Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration’s federal spending freeze after nonprofit groups lawsuit
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A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s administration from freezing federal grant funding across government agencies, dealing a setback to the White House’s plan to pause federal programs that don’t align with the new president’s political ideology.
US District Judge Loren AliKhan issued the two-day temporary restraining order after a brief hearing in Washington on Tuesday.
The order, which is meant to preserve the status quo while legal proceedings continue, follows a lawsuit from a coalition of nonprofit organizations and small businesses that warned in court documents that the order “will have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of grant recipients” who depend on the steady flow of grant money that they’ve already been awarded and “deprive people and communities of their life-saving services,” including health care services, LGBT+ community support and services to support small businesses.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent.
The two-page memo at issue comes from acting White House Office of Management and Budget director Matthew Vaeth and directs federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance.”
That includes “other relevant agency activities that may be implicated” by Trump’s sweeping executive orders, “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” according to the memo.
The memo sent nonprofits and public programs that support low-income families and vulnerable Americans into a tailspin Tuesday, fearing imminent cuts to disaster relief, healthcare, childcare, infrastructure support and groups that support homeless people and veterans, among a wide range of other programs that depend on federal funding, from suicide prevention to support for domestic violence survivors.
A subsequent memo from the White House to members of Congress on Tuesday sought to clarify the “pause,” which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters is meant to “ensure that all of the money going out from Washington, D.C., is in line with the president’s agenda.”
Democratic officials and legal analysts have argued that Trump’s order violates Congress’s constitutional authority and federal law that prohibits the president from blocking funds appropriated by lawmakers.
“This president has exceeded his authority, he has violated the constitution and he has trampled on a co-equal branch of government,”
New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters in a video briefing on Tuesday: “There is no question, this policy is reckless, dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional,” she said.She called the Trump administration memo “arbitrary and capricious.”
“What we are doing is protecting democracy and the rule of law,” she said.
In a press briefing in Washington, D.C., Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer called Trump’s funding freeze “a heist done on a national scale.”He called the order “lawless, dangerous, destructive, cruel.”
“It’s illegal. It’s unconstitutional,” said Schumer, speaking at a briefing that was initially intended to speak on Senate Democrats’ resolution to condemn Trump’s January 6 pardons.
Instead, lawmakers are getting “panicked calls” and “people are scrambling” to understand the scope of Trump’s order.“Virtually any organization — school, state, police office, county or community — depends on federal grant money to run its day to day operations, and they’re all now in danger,” Schumer said.
“The blast radius of this terrible decision is virtually limitless, and its impact will be felt over and over again … The only people who might be immune to this might be the ultra, ultra wealthy who they want to give a tax break to. The Trump administration is robbing Peter to pay the billionaires.”
A second imminent lawsuit from James and 22 other state attorneys general is also seeking a court order to immediately halt the administration’s order, which they say imperils billions of dollars in aid to their states.
