal government has sovereign immunity from this type of breach-of-contract claim everywhere but the Court of Federal Claims.”

Here, Harris cited 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1346(a)(2), which explicitly states, “the district courts shall not have jurisdiction of any civil action or claim against the United States founded upon any express or implied contract with the United States or for liquidated or unliquidated damages…”

Meaning, the district courts slapping injunctions on spending freezes related to federal contracts are likely overstepping their jurisdiction. If there are any claims, they are to be directed to the U.S. Court of Claims, but even then, those still must be squared with Article II’s vesting clause of executive power in the President, particularly as it relates to national security and foreign policy.

If the President says not to continue a treaty or to send foreign aid, that might be the final word on the subject.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/supreme-court-renews-trumps-foreign-aid-freeze-pending-hearing-who-controls-foreign-policy-the-president-or-district-courts/

GOP-led states embrace DOGE’s return-to-office move for government workers

By Sean Salai

Several Republican-led states are in step with President Trump’s push to make government workers return to the office or forfeit their jobs.

Republican officials in Oklahoma, Utah, Ohio and Wisconsin have been revoking or rethinking state workers’ allowances to stay home since Mr. Trump won reelection in November and signaled his intent to reduce the federal workforce through a Department of Government Efficiency.

The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a network of state lawmakers that launched a Government Efficiency Coalition to coordinate with DOGE, said the return-to-office push is part of a broader effort to audit the “size and effectiveness of the public-sector workforce.”

“For nearly five years, many state governments have been paying for maintenance on office buildings that have remained largely empty,” said economist Jonathan Williams, the legislative council’s president. “That’s taxpayer money flying right out the window, and it gives state-level DOGE efforts a significant area to investigate.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed an executive order this month for state workers to return to their offices by March 17. He cited a need for Ohio’s employees “to effectively, efficiently and accountably serve its citizens at all times.”

“There is no right to work remotely whenever an employee feels like doing so, and many employers, including the government of Ohio, are correct in having rules to ensure workers are as productive as possible,” Rea Hederman, an economist at the conservative Buckeye Institute in Columbus, said in an email. “Expect more states to roll back the permissive work-from-anywhere policies that have been prevalent since the pandemic, as have many private-sector businesses.”

As the incoming Trump administration announced its plans for DOGE in December, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, ordered workers to return to the office by Feb. 1. He said the “conditions necessary for nontraditional work environments” ended once the World Health Organization canceled the COVID-19 public health emergency in May 2023.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican who once described himself as a “televangelist for telework,” said last month that he was rethinking a 2021 executive order he signed promoting telework. That order claimed remote work saved taxpayers millions of dollars.

“Remote work has its place, but so does being together,” Mr. Cox told reporters.

Democrats and government labor unions have resisted the return-to-office mandates, arguing that working from home improves government savings and efficiency.

Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled Legislature heard testimony on a proposal this month that would send most state employees back to the office four days a week. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has threatened to veto any return-to-office legislation that reaches his desk.

“I think it’s important for us to say we want to get the best people working for the state of Wisconsin possible, and sometimes that will mean that they will work from home,” Mr. Evers said in a December interview with Milwaukee’s WISN-TV.

Virginia, Idaho and Nebraska tried to reduce telework before November’s election, with mixed success.

The Nebraska Association of Public Employees, a union of more than 8,000 state workers, has filed legal challenges against Republican Gov. Jim Pillen’s November 2023 order that they work full time in the office without negotiating new contracts.

“These legal actions are important to all state employees because there is an important legal question about when the state must negotiate the terms and conditions of employment,” the union said in September.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, ordered the commonwealth’s employees to justify their remote work or return to the office by July 2022.

Rick Manning, president of the Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government, estimated that county workers are the only ones still working from home.

“Overall, it’s a productive trend,” said Mr. Manning, an official in the George W. Bush Labor Department and a Trump transition team member for that agency. “Jobs overseeing complex government programs require in-person collaboration that makes for a significantly more efficient and better-operating government than building your day around Zoom meetings.”

He noted that Republican-led states allow exceptions for the handful of taxpayer-funded jobs, including social media managers, data entry specialists and information technology consultants, that qualify for legitimate remote work exceptions. Still, he urged officials to evaluate whether workers adequately fulfill their duties.

“If you’re told by your employer to come to work and you refuse, it may indicate you don’t care much about your job,” Mr. Manning said. “If people aren’t willing to do simple things, I don’t know that we can expect them to do hard things.”

In Idaho, the state government implemented a policy limiting remote work to 20% of the workforce, which started last spring.

“The shift back to in-office work has become a political issue, even though it shouldn’t be,” said Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of Idaho-based jobs board RedBalloon. “Bringing workers back to the office ensures greater transparency and efficiency, which benefits both taxpayers and the workforce.”

Mr. Youngkin and other Republican leaders criticized the Biden administration for failing to get federal employees back to the office, resulting in unanswered phone calls and sluggish government services.

Since returning to the White House in January, Mr. Trump has signed an executive order for all federal workers to work from their offices. He said those who work from home spend only a fraction of their time on government work.

He has also fired probationary federal workers and applauded DOGE consultant Elon Musk’s threats to fire others who don’t return to their desks.

“Starting this week, those who still fail to return to office will be placed on administrative leave,” Mr. Musk wrote Monday on X.

To view online: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/feb/26/gop-led-states-embrace-doges-return-office-move-government-workers/

Urge Congress To Suspend Impoundment Control Act Through Dec. 2026 and Authorize DOGE Cuts!

To view online: https://www.votervoice.net/AFLG/campaigns/121532/respond