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The Trump administration is appealing to the Supreme Court to keep a hold on billions of dollars in foreign aid that it had already spent.

Attorneys for the Trump administration sent an emergency request to the Supreme Court on Tuesday night, asking the justices to allow it to freeze billions of dollars in foreign aid that Congress has already approved. It sends the USAID funding case to the high court for a second time, six months after the justices first ruled on it.

The nearly $12 billion in dispute is aid specifically set aside for the U.S. Agency for International Development. It must be spent by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Trump has been quick to try to block the money. Returning to the office in January after a 150-day stint at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the president signed an executive order on his first day back in Washington, ordering the federal government to pause the disbursement of nearly all foreign aid.

The president has justified the freeze as an effort to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse” in the overseas budget, but critics say it is part of a Trump effort to control spending in a way that is largely unfettered by congressional intent. After the president’s freeze order was challenged in court, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in February to block the move. Amir Ali, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia, ordered the administration to keep the money flowing on billions of dollars in USAID grants already approved by Congress.

The Trump administration has not taken the order lying down, though. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reopened the case earlier this month, overturning Judge Ali’s decision in a 2-1 vote. “Plaintiffs lack a cause of action under the doctrine of impoundment,” wrote Judge Karen L. Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, in her majority opinion. “Accordingly, we vacate the injunction.”

But the case is not over. The Trump administration is scrambling to keep the foreign aid payments on hold. The appeals court has not yet issued a formal mandate on its decision to throw out Judge Ali’s order. That means his order, and the payment schedule he crafted, is still on the books. The administration is thus on a race to get to the Supreme Court before the full $12 billion is forced to be disbursed before Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

Appeals Court Judge Karen L. Henderson, in her Majority Opinion

Attorneys for the administration Tuesday night made a late-night emergency filing with the Supreme Court. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in his application to the court, said if the high court does not intervene, the Trump administration “will be forced to rapidly obligate” nearly $12 billion in foreign aid funds by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. Federal judges, Sauer argued, should not have been allowed to jump into the case in the first place.

“Congress did not upset the delicate interbranch balance by allowing for unlimited, unconstrained private suits,” Sauer wrote. “If anything, it only underscored its expectation that political actors, not courts, would carry out the ICA’s ‘control mechanism’ and keep any long-term rescission process within acceptable bounds.”

The plaintiffs in the case, a group of foreign aid organizations with projects that rely on USAID assistance, do not agree. They argue that the president does not have the unilateral authority to withhold funds that Congress has already appropriated. In their lawsuit, the aid groups point to the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) of the 1970s and the Administrative Procedure Act as the main statutory laws that they believe strengthen their argument.

Again, the high court has already ruled on the USAID funding dispute. It’s simply a question of when the deadline for the current appropriations will force the court to act. In a brief 5-4 ruling earlier this year, the Supreme Court first took up the question.

The Trump administration has made foreign aid spending a priority of its fiscal approach to Congress. The White House wants greater power over spending in a number of accounts that traditionally have been heavily influenced by congressional funding levels. For the aid organizations that stand to lose out on billions of dollars in USAID funding if Trump prevails in court, the case could have existential consequences.