Trump Hijacked Congress’s Money, and Won -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

If anyone truly still believes the United States is a nation governed by laws and not men, then the case of Global Health Council v. Donald J. Instead, it is stark evidence that the American executive now feels free to flout the Constitution in broad daylight and that a Supreme Court, supposedly our last bulwark against similar strokes of tyranny, simply stood by.

It began simply enough and ended in tears. Trump froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid disbursements on January 20, 2025 with an executive order and issued far, ranging directions for the restructuring of USAID, the agency that has constituted the backbone of global health programs ranging from HIV/AIDS treatment to emergency humanitarian assistance over decades. As presented in the text box below, embracing a range of political/economic priorities, these are called scientifically sensible policy reforms. This was never just an unpopular foreign policy decision. It was the usurpation of Congress’s constitutionally given “power of the purse”, the unalienable right to dictate how federal currency moves in which direction.

Global Health Council and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging violations of separation of powers, Administrative Procedure Act obligations, and ultra vires conduct by USAID and State Department. In an initial glimmer of hope, District Judge Amir H. Ali granted a temporary restraining order in February 2025 suspending the freeze on existing assistance, and again in March ordered the administration to release nearly $2 billion in overdue payments . Then, the Trump administration partly disregarded that ruling, an act of contempt for the judiciary in any functioning democracy.

The real drama, if you want to call it thatwas on appeal. In August 2025, the D.C. Circuit struck the district court’s preliminary injunction on a maddeningly technical basis: while the plaintiffs had standing to sue (perfectly in accord with Kaufman), there was no “cause of action” under the Impoundment Control Act because only the Comptroller General as a plaintiff can bring suit for violations of that statute. This is cynical legal sleight of hand, rescuing an act of executive overreach by concealing substance with procedure.

The apex arrived on 26 September, 2025. In a 6-3 order, the Supreme Court denied an emergency request by the Trump administration to freeze $4 billion in foreign aid that Congress had already appropriated and which was set to expire four days (Sept. 30) later. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson filed a staunch dissent saying the stakes were too high to be decided by the Court’s emergency “shadow docket” and without full briefing or oral argument.

Get on with what this ruling actually is. It was never merely a budget fight. It is about billions of the world’s poorest people who will die because this man in the White House has decided to suspend the law and with it, trillion dollars donations for global health programs. A Supreme Court decision that gives a president “temporary license” to hold back money Congress has lawfully appropriated does more than dent some guardrails, it tells the executive branch illegal impoundment is within sight, but only if they act fast enough and big enough to get out of reach before the courts react.

The case is not yet finished. Yet the precedence has now been set: the American executive branch knows that it can use lives as a hostage, as constitutional blackmail and rather than stopping this extreme overreach, its highest court left the doors wide open.

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia