Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) criticized the newest Supreme Court ruling blocking President Trump’s freeze on foreign aid, calling it a missed opportunity.
“The (liberal) district judge has no authority to order @POTUS Trump to send billion of dollars oversees. The Supreme Court missed a huge opportunity to put a stop to rogue district courts interfering with executive branch operations,” DeSantis said Wednesday on X.
He argued that the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision gives a “green light” to every judge resisting Trump’s actions and allows them to “throw sand in the gears” of his executive authority.
DeSantis also pointed out that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito “is right.”
In the emergency ruling Wednesday, Alito was one of the justices who dissented, along with three of the court’s other conservatives.
The three liberal justices and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided against the Trump administration, siding with the district judge that ordered the administration to release $2 billion in foreign aid already under contract.
Alito questioned if the district court judge has the jurisdiction and “unchecked power to compel” the federal government to pay out the contracts.
“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise,” Alito wrote. “I am stunned.”
The emergency ruling came as the Trump administration worked to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Thousands of employees have been fired and payments for 90 percent of international aid contacts have been halted, resulting in several lawsuits and uncertainty around the administration’s ability to change federal spending.
Advocates for the agency say the interference will cause “preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a national scale.”
