A Federal district court judge in Rhode Island is continuing to weigh the legality of the Trump administration’s move earlier this week to freeze trillions in congressionally approved Federal funding despite the administration’s action on Wednesday to rescind the order that authorized the freeze effort.
On Monday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) declared a freeze on most Federal grant and loan program payments with an aim to defund Federal programs that don’t align with the president’s agenda – creating nearly universal confusion as agencies and funding recipients alike scrambled to fall into compliance with the order and understand how it would impact them.
OMB rescinded the memo yesterday in a series of last-minute legal maneuvers.
In a virtual hearing on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge John McConnell said that he would grant a motion filed by 22 states and the District of Columbia to temporarily place a restraining order on the Federal funding freeze. According to the plaintiffs, the restraining order will allow the states the time to file a preliminary injunction against the freeze attempt.
“I believed at the time of reading the complaint … that the states were very likely to succeed on some or all of the five counts that they put forward,” said Judge McConnell in his decision to side with the states. “And the public interest and the balancing of the equities all supported a temporary order stopping that order from taking effect so that the inappropriate effects of that order would not continue.”
The judge asked the state attorneys generals who sued the Trump administration to draft an order and said that he will then give the Department of Justice (DoJ) 24 hours to respond to the draft order.
“What I am continuing to question is how that order would look and what the scope of it would be and how it would be directed and implemented,” said Judge McConnell.
Significantly to how any future funding freeze might fare, Judge McConnell determined that the motion to place a restraining order was not moot – despite arguments by the DoJ attorney representing the Trump administration that the lawsuit was moot following the OMB memo being rescinded – and after contradictory statements from the White House issued earlier that same day.
In a statement posted to X, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that withdrawing the OMB memo was “NOT a recission of the federal funding freeze.”
“The President’s EO’s [executive order] on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented,” Leavitt said in her statement.
The complaint filed by the states called the OMB memo “unconstitutional” and said that “unlawfully withheld funding” would “result in immediate and devastating harm to Plaintiff States.”
“Without this funding, Plaintiff States will be unable to provide certain essential benefits for residents, pay public employees, satisfy obligations, and carry on the important business of government,” the complaint says.
