This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump suffered a setback at the Supreme Court Wednesday when justices issued a 5-to-4 ruling rejecting a request by the Trump administration to keep frozen $2 billion in foreign aid. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in the majority. The case was brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and other groups who are seeking to unfreeze foreign aid that had already been appropriated by Congress.
In its one-paragraph ruling, the court instructed federal district Judge Amir Ali to, quote, “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill,” unquote, in order to comply with a temporary restraining order the judge issued on February 13.
Judge Ali has faced numerous threats over the past month after he ordered the Trump administration to restore the $2 billion in funding. In late February, Trump adviser Elon Musk called for his firing, writing, quote, “When judges egregiously undermine the democratic will of the people, they must be fired,” unquote. Several users on the Musk-owned social media platform X have also posted death threats against Judge Ali. Reuters reports Musk has lambasted Ali and other judges in more than 30 posts since the end of January, calling them “corrupt,” “radical” and “evil.”
We’re joined in Washington, D.C., by two guests. Mitchell Warren is executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, one of the groups that sued the Trump administration. He’s a longtime advocate for expanding access to HIV prevention. Among his many other roles, he’s a member of the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board. He’s in Washington along with Nicolas Sansone, an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, which brought the lawsuit.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Nicolas, let’s begin with you. Just explain the judge’s ruling — the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday and what this means.
NICOLAS SANSONE: So, the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday essentially vindicates the district judge’s power to enforce his own orders. We brought this lawsuit to challenge the executive’s unlawful blanket termination and suspension of virtually all foreign assistance projects throughout the world. That was an abuse of executive power, and it caused immediate harm across the globe to our clients, to American businesses that provide foreign assistance, and, of course, to the global constituencies of those organizations. So we asked the district judge to enter a temporary restraining order, essentially putting the foreign assistance freeze on hold while the litigation continued and while we pressed our legal claims that the freeze was an abuse of executive power.
After the judge entered this temporary restraining order requiring the executive branch to lift the foreign assistance freeze, the executive took no steps toward compliance, restoring none of the funding, renewing access to no grant money and restarting none of the projects upon which communities worldwide depend. So, after nearly two weeks of noncompliance, the court entered an order requiring the government to take specific steps towards complying with the temporary restraining order by a date certain. That’s the order that the government appealed and that the Supreme Court upheld yesterday, essentially requiring the government to stop flouting the temporary restraining order and immediately lift the foreign assistance freeze while this litigation continues.
AMY GOODMAN: Nicolas, can you give us some examples of some of the programs that got defunded, but also explain? It’s not only that Congress appropriated the money, right? It is that the money, in a lot of cases, it’s paying back for services already rendered.
NICOLAS SANSONE: That’s absolutely correct. And Congress has earmarked funds for particular sorts of projects. So, our client, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, who you’ll hear from in a moment, they do essential work on HIV and AIDS prevention research, the sort of work that Congress has expressly directed the executive to put foreign assistance funding towards. So, whatever policy disagreements the current State Department has with the work that Congress has directed it to fund, the executive doesn’t have the authority to override congressional directives in that way. Another one of our clients, the Journalism Development Network, they do global work protecting journalists who are exposing corruption in governments worldwide. Our clients have had to substantially cut down their operations, terminate staff, and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.
The scale of the foreign assistance funding freeze has been catastrophic and unprecedented. Food has been left rotting in warehouses that would otherwise be distributed to victims of famine. Children have been left without essential medicines. In some cases, lives have been lost. Aid workers have been stranded in hostile areas without access to emergency medical care. And there has been no justification for this dramatic action by the executive branch, that, again, we maintain was an abuse of its constitutional authority.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Justice Alito, in his dissent, calling the majority’s decision — that’s the Chief Justice John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett — stunning, arguing a single judge shouldn’t have the power to compel $2 billion in payments?
NICOLAS SANSONE: What’s stunning here is the extent of the executive branch’s failure to comply with a clear court order requiring it to lift the foreign assistance freeze. To be clear, there is nothing unusual about judges ordering a likely unlawful practice — there was a judicial determination that this foreign assistance freeze was likely unlawful. And it is very par for the course for judges, once they have made that initial determination, and where they have determined that irreparable harm is likely to be suffered if the unlawful practice is not paused while the litigation continues, it’s very common for judges to enter temporary restraining orders requiring a return to the status quo before an unlawful practice was instituted, while the case sort of makes its way through the courts.
The only reason that this case found itself at the Supreme Court at this stage is the fact that the government took no steps to comply with the temporary restraining order, requiring the district judge to sort of put his foot down and say, “Look, there has been no evidence that you have taken any action to lift the foreign assistance freeze, so I’m going to require you to make certain funds available by tomorrow. You’ve had two weeks already to do this, and you haven’t.”
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring in Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, or AVAC, also on the board of the PEPFAR organization, which was, PEPFAR, of course, a major project of President George W. Bush. Can you talk about the work you do and what this funding freeze has meant for you and for people around the world?
MITCHELL WARREN: Thank you so much for having me, and really appreciate you bringing light into what’s happening.
This is not just a legal case. This is about foreign assistance, that for 60 years has been the backbone of U.S. diplomacy. Every president has made decisions about what that policy might look like, but it’s been a core tenet of every administration of all political stripes that foreign assistance matters.
PEPFAR, as you described, for 20 years, first founded by President Bush, has been the most lifesaving program imaginable in global health. And AVAC is just one small part of it. We’re a small advocacy organization focused on HIV prevention. And right now what’s most alarming is that we stand in one of the greatest moments in HIV prevention, as PEPFAR and other partners in countries around the world are looking at the introduction of new prevention technologies. And that’s a lot of the work that we do at AVAC, in really trying to make sure those products get developed and then get delivered to prevent new infections.
And so, projects around the world were stopped a month ago, and for no good reason and with no clear strategy. No one’s arguing that an administration can’t make policy changes, and of course that’s in their purview. But you do it in a way that follows process and follows the law. And that’s all that we’re talking about here. If you want to make changes, describe them, articulate them, and work together with the implementing partners and with host countries to ensure that people have healthy lives and that countries and economies stay robust. And what is remarkable is PEPFAR has demonstrated for 20 years that it is truly the project that makes America and the world safer, stronger and more prosperous — precisely what this administration describes as their policy. So, it’s working in complete opposition to what they’re actually saying and, clearly, acting in a capricious, vindictive way.
AMY GOODMAN: An official at the Desmond Tutu HIV Center is warning the funding cuts to HIV projects could lead to half a million deaths in South Africa over the next 10 years, Mitchell?
MITCHELL WARREN: Exactly. You know, PEPFAR, over 20 years, has helped to save — get 20 million people on antiretroviral therapy that saves lives and prevents infections. Millions of people’s lives have been saved. And, you know, remember, George Bush started this with bipartisan support, because people were dying. And PEPFAR has ensured that people are living and economies are growing. And the United States benefits from that. South Africa has been the epicenter of the epidemic. I worked there throughout the 1990s setting up the first HIV prevention programs at the beginning of the epidemic, when HIV and AIDS was actually a death sentence. Now it’s not.
But if we don’t allow drug supplies to happen, as Nicolas was describing, there are many ramifications, not just in HIV, with food rotting, but also medicines in shipping containers destined for countries around the world. Even if the new administration wants to stop that program, you’ve already made the investment. You’ve spent the money, appropriated by Congress, to procure those antiretrovirals, to deliver them, and now people can’t actually access them. And people will die. And it’s not just about HIV, tuberculosis, malaria. We have an issue — you know, the executive orders coming in January were concurrent with an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. So, you’re seeing the inability to do surveillance of outbreaks and to deal with emerging pandemics, as well as HIV. And so, you’re seeing ramifications left, right and center. We may not see the numbers tomorrow. You know, people won’t die tomorrow without antiretroviral therapy. But if they fall out of therapy, they will get sick. They’re more likely to transmit the virus, and they will die. And we’ll see those numbers coming up in the months and years ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: During his address to Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump highlighted several foreign aid cuts already made, including this one.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Eight million dollars for making mice transgender. This is real.
AMY GOODMAN: In fact, it’s not real. Rolling Stone and other outlets have documented that the funding Trump seems to have referred to was actually not for transgender mice, but for transgenic lab mice used in medical studies for cancer and asthma research. Mitchell Warren, if you can talk about the lies that have been perpetrated? I mean, going through to when Elon Musk was challenged, when his child was on his shoulders in the Oval Office, talking about when he had said that $50 million was going to Gaza for condoms, when told, no, in fact, that is a complete lie, that isn’t true, that there were condoms going to the Gaza region of Mozambique. He said, “OK,” something like, “we all make mistakes.” But what this is meant to do when they continually ridicule, mock what they call corrupt programs that they’re cutting, what in fact is happening, Mitchell?
MITCHELL WARREN: What in fact is happening are lies to actually create a mythology amongst their supporters that foreign aid is somehow evil. You know, before January 20th, I would expect that 99% of Americans didn’t even know what USAID was. Most people have now heard that acronym, but they don’t actually know what it does. And for 60 years, it has provided immunization, disease surveillance, antiretroviral therapy, bed nets, condoms in lots of places that are urgently needed to prevent infections and to prevent unintended pregnancy. And now we see these lies that are entire fabrications.
And when I heard that speech and those lies and I heard the laughter coming from our elected officials in Congress, I was appalled. And these are members of Congress who historically, across both parties, have supported foreign assistance, and to be laughing at what the president is making up. You know, one of the things that was also remarkable, he criticized the investment of circumcision in Mozambique. And it showed the complete ignorance of the science. Voluntary medical male circumcision for 20 years has been proven to be one of the most effective forms of HIV prevention. It was actually studied with funding from the National Institutes of Health, a great example of NIH leadership in science. We’ve shown that circumcision prevents HIV infection by upwards to 70%. And now we have a president of the United States who mocks it as if it’s a joke. It has saved lives. It’s one of the most high-impact, cost-effective interventions. So, there are lies, as you described, with transgenic mice that actually help advance the development of vaccines, as well as cures. It is just a willful ignorance, a willful disregard of science and an intentional effort to undermine democracy, frankly, because when you undermine science, when you undermine evidence, you’re undermining democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, you’re a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, George W. Bush’s project. Has the former president weighed in?
MITCHELL WARREN: The George Bush Institute, that is named for him in Texas, has been a staunch supporter of PEPFAR and continues to explain what PEPFAR is doing, why it is the most data-driven, why it is the most evidence-based intervention we’ve seen, honestly, in the history of global health. And I hope — I hope — that Democrats and Republicans, including Marco Rubio — it’s important to note that Secretary of State Rubio, when he was Senator Rubio, was one of PEPFAR’s biggest supporters. So we need to remind people what they said, what they believed, and to stop this willful disregard of congressional authority and of science.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Nicolas Sansone, you’re back in court today, right? You’re back in the judge’s court. And what is going to happen? What is the course of events now? Is it possible that even after the Supreme Court ruling, that the president, that Elon Musk won’t have the $2 billion in funds unfrozen?
NICOLAS SANSONE: The court’s order is clear. It’s not optional at this point. The government must comply. And today in court, we expect to make that case to the district judge, and we expect there to be clear steps laid out as to exactly what the government must do to lift this unlawful funding freeze while our case continues, and when the government must act by. So, we will be speaking with the judge and with the government counsel this afternoon, and we expect to know more about what circumstances on the ground are going to look like after that.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll continue to follow this, of course, Nicolas Sansone of Public Citizen Litigation Group and Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.
Coming up, internal memos show senior USAID leaders have warned Trump appointees that closing the agency will lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Stay with us.
