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Attorneys representing the Trump administration on Tuesday night filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the White House to continue its efforts to block the spending of billions in foreign aid dollars that Congress has already set aside. The request will once again send the issue of funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to the justices for the second time in six months.

The battle concerns nearly $12 billion in aid set aside for USAID that must be obligated before the fiscal year ends on September 30. President Donald Trump, just days after returning to the White House in January, signed an executive order on his first day back in office, instructing the federal government to put a near-total stop on nearly all foreign aid payments being disbursed. The president at the time said the order was part of a campaign to rein in what he described as “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the United States’ overseas spending.

In response, that order was quickly put into the courts, and, in February, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, D.C., put a stop to the administration’s attempt to continue that freeze on all funding to USAID. The judge ruled the White House was required to continue releasing money for projects that Congress had already budgeted, a ruling that directed the Trump administration to restart payments on billions of dollars in USAID grants.

The Trump administration, in a partial reprieve from its current decision to leave the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the hands of the courts, quickly appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The court heard the case earlier this month, vacating Judge Ali’s injunction in a 2-1 decision. In her majority opinion, Judge Karen L. Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, ruled the plaintiffs in the case — a collection of foreign aid groups that brought suit against the administration to reinstate their grant payments — were not granted a proper cause of action under the doctrine of impoundment.

The court’s decision, while a major victory for Trump, has not yet had the formal mandate to carry out its ruling. That delay, while under appeal, has left Judge Ali’s order — and the payment schedule he outlined for the USAID grants — still in effect. As a result, the administration is now engaged in a race to the finish of the fiscal year to prevent the White House from being forced to disburse the full $12 billion set aside for USAID.

Appeal to the Supreme Court

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the emergency request with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, warning that if the court does not take action, the government will be forced to “rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds” by the September 30 deadline. Sauer continued in the filing that the government must be allowed to let the political branches “accommodate themselves without federal court interference.”

“Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” Sauer wrote in the filing. “Indeed, 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.”

Plaintiffs in the case — a collection of foreign aid groups who rely on the U.S. government’s USAID funds for their projects — take the opposite view. The groups claim, in part, that the president cannot unilaterally block the flow of funds once Congress has already appropriated the money for USAID. The organizations say the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), a law passed in the 1970s to curb presidential discretion in the federal budget, and the Administrative Procedure Act are the chief statutory grounds for their claim.

The case raises broader questions about executive power and how that power should be balanced between the White House and Congress. For Trump, a victory in the case would give the president greater ability to rescind or delay spending even after Congress has set money aside. If the plaintiffs are to win, however, that could dramatically reduce the discretion of the executive when it comes to federal spending.

The Supreme Court already ruled on a nearly identical case in a narrow 5-4 ruling earlier this year. As the fiscal year deadline looms with billions in the balance, the justices are being asked once more to enter the battle.

For Trump, the case fits into the broader context of an effort to reorient U.S. spending to his administration’s stated priorities and gain greater control over foreign assistance spending. The stakes are much higher for foreign aid groups, which are facing the existential threat of having projects already in motion around the world scaled back or completely defunded.

With the decision from the appeals court in partial limbo and the administration requesting emergency action, the Supreme Court’s handling of the case’s latest emergency appeal could determine the fate of $12 billion in foreign aid. It could also set a precedent for what kind of power presidents have in the near-term future of being able to manage and redirect congressionally appropriated funds.