Freezing the Freeze: Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Order Pausing Federal Aid Funding
AP Photo/Alex Brando
A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to freeze all federal aid funding.
The order, issued Monday evening from Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent shockwaves across the country and drew outrage from politicians and others involved in the agencies and nonprofits that expected to be affected.
The funding freeze was originally scheduled to kick in at 5:00 pm ET on Tuesday and expected to remain in place through at least mid-February, The New York Times reported. Vaeth’s memo ordered that all federal agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
The memo swiftly drew a legal challenge filed by several nonprofit groups, arguing that it violated both the First Amendment and federal law on how executive orders can be implemented, and the plaintiffs secured an emergency hearing that took place just minutes before the funding freeze was set to go into effect.
US District Judge Loren L. AliKhan issued a ruling imposing a temporary hold, saying it would be “a way of preserving the status quo” and give the court time to consider the challenge more fully and issue a permanent ruling by Feb. 3.
This administrative stay was “really for the court’s benefit,” said the judge. “It’s really for the court to have full briefing” and properly consider the arguments from the plaintiffs and the Trump administration.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reported on the judge’s order, noting that the OMG memo had “certainly has sown confusion throughout the day here in Washington and indeed in states around the country about spending, about government programs, about government loans.”
The funding that appeared to be affected by the memo involved “programs that affect people’s lives,” said Zeleny, including Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and various Medicaid programs. The White House had insisted there would be no pause on spending that affected people directly, but there was still “so much confusion,” he added, and multiple states reported their Medicaid website portals — the way people get Medicaid reimbursements — were “simply not working.”
This order paused the funding freeze until next Monday, Feb. 3, Zeleny concluded, “and then there will be more court cases to come, obviously. But it is just the latest example of the president and the Trump administration’s exertion of their executive authority.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
