Congress is barely functional these days. One reason is that Republicans control both chambers and are consciously ceding their power to President Donald Trump. Other structural factors, like gerrymandering and the constant fundraising churn, have weakened Congress’s ability to pass laws and—as shown by the ongoing shutdown—to keep the government open. But perhaps an even more significant reason is that the Supreme Court’s rulings have rendered it a largely vestigial organ in American governance. With last week’s decision to allow the Trump administration to block $4 billion in appropriated foreign aid, the conservative justices effectively transferred Congress’s spending power to Trump.

The ruling was easily overlooked, one of myriad court decisions this year related to Trump’s norm-smashing, lawbreaking rule. But it’s worth considering the ruling’s ramifications more deeply, as it represents a crippling blow to the American constitutional order—and the further empowerment of Trump as a de facto king.

Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition—I’ll refer to the case hereafter as AVAC, for brevity’s sake—is about the appropriations bill that Congress passed in the spring of 2024. Congress set aside billions of dollars for certain foreign-aid programs at issue in this case. Among those appropriations was $3.9 billion for development assistance, which the law said “shall be made available” for programs and direct relief. AVAC and other groups that regularly receive the funds sued the Trump administration to compel it to take steps to disburse the money.

A federal district court and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with those groups, ruling that the administration could not lawfully ignore Congress’s spending powers. That prompted the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to intervene once again on the shadow docket. It claimed that the ruling would infringe upon the executive branch’s core powers over foreign affairs. “To have any hope of complying in time, the Executive Branch would have to immediately commence diplomatic discussions with foreign nations about the use of those funds—discussions the President considers counterproductive to foreign policy—and notify Congress about planned obligations that the President is strongly opposing,” they complained.

The groups urged the court to leave the lower court’s order intact. They noted that “neither the injunction nor the appropriations acts require the government to use such agreements to obligate funds,” and emphasized that the lower courts had not told the Trump administration how to spend the funds, only that they must be spent before the deadline. At stake, the plaintiffs

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