“Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday night granted a respite to the Trump administration as it seeks to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid frozen, despite a judge’s order directing the administration to resume payments immediately.
Roberts’ intervention heads off the possibility of administration officials being held in contempt for failing to comply with the order from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Wednesday for the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion in unpaid invoices from foreign-aid contractors.”
…
“Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered the administration on Tuesday to pay the accumulated bills by the end of the day on Wednesday. The judge acted after finding that the Trump administration had essentially flouted earlier orders he issued requiring the State Department to lift a blanket freeze on overseas aid programs.
Rather than take steps to unfreeze that aid, as Ali had directed Feb. 13, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development found new legal rationales to keep it on hold, the judge said.
As a result, Ali gave the administration the midnight Wednesday deadline to send the payments for what officials have estimated is $2 billion-worth of unpaid work completed by aid contractors.”
LC: Basically, the Trump administration flouted the courts, the law, and the separation of powers, and Roberts bailed them out rather than forcing the issue. Under Trump, the U.S. constitutional system is deeply degrading.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/26/trump-supreme-court-freeze-00206381
MAGA-Pilled John Roberts Didn’t See This Coming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmbI4bvmUIg
“Roberts does have an underlying judicial philosophy that motivates him in many of these big cases; it just happens that this philosophy has rapidly fallen out of favor among many of his fellow conservatives.
I am referring to the philosophy of judicial deference or restraint, which, in a nutshell, is the idea that people should take their complaints to the ballot box, not to the courthouse.”
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“That deferential view is not as popular among conservatives today as it once was. But Roberts can still be seen carrying the Holmes/Bork torch.
During his 2005 Senate confirmation hearings, for instance, Roberts tried to put a positive spin on Kelo v. City of New London, a recently decided case that left many conservatives fuming, angry that the Court had shortchanged property rights in favor of a controversial eminent domain scheme. Roberts offered a different view. The Court’s ruling “leaves the ball in the court of the legislature,” he said, “and I think it’s reflective of what is often the case and people sometimes lose sight of, that this body [Congress] and legislative bodies in the States are protectors of people’s rights as well.””
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“the survival of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Roberts saved the law from destruction. Why did he do it? In their piece for The Washington Post, Vermeule and Mehta cite the Obamacare case as “an early, important example” of Roberts’ “dismaying trend of tactical decisions.” He upheld President Barack Obama’s signature law, in their view, in order to save the Court from scorching liberal criticism.
But Vermeule and Mehta’s take misses what actually happened in Roberts’ Obamacare ruling. Not only did Roberts’ borrow a page from the Holmes/Bork playbook, but he specifically invoked one of Holmes’ most notable statements about the proper role of the courts. “If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them,” Holmes wrote in 1920. “It’s my job.” Here is how Roberts put it in 2012: “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
Whether or not you agree with the chief justice’s embrace of judicial deference, it would be a mistake to downplay this important facet of his thinking.”
“The ruling was based on very narrow grounds that ducked whether or not DACA was originally legal (the Trump administration had claimed that it was not), or whether Trump was within his rights to eliminate it (there were good reasons to believe he was). Instead of answering those questions, today’s ruling focused on the question of whether Trump followed the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act when he ended DACA.”