A second federal judge has imposed a preliminary injunction on President Donald Trump’s spending freeze, pausing it and requiring the administration to disburse federal financial assistance to various entities.
McConnell’s order follows a series of blocks placed on the spending freeze, as well as on various policies targeted toward more specific funding streams.
One of those made it to the Supreme Court, which on March 5 declined an opportunity to halt a lower court order mandating the disbursement of foreign assistance funding.
McConnell’s preliminary injunction is the second targeting the directive from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to halt various categories of spending across the federal government on the basis of Trump’s executive orders.
Both she and McConnell said the administration exceeded its statutory authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
AliKhan wrote: “In the simplest terms, the freeze was ill-conceived from the beginning. Defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than 24 hours.
“The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable.”
The administration opposed McConnell’s and AliKhan’s preliminary injunctions.
It has argued, among other things, that the cases were moot because the OMB memo directing the freeze was rescinded.
The freeze, it said, was also not the type of final agency action that could be adjudicated under the APA.
McConnell disagreed on both points. His opinion pointed to a social media post by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt after the OMB rescinded the memo, apparently in response to an initial administrative stay imposed by AliKhan.
In her post, Leavitt wrote: “This is not a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The president’s [executive orders] on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
“The press secretary’s statement,” McConnell said, “reflects that the OMB Directive’s rescission was in direct response to litigation that impeded the execution of a federal funding freeze.
“Thus, the rationale underlying the OMB Directive’s rescission makes it unreasonable to conclude that the defendants will not reinstate the challenged funding freeze absent an injunction from this court.”
AliKhan said in a Feb. 3 opinion that the administration’s “actions appear to suffer infirmities of a constitutional magnitude.”
“The appropriation of the government’s resources is reserved for Congress, not the executive branch,” she said.
McConnell similarly indicated that Trump was encroaching on Congress’s authority and cited statutory language that he said directed that various federal entities “shall” make grants or distribute funds.
“There’s a lot of discretion that’s given in a variety of grants,” Devin Watkins, an attorney at Competitive Enterprise Institute, previously told The Epoch Times.
“Without examining each and every one of those grants ... you can’t know whether the pause is lawful or not.”
The issue is expected to reach the Supreme Court. Four justices dissented from the court’s March 5 decision not to block the disbursement of foreign aid.
In the dissent, Justice Samuel Alito said he was “stunned” by his fellow justices’ decision not to intervene.
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out [and probably lose forever] 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” he wrote.
“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise.”
