A federal judge on Thursday extended an order that prevented the Trump administration from freezing billions in congressionally approved funds to 22 states and the District of Columbia. The judge found that the administration had overstepped in trying to stop the agencies from using money appropriated by Congress.
The ruling, which builds on the judge’s temporary order instructing the government to keep dispersing the funds, sets up a broader clash between Democratic states over the Trump administration’s efforts to align spending with the president’s agenda.
In an opinion handed down on Thursday morning, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island, said the case amounted to executive overreach.
“Here, the executive put itself above Congress,” he wrote. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”
A memo from the White House budget office had demanded a pause on billions in grants until the administration could determine that the funding complied with Mr. Trump’s priorities, setting off days of confusion and alarm. A coalition of the states’ attorneys general quickly sued. In their challenge, they pointed to specific examples of how critical funding from agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Environmental Protection Agency could leave states stranded in an emergency, unable to provide such vital services as clean water.
Judge McConnell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, said that the directive from the budget office “fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government” and that without his action, “the funding that the states are due and owed creates an indefinite limbo.”
The order on Thursday was aimed at all the federal agencies cited in the memo from the budget office. It directs them to refrain from “pausing, freezing, blocking, canceling, suspending, terminating or otherwise impeding the disbursement of appropriated federal funds to the States under awarded grants, executed contracts or other executed financial obligations.”
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