President Donald Trump has wasted little time in enacting his second-term agenda, but last week he encountered some judicial obstacles to one of his key priorities.
On Friday, a federal judge placed a temporary block on the Trump administration's freeze on federal funds disbursement covering a range of potential programs, the second time in a week that such a halt was implemented by a court, as NBC News reports.
At issue is a memo issued by Trump's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that ordered federal agencies to place a temporary freeze on the disbursement of grants and loans, a move meant to make certain that funds are not being spent on programs that do not align with the president's overall agenda, as Roll Call explained.
The spending freeze was set to take effect last Tuesday at 5 p.m., and the administration said that it was intended to eliminate spending on “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering.”
Acting OMB Director Matthew Vaeth stated, ““Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities,” and added that the memo “requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President's policies and requirements.”
It did not take long for Democrats and members of the mainstream media to seize on the memo and declare it an attempt to circumvent Congress by withholding duly appropriated funding from the American people, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer decrying what he said was “lawlessness and chaos” that would extract “an awful price,” as Fox News reports.
Though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went to great lengths to explain that the freeze did not impact anyone who receives direct assistance such as payments from Social Security, Medicare benefits, food stamps, or the like, legal action was initiated to stop the administration's move.
On Tuesday, before the freeze was set to take effect, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan issued a temporary block on the action via an administrative stay.
After hearing arguments from those protesting the action as well as from the administration, AliKhan said, “I do think there is the specter of irreparable harm” and granted the aforementioned stay, effective until Monday.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell agreed with a group of 22 states who sought a block on the funding freeze, stating, “The Executive's action unilaterally suspends the payment of federal funds to the States and others simply by choosing to do so.”
He went on, “The Executive cites no legal authority allowing it to do so; indeed, no such federal law would authorize the Executive's unilateral action here” and granted a temporary restraining order against the administration.
Though the White House last week rescinded the OMB memo at issue and suggested that doing so rendered the nascent litigation moot, Judge McConnell noted that administration spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that the action did not mean that the funding freeze had been ended, only the memo itself, something he interpreted to mean that the “policies...that the States challenge here are still in full force and effect and thus the issues presented in the States' TRO motion are not moot.”
McConnell's order suggested his belief that the plaintiff states are “likely to succeed on the merits of some, if not all, of their claims,” stating, “Federal law specifies how the Executive should act if it believes that appropriations are inconsistent with the President's priorities -- it must ask Congress, not act unilaterally.”
He continued, “Are there some aspects of the pause that might be legal and appropriate constitutionally for the Executive to take? The Court imagines there are, but it is equally sure that there are many instances in the Executive Orders' wide-ranging, all-encompassing, and ambiguous 'pause' of critical funding that are not,” but given the apparent confidence from the White House that the spending freeze will pass legal muster, only time will tell how this confrontation ultimately concludes.
