Jerrod KingeryA second federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s plan to pause spending on federal loans and grants.
Last week, a memo issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) called for a freeze on all federal assistance in order to review agency program spending. U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan issued an administrative stay just before it was set to take effect.
The memo stated that the freeze was intended to allow the new administration to review agency programs and ensure that the funding aligns with President Donald Trump’s policies and executive orders.
OMB has since rescinded the memo, but the confusion over the freeze continued after White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X that the freeze on federal funding remained “in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
On Friday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr. issued a temporary restraining order after considering Leavitt’s post, preventing the Trump administration from pausing federal grant and loan payments to 22 states and the District of Columbia, which had sued the administration.
“The Executive’s action unilaterally suspends the payment of federal funds to the States and others simply by choosing to do so, no matter the authorizing or appropriating statute, the regulatory regime, or the terms of the grant itself,” McConnell wrote in the order. “The Executive cites no legal authority allowing it to do so; indeed, no federal law would authorize the Executive’s unilateral action here.
Photo courtesy DJTechYT, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
