WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A divided US Supreme Court handed a legal defeat to President Donald Trump on Wednesday rejecting his bid to freeze some $2 billion in foreign aid payments.

The court, in its first significant ruling on a legal challenge to the Trump Administration, voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court order requiring that payments be made on aid contracts that have already been completed.

The justices said the federal judge who ordered the resumption of payments for contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department, “should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfil”.

Conservatives John Roberts, the chief justice, and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, voted with the three liberal justices on the nine-member Supreme Court.

Judge Samuel Alito wrote a dissent that was joined by the three other conservative justices.

“Does a single district court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out [and probably lose forever] two billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic, ‘No,’ but a majority of this court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” he said.

District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order last month prohibiting the Trump Administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing” foreign assistance funds.

Trump has launched a campaign, led by his top donor Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US Government.

The most concentrated fire has been on USAID, the primary organisation for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world with health and emergency programmes in around 120 countries.

Trump has said USAID was “run by radical lunatics” and Musk has described it as a “criminal organisation” needing to be put “through the woodchipper”.