The Supreme Court today rejected the Trump administration's request to freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid for work that's already been done.

The administration asked the court to block a lower court ruling ordering the government to release the funds.

It remains unclear when the aid will now be distributed.

John Yang is here now to unpack all of this for us.

So, John, what exactly did the

Supreme Court do here? Well, you remember on day one, the president froze foreign aid spending.

Groups that got that money went to court. And a district court judge here in Washington, a Biden

appointee named Amir Ali, said that money for projects that had been completed had to be sent out the door.

The Trump administration went to the Supreme Court wanting to block that order, and today,

the Supreme Court said no. It was a five to four vote. The majority included Chief Justice

John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative Trump appointee to the bench.

And I'd like to tell you why they did this, but I can't because there was no explanation,

as is usually the case, when you're dealing with an emergency application, and it's an unsigned

order.

It's part of what's called the shadow docket.

What about the dissenting justices? What did they say in this case?

The dissent written by Justice Alito. He was joined by Thomas Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

He essentially said that the district court judge vastly overstepped his bounds.

He wrote, today the court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of

judicial hubris and opposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers. So in terms of the freezing

or unfreezing of the funds, what happens now? Well, it doesn't mean that the money starts going out the door

immediately. The justices sent it back to the district court, back to Judge Ali, for him to decide which programs get unfrozen and when.

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