“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
Trump DC Circuit judge Greg Katsas cast the deciding vote to permit the Trump Administration to continue to freeze and refuse to spend billions in needed foreign aid approved by Congress. Biden nominee Florence Pan dissented from the August 2025 decision, written by George H W Bush nominee Karen LeCraft Henderson, in Global Health Council v Trump.
What happened in this case?
On the first day of his second term in office in January, Trump announced a freeze on spending on foreign aid, including funds appropriated by Congress and designated for “food, medicine and development.” Health groups and other grantees filed suit, claiming that Trump’s actions violated his authority concerning impoundment of Congressionally approved funding. Judge Amir Ali issued a preliminary injunction against the Administration, which immediately appealed. Reports indicate that while the case has been on appeal, the Administration has done “little” to actually allocate the appropriated funds, with some 60,000 metric tons of food, some rotting, sitting in warehouses. The Administration claimed it “planned to comply” with court orders in the case.
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How did Trump judge Katsas and the DC Circuit majority rule and why is the result harmful?
As a result of the recent DC Circuit decision, no such action will occur. Trump judge Katsas cast the deciding vote in Judge Henderson’s 2-1 ruling that reversed the district court and allowed Trump to continue to freeze the billions in foreign aid approved by Congress. The majority maintained that only the Comptroller General could bring suit to enforce violations of the Impoundment Control Act and that the health groups and others did not have standing to sue.
Judge Pan strongly dissented, calling the majority ruling ‘as startling as it is erroneous.” She explained that the Supreme Court and the DC Circuit have stated “in no uncertain terms” that the President “has no authority to disobey duly enacted statutes for policy reasons,” as he has done here. Based on a careful review of the record and past precedent, she concluded, the majority opinion “misconstrues” the grantees’ separation of powers claim, which makes the majority’s claim about the Comptroller General’s authority irrelevant. Instead, she went on, the majority “misapplies precedent, and allows Executive Branch officials to evade judicial review of constitutionally impermissible actions.” The majority’s “acquiescence” in Trump’s “unlawful behavior”, she went on, “derails the carefully crafted system of checks and balances” in our Constitution that has previously been our “greatest security against tyranny.”
The case is not over, since the ruling applied only to the preliminary injunction issue and the grantees have already announced that they will seek review of the ruling from the full DC Circuit. The damage done by Trump, however, has been enormous; one study estimated that the cuts “could lead to up to 14 million additional deaths,” including four to five million “children under the age of 5.” The ruling also illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.