Judge Ali Is A Threat To Democracy

By Rich Lowry on Mar 6, 2025

It's good to be king -- or a district judge.

Judge Amir Ali has no power to appropriate money or spend it. Neither does he have any authority over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. If he wanted to have any of these things, he's in the wrong line of work as a federal district judge.

Ali is not letting that stop him in his escalating conflict with the Trump administration over USAID spending, though.

The judge won a modified victory in the Supreme Court, which opted not to stop him from trying to force the Trump administration to spend money that it has currently paused.

In a dissent expressing shock and dismay that the court is letting Ali proceed on his current course, Justice Samuel Alito described the crux of the matter as the question, "Does a single district court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?"

The Supreme Court said, "Yes," or, in effect, "Don't bother us with this now although we realize the matter may come back up to us soon enough."

The root of the dispute is a suit by NGOs over Trump's suspension of USAID funding. The president ordered the pause on grounds that the "foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values" and "serve to destabilize world peace."

Since the president has vast power over our foreign policy, this a judgment that is unquestionably his to make, although the good judge doesn't see it that way.

There are many complicated legal details, but the basic picture is that Ali didn't consider the Trump pause rational and so ordered the administration to pay up for work that had been done by Feb. 13.

In a ploy to try to make his ruling unappealable, Ali said that he was issuing a temporary restraining order, even though he obviously wasn't. Such orders are meant merely to hold things in place pending further court action. Instead, Ali was ordering the government to affirmatively do something (disburse funds) that would have irreversible consequences.

There's nothing temporary about spending $2 billion. Once it is spent, it is ... spent.

Worse, Ali wanted the money disbursed on an absurdly rapid timetable of 36 hours and for his ruling to apply to contractors who aren't part of the suit.

On top of this, the proper venue for a case involving the government not making good on contracts is not Ali's court, but the Court of Federal Claims.

In short, it was Ali who was the picture of lawlessness here. If nothing else, he should get credit for abusing his power with extraordinary rapidity. A progressive activist, he was only confirmed as a judge by the Senate last November, and by a narrow 50-49 margin.

Nevertheless, he's now a major actor in the making of U.S. foreign policy. This is why it pays to go to law school.

All three branches have their constitutional bounds, and the judiciary exceeding its power is no better than any other branch doing the same. Yet, when they are ruling against Trump, it doesn't matter if judges are highly cautious sticklers for the rules, or completely out-of-bounds partisan adventurers -- they are portrayed as paragons of the law. All that matters is the black robes and the animus to Trump.

Implicitly responding to Elon Musk's posts on X criticizing judges who've made adverse rulings -- including a call for Judge Ali to be impeached -- the American Bar Association issued a statement imploring people to stand up for the rule of law. That's always good advice, but it's not only the president and his allies who need to hear it.

When judges are unmoored by the Constitution or statute, they become unelected political actors who themselves are a threat to our system of government.

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(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)