A second judge pauses Trump's federal funding freeze, siding with Raoul and other attorneys general
A U.S. district court judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from imposing a blanket freeze on federal funding at the urging of 22 state attorneys general, including Illinois.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, the attorneys general from 21 other states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit last Tuesday against President Donald Trump after he issued a memo to temporarily freeze federal grants, loans and other funding assistance. The directive sparked widespread concern and confusion in Illinois and across the country.
Friday’s decision, from federal Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the District of Rhode Island, is a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration. It requires the administration not to “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate” taxpayer money already doled out by Congress. The order applies only to the states that filed last week's compliant.
A different federal judge issued a temporary stay on Tuesday to block the order from the White House Office of Management and Budget to freeze as much as $3 trillion in federal money. But that was set to expire Monday.
The administration froze the funds pending a spending analysis to root out “wokeness and the weaponization of government.” The lawsuit argued that decision violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law by creating new conditions on funding that has already been allocated.
“I am pleased the judge agreed with our coalition that the president cannot interrupt funding appropriated by the separate, but equal, legislative branch of government,” Raoul said in a statement. “Illinois relies on this federal funding to support our state’s most vulnerable residents who depend on Medicaid, to enhance public safety by protecting children from online predators, and to support the farming industry that serves as the backbone of Illinois’ economy.”
It's not clear how much funding could be at stake for Illinois, but the city’s budget director estimated about $4 billion that goes to Chicago.
By Wednesday, the Trump administration had rescinded the memo. But that same day, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration will continue reviewing federal funding programs.
“This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” Leavitt said in a social media post that was also presented as evidence in the complaint. She added the president’s executive orders “on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
Judge McConnell’s order called out that statement and required the Trump administration not to reintroduce the freeze “under any other name or title.” The states argued that rescinding the memo without unfreezing funding was an attempt to evade the lawsuit.
McConnell also agreed with the states that the president had overstepped his authority. He wrote in his ruling: “Congress has not given the Executive limitless power to broadly and indefinitely pause all funds that it has expressly directed to specific recipients and purposes and therefore the Executive’s actions violate the separation of powers.”
The order does not block the Trump administration from continuing its review, only from defunding the programs that fail its tests in the states that sued.
The temporary restraining order is valid until the court rules on the preliminary injunction.
Raoul is co-leading the lawsuit that was joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.