On Wednesday night, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily halted a lower court order, which would have required the Trump administration to make approximately $2 billion in foreign aid payments that it had stopped as part of a broader attack on the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

It’s important not to read too much significance into Roberts’s temporary order in this case, known as Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. Judges often have the power to hit “pause” on a case while they take more time to figure out how the law requires them to act — indeed, many of the lower court judges who’ve halted Trump administration policies relied on similar authority when they did so. It’s likely that Roberts issued Wednesday’s order to give himself and his colleagues more time to consider the questions presented by the AIDS Vaccine case.

But the current dispute before the Supreme Court is significant for at least two reasons. The first: it is the first Trump-era case involving impoundment, a legally dubious claim that the president may cancel federal spending that is mandated by laws enacted by Congress. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 places very strict limits on the president’s ability to second-guess Congress’s spending decisions — typically the president must seek permission from Congress before canceling spending.

But Trump has nonetheless claimed the power to do so without legislative approval.

The second reason is that, in a document Trump’s Justice Department recently filed in the Supreme Court, Trump’s legal team seems to reveal how they plan to get around the Impoundment Control Act and similar rules requiring the president to obey federal spending laws.

Significantly, the Trump administration does not argue — at least not yet — that the president has the inherent constitutional authority to impound funds. Indeed, the DOJ’s recent filing does not even argue that Trump’s decision to halt USAID spending is legal. Instead, the Trump........

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