Lawyers for the government had said it would miss a deadline to release more than $1.5 billion in payments for past aid work and sought a late intervention from the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday paused a court-imposed midnight deadline that would have required the Trump administration to release $2 billion in frozen foreign aid, a goal that the government has claimed it is unable to meet.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court Wednesday night to lift a judge’s order requiring the federal government to pay nearly $2 billion in unpaid invoices from foreign-aid contractors in a matter of hours.