A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s effort to freeze as much as $3 trillion in federal grants and loans, siding for now with activists who said the order was illegal.
Judge Loren AliKhan’s decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the activist group Democracy Forward. The group argued that the order, issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), violated the first amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs the executive branch’s rule-making authorities. The judge said she would render a more permanent decision February 3rd.
The suit was separate from another case filed in Providence, Rhode Island, after the ruling by attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia, which also seeks to thwart President Donald Trump’s effort to freeze funding pending his administration’s review of whether the spending comported with his priorities.
Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward’s president and chief executive, praised the initial ruling. “We are grateful for this administrative stay to allow our clients time to sort through the chaos created by the Trump administration’s hasty and ill-advised actions,” she said in a statement.
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The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This ruling marks the second time that a federal judge has intervened to pause Mr Trump’s expansive interpretation of his own powers in order to let a legal challenge proceed. On Thursday, Judge John C Coughenour of the Western District of Washington issued a temporary restraining order that blocked an attempt by Trump to end automatic citizenship for babies born on US soil.
The funding freeze, announced on Monday night in a two-page memo from Matthew J Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, directs federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance,” specifically citing “DEI, woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal.” The meaning of the directive was unclear, and plunged state agencies, city governments and non-profit organisations into confusion.
Judge AliKhan’s stay came as access to federal money for programmes large and small was interrupted, causing chaos across the country. State health agencies said they had been locked out of their Medicaid reimbursement portals. State officials said funding for preschools, community health centres, food for low-income families, housing assistance and disaster relief was at risk. Universities were freezing new research grants.
With even Republican states pleading for guidance, the White House and its budget office tried on Tuesday afternoon to dial back perceptions about the order’s scope, saying the funding pause did “not apply across-the-board” and was limited to programmes implicated by the president’s executive orders, including those on DEI efforts and funding for non-governmental organisations “that undermine the national interest.”
A question-and-answer document released by the budget office as a follow-up said that “mandatory programs like Medicaid” would “continue without pause.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
