WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — A federal judge told the Trump administration on Monday that it must comply with a previous ruling that required the government to unfreeze funding on grants and loans.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island issued the new five-page ruling just days after Democratic attorneys general filed an emergency motion, alleging the Trump administration wasn’t following a temporary restraining order the judge issued in late January.
McConnell wrote in his latest ruling the Trump administration must “restore withheld funds” connected to the bipartisan infrastructure law and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the climate change, health care and tax package that Democrats passed when they held unified control of government.
He also wrote that the Trump administration needed to unfreeze funding at the National Institutes of Health.
Two lawsuits
The ongoing case in the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, State of New York v. Trump, is just one of two lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grant and loan funding.
The other case, National Council of Nonprofits v. Office of Management and Budget, includes its own temporary restraining order requiring the Trump administration to release the funds it tried to halt.
The cases began in late January when the Office of Management and Budget issued a two-page memo instructing departments and agencies to halt the payments.
The memo immediately came under a short-term administrative stay from a federal judge and the Office of Management and Budget decided to withdraw the memo the next day.
Confusion, however, persisted after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on social media that rescinding the OMB memo was “NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.”
Both federal judges later issued temporary restraining orders blocking the Trump administration from implementing the type of halt in grant and loan payments envisioned in the OMB memo.
All freezes included, judge says
McConnell tried to clear up any confusion about his temporary restraining order with the emergency order on Monday, writing the “plain language of the TRO entered in this case prohibits all categorical pauses or freezes in obligations or disbursements based on the OMB Directive or based on the President’s 2025 Executive Orders.”
“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” McConnell wrote.
“The Defendants now plea that they are just trying to root out fraud,” he wrote. “But the freezes in effect now were a result of the broad categorical order, not a specific finding of possible fraud. The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country. These pauses in funding violate the plain text of the TRO.”
