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Attorneys for the Trump administration submitted an emergency application to the Supreme Court late on Tuesday, asking justices to keep the government from being forced to pay billions in foreign aid that Congress had already approved. The legal move will send the question of money for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) back to the justices for the second time in six months.

Trump administration officials have fought hard to block Congress from releasing nearly $12 billion in foreign aid for USAID. The money was already marked for the USAID grants, but legally, it must be spent by Sept. 30 before the end of the fiscal year. Within hours of returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum ordering the federal government to stop most foreign aid spending. Trump characterized the order as part of an effort to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse” in foreign government spending.

However, that order faced legal challenges in court almost immediately. In February, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, D.C. ruled against the Trump administration’s effort to block spending on grants that Congress had already approved. Ali’s order, which forced the Trump administration to start making payments again on billions of dollars in USAID grants, requires the administration to release the foreign aid money that Congress had already set aside for those projects.

The Trump administration was not done with the case yet. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit took up the case again earlier this month. The judges in the appeals court voted 2-1 to overturn Ali’s injunction against the Trump administration. In the ruling, George H.W. Bush appointee Judge Karen L. Henderson wrote for the majority in the decision, siding with the Trump administration. Henderson stated that the plaintiffs, who in this case were the foreign aid groups that were trying to have their USAID grants restored, did not have legal standing to sue the government.

Judge Henderson wrote in her order for the majority of the D.C. Circuit that the foreign aid groups had no valid “cause of action” as described under the doctrine of impoundment. Though the appeals court ruled in the Trump administration’s favor, the court has yet to issue a formal mandate. A mandate is what makes a court’s ruling official, and without a mandate, the court’s rulings technically don’t take effect until it is issued. This means that Judge Ali’s ruling and the payment schedule he set up in his order for foreign aid spending are technically still in place.

Therefore, the Trump administration is now racing against time to prevent being forced to pay the full $12 billion on foreign aid grants before the fiscal year ends at the end of September.

Emergency Appeal and Legal Arguments

In the emergency application filed to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration’s U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that if the justices do not act, the federal government will be forced to “rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds” by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Sauer wrote in the filing on Tuesday that the issue is not to be resolved by the federal courts. Instead, the matter, Sauer says, should be left in the hands of the political branches of government. The U.S. Solicitor General, Sauer, wrote: “Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits.” He went on to say that “any lingering dispute about the proper disposition of funds that the President seeks to rescind shortly before they expire should be left to the political branches, not effectively prejudged by the district court.”

The plaintiffs in the suit, who are a collection of foreign aid groups that have projects funded by USAID grants, claim just the opposite. The plaintiffs have argued that the president does not have the legal authority to stop the money, which Congress has already appropriated for spending by the government. The plaintiffs have pointed to the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) of the 1970s, which was created in that decade as a way to rein in executive branch attempts to withhold or limit federal spending. The plaintiffs are also using the Administrative Procedure Act as the main statute used for the legal basis of their argument.

The Supreme Court has already weighed in on a similar case to the current one. The high court issued a narrowly written 5-4 decision in the case earlier in the year. The justices will now once again be asked to decide on the case, with billions of dollars and the fate of a variety of foreign aid programs once again hanging in the balance.

The Fight in Context

The case is a continuation of Trump’s broader push to change the focus of U.S. spending and his efforts to gain more control over foreign aid. Trump’s focus on foreign aid in particular goes back to the time he was running for the presidency.

During his time as president, Trump and his administration have gone back and forth over issues on the authority to rescind or delay spending that Congress has already approved. The Trump administration wants to be able to control U.S. spending more. This case and the next round of legal decisions that come out of it could decide the way that the federal government handles foreign aid moving forward, as well as having an impact on the balance of power between the White House and Congress.