Dozens of States Ask Court to Enforce Restraining Order on Trump’s Funding Freeze

The White House in Washington on Feb. 4, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A coalition of attorneys general from 22 states and the District of Columbia filed an emergency motion on Friday for the enforcement of a restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s funding freeze.

Rhode Island U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell issued a temporary restraining order on Jan. 31 to prevent the Trump administration from freezing federal financial assistance. But the attorneys general said that access to federal funds have remained blocked despite the order.

The attorneys general said that they have observed “an ever-changing kaleidoscope of federal financial assistance that has been suspended, deleted, in transit, under review, and more since entry of the order.”

“These conditions persist today,” they stated in the motion. “And, while it is imaginable that a certain amount of machinery would need to be re-tooled in order to undo the breadth of the federal funding freeze, there is no world in which these scattershot outages, which as of this writing impact billions of dollars in federal funding across the plaintiff states, can constitute compliance with this court’s order.”

The motion states that the Trump administration has failed to fully comply with the order as access to federal funds under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure, Investment, and Jobs Act (IIJA) remained blocked.

These funds include $5 billion for supporting states, tribes, and local governments in greenhouse gas reduction efforts; $117.5 million for an air monitoring and research program; $4.5 billion for a home electrification and appliances rebate program; and $7 billion for rooftop and community solar energy projects.

The attorneys general said that as of Feb. 5, grant accounts were still unavailable for disbursements and federal grantor agencies replied to state agency inquiries “with receipt-acknowledging non-answers or not replied at all.” Meetings with agency grant offices were also frequently canceled, they stated.

According to the motion, the Trump administration explained that certain federal funds fall outside the scope of the court’s order, which were frozen pursuant to another memo issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that the states had not challenged.

The Trump administration also cited “unspecified operation and administrative reasons” for the delays in some funding, the motion stated.

The attorneys general said that while they do not currently intend to seek any sanction, they asked the court to require the administration to “take every step necessary to effectuate the order, including clearing any administrative, operational, or technical hurdles to implementation.”

“These funds are not monopoly money, and this is not a game,” Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “Real people are suffering, and will continue to suffer incredible damages from the disruption of these vital funds.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

The states filed the lawsuit on Jan. 28 after OMB issued a memo directing federal agencies to suspend the distribution of grants, loans, and other financial assistance while the programs were being reviewed to ensure they aligned with President Donald Trump’s policy priorities. OMB rescinded the memo on Jan. 29 after a federal judge in Washington issued a temporary restraining order.

In issuing his order on Jan. 31, McConnell said the rescission was “in name only and may have been issued simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts,” citing a social media post from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that said a federal funding freeze remains in effect.

McConnell said the states were likely to succeed in their lawsuit and that Trump violated the Administrative Procedures Act by imposing conditions on funding that Congress instructed the executive to provide to them.

The attorneys general joining Jennings in the lawsuit include those from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Sam Dorman contributed to this report.