The US Supreme Court has proven its mettle in its first important confrontation with the Trump administration — barely. By a 5-4 vote, the court upheldan order by a federal judge requiring the government pay some $2 billion owed to contractors for work they’d completed for the US Agency for International Development. The decision effectively repudiated President Donald Trump’s unlawful executive order that froze all foreign aid spending. The court’s four most conservative justices dissented. But Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices to stand up for the rule of law.
The background to the court’s decision ...