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Attorneys for the Trump administration on Tuesday night asked the Supreme Court to let the administration block billions in foreign aid spending Congress had already set aside. The emergency application, filed just before midnight, returns the USAID funding fight to the high court for the second time in six months.

The Justice Department’s request would freeze nearly $12 billion in aid that has been sitting in a funding “reservoir” for USAID, with Congress mandating the funds be disbursed before the fiscal year ends on September 30. Trump has moved quickly since returning to the White House in January, signing an executive order on his first day back in office to direct the federal government to freeze nearly all foreign aid payments. The president has portrayed the move as part of an effort to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” in overseas spending.

In a court filing on Tuesday night, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said, “unless this Court grants the requested stay, the Government will be forced to rapidly obligate some $12 billion in foreign-aid funds” before the fiscal year deadline. Sauer also said the administration expected to comply with the court-ordered payment schedule by the time a formal mandate issued from the appellate ruling, but warned that “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.”

Congress, the administration argued, did not “tip the scales in favor of private suitors by barring plaintiffs from ‘maintain[ing] . . . any action for the recovery of a payment’ that has already been made” by the executive branch, Sauer wrote in the filing. He added that “Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits.”

The plaintiffs in the case, a coalition of foreign aid groups that rely on USAID funds for their programs and projects, say the opposite. They say the president has no authority to cancel funding that Congress has already appropriated for a given fiscal year, and that the two key statutes they are relying on — the Impoundment Control Act (ICA), which was passed in the 1970s as a check on executive discretion in federal spending, and the Administrative Procedure Act — provide them with a private cause of action, or cause of action, in court to enforce the relevant laws.

In the meantime, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has not issued a formal mandate on the case, leaving Judge Ali’s injunction in place while the administration continues to appeal. As a result, the administration is racing against the clock to avoid being forced to disburse the $12 billion before the fiscal year ends on September 30.

A separate Supreme Court decision came this spring after the appeals court twice declined to issue a stay to halt the aid payments, in a move that analysts said amounted to a rebuke of the judges who sat on the case. A decision from the high court could come at any time, but the fiscal deadline looms. The Justice Department’s request would freeze nearly $12 billion in aid that has been sitting in a funding “reservoir” for USAID, with Congress mandating the funds be disbursed before the fiscal year ends on September 30. Trump has moved quickly since returning to the White House in January, signing an executive order on his first day back in office to direct the federal government to freeze nearly all foreign aid payments. The president has portrayed the move as part of an effort to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” in overseas spending.