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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Miami to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Expressing concerns about “irreparable harm,” a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily stopped President Donald Trump‘s funding freeze on federal aid programs minutes before it could take effect.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan issued a temporary order, blocking the freeze for further review. AliKhan’s order will last until Feb. 3 at 5 p.m., meaning no federal funds can be suspended until then.
“I think there is the specter of irreparable harm,” said AliKhan, a Joe Biden appointee, Politico reported.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit against the one-week-old Trump administration by the National Council of Nonprofits (NCN), the largest network of nonprofit organizations in North America, with more than 30,000 organizational members and other groups, including SAGE is the country’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of elderly LGBTQ+ people.
“They are going to lose funding in 10 minutes because they support transgender equality instead of supporting something that the administration finds more palatable,” said Jessica Morton, an attorney for the National Council of Nonprofits and other groups, Politico reported.
The complaint names the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is part of the Executive Office of the President and is responsible for overseeing the management of federal financial assistance, and its Acting Director, Matthew Vaeth, as defendants.
Justice Department attorney Daniel Schwei fired back at the Council’s request for the temporary restraining order.
“They request sweeping relief … not tethered to any identified grant programs,” Schwei said. “It would be appropriate to allow these issues to be addressed on a more orderly timeframe … I think it would be preemptive for the court to order relief just based on the suspicion that there might be some harm at some point.”
According to the complaint, Vaeth had issued a memorandum entitled “Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs.”
The memo purports to require every federal agency to temporarily pause “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by [President Trump’s] executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
The complaint said the memo — made public only through journalists’ reporting, with barely 24-hour notice, is “devoid of any legal basis or the barest rationale” and “will have a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands of grant recipients who depend on the inflow of grant money (money already obligated and already awarded) to fulfill their missions, pay their employees, pay their rent — and, indeed, improve the day-to-day lives of the many people they work so hard to serve.”
Although the Trump Administration is at liberty to “advanc[e] [its] priorities,” it must do so within the confines of the law, the complaint said.
“It has not,” the complaint continues. “The Memo fails to explain the source of OMB’s purported legal authority to gut every grant program in the federal government; it fails to consider the reliance interest of the many grant recipients, including those to whom money had already been promised; and it announces a policy of targeting grant recipients based in part on those recipients’ First Amendment rights and with no bearing on the recipients’ eligibility to receive federal funds.”
Meanwhile, state attorneys general in 23 states have also filed a lawsuit in Rhode Island seeking to stop the freeze.
